scholarly journals Research Agenda for Political Science in China in an Era of Great Change

Author(s):  
Guangbin Yang

AbstractThe world order is undergoing tumultuous changes amid the Sino–US trade war and a global pandemic. During these epochal times for political science, The American school of social sciences needs an intellectual revolution and a repositioning of the research agenda for political science. Comparative political studies must shift their focus from their traditional role of comparison of political institutions to that of state governance models, as the former can no longer advance new knowledge in political science while the latter represents a greater challenge for such studies. Likewise, studies of international relations in the traditional sense should take a step further and explore studies of world politics, i.e., studies of international relations and world order as shaped by institutional changes triggered by political trends within certain countries. The research approach of historical political science is indispensable, whether it is comparison of state governance models or of world politics.

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 598-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Thomson

Abstract Since the inception of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325) in 2000, feminist academia has been closely interested in the developing women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda in international affairs. The majority of this work has emerged from within feminist international relations (Mcleod 2015; Shepherd 2008) and feminist legal studies. Less attention has been paid to the WPS agenda by feminist political science. As a result, less consideration has been given to political institutions within the WPS framework. This paper argues that the design and implementation of postconflict political institutions is an important component of the WPS agenda and one which deserves greater attention. It demonstrates that using certain tenets of feminist political science, and feminist institutionalism in particular, can offer key insights into greater understanding of the importance of political institutions within postconflict societies. The article illustrates how political institutions have been underconsidered within academic work on the WPS agenda. It then argues that political institutions are an important part of the puzzle when it comes to implementing the WPS agenda. It shows how feminist institutional theory can help to provide key insights into the nature of postconflict institutions.


Author(s):  
Regan Burles

Abstract Geopolitics has become a key site for articulating the limits of existing theories of international relations and exploring possibilities for alternative political formations that respond to the challenges posed by massive ecological change and global patterns of violence and inequality. This essay addresses three recent books on geopolitics in the age of the Anthropocene: Simon Dalby's Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalization, Security, Sustainability (2020), Jairus Victor Grove's Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World (2019), and Bruno Latour's Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climactic Regime (2018). The review outlines and compares how these authors pose contemporary geopolitics as a problem and offer political ecology as the ground for an alternative geopolitics. The essay considers these books in the context of critiques of world politics in international relations to shed light on both the contributions and the limits of political ecological theories of global politics. I argue that the books under review encounter problems and solutions posed in Kant's critical and political writings in relation to the concepts of epigenesis and teleology. These provoke questions about the ontological conceptions of order that enable claims to world political authority in the form of a global international system coextensive with the earth's surface.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-46
Author(s):  
I. I. Arsentyeva

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increased interest in studying social stigma. The concept of stigma is also included in political discourse, as evidenced, among other things, by Xi Jinping’s speeches, in which the Chinese President urges to abandon further politicization and stigmatization of COVID-19. In this regard, the main aim of the article is to analyze the correlation between the novel coronavirus and stigmatization, not only from the traditional point of view (stigma associated with certain diseases), but also in terms of world politics. To explain the nature of social stigma, the author relies on evolutionary psychol- ogy, terror management theory and social identity theory. To analyze ongoing processes in international relations, some provisions of “rogue states” concept, leadership theories, and biopolitics are applied. The primary sources are documents of the World Health Organiza- tion (WHO) and the Group of Seven (G7), statements by UN and WHO officials, speeches of Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump, public opinion polls, and media publications. During the course of the study, the following scientific results were ob- tained: the works on COVID-19-related stigma have been systematized, the issues consid- ered in them and research gaps are highlighted; the consequences of stigma due the novel coronavirus have been summarized; some differences between stigma during the pandem- ic and stigma associated with other diseases are also identified; it is suggested to consider COVID-19 stigma not only at the level of interpersonal interactions, but also in international relations; the possible impact of the pandemic on the China’s role on the world stage has been revealed. It is concluded that this research approach allows to take a fresh look at the possibility of restoring ties between states and their citizens in a post-COVID-19 world, as well as to assess the likelihood of a change of global leader. In the final part of the article, possible ways of further development of the situation are predicted and prospects for study on the issue are outlined.


Author(s):  
Deborah Welch Larson ◽  
T.V. Paul ◽  
Harold A. Trinkunas ◽  
Anders Wivel ◽  
Ralf Emmers

This concluding chapter offers a summary and evaluation of the key ideas contained in the chapters of this Handbook. The chapter discusses peaceful change in terms of conceptual clarity; historical evolution of scholarship in the area, especially the interwar, Cold War, and post–Cold War era efforts at analyzing the concepts; and the policy innovations in this realm. This is followed by an evaluation of the key umbrella theories of international relations—realism, liberalism, and constructivism—and how they approach peaceful change. Some important sources and mechanisms of change are analyzed. This is followed by discussion of the policy contributions of selected great and rising powers toward peaceful change. The chapter then offers a summary of contributions and progress that various regions have made in the area of peaceful change. It concludes with some ideas for future research while highlighting the significance of the subject matter for international relations and the world order.


2021 ◽  
pp. 103-136
Author(s):  
Georg Sørensen ◽  
Jørgen Møller ◽  
Robert Jackson

This chapter examines the liberal tradition in international relations (IR). It first considers the basic liberal assumptions, including a positive view of human nature and the belief that IR can be cooperative rather than conflictual. In their conceptions of international cooperation, liberal theorists emphasize different features of world politics. The chapter explores the ideas associated with four strands of liberal thought, namely: sociological liberalism, interdependence liberalism, institutional liberalism, and republican liberalism. It also discusses the debate between proponents of liberalism and neorealism, and it identifies a general distinction between weak liberal theories that are close to neorealism and strong liberal theories that challenge neorealism. Finally, it reviews the liberal view of world order and the notion that there is a ‘dark’ side of democracy.


Author(s):  
Robert Jackson ◽  
Georg Sørensen

This chapter examines the liberal tradition in international relations (IR). It first considers the basic liberal assumptions, including a positive view of human nature and the belief that IR can be cooperative rather than conflictual. In their conceptions of international cooperation, liberal theorists emphasize different features of world politics. The chapter explores the ideas associated with four strands of liberal thought, namely: sociological liberalism, interdependence liberalism, institutional liberalism, and republican liberalism. It also discusses the debate between proponents of liberalism and neorealism, the liberal view of world order, and the prospects for the liberal tradition as a research programme in IR.


1998 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen V. Milner

International relations has often been treated as a separate discipline distinct from the other major fields in political science, namely American and comparative politics. A main reason for this distinction has been the claim that politics in the international system is radically different from politics domestically. The degree of divergence between international relations (IR) and the rest of political science has waxed and waned over the years; however, in the past decade it seems to have lessened. This process has occurred mainly in the “rationalist research paradigm,” and there it has both substantive and methodological components. Scholars in this paradigm have increasingly appreciated that politics in the international realm is not so different from that internal to states, and vice versa. This rationalist institutionalist research agenda thus challenges two of the main assumptions in IR theory. Moreover, scholars across the three fields now tend to employ the same methods. The last decade has seen increasing cross-fertilization of the fields around the importance of institutional analysis. Such analysis implies a particular concern with the mechanisms of collective choice in situations of strategic interaction. Some of the new tools in American and comparative politics allow the complex, strategic interactions among domestic and international agents to be understood in a more systematic and cumulative way.


2020 ◽  
pp. 004711782092228
Author(s):  
Aaron McKeil

International relations today are widely considered to be experiencing deepening disorder and the topic of international disorder is gaining increased attention. Yet, despite this recent interest in international disorder, in and beyond the academy, and despite the decades-long interest in international order, there is still little agreement on the concept of international disorder, which is often used imprecisely and with an alarmist rather than analytical usage. This is a problem if international disorder is to be understood in theory, towards addressing its concomitant problems and effects in practice. As such, this article identifies and explores two ways international order studies can benefit from a clearer and more precise conception of international disorder. First, it enables a more complete picture of how orderly international orders have been. Second, a greater understanding of the problem of international order is illuminated by a clearer grasp of the relation between order and disorder in world politics. The article advances these arguments in three steps. First, an analytical concept of international disorder is developed and proposed. Second, applying it to the modern history of international order, the extent to which there is a generative relationship between order and disorder in international systems is explored. Third, it specifies the deepening international disorder in international affairs today. It concludes by indicating a research agenda for International Relations and international order studies that takes the role of international disorder more seriously.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1126-1126
Author(s):  
L.H.M. Ling

In White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations, Robert Vitalis presents a critical disciplinary history of the field of international relations, and the discipline of political science more broadly. Vitalis argues that the interconnections between imperialism and racism were “constitutive” of international relations scholarship in the U.S. since the turn of the 20th century, and that the perspectives of a generation of African-American scholars that included W. E. B. Dubois, Alain Locke, and Ralph Bunche were equally constitutive of this scholarship—by virtue of the way the emerging discipline sought to marginalize these scholars. In developing this argument, Vitalis raises questions about the construction of knowledge and the racial foundations of American political development. These issues lie at the heart of U.S. political science, and so we have invited a range of political scientists to comment on the book and its implications for our discipline.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Терновая ◽  
Lyudmila Tyernovaya

In the book from the standpoint of the sociology of the imagination represented such terms of international relations as national dream, happiness, miracle, freedom, hope etc. Their introduction to the number of categories for evaluating the status of States reflected the profound changes not only in the world order, but also in the interactions of the most important international factors. The publication is intended for students and professors of sociology, political science, history, philology, cultural and psychological disciplines, for readers, interested in international processes.


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