The Main Periods in the History of International Relations, Traditional Left-right Measures - Assignment Example

107 Discussion Questions What are the main periods in the history of International Relations (IR) as a discipline? 2. How is the intellectual history of the discipline related to the history of world politics? 3. What is the core argument of the so-called “Democratic Peace? 1. The disciplinary ramification of the IR started on the painful legacy of WWI. Nation states evidently failed to establish harmless and effective foreign policies due to their unsuccessful endeavour to pacify the overwhelming international tensions. The uncontrolled arms raid and the unsuccessful effectuation of abstention politics resulted in a World War which was devastating. Idealism emerged in the form of liberal premises, quoting that all states are better off in a state of peace and that cooperation would foster their individual prosperity. Subsequently, realism emerged with its more pessimistic accounts with states functioning in self-centred way by seeking power and security. As the heated debate between the two camps evolved, a critical discipline called ‘behaviouralism’ emerged. Its critics assumed that the political inquiry into social phenomenon was solely conducted on the qualitative and normative grounds. Subsequently, it was indispensable to introduce scientific methods to legitimate politics as a science. From this rehabilitative position, behavioralists realized that to codify their study as scientifically valid, they will have to follow a stringent method and to conduct empirical research. Interdisciplinary contacts and remarks between the competing theories resulted in a revision of liberal accounts. This Neoliberalism accepted the neorealist notion that states are important actors in IR, but still acknowledged the relevance of international organizations. As international cooperation from the bipolar point of view accelerated, the emphasis on the international institutions asserted substantial influence on the IR-agenda of many national states. This made institutionalization a more prominent discipline (extracted from Neoliberalism). 2. Intellectual magnates like Hobbes (Leviathan) and Machiavelli (The Prince), who form the realist backbone of the discipline, wrote influential work about ideal relationships within and between states. The liberal touchstones of IR as a discipline, could be attributed to the work of Kant (Perpetual Peace: 1795) and Rousseau, which offered insight on the way liberalism should be practiced. The intellectual history of IR herein actually started with the seventeenth century treaty of Peace of Westphalia (1648), where the strategic contours of the independent modern state became visible. The most fundamental aspect of the peace treaty formed the introduction of sovereignty which paved the way for the participants to form a full-fledged nation by incorporating rules regarding the institutionalization of diplomacy and armies. This way, the study on developing nation states gained more and more importance due to the works of the cited authors. 3. Democratic Peace is a belief that the individual (moral) freedom establishes normative and feasible rights and effective institutions, in which subjects are treated as ethical entities on the basis of equality and justice. A subset of positive (regulative) and negative (constitutive) rights safeguard the legitimacy of these individual rights. Because of the power and the influence of the civilized and the enlightened subjects on the war-agenda of their rulers, countries with liberal democratic traditions will never go to war with each other. Bibliography Hollins, M.and Smith, P. (1990) ‘Explaining and Understanding International Relations’. Oxford: Clarendon Press: 16-44 Doyle, M. (1983) ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 12 (3): 205-235. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 108 Discussion question: Can traditional left-right measures still be useful in studies on welfare state development? According to the author, the current left-right measures on the ideological nature of cabinets reveal some shortcomings as their policy towards the welfare of state is categorized on the behalf of the traditional scales. For e.g. one mentioned shortcomings of these analysis by country experts is the subjectivity of the coder (country expert), which dichotomizes cabinets as either being leftist or rightist or which categorizes them into a five-points scale varying from extreme right to the extreme left. In my opinion, answering the question whether the traditional left-right measures can still be useful in studies on welfare state development depends on three key questions. The first is to define whether the substantive course in social welfare development in western democracies altered after the 1980s. The second question is, whether the party and the cabinet alignments on social welfare issues still occur on the traditional left-right dimension. The third question is, whether the suggested social welfare dimension reveal the same results about the ideological nature of cabinets on the left-right scale when the vantage point of research is not the cabinet position on the variety of social welfare issues but on a single, unpopular, difficult and critical social welfare issue. These questions will be discussed briefly. A substantive social welfare policy alternation indeed occurred after the 1980s. The generous welfare state reforms until the 1980s took place in a substantially different institutional setting and a prosperous environment which benefited from the post-war industrialization gulf. The institutional setting and the environment especially refers to the population characteristics which directly influenced the social policy agenda and the national economic infrastructure. The populous post-war baby-boom generation from 1945 to 1980, which has only reached the average age of 35 during the initial welfare state retrenchment, are currently approaching their legal-fiscal retirement age by 2011. This example of a demographic transformation illustrates that a substantive policy alternation is inevitable when the policy towards this same generation is taken into account. This necessarily affects the traditional left and right oriented party and cabinet positions on the substantial income and social welfare matters. The traditional left-right dimension does not always reflect the true party alignments on the social welfare issues. One important shortcoming of current left- right measures and the conceptualization of the real life politics is the issue of middle positions. The traditional ideological and programmatic distinction of the cabinets in either being leftist or rightist has the potential to misplace the actual cabinet positions when a more vague intermediate course is driven by the cabinet. But how then? Theoretically, one could very well imagine and estimate that the cabinets follow a multiple divergent mid-course on social welfare questions when both, short- and long-term unpopular issues intersect and dominate the political agenda. Right wing cabinets could strategically decide to take an unfavourable position on a very unpopular social welfare issue and consciously postpone another intersecting social issue until the next cabinet period in order to prevent a deepening reputation damage on behalf of entering elections. Deciding on difficult social welfare question not only has the potential to affect the cabinets general position in consecutive national parliamentary or presidential elections, but also has a potential to affect their electorate position on the municipal and provincial elections. It is interesting to research whether measuring cross-sectional cabinet positions on several welfare state issues on the traditional left-right scale reveal similar outcomes when an isolated, critical, important and very unpopular policy position from the same cabinet is measured. Not all social welfare issues should be measured as an equally heavy leftist or rightist welfare policy issue. While deciding on several social protection issues with relatively low budgetary consequences like the introduction of an anti-discrimination law on behalf of the ageing, could form a potential contribution to the ‘social color’ of the cabinet program, the silence on these issues or a very short reference to a singular social issue which directly affects all socially protected, like extending the retirement age with four years, could theoretically, be measured as double ‘rightist’ or ‘leftist’. To conclude, demographic changes and the strategically calculating nature of the cabinets, together with different weights on left-right issues, point to the need of introducing more finer grained continuous scale which takes into account the temporal dynamics of the cabinet positions. Bibliography Schumacher, G. (2008) ‘Why Not to Use Left-Right Scales: Introducing a New Measure for Cabinet Partisanship in Welfare State Research’, Manuscript under review. Kroh, M. (2007) ‘Measuring Left-Right Political Orientation: The Choice of Response Format’, Public Opinion Quarterly: Oxford journals, Oxford University Press. What are the causal mechanisms suggesting that democracy is a result of, rather than, a cause for peace? What makes Thompson’s argument a systemic one? The causal mechanisms suggesting that the democracy is a result of peace, refers to the regional primacy thought in which states are defined as regional and extra-regional hegemony seeking actors which (eventually) abandoned hegemonic desires on the basis of strategic considerations. As soon as the ´regional zones of peace´ emerge, incumbent states experience a period of relaxation and the attractive geopolitical benefits of maintaining the peace due to the absence of costly warlike conflicts. This pacification-trend between and among the democratic dyads effectuates two complementary findings. One finding refers to the development of internal proceedings like the necessary introduction of liberal institutions, which aims to safeguard and stimulate the peaceful cooperation between the involved actors (states) in these new ´zones of peace´. The other complementary finding is about the external aspiration of these same countries beyond the ‘zones of peace’ where the democratic dyads tend to operate competitively to expand their respective (inter)national hegemonic statue. The logical consequence is that the presence of other competing regional democratic counterparts in the new battleground outside these ‘zones of peace’, resorts a constraining and disciplining effect on the potentially hazardous expansionist aspiration of democratic states. The abandonment of expansionist foreign policies made the historical development of the liberal institutions and democratization feasible. This way, the working sphere of the ‘zone of peace’ was virtually expanded to the places beyond the region where the democratic dyads originated from, and this resulted in the democratization of these ‘extra-zonal’ areas where the democratic counterparts over a longer period of time strategically decide not to fight one another. This points to the reversal in the causal arrow in the democratic peace theory in favor of an initial peace situation, ultimately leading to democratization. Although the International Relation literature on the "democratic peace" theory lays a lot of emphasis on the apparently persuasive and relevant components of the regime types in relation to the relative peacefulness, one can criticize the theory and the findings of its proponents from various angles ranging from purely definitional issues1 to the presence of "democratic peace" 2. One fundamental criticism in Thompson’s article on the democratic peace theory is his excessive reference to the regime types in research settings. What makes Thompson’s argument systemic is his strong reference to the national states as the smallest unit, in which neither domestic politics nor the human individuals and their nature in the context of the democratic peace theory are allowed to matter3. The term ‘democracy’ and ‘democratization’ remain essentially contested concepts. Different interpretations of the largely value-laden and usually ambiguous character of these concepts make it impossible to objectively measure the true nature of "democratic peace’’. Scientifically accurate generalizations about the ‘peace produces democracy’ notion require a sensitive and balanced research design on both, democracy and peace. The democratic peace theory and the eventual experimental findings on the behalf of historical data regarding ‘regional zones of peace’ should be (re-)tested and compared on the basis of a multiple-time series design, in which the conditions for peace and the conditions for democracy are separately analyzed, tested and compared. This way, a narrower identification of eventual separate evolutions of both, peace and democracy can be traced. Bibliography Hollins, M. and Smith, P. (1990) ‘Explaining and Understanding International Relations: The International System’. Oxford: Clarendon Press: 92-118. Thompson, W. (1996) ‘Democracy and Peace: Putting the Cart Before the Horse?’, International Organization, 50 (1): 141-174. Spiro, D. (1994) ‘The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace’, in International Security, 19(2):50-86. Farber, S. Henry & Joanne Gowa. (1995) ‘Politics and Peace’, in International Security, 20(2):123-146. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 111What are the causal mechanisms suggesting that democracy is a result of, rather than a cause for peace? What makes Thompson’s argument a systemic one? The causal mechanisms suggesting that democracy is a result of peace refers to the regional primacy thought, in which states are defined as regional and extra-regional hegemony seeking actors, which (eventually) abandoned hegemonic desires on the basis of strategic considerations. As soon as ´regional zones of peace´ emerge, incumbent states experience a period of relaxation and the attractive geopolitical benefits of maintaining the peace due to the absence of costly warlike conflicts. This pacification-trend between and among the democratic dyads effectuates two complementary findings. One finding refers to the development of internal proceedings like the necessary introduction of liberal institutions, which aims to safeguard and stimulate the peaceful cooperation between the involved actors (states) in these new ´zones of peace´. The other complementary finding is about the external aspiration of these same countries beyond the ‘zones of peace’ where the democratic dyads tend to operate competitively to expand their respective (inter) national hegemonic status. The logical consequence is that the presence of other competing regional democratic counterparts in the new battleground outside these ‘zones of peace’, resorts a constraining and disciplining effect on the potentially hazardous expansionist aspiration of democratic states. The abandonment of expansionist foreign policies, made the historical development of liberal institutions and the democratization feasible. This way, the working sphere of the ‘zone of peace’ was virtually expanded to the places beyond the region where the democratic dyads originated from, and this resulted in the democratization of these ‘extra-zonal’ areas where the democratic counterparts over a longer period of time strategically decide not to fight one another. This points to a reversal in the causal arrow in the democratic peace theory in favor of an initial peace situation, ultimately leading to the democratization. Although the International Relation literature on the "democratic peace" theory lays a lot of emphasis on the apparently persuasive and relevant components of the regime types in relation to the relative peacefulness, one can criticize the theory and the findings of its proponents from various angles, ranging from purely definitional issues4 to the presence of "democratic peace"5. One fundamental criticism in Thompson’s article on the democratic peace theory is his excessive reference to the regime types in research settings. What makes Thompson’s argument systemic is his strong reference to the national states as the smallest unit, in which neither domestic politics nor the human individuals and their nature in the context of the democratic peace theory are allowed to matter6. The term ‘democracy’ and ‘democratization’ remain essentially contested concepts. Different interpretations of the largely value-laden and usually ambiguous character of these concepts make it impossible to objectively measure the true nature of "democratic peace’’. Scientifically accurate generalizations about the ‘peace produces democracy’ notion require a sensitive and balanced research design on both, democracy and peace. The democratic peace theory and eventual experimental findings on the behalf of historical data regarding ‘regional zones of peace’ should be (re-)tested and compared on the basis of a multiple-time series design, in which the conditions for peace and the conditions for the democracy are separately analyzed, tested and compared. This way, a narrower identification of eventual separate evolutions of both, peace and democracy can traced. Bibliography Hollins, M. and Smith, P. (1990) ‘Explaining and Understanding International Relations: The International System’. Oxford: Clarendon Press: 92-118. Thompson, W. (1996) ‘Democracy and Peace: Putting the Cart Before the Horse?’, International Organization, 50 (1): 141-174. Spiro, D. (1994) ‘The Insignificance of the Liberal Peace’, in International Security, 19(2):50-86. Farber, S. Henry & Joanne Gowa. (1995) ‘Politics and Peace’, in International Security, 20(2):123-146. Read More