| 1. |
- Aggestam, Karin, et al.
(författare)
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Political leadership and gendered multilevel games in foreign policy
- 2021
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Ingår i: International Affairs. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0020-5850 .- 1468-2346. ; 97:2, s. 385-404
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Gender intersects as a major fault-line in increasingly polarized, contemporary global politics. Many democratic states in the global North and South have adopted pro-gender norms in their foreign policies, while other states and populist regimes have resisted the promotion of gender equality and women's rights. This article analyses how political leaders harness gender dynamics to further their power, status and authority to act in foreign policy. While scholarship on foreign policy analysis has emphasized the role of individuals, political leaders and their followers, and of two-level games balancing domestic and international pressures, we advance a novel theoretical concept: ‘gendered multilevel games’. This new concept highlights the gendered dynamics of the problem of agency and structure in foreign policy, which are generated from the interactions between the domestic, international and transnational levels, and reach within and across states. To illustrate the utility of this concept, we analyse foreign policy leadership and the variation in gendered multilevel games in four vignettes: (1) hyper-masculinity and revisionist leadership; (2) normative leadership and gendered nation-branding; (3) compassionate leadership and gendered transnational symbolism; and (4) contested leadership on pro- and anti-gender norms in foreign policy. Importantly, these empirical illustrations show how adept political leaders navigate pro- and anti-gender norms to achieve core and often divergent foreign policy goals.
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| 2. |
- Albin, Cecilia
(författare)
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Using negotiation to promote legitimacy : an assessment of proposals for reforming the WTO
- 2008
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Ingår i: International Affairs. - 0020-5850 .- 1468-2346. ; 84:4, s. 757-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- How can negotiations be conducted to promote the legitimacy of international institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO)? Can negotiation procedures be designed so as to strengthen the WTO as an institution and the agreements it concludes? One reason for which the legitimacy of the organization is being questioned is its decision-making-especially negotiation-procedures. These have contributed significantly to recent setbacks in WTO talks. Yet proposals for procedural reform have not been subject to much discussion or review, in particular with no regard to content which may boost legitimacy. Justice and other values associated with legitimacy have generally not been addressed by trade experts, and conceptual tools for identifying what practical form their inclusion could take are lacking. This article reviews a variety of proposals, formal and informal, for reforming the WTO's negotiation procedures. It develops an approach to procedural justice which is used to identify the justice content in these proposals, based on four main principles. Drawing on this analysis, the article concludes by highlighting promising elements of reform. In so doing, it brings research literature on justice and negotiation to bear on current debates over the legitimacy deficit in international institutions, using the WTO as a significant case. More practically, the article helps to identify what more legitimate negotiation procedures may mean and require, and how their justice content may be assessed and increased.
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| 3. |
- Bachmann, Jan, 1978, et al.
(författare)
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Concrete approaches to peace: infrastructure as peacebuilding
- 2018
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Ingår i: International Affairs. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0020-5850 .- 1468-2346. ; 94:2, s. 381-398
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Do roads literally lead to peace? While seemingly a strange question to ask, today's peacebuilders certainly seem to think so. After decades of focus on questions of governance, today, instead, infrastructure primes in state- and peacebuilding missions in many fragile and conflict-affected societies. Peacebuilding efforts in places ranging from Somalia to Afghanistan to the Congo are, to a considerable extent, interventions in the built environment. While infrastructure has always been around in post-conflict reconstruction, today, infrastructure is mobilized during ongoing conflict, invested with aspirations of improving security and stability. To be sure, infrastructure played a big role in the formation of strong western states. But can we take this experience to try and forge political orders of concrete and steel? At a first glance, a theory of change that reorders societies by deploying the hidden powers of the built environment seems compelling, and measurable and concrete infrastructure outputs, additionally, fit perfectly within today's more pragmatic approaches to peace. However, based on examples from across the contemporary global peacebuilding landscape, we show that infrastructure neither amounts to a uniform force, nor is it clear what its impact on peace exactly is. What is certain is that infrastructure is profoundly entwined with contemporary peacebuilding, and that we therefore need to develop novel theoretical angles to come to terms with the ubiquitous politics of infrastructure.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Borg, Stefan, 1978-
(författare)
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A ‘natcon takeover’? The New Right and the future of American foreign policy
- 2024
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Ingår i: International Affairs. - 0020-5850 .- 1468-2346.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Donald Trump's capture of the Republican Party enabled a radical questioning of received wisdom within the broader conservative intellectual movement. In particular, it enabled the emergence of a post-Trump, distinctly American New Right. This policy paper examines the American New Right and its visions for United States foreign policy.In the context of contemporary American politics, the New Right is best understood as a rejection of the ‘fusionism’ that has characterized US conservatism since the early decades after the Second World War. The paper argues that there are three major identifiable parts of the New Right: the Claremonters, the post-liberals and the national conservatives. In part because of their ‘big-tent’ character, as well as deft intellectual leadership by Yoram Hazony, the national conservatives have become the most influential group within the contemporary New Right. The article also examines how the New Right has attempted to create an alternative ideational infrastructure, with a clear focus on entrenching itself through large-scale credentialing of personnel deemed to be loyal to the New Right's agenda. There is reason to speak of a ‘natcon takeover’ of traditional conservative institutions. This is particularly the case with the Heritage Foundation, the largest and most influential conservative think tank. While all segments of the New Right ostensibly embrace some notion of grand strategic restraint, the policy paper argues that the rise of national conservatism is likely to accelerate the US pivot from Europe to Asia rather than lead to neo-isolationism, as is sometimes suggested.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Bramsen, Isabel, et al.
(författare)
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How research travels to policy: The case of Nordic peace research
- 2023
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Ingår i: International Affairs. - 0020-5850. ; 99:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- How is peace research connected to practice? Observers have argued that peace research has gone from activist, political ideals about changing the world to being a methods-driven field of research that has lost all criticality. This article adds empirical substance to the debate by investigating the case of Nordic peace research and its relationship to practice. Through interview data with more than 60 individuals, including prominent peace and conflict scholars as well as practitioners working with peace and conflict resolution, we conceptualize the practice-research relationship through four 'travelers' connecting peace research and practice: 1) researchers, 2) students, 3) theories and concepts and 4) empirical findings. We describe distinct characteristics of the four travelers and discuss the changing impact of peace research over time; from researchers acting as mediators and peace activists to an increasing professionalization that has disentangled peace research and practice, shrinking the space for reflexivity in practice as well as the ability to integrate practical experience into research. We discuss the paths forward in terms of co-creation and suggest that peace research need not necessarily influence policy in terms of concrete policy advice but more so by asking big and difficult questions such as 'how peace?' and 'why war?'
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| 8. |
- Bramsen, Isabel, et al.
(författare)
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The missing sense of peace: diplomatic approachment and virtualization during the COVID-19 lockdown
- 2021
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Ingår i: International Affairs. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0020-5850 .- 1468-2346. ; 97:2, s. 539-560
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- With the unprecedented COVID-lockdown in 2020, many peace diplomatic efforts turned virtual. This represented a temporary loss of many of the usual practices of peace diplomacy and provided an opportunity to examine micro-dynamics of both virtual diplomacy and face-to-face meetings. Based on interviews with parties and mediators involved in the Syrian and Yemeni peace processes we analyze the affordances of virtual and physical meetings respectively. We find that virtual meetings condition peace diplomacy by broadening accessibility, putting confidentiality at risk, allowing for higher frequency of meetings, often disrupting interaction, but also in some instances equalizing it. The transition to virtual also meetings demonstrated what is lost in the absence of physicality: bodily presence, spending longer periods of time together, the possibility of reconciliatory interaction and sharing informal space. When this is missing, it hampers conditions for what we call the sense of peace, that is, the visceral potential of meeting physically, which we conceptualize to include a sense of understanding, togetherness and trust. We further propose a wider application of this conception beyond peace diplomacy, in the form of diplomatic approachment. Finally, we suggest strategies in virtual diplomacy and discuss how virtual and physical diplomacy may supplement each other.
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| 9. |
- Bramsen, Isabel
(författare)
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Transformative face-to-face diplomacy? Micro-sociological observations from the Philippine peace talks
- 2022
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Ingår i: International Affairs. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0020-5850 .- 1468-2346. ; 98:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- How do adversaries build social bonds in peace talks and how decisive are such bonds for the success of peace processes? The article investigates the micro-sociological thesis that diplomatic face-to-face interaction can generate social bonds. It is based on direct observations from peace talks between the Philippine government and the communist party (NDFP) in January 2017 and backchannel talks in 2020. The article shows that the talks took the form of friendly and disengaged interaction with very little dominating or conflictual interaction. Observations and interviews with participants show that social bonds were generated at the negotiations. However, the talks broke down immediately after the third round and has not been running since, apart from back-channel negotiations. The article discusses the remarkable contrast between the good atmosphere at the table and the breakdown of negotiations, arguing that while face-to-face interaction holds transformative potential, the right people need to be at the table for it to bring peace. As neither the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, nor the hardliners of his government were present at the table, the transformative potential was limited. The article therefore questions the transformative potential of peace talks, if leaders and hardliners are not present.
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| 10. |
- Bremberg, Niklas, 1978-
(författare)
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The OSCE and climate security : diplomatic practice in a changing geopolitical context
- 2023
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Ingår i: International Affairs. - 0020-5850 .- 1468-2346. ; 99:3, s. 1149-1165
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article analyses the role of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in the field of climate security. In 2021, the OSCE unanimously adopted a ministerial decision on climate change despite rising geopolitical tensions between Russia and the US. Why and how was this possible? The article answers these questions, drawing on a unique set of qualitative data collected from interviews with diplomats and officials conducted during Sweden's OSCE chairpersonship. The analytical framework draws on the concept of communities of practice to analyse how Swedish and like-minded diplomats built on the OSCE's approach to security to informally expand the domain of knowledge on climate-related security risks in the organization. The article suggests that the current political impasse in the OSCE does not necessarily mean that initiatives advanced by groups of like-minded states, in collaboration with the OSCE secretariat, need to be paralyzed. The findings reveal important features of multilateral diplomacy on climate security as well as how the OSCE works in practice.
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