History of International Relations

In this volume, essays by scholars from both sides of the Atlantic open new perspectives on the construction of the "Atlantic community" during World War II and the early Cold War years. Based on original approaches bringing together diplomatic history and the history of culture and ideas, the book shows how atlantism came to provide a solid ideological foundation for the security community of North American and European nations which took shape in the 1940s. The idea of a transatlantic community based on shared histories, values, and political and economic institutions was instrumental to the creation of the Atlantic Alliance, and partly accounts for the continuing existence of the Atlantic partnership after the Cold War. At the same time, this study breaks new ground by arguing that the emergence of the idea of "Atlantic community" also reflected deeper trends in transatlantic relations; in fact, it was the outcome of the re-definition of "the West" due to the rise of the US and the decline of Europe in the international arena during the first half of the Twentieth Century.

This chapter argues that the differences between orthodox international legal and Ethiopian conceptions of sovereignty and civilisation were consistently lost in translation during Ethiopia’s diplomatic encounter with the League of Nations, and especially during the Crisis of 1935-36. In the first place, the conditions attached to Ethiopia’s membership of the League can be linked directly to an inability on the part of inter-war international law, as institutionalised in the League, to recognise and respect the existence of a specifically Ethiopian conception of sovereignty. Second, the Abyssinian conception of civilisation as a process of cultural transformation made it possible of Ethiopia to present itself as equal in cultural terms to European states, and inferior to them only in material – that is, developmental and hence rectifiable terms.

This is a draft chapter for the forthcoming volume, Florian Hoffman & Anne Orford (eds) The Oxford Handbook of International Legal Theory (Oxford: OUP). Please do not cite without the author's permission.

Rather than providing either a taxonomy of international personality or a history of recognition, this chapter examines the way in which the legal effect of recognition on international personality has been theorized. It will therefore distance itself slightly from the ‘indeterminacy thesis’. Bringing some of the most prominent theories of the relationship between recognition and international personality into conversation with some of their most recent and radical alternatives, it will ask why colonial patterns of inequality persist, in spite of the ‘rolling out’ of international personality globally. Is it possible that orthodox theories of this relationship have ‘determined’ these patterns in some way? The focus will therefore be on international recognition (that is, inter-state recognition, as opposed to recognition of governments and belligerents), and on the personality of entities which identify (whether actually or potentially) as territorial (such as states, colonies, ‘mandates’ and indigenous peoples). The chapter begins with a theoretical history of the relationship between recognition and personality, starting with an examination of the work of GWF Hegel, before moving to the contemporary debate and its politics.

‘Earned sovereignty’ has been billed as a new addition to the international legal ‘tool kit’, designed specifically to resolve nationalist conflict. So violent and intractable is such conflict, earned sovereignty’s proponents argue, that the international legal rules (protecting the integrity of the state while granting unconditional independence to colonised peoples) on which traditional solutions are based have become obsolete. In their place, a commendable body state practice is held to indicate the emergence of a new, pragmatic approach in which sovereign power is disaggregated and transferred gradually, in some cases wholly and in others partially, to those secessionist sub-state entities which deserve it, having erected liberal political and economic institutions at the behest and under the supervision of the ‘international community’. This chapter critiques the concept of earned sovereignty from both a historical and a theoretical point of view, drawing in particular on the historical work of TWAIL historians like Antony Anghie, Susan Marks’s ‘critique of international legal ideology’, and M. M. Bakhtin’s concept of ‘dialogics’.

Nach dem Sieg über Napoleon tagten die Vertreter der Siegermächte im Jahr 1814 in Wien, um nach langen Kriegsjahren die Neuordnung Europas zu bestimmen: Die gestürzten Monarchen kehrten auf den Thron zurück, neue Grenzen wurden gezogen. Eine Hauptfrage beim Wiener Kongress war die polnische Frage. Im Zentrum dieses eintägigen Symposiums, an dem Wissenschaftler aus Deutschland, Österreich und Polen teilnehmen werden, stehen die polnischen Gebiete und deren weiteres Schicksal nach den Napoleonischen Kriegen.

Becker, A., (book review) ‘Patrick Crowhurst, Hitler and Czechoslovakia in World War II, Domination and Retaliation’ in Humanities. Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte, Aktueller Fokus (Featured contributions), October 2014: <http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/>

The trip of the former Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during the summer of 2011 has opened the increase of Turkey’s presence in Somalia. At the same time Erdoğan’s visit has represented the turning point in the Somali process of stabilization following twenty years of political vacuum, civil war, anarchy and humanitarian crises. The Turkish commitment in Somalia has been presented as ‘moral imperatives’ (Erdoğan, 2011a) having a particular characteristics that distinguish it from previous attempts of mediation and peacebuilding made by external actors and intergovernmental organizations. The Turkey’s policy in Somalia highlighted the process of diversification of foreign policy actors marked by the progressive involvement of non-state actors .

This module textbook accompanies the new Open University level 3 undergraduate module DD313 and is of interest to anyone who wants to understand the key areas of change, major problems and approaches in international relations today. It contains chapters by Alex Anievas, Duncan Bell, Simon Bromley, William Brown, Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Olaf Corry and Alan Shipman. The module is organised around a series of problem areas, or choices, facing the world today, including:

Will the rise of China lead to greater cooperation or conflict with the United States (US)?
Is political and economic change leading to a more uniform world or one split by inequalities and difference?
Can justice be pursued at the international level in the areas of humanitarian intervention and global inequality?
Can issue areas as diverse as economic relations between China and the US, nuclear proliferation and arms control be governed effectively at the international or global level?
How do states and other players pursue security in the international system?
Each of these forms the focus for the first five blocks of the module, which also introduce key theoretical approaches including realism, liberalism, Uneven and combined development, constructivism, feminism, network theory and governmentality.

Block 1 begins with China’s deepening interconnections with the US and analyses whether this key relationship will lead to greater cooperation or conflict. It also sets out the scope of international relations as a subject and introduces realist and liberal themes.

Block 2 tackles the rise of the modern system of nation states and asks: is the world getting ‘flatter’ or more uneven? That is, are the political systems and economies in the world becoming increasingly similar – liberal, democratic and rich – or is the world more diverse, unequal and divided than ever? Theories of uneven and combined development and network theories are introduced.

Block 3 asks whether justice can be achieved in the international system and whether ideas about universal rights can – or should – be applied across the world. Does the historical dominance of the west continue to create injustices in the world today? Theoretically, attention here turns to cosmopolitanism and postcolonial theories.

Block 4 looks at global governance and whether international cooperation is achieved from the top down, in relations between powerful states, or from the bottom up, through the actions of transnational networks of activists. Game theory, regime theory and governmentality give different theoretical accounts of governance beyond the state.

Block 5 assesses how states have traditionally pursued their own security through the balance of power and nuclear deterrence. It questions whose security is being safeguarded and draws on feminist analysis to look at the particular role of gender in war. And it asks how we change an issue dramatically when we say it is a matter of ‘security’. Neorealism, feminism, Critical Theory and securitization theory are also taught.

The final block looks back over the module in substantive and theoretical terms and prepares the ground for students' end-of-module project.

This book explores the 'textbook narrative of origins'  which has dominated most research on the history of human rights until recently through a collective experiment by historians, legal scholars, anthropologists and theologians. It outline the main contours of the narrative as well as investigates what kind of novel insights a fresh take informed by the recent ‘zeal’ around the topic offers on the narrative's main contours. Importantly, rather than entities with an absolute, predefined ‘essence’, this book conceptualizes human rights as open-ended and ambiguous entities – qualities responsible, furthermore for their global appeal - formed around an ideal of the universal human being as free and equal in particular. This book addresses the study of the dynamics, tensions and struggles accompanying the making of these claims.