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Cambridge Studies in International Relations is a joint initiative of Cambridge University Press and the British International Studies Association (BISA). The series aims to publish the best new scholarship in international studies, irrespective of subject matter, methodological approach or theoretical perspective. The series seeks to bring the latest theoretical work in International Relations to bear on the most important problems and issues in global politics.

  • Managing Editors: Evelyn Goh, Christian Reus-Smit, Nicholas J. Wheeler
  • Advisory Boards: Jacqueline Best, University of Ottawa, Karin Fierke, University of St Andrews, William Grimes, Boston University, Yuen Foong Khong, National University of Singapore, Andrew Kydd, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Lily Ling, New School for Social Research, New York, Andrew Linklater, Aberystwyth University, Nicola Phillips, University of Sheffield, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Northwestern University, Illinois, Jacquie TRUE, Monash University, Victoria, Leslie Vinjamuri, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Alexander Wendt, Ohio State University

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150 results in Cambridge Studies in International Relations

Page 4 of 8

State Sovereignty as Social Construct
  • Edited by Thomas J. Biersteker, Cynthia Weber
  • Published online:
    01 June 2011
    Print publication:
    02 May 1996
  • State sovereignty is an inherently social construct. The modern state system is not based on some timeless principle of sovereignty, but on the production of a normative conception which links authority, territory, population (society, nation), and recognition in a unique way, and in a particular place (the state). Attempting to realize this ideal entails a great deal of hard work on the part of statespersons, diplomats, and intellectuals. The ideal of state sovereignty is a product of the actions of powerful agents and the resistances to those actions by those located at the margins of power. The unique contribution of this book is to describe, theorize, and illustrate the practices which have socially constructed, reproduced, reconstructed, and deconstructed various sovereign ideals and resistances to them. The contributors analyse how all the components of state sovereignty - not only recognition, but also territory, population, and authority - are socially constructed and combined in specific historical contexts.

Quasi-States
  • Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World
  • Robert H. Jackson
  • Published online:
    01 June 2011
    Print publication:
    17 January 1991
  • In this book, Professor Robert Jackson develops an original interpretation of Third World underdevelopment, explaining it in terms of international relations and law. He describes Third World countries as 'quasi-states', arguing that they are states in name only, demonstrating how international changes during the post-1945 period made it possible for many quasi-states to be created and to survive despite the fact that they are usually inefficient, illegitimate and domestically unstable.

Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations
  • William Bloom
  • Published online:
    01 June 2011
    Print publication:
    25 May 1990
  • Personal Identity, National Identity and International Relations is the first psychological study of nation-building, nationalism, mass mobilisation and foreign policy processes. In a bold exposition of identification theory, William Bloom relates mass psychological processes to international relations. He draws on Freud, Mead, Erikson, Parsons and Habermas to provide a rigorously argued answer to the longstanding theoretical problem of how to aggregate from individual attitudes to mass behaviour. With a detailed analysis of the nation-building experience of preindustrial France and England, William Bloom applies the theory to international relations.

Rules, Norms, and Decisions
  • On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs
  • Friedrich V. Kratochwil
  • Published online:
    01 June 2011
    Print publication:
    11 May 1989
  • This book assesses the impact of norms on decision-making. It argues that norms influence choices not by being causes for actions, but by providing reasons. Consequently it approaches the problem via an investigation of the reasoning process in which norms play a decisive role. Kratochwil argues that, depending upon the strictness the guidance norms provide in arriving at a decision, different styles of reasoning with norms can be distinguished. While the focus in this book is largely analytical, the argument is developed through the interpretation of the classic thinkers in international law (Grotius, Vattel, Pufendorf, Rousseau, Hume, Habermas).

A Genealogy of Sovereignty
  • Jens Bartelson
  • Published online:
    03 May 2011
    Print publication:
    06 April 1995
  • The concept of sovereignty is central to international relations theory and theories of state formation, and provides the foundation of the conventional separation of modern politics into domestic and international spheres. In this book Jens Bartelson provides a critical analysis and conceptual history of sovereignty, dealing with this separation as reflected in philosophical and political texts during three periods: the Renaissance, the Classical Age, and Modernity. He argues that the concept of sovereignty and its place within political discourse are conditioned by philosophical and historiographical discontinuities between the periods, and that sovereignty should be regarded as a concept contingent upon, rather than fundamental to, political science and its history.

Asymmetric Conflicts
  • War Initiation by Weaker Powers
  • T. V. Paul
  • Published online:
    03 May 2011
    Print publication:
    10 March 1994
  • This book examines a question generally neglected in the study of international relations: why does a militarily and economically less powerful state initiate conflict against a relatively strong state? T. V. Paul analyses this phenomenon by focusing on the strategic and political considerations, domestic and international, which influence a weaker state to initiate war against a more powerful adversary. The key argument of deterrence theory is that the military superiority of the status quo power, coupled with a credible retaliatory threat, will prevent attack by challengers. The author challenges this assumption by examining six twentieth-century asymmetric wars, from the Japanese offensive against Russia in 1904 to the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands in 1982. The book's findings have wide implications for the study of war, power, deterrence, coercive diplomacy, strategy, arms races, and alliances.

Crisis Diplomacy
  • The Great Powers since the Mid-Nineteenth Century
  • James L. Richardson
  • Published online:
    03 May 2011
    Print publication:
    29 September 1994
  • Although much has been written on international crises, the literature suffers from a lack of historical depth, and a proliferation of competing theoretical frameworks. Through case studies drawing on the rich historical experience of crisis diplomacy, James Richardson offers an integrated analysis based on a critical assessment of the main theoretical approaches. Due weight is given to systemic and structural factors, but also to the specific historical factors of each case, and to theories which do not presuppose rationality as well as those which do. Crisis diplomacy the major political choices made by decision makers, and their strategies, judgments and misjudgments - is found to play a crucial role in each of the case studies. This broad historical inquiry is especially timely when the ending of the Cold War has removed the settled parameters within which the superpowers conducted their crisis diplomacy.

Peace and War
  • Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–1989
  • Kalevi J. Holsti
  • Published online:
    04 February 2011
    Print publication:
    26 April 1991
  • In this book, Professor Holsti approaches the study of the origins of war and the foundations of peace from a distinct perspective. He asks three interrelated questions. Which issues generate conflict? How have attitudes towards war changed? And, what attempts have been made historically to create international orders and institutions that can manage, control or prevent international conflicts? Starting with the peace treaties of Munster and Osnabruck of 1648, Kalevi Holsti examines 177 international wars. Through these, he identifies the variety of conflict-producing issues and how they, as well as the attitudes of policy makers to the use of force, have changed over the last 350 years. He demonstrates how the orders established by the great peacemaking efforts of 1648, 1713, 1815, 1919 and 1945 attempted to solve the issues of the past, yet few successfully anticipated those of the future. Indeed, some created the basis of fresh conflicts.

War, Religion and Empire
  • The Transformation of International Orders
  • Andrew Phillips
  • Published online:
    10 January 2011
    Print publication:
    23 December 2010
  • What are international orders, how are they destroyed, and how can they be defended in the face of violent challenges? Advancing an innovative realist-constructivist account of international order, Andrew Phillips addresses each of these questions in War, Religion and Empire. Phillips argues that international orders rely equally on shared visions of the good and accepted practices of organized violence to cultivate cooperation and manage conflict between political communities. Considering medieval Christendom's collapse and the East Asian Sinosphere's destruction as primary cases, he further argues that international orders are destroyed as a result of legitimation crises punctuated by the disintegration of prevailing social imaginaries, the break-up of empires, and the rise of disruptive military innovations. He concludes by considering contemporary threats to world order, and the responses that must be taken in the coming decades if a broadly liberal international order is to survive.

Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations
  • Edited by Stephen Gill
  • Published online:
    10 January 2011
    Print publication:
    26 February 1993
  • The essays collected here relate the writings of Antonio Gramsci and others to the contemporary reconstruction of historical materialist theories of international relations. The contributors analyse the contradiction between globalising and territorially-based social and political forces in the context of past, present and future world orders, and view the emerging world order as undergoing a structural transformation, a 'triple crisis' involving economic, political and 'socio-cultural' change. The prevailing trend of the 1980s and early 1990s toward the marketisation and commodification of social relations leads the contributors to argue that socialism needs to be redefined away from the totalising visions associated with Marxism-Leninism, towards the idea of the self-defence of society and social choice to counter the disintegrating and atomising effects of globalising and unplanned market forces.

After Defeat
  • How the East Learned to Live with the West
  • Ayşe Zarakol
  • Published online:
    10 January 2011
    Print publication:
    23 December 2010
  • Not being of the West; being behind the West; not being modern enough; not being developed or industrialized, secular, civilized, Christian, transparent, or democratic - these descriptions have all served to stigmatize certain states through history. Drawing on constructivism as well as the insights of social theorists and philosophers, After Defeat demonstrates that stigmatization in international relations can lead to a sense of national shame, as well as auto-Orientalism and inferior status. Ayşe Zarakol argues that stigmatized states become extra-sensitive to concerns about status, and shape their foreign policy accordingly. The theoretical argument is supported by a detailed historical overview of central examples of the established/outsider dichotomy throughout the evolution of the modern states system, and in-depth studies of Turkey after the First World War, Japan after the Second World War, and Russia after the Cold War.

Moral Movements and Foreign Policy
  • Joshua W. Busby
  • Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    29 July 2010
  • Why do advocacy campaigns succeed in some cases but fail in others? What conditions motivate states to accept commitments championed by principled advocacy movements? Joshua W. Busby sheds light on these core questions through an investigation of four cases - developing-country debt relief, climate change, AIDS, and the International Criminal Court - in the G-7 advanced industrialized countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Drawing on hundreds of interviews with policy practitioners, he employs qualitative, comparative case study methods, including process-tracing and typologies, and develops a framing/gatekeepers argument, emphasizing the ways in which advocacy campaigns use rhetoric to tap into the main cultural currents in the countries where they operate. Busby argues that when values and costs potentially pull in opposing directions, values will win if domestic gatekeepers who are able to block policy change believe that the values at stake are sufficiently important.

The ANZUS Crisis, Nuclear Visiting and Deterrence
  • Michael Pugh
  • Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    29 September 1989
  • The development of nuclear weapons has been a critical problem for the NATO alliance. In the Pacific, a region of increasing strategic interest for the United States and Soviet Union, nuclear weapons have been an environmental concern since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Opposition to nuclear tests has now been taken a step further with the creation of a South pacific Nuclear Free Zone and the decision by a New Zealand Government to ban port visits by vessels believed to be carrying nuclear weapons. New Zealand's proposal to back its policy with legislation had been seen by the Reagan and Thatcher administrations as a threat to the principle of 'neither confirm nor deny' the presence of nuclear weapons on vessels. This 1989 study examines the questions of principle at issue, the evolution of the ANZUS crisis, its implications for the Western alliance structure as a whole, and the degree to which the 'nuclear-free' virus' in the South Pacific might be catching.

Strategic Studies and World Order
  • The Global Politics of Deterrence
  • Bradley S. Klein
  • Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    05 May 1994
  • In this 1994 book Bradley Klein draws upon debates in international relations theory to raise important questions about the nature of strategic studies. He argues that post-modern critiques of realism and neorealism open up opportunities for new ways of thinking about nuclear deterrence. In clear and uncluttered language, he explores the links between modernity, state-building and strategic violence, and argues that American foreign policy, and NATO, undertook a set of dynamic political practices intended to make and remake world order in the image of Western identity. Klein warns against too facile a celebration of the end of the Cold War, concluding that it is even more imperative today to appreciate the scope and power of the Western strategic project. The book will be of interest to students of international relations theory, strategic studies, peace studies, and US foreign policy.

Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics
  • Edited by Richard M. Price
  • Published online:
    14 May 2010
    Print publication:
    10 July 2008
  • At what point can we concede that the realities of world politics require that moral principles be compromised, and how do we know when a real ethical limit has been reached? This volume gathers leading constructivist scholars to explore the issue of moral limit and possibility in global political dilemmas. The contributors examine pressing ethical challenges such as sanctions, humanitarian intervention, torture, the self-determination of indigenous peoples, immigration, and the debate about international criminal tribunals and amnesties in cases of atrocity. Their analyses entail theoretical and empirical claims about the conditions of possibility and limits of moral change in world politics, therefore providing insightful leverage on the ethical question of 'what ought we to do?' This is a valuable contribution to the growing field of normative theory in International Relations and will appeal to scholars and advanced students of international ethics and political theory.

Contexts of International Politics
  • Gary Goertz
  • Published online:
    07 May 2010
    Print publication:
    24 November 1994
  • In this book Gary Goertz examines how states interact with their environment and contexts, which are important in understanding international politics. He presents a philosophical, methodological and empirical discussion of three important contexts which affect decision makers: history, system structure, and international norms. The effects of these contexts are explored by viewing context in turn as cause, as changing meaning, and as a barrier. The book engages with the literature on structural realism and international regimes, and uses rational actor and diffusion models as theoretical references. A number of concrete studies are provided using these contextual tools, including oil nationalisation, USSR-East European relations, enduring rivalries, and decolonisation. These empirical examples illustrate the fruitfulness of the contextual approach to international politics.

The State, War, and the State of War
  • Kalevi J. Holsti
  • Published online:
    05 May 2010
    Print publication:
    28 August 1996
  • War has traditionally been studied as a problem deriving from the relations between states. Strategic doctrines, arms control agreements, and the foundation of international organizations such as the United Nations are designed to prevent wars between states. Since 1945, however, the incidence of interstate war has actually been declining rapidly, while the incidence of internal wars has been increasing. The author argues that in order to understand this significant change in historical patterns, we should jettison many of the analytical devices derived from international relations studies and shift attention to the problems of 'weak' states, those states unable to sustain domestic legitimacy and peace. This book surveys some of the foundations of state legitimacy and demonstrates why many weak states will be the locales of war in the future. Finally, the author asks what the United Nations can do about the problems of weak and failed states.

Justifying Ballistic Missile Defence
  • Technology, Security and Culture
  • Columba Peoples
  • Published online:
    04 May 2010
    Print publication:
    10 December 2009
  • Technology is championed as the solution to modern security problems, but also blamed as their cause. This book assesses the way in which these two views collide in the debate over ballistic missile defence: a complex, costly and controversial system intended to defend the United States from nuclear missile attacks. Columba Peoples shows how, in the face of strong scientific and strategic critique, advocates of missile defence seek to justify its development by reference to broader culturally embedded perceptions of the promises and perils of technological development. Unpacking the assumptions behind the justification of missile defence initiatives, both past and present, this book illustrates how common-sense understandings of technology are combined and used to legitimate this controversial and costly defence programme. In doing so it engages fundamental debates over understandings of technological development, human agency and the relationship between technology and security.

Central Banking as Global Governance
  • Constructing Financial Credibility
  • Rodney Bruce Hall
  • Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    04 December 2008
  • Money is a social convention, but with what social consequences? In this innovative study, Rodney Bruce Hall argues that those who govern the parameters of money's creation, its destruction, and its valuation are responsible for the governance of international finance. The volume is an analysis of central banking as global governance, employing the institutional philosophy of John Searle as a theoretical basis for exploring the consequences of money as a social institution, and the social relations of credit and debt. While previous studies in this field have made forays into the political economy of monetary institutions, this book breaks new ground by offering a constructivist social analysis that identifies the mechanisms of governance as social rather than material processes. The volume will therefore be of great interest to a wide range of scholars and students, particularly those with an interest in international relations, international finance and international political economy.

International Security in Practice
  • The Politics of NATO-Russia Diplomacy
  • Vincent Pouliot
  • Published online:
    03 May 2010
    Print publication:
    18 February 2010
  • How do once bitter enemies move beyond entrenched rivalry at the diplomatic level? In one of the first attempts to apply practice theory to the study of International Relations, Vincent Pouliot builds on Pierre Bourdieu's sociology to devise a theory of practice of security communities and applies it to post-Cold War security relations between NATO and Russia. Based on dozens of interviews and a thorough analysis of recent history, Pouliot demonstrates that diplomacy has become a normal, though not a self-evident, practice between the two former enemies. He argues that this limited pacification is due to the intense symbolic power struggles that have plagued the relationship ever since NATO began its process of enlargement at the geographical and functional levels. So long as Russia and NATO do not cast each other in the roles that they actually play together, security community development is bound to remain limited.

Page 4 of 8