Columbia International Affairs Online

CIAO DATE: 2/08

Journal of International Relations and Development

Volume 9, Issue 1 (March 2006)

Articles

• 'Civil society' and HIV/AIDS in Africa: the use of language as a transformative mechanism

  Hakan Seckinelgin

  This article argues that the language of international policy frameworks has an important impact on the people who are targeted by these policies. The question of whether definitions have any impact on action is examined. To respond to this question, the article analyses an example of international language: civil society as it is employed by international actors when dealing with Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) problems in sub-Saharan Africa. A theoretical framework is developed and applied to understand two sets of institutional definitions of civil society used in engaging with HIV/AIDS. The implications of these definitions are then juxtaposed with how people identify themselves in relation to such definitions in the field of policy implementation. The article provides a useful theoretical framework based on language that links international policy and people in the area of policy implementation.

• Signalling credibility? The IMF and catalytic finance

  Martin S Edwards

  International Monetary Fund (IMF) programmes are thought to function as a seal of approval to international markets although evidence suggests that Fund programmes do not attract capital inflows. Existing studies fail to address the effects of selection into IMF programmes, which raises questions about the robustness of the findings. Correcting for selection bias, I find that states under Fund programmes experience significant outflows of portfolio investment, which is a 'most likely case' for catalytic effects. The source of this capital flight is the 'medicine' (the Fund programme), not the 'disease' (the economic downturn necessitating the IMF programme). I argue that austerity deters portfolio inflows through its effects on future returns. These findings confirm previous studies and have broader implications for both the influence of IMF programmes and the politics of economic reform.

• Securitization theory and securitization studies

  Rita Taureck

  Opposed to the recently fashionable 'moral and ethical' criticism levelled against Ole Wæver's securitization theory this article argues that such criticism fundamentally misconceives the analytical goal of securitization theory, which is namely to offer a tool for practical security analysis. In arguing that being political (critical) on the part of the analyst has no bearing on the type of practical security analysis that can be done using securitization theory, this article proposes that the analytical goal of such criticism and that of securitization theory are incommensurable; in the process rendering obsolete this kind of criticism of securitization theory. By way of reconciling securitization theory with its critics, however, this article takes up Wæver's suggestion of wider securitization studies in which moral and ethical criticism, as well as being political, can play a supplementary role in the analysis of securitization theory.

• No way out: desecuritization, emancipation and the eternal return of the political — a reply to Aradau

  Andreas Behnke

  Claudia Aradau addresses important issues within the securitization approach of the Copenhagen School. Discussions of security, securitization and desecuritization always involve implicit or explicit stances on political preferences. Unsatisfied with both desecuritization and the identification of security with emancipation, she goes on to develop an alternative take on the problem. De-coupling emancipation from security, Aradau tries to locate emancipation as the counter-strategy to securitization in a realm beyond and outside the reach of exceptional politics, sovereign authority and exclusionary moves. What Aradau underestimates is the central, indeed constitutive, role that security plays in the ontotheology of politics.

• On securitization politics as contexted texts and talk

  Hayward R Alker

  As a reaction to Claudia Aradau's essay in this journal, I firstly feel something more should be said about the strengths of the Copenhagen School's modest, but analytically, normatively and empirically useful approach to securitization, and securitization's relationship with desecuritization. When properly understood, this analytical approach helps us in the same limited way to answer Aradau's call for prior political theorizing. Secondly, I want emphatically to demur from Aradau's assertion of the necessary priority of political analyses of securitization before beginning its conceptual or comparative analysis. Sceptically, I am led to ask: 'Can only a master political theorist emancipate the securitization analyst?' Finally, I want to express my appreciation of Aradau's creative and insightful approach to the dilemmas of immigration-relevant securitization in the European context.

• Limits of security, limits of politics? A response

  Claudia Aradau

  My article, 'Security and the Other Scene: Desecuritization And Emancipation' has triggered reactions to the political claims it put forth. The most controversial claim — in the eyes of the critics — was the formulation of the impossibility to think security only analytically, outside any political project. The other main criticism concerned the concept of politics formulated in the article. In my response, I argue first that political decisions are necessary to cut across the 'indiscernability of knowledge'. Moreover, security is the political concept par excellence, as it entails questions about the politics that we enact. Second, I expose the closure that Schmitt's concept of the political entails for our possibilities of thinking a different politics.

Book Reviews

• The EU, NATO and the Integration of Europe: Rules and Rhetoric

  Lucie Königová

  Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, 323pp.
  ISBN: 0 521 53525 5
  Frank Schimmelfennig

• Politique étrangère: nouveaux regards

  Ana Bojinović

  Presses de Sciences Po, Paris, 2002, 438 pp.
  ISBN: 2-7246-0866-6
  Frédéric Charillon (ed.)

• Security Dynamics in the Former Soviet Bloc

  Marcus Cavelius

  RoutledgeCurzon, London, 2003, 200pp.
  ISBN: 0-4150-29732-X
  Graeme P. Herd and Jennifer D.P. Moroney (eds)

• Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty-making

  Ivana Chlapcová

  Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, xvii+427pp.
  ISBN: 0-19-925733-7
  Scott Barrett