CIAO DATE: 2/08
Journal of International Relations and Development
Volume 8, Issue 3 (September 2005)
Articles
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Incomplete agreements and the limits of persuasion in international politics
Jens Steffek
Research on international political communication has been revived by constructivist International Relations scholars who have developed the concept of 'arguing'. In this mode of communication, negotiators are brought to revise causal or normative beliefs that they previously held by means of persuasion. Thus arguing is conceptualized as a trigger of change in international politics. Yet, the underlying assumptions about the malleability of beliefs contrast with traditional approaches to international diplomacy. In the traditional view, diplomacy is a practice of containing rather than resolving fundamental disagreement. In this essay, I claim that whenever arguments are part of a process of legal reasoning, they can be politically effective without a demonstrable change in actors' beliefs. To account for such different effects of 'arguing', I introduce the distinction between complete and incomplete agreements from legal theory. Incomplete agreements occur when actors agree on a norm, a rule or a course of action, yet without agreeing on all principles, values or other reasons that stand behind it. The article illustrates the emergence of such an incomplete agreement with the negotiation history of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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Classical realism and the tension between sovereignty and intervention: constructions of expediency from Machiavelli, Hobbes and Bodin
Alan Chong
This article revisits the tension between sovereignty and intervention through the philosophical lenses of three classical realists — Machiavelli, Hobbes and Bodin. A close reading of their studies of sovereignty reveals that they have been animated by a common philosophical search for order and preservation by state authorities amidst the arbitrariness inherent in politics. Their quest for these goals was premised upon the construction of sovereignty in tandem with intervention. Explaining the realist premises of intervention also requires the co-constitution of a third idea: the logic of expedience intrinsic to sovereignty itself. This holds implications for the way one views sovereignty in contemporary international relations discourses.
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Centre–periphery conflict and institutional development: the significance of North–South relations for the CAP
Christilla Roederer-Rynning
Something fundamental is missing in Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) research: an account of how North–South relations have shaped the institutionalization of this policy regime. This article examines the points of contact between developing countries' mobilization and CAP development over the last 40 years. Several points emerge from this comparative historical analysis. With regard to the CAP, developing countries have acted not as one South, but several Souths. The European Community (EC) has helped shape these Souths through an intricate system of trade and development cooperation agreements. In turn, parts of the South have helped sustain the CAP both as a necessary price to pay for the development of privileged relations with the EC and as a consequence of developing countries' international advocacy of managed trade and preferential trade agreements. Recent CAP reforms attest to the erosion of these historical ties and the deployment of new North–South logics. The article makes a call to place developing countries on the CAP research agenda and concludes by sketching out a strategy for further research.
Book Reviews
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Islam in Europe
Petra Maroša
Polity Press, Cambridge, 2004, 178pp.
ISBN: 0 7456 3193 2.
Jack Goody -
The Cuban Revolution: Past, Present and Future Perspectives
Dagmar Huncova
Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2003, 227pp.
ISBN: 0 333 6 96852 0.
Geraldine Lievesley -
The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders
Štěpánka Zemanová
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, 424pp.
ISBN: 0-521-82753-1
Richard Ned Lebow -
Negotiating the New Europe: The European Union and Eastern Europe
Ana-Maria Boromisa
Burlington, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002, 215pp.
ISBN: 0 7546 1865 X
Dimitris Papadimitriou