| 1. |
- Danielsson, Anna, 1980-
(författare)
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Programming peacebuilding : representations, misrepresentations and a shift to the production of interventionary objects
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of International Relations and Development. - : Palgrave Macmillan. - 1408-6980 .- 1581-1980. ; 22:3, s. 584-609
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The epistemologies of international interventions are receiving increased attention. An emerging literature on knowledge production in peace- and statebuilding has questioned any given authority of western epistemologies in conflict contexts. However, this article argues that by not interrogating into the conditions of producing representations, the literature paradoxically leaves interveners’ representations and knowledge forms intact. The article develops a conceptual framework for a reflexive analysis of how phenomena in conflict contexts are made known and representable. The framework’s value is illustrated in an analysis of the epistemic practices and their conditions of possibility that from 1995 to 2015 produced the ‘informal economy’ as interventionary object in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The multifaceted work of production included international standard-setting procedures, survey distributions and a development of calculative techniques. Conditioned by this work, various ‘informalities’ were produced as interventionary object, with distinct stakes brought into the respective object through the acts of producing it.
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| 2. |
- Abrahamsson, Sebastian, 1979-, et al.
(författare)
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Becoming stronger by becoming weaker : the hunger strike as a mode of doing politics
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of International Relations and Development. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1408-6980 .- 1581-1980. ; 22:4, s. 882-898
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Drawing on Judith Butler’s work and a series of studies associated with actor–network theory (ANT), this paper engages with political agency through the concept of performativity. Based on the empirical analysis of a hunger strike that took place in Brussels in 2012 and involved 23 illegal immigrants, we aim to achieve three things. First, we foreground physical bodies as political entities caught up in multiple modes of doing politics. Second, we show how such modes relate to one another, reinforcing citizenship, activism and party politics as specific performances of agency associated with liberal democracy. Finally, we argue that the Brussels hunger strike also challenges these performances by failing to meet certain expectations about what it is to be political/act politically. As the European refugee crisis is generating louder and louder voices, hunger strikes sensitise us to modes of doing that work by becoming passive, silent, weak and vulnerable. Such processes, we suggest, expand the standard repertoire of modes of doing and may refigure our understanding of the interaction between transnational and liberal democratic politics—in International Relations, ANT and beyond.
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| 3. |
- Aggestam, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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The gender-resilience nexus in peace building : the quest for sustainable peace
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of International Relations and Development. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1581-1980 .- 1408-6980. ; 25:4, s. 880-901
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Resilience and gender have become new buzzwords for expressing renewal in peacebuilding. This article unpacks the gender-resilience nexus in theory and analyses global trends and variation in peacebuilding policy and practice. It advances an analytical framework based on three central pillars of peacebuilding: process, outcome, and expertise. A comprehensive analysis of 49 international peacebuilding handbooks, produced by leading international organisations for policymakers and practitioners in the field, is conducted. The results show how the integration of the gender-resilience nexus signals new ways of understanding conflict dynamics and peacebuilding. Yet, gender peace expertise is ‘thin’ in regards to policies and practices of resilient conflict transformation. By way of conclusion, we suggest three directions to be taken in research to advance and refine the gender-resilience nexus. First, the politics and contestation of peacebuilding need to be problematised and explored further. Second, the understanding of resilience in peacebuilding needs to shift emphasis from conflict management to conflict transformation. Third, the positionality of peacebuilding actors and local contexts need to be probed further.
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| 4. |
- Behravesh, Maysam
(författare)
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State revisionism and ontological (in)security in international politics: The complicated case of Iran and its nuclear behavior
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of International Relations and Development. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1581-1980 .- 1408-6980. ; 21:4, s. 836-857
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite continuing to be a strong tendency in international relations today, “state revisionism” has been theoretically and empirically understudied. This article attempts to fill the lacuna by further conceptualizing revisionism and subsequently investigating its relationship with ontological (in)security through studying the ways in which revisionist states envision their identities and interests and take measures to secure them. It argues that revisionists define their relationship with outside “Others” primarily in terms of dissatisfaction and self-extending change and thus find themselves operating within an enmity-centric “Hobbesian culture of anarchy,” which may ironically serve as a source of ontological security due to the consequent “singularity” status it confers upon them. By opposing the prevailing status quo, however, revisionists are likely to subject themselves to a “geopolitics of exclusion,” which in turn helps render them more prone to feelings of ontological insecurity. To instantiate the theory, I focus on Iran and its nuclear behavior, contending that it represents a case of “thin revisionism” aimed at attaining ontological security, but which also entails undesirable consequences that generate ontological insecurity. The case furthermore reveals the limits of seeking ontological security, suggesting that the degree of revisionism is usually checked by existential fears of threat to survival.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Björkdahl, Annika, et al.
(författare)
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'Global' norms and 'local' agency: frictional peacebuilding in Kosovo
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of International Relations and Development. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1581-1980 .- 1408-6980. ; 18:3, s. 265-287
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article explores how the 'liberal democratic peace package' is received in post-conflict spaces. As such, it is part of a critical peace research agenda that raises critical questions concerning the quality of peace in many post-conflict societies. A close reading of the peace-building process in post-conflict Kosovo provides the backdrop for the theoretical discussion that identifies friction in norm diffusion processes and the different agencies that are generated through encounters between global norms and local practices. We unpack the interplay between the 'global' and the 'local' in peacebuilding and, through the lens of friction, we reveal the diverse and unequal encounters that produce new power relations. By foregrounding agency, we theorise different agentive subjects in the post-conflict setting, and map local agency from various segments of society that may localise, co-opt or reject global norms pertaining to the liberal democratic peace.
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| 7. |
- Bremberg, Niklas, et al.
(författare)
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Ambiguous power? A relational approach to how the EU exercises power in Morocco and Tunisia
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of International Relations and Development. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1408-6980 .- 1581-1980. ; 24, s. 128-148
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article addresses the question of how the EU exercises power in international politics and, in particular, whether or not there is anything distinctive about the ways in which it does so. Taking a relational approach to power, where the focus is on practical knowledge and perceptions of self and other, the paper departs from the assumption that such a question has to be evaluated in specific settings. Extrapolating from the EU's attempt to influence outcomes in Tunisia and Morocco following the Arab Spring, this paper proposes that the power of ambiguity captures some of the distinctiveness of the EU as a global actor. The paper highlights the ambiguity of what the EU is in the eyes of others, which opens up avenues for exercising power that others lack, not necessarily in accordance with a well-defined agenda, but understood as the production of effects in delimited settings.
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| 8. |
- Brommesson, Douglas, 1976, et al.
(författare)
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The feasibility of an expanded regime on the use of force: the case of the responsibility to protect
- 2013
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Ingår i: Journal of International Relations and Development. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1408-6980 .- 1581-1980. ; 16:1, s. 138-166
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article addresses the question of whether an expanded regime on the use of force, based on the report The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) of 2001, would be feasible. The formula of the R2P has since found its way into the United Nations machinery via the final resolution from the World Summit in 2005 and can be seen as an emerging and more permissive norm on the use of force in cases of humanitarian catastrophes. The question of whether or not the theoretical framework of the norm is feasible is therefore urgent. Our analysis of feasibility is based on three logics of human action: the logic of consequence, logic of appropriateness and logic of arguing. We argue that each of these logics contains aspects that must be observed before a regime can be considered feasible. These logics are coupled with three mechanisms of socialisation of norms: strategic calculation, role-playing and normative suasion. We construct a minimal standard for a feasible regime by deducing requirements from the logics and their mechanisms, and then apply that standard to the content of the ICISS report. The empirical results show that the report must address the fact that it lacks qualities in regard to all three logics, before the expanded regime can be considered feasible.
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| 9. |
- de Donà, Matteo
(författare)
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Is it only about science and policy? The ‘intergovernmental epistemologies’ of global environmental governance
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of International Relations and Development. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1408-6980 .- 1581-1980. ; 26
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Although international actors operating under the United Nations umbrella put much faith in the possibility of bridging science and policy through various institutional arrangements, research in the Science and Technology Studies (STS) tradition suggests that different civic epistemologies revolve around environmental degradation issues. Civic epistemologies, which imply peculiar understandings of knowledge across cultures, are not easily bridged. This paper contends that conflicting (civic) epistemologies inevitably emerge in epistemic debates at the intergovernmental level, with strong implications for how science and knowledge are dealt with and understood in environmental negotiations. Drawing on the experience of global soil and land governance and building on the idiom of civic epistemologies, the concept of intergovernmental epistemologies is introduced as an analytical tool to capture the diverging ways of appreciating and validating knowledge in intergovernmental settings. Placing state actors and their perspectives center stage, intergovernmental epistemologies account for the tensions, contestations and politicisation processes of international institutional settings dealing with environmental issues. The paper concludes discussing the consequences of intergovernmental epistemologies for the study of global environmental governance: it cautions about overreliance on approaches based on learning and all-encompassing discourses, emphasizing the value of using STS-derived concepts to investigate the complexity of international environmental negotiations.
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| 10. |
- Eriksson, Johan, Professor, 1967-, et al.
(författare)
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Russian space policy and identity : visionary or reactionary?
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of International Relations and Development. - : Palgrave Macmillan. - 1408-6980 .- 1581-1980. ; 24:2, s. 381-407
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Why is there a lack of grand, forward-looking vision in contemporary Russian space policy? Our study reveals nothing that compares with either ambitious Soviet goals or contemporary American goals of being first, reaching farthest, and being a dominant power in space; nor are there any clear explanations available of what goals Russia pursues in space. Notwithstanding the celebrational rhetoric on Russia being an ‘acknowledged leader’ which recurrently refers to its superpower past, the substance of contemporary Russian space policy is not focused on hegemony but rather on reaching equal status, catching up, being competitive, and strengthening independent access to space. Whether motivated by a shift to a less ambitious great power identity seeking equal status rather than dominance or departing from a perception of inferiority in comparison with the West, Russian space policy simultaneously seeks lasting space cooperation with the US and criticises the US for militarisation of space. This may seem paradoxical from a geopolitical perspective, but it makes sense from an identity perspective; for better or worse, the US remains Russia’s ‘significant other’ in space.
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