scholarly journals Conceptualising backlash politics: Introduction to a special issue on backlash politics in comparison

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen J Alter ◽  
Michael Zürn
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Threshold Condition ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Emotional Appeals ◽  
Distinct Category

Despite the widespread sense that backlash is an important feature of contemporary national and world politics, there is remarkably little scholarly work on the politics of backlash. This special issue conceptualises backlash politics as a distinct form of contentious politics. Backlash politics includes the following three necessary elements: (1) a retrograde objective of returning to a prior social condition, (2) extraordinary goals and tactics that challenge dominant scripts, and (3) a threshold condition of entering mainstream public discourse. When backlash politics combines with frequent companion accelerants – nostalgia, emotional appeals, taboo breaking and institutional reshaping – the results can be unpredictable, contagious, transformative and enduring. Contributions to this special issue engage this definition to advance our understanding of backlash politics. The special issue’s conclusion draws insights about the causes and dynamics of backlash politics that lead to the following three potential outcomes: a petering out of the politics, the construction of new cleavages, or a retrograde transformation. Creating a distinct category of backlash politics brings debates in American politics, comparative politics, and international relations together with studies of specific topics, facilitating comparisons across time, space, and issue areas and generating new questions that can hopefully promote lesson drawing.

Ethnographic Approaches to Contentious Politics: The What, How, and Why

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402110255
Author(s):  
Diana Fu ◽  
Erica S. Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Ethnographic Methods ◽  
Political Ethnography ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Methodological Tool ◽  
Why Questions

How should we study contentious politics in an era rife with new forms of contention, both in the United States and abroad? The introduction to this special issue draws attention to one particularly crucial methodological tool in the study of contention: political ethnography. It showcases the ways in which ethnographic approaches can contribute to the study of contentious politics. Specifically, it argues that “what,” “how,” and “why” questions are central to the study of contention and that ethnographic methods are particularly well-suited to answering them. It also demonstrates how ethnographic methods push scholars to both expand the objects of inquiry and rethink what the relevant units of analysis might be. By uncovering hidden processes, exploring social meanings, and giving voice to unheard stories, ethnography and “ethnography-plus” approaches contribute to the study of contention and to comparative politics, writ large.

The past, present, and future of intervention

2013 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 1233-1253 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE LAWSON ◽  
LUCA TARDELLI
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

AbstractDespite the prominent place of intervention in contemporary world politics, debate is limited by two weaknesses: first, an excessive presentism; and second, a focus on normative questions to the detriment of analysis of the longer-term sociological dynamics that fuel interventionary pressures. In keeping with the focus of the Special Issue on the ways in which intervention is embedded within modernity, this article examines the emergence of intervention during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, assesses its place in the contemporary world, and considers its prospects in upcoming years. The main point of the article is simple – although intervention changes in character across time and place, it is a persistent feature of modern international relations. As such, intervention is here to stay.

International Relations and Comparative Politics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vidya Nadkarni ◽  
J. Michael Williams
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Economic Interaction ◽  
Interstate System ◽  
The One ◽  
Cross Fertilization ◽  
Scholarly Inquiry

Both the political science fields of International Relations (IR) and Comparative Politics (CP) developed around a scholarly concern with the nature of the state. IR focused on the nature, sources, and dynamics of inter-state interaction, while CP delved into the structure, functioning, and development of the state itself. The natural synergies between these two lines of scholarly inquiry found expression in the works of classical and neo-classical realists, liberals, and Marxists, all of whom, to varying degrees and in varied ways, recognized that the line dividing domestic and international politics was not hermetically sealed. As processes of economic globalization, on the one hand, and the globalization of the state system, on the other, have expanded the realm of political and economic interaction, the need for greater cross-fertilization between IR and CP has become even more evident. The global expansion of the interstate system has incorporated non-European societies into world politics and increased the salience of cultural and religious variables. These dynamics suggest that a study of cultures, religions, and histories, which shape the world views of states and peoples, is therefore necessary before assessments can be made about how individual states may respond to varied global pressures in their domestic and foreign policy choices.

scholarly journals Politics, policy-making and the presence of images of suffering children

2020 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-608
Author(s):  
Helen Berents
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Visual Politics ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
Political Dimensions

Abstract In 2017 Trump expressed pity for the ‘beautiful babies’ killed in a gas attack on Khan Shaykhun in Syria before launching airstrikes against President Assad's regime. Images of suffering children in world politics are often used as a synecdoche for a broader conflict or disaster. Injured, suffering, or dead; the ways in which images of children circulate in global public discourse must be critically examined to uncover the assumptions that operate in these environments. This article explores reactions to images of children by representatives and leaders of states to trace the interconnected affective and political dimensions of these images. In contrast to attending to the expected empathetic responses prompted by images of children, this article particularly focuses on when such images prompt bellicose foreign policy decision-making. In doing this, the article forwards a way of thinking about images as contentious affective objects in international relations. The ways in which images of children's bodies and suffering are strategically deployed by politicians deserves closer scrutiny to uncover the visual politics of childhood inherent in these moments of international politics and policy-making.

Harold Innis and the Empire of Speed

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
RONALD J. DEIBERT
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Anthony Giddens ◽  
The Face ◽  
Robert Cox ◽  
Per Se

Increasingly, International Relations (IR) theorists are drawing inspiration from a broad range of theorists outside the discipline. One thinks of the introduction of Antonio Gramsci's writings to IR theorists by Robert Cox, for example, and the ‘school’ that has developed in its wake. Similarly, the works of Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, and Jurgen Habermas are all relatively familiar to most IR theorists not because of their writings on world politics per se, but because they were imported into the field by roving theorists. Many others of varying success could be cited as well. Such cross-disciplinary excursions are important because they inject vitality into a field that – in the opinion of some at least—is in need of rejuvenation in the face of contemporary changes. In this paper, I elaborate on the work of the Canadian communications theorist Harold Innis, situating his work within contemporary IR theory while underlining his historicism, holism, and attention to time-space biases.

scholarly journals Theorising backlash politics: Conclusion to a special issue on backlash politics in comparison

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 739-752
Author(s):  
Karen J Alter ◽  
Michael Zürn
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Threshold Level ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Special Issue

This conclusion to a special issue on backlash politics develops a proto-theory of backlash politics. The special issue’s introduction defined backlash politics as a particular form of political contestation with a retrograde objective as well as extraordinary goals or tactics that has reached the threshold level of entering mainstream public discourse. While a sub-category of contentious politics, we argue that backlash politics is distinct and should not be understood as ‘regressive contentious politics’. Drawing from the contributions to this special issue, we discuss the causes of backlash politics, yet we argue that the greatest theoretical advances may come from studying backlash dynamics and how these dynamics contribute to different outcomes. We develop a proto-theory of backlash politics that considers causes for the rise of backlash movements, how frequent companions to backlash politics – emotive politics, nostalgia, taboo breaking, and institution reshaping – intensify backlash dynamics and make it more likely that backlash politics generate consequential outcomes.

scholarly journals Hidden in Plain Sight: Coloniality, Capitalism and Race/ism as Far as the Eye Can See

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia U. Rutazibwa
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
International Relations ◽  
New England ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The World ◽  
White Innocence

This review essay is a generative reading of four monographs and one special issue to rethink the discipline of International Relations (IR) and its syllabus anticolonially. At the centre of White Innocence by Gloria Wekker, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, by Christina Sharpe, The Colonial Lives of Property by Brenna Bhandar, Beyond Coloniality by Aaron Kamugisha and the New Political Economy special issue titled Raced Markets edited by Robbie Shilliam and Lisa Tilley are issues of race and racism, neoliberalism and capital and (the afterlives of) colonisation and slavery. This essay deploys a narrative approach of the autobiographical example to write the themes and arguments of the works onto the international everyday, i.c. a period of five months (April-September 2019) and the five places (Toronto, Stellenbosch, (New) England, Ghana and Puerto Rico) in which these works were read. First, the themes of racism, capitalism and coloniality – to varying degrees disavowed and erased in both IR as a discipline and public opinion – appear as persistent, pervasive yet adapting across time, space and situatedness. Second, both the autobiographical examples and the works point at the equally omnipresent cracks in the system and invite reflection on anticolonial alternatives (of solidarity). In conclusion, the essay explores how these works could inform reconceptualisation of the IR syllabus, towards a discipline that engages with the world rather than itself, against the colonial status quo.

Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms across Research Traditions

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudra Sil ◽  
Peter J. Katzenstein
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Real World ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Research Traditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

This article defines, operationalizes, and illustrates the value ofanalytic eclecticismin the social sciences, with a focus on the fields of comparative politics and international relations. Analytic eclecticism is not an alternative model of research or a means to displace or subsume existing modes of scholarship. It is an intellectual stance that supports efforts to complement, engage, and selectively utilize theoretical constructs embedded in contending research traditions to build complex arguments that bear on substantive problems of interest to both scholars and practitioners. Eclectic scholarship is marked by three general features. First, it is consistent with an ethos of pragmatism in seeking engagement with the world of policy and practice, downplaying unresolvable metaphysical divides and presumptions of incommensurability and encouraging a conception of inquiry marked by practical engagement, inclusive dialogue, and a spirit of fallibilism. Second, it formulates problems that are wider in scope than the more narrowly delimited problems posed by adherents of research traditions; as such, eclectic inquiry takes on problems that more closely approximate the messiness and complexity of concrete dilemmas facing “real world” actors. Third, in exploring these problems, eclectic approaches offer complex causal stories that extricate, translate, and selectively recombine analytic components—most notably, causal mechanisms—from explanatory theories, models, and narratives embedded in competing research traditions. The article includes a brief sampling of studies that illustrate the combinatorial potential of analytic eclecticism as an intellectual exercise as well as its value in enhancing the possibilities of fruitful dialogue and pragmatic engagement within and beyond the academe.

American Perspectives and Blind Spots on World Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff D Colgan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
The World ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
Previous Scholarship ◽  
Blind Spots

AbstractScholars of international relations (IR) from the United States, like any country, view the world with particular perspectives and beliefs that shape their perceptions, judgments, and worldviews. These perspectives have the potential to affect the answers to a host of important questions—in part by shaping the questions that get asked in the first place. All scholars are potentially affected by national bias, but American bias matters more than others. This special issue focuses on two issues: attention and accuracy in IR research. While previous scholarship has raised principally normative or theoretical concerns about American dominance in IR, our work is heavily empirical and engages directly with the field's mainstream neopositivist approach. The collected articles provide specific, fine-grained examples of how American perspectives matter for IR, using evidence from survey experiments, quantitative datasets, and more. Our evidence suggests that American perspectives, left unexamined, negatively affect our field's research. Still, the essays in this special issue remain bullish about the field's neopositivist project overall. We also offer concrete steps for taking on the problems we identify, and improving our field's scholarship.

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