David Ogbeidi

On 14 July 2015, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, (namely, United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China) and Germany, whimsically dubbed, P5+1, and the EU reached an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. Under the terms of the deal, Iran’s nuclear program is to be used for purely peaceful purposes, in exchange for a broad suspension of U.S., European Union (EU), and United Nations sanctions. Iran agreed to refrain from any further advances of its activities at the Natanz commercial-scale facility, Fordow facility, and Arak reactor. Tehran is also required to provide the IAEA with additional information about its nuclear program, as well as access to some nuclear-related facilities to which Iran’s IAEA safeguards agreement does not require access. To understand the nature and scope of the Iranian deal and its implication on contemporary international politics, the present study examined the secondary sources to ascertain the following questions: What are the origins and development of the Iranian nuclear programme? How have states in the international system, particularly the US and other members of the UN Security Council, reacted to the Iranian nuclear programme? To what extent has US and its negotiating allies employed diplomacy in the resolution of the issues emanating from the Iranian nuclear crises. What are the economic, political and diplomatic implications of the Iranian deal for contemporary international politics? The paper combines a theoretical approach with historical and contemporary perspectives in nuclear diplomacy in order to comprehensively depict the evolution of the Iranian nuclear deal and its implications on international politics. The paper finds that the deal is expected to have implications for Middle East regional stability and political economy; US – Iran rapprochement, rivalry with Saudi Arabia, economic effect on sale of crude oil of other oil exporting states such as Nigeria and a decline in relations between Iran and Israel, while bolstering relations with the US. Using power theory to explain why power and national interest is paramount in the calculations of the negotiating parties as well as situating the winners and losers in the process of diplomatic bargaining within the game theory, the paper concludes that the deal is sound diplomacy but a product of international politics that further legitimizes the possession of weapons in the hands of nuclear power states and their allies in perpetuity.

This paper focuses on the African Union (AU) and attempts to appraise African integration using the dormant theories of regional integration. It has two main sections: the descriptive and the theoretical. The first section traces the origin and formation of the AU, examines the rationale for regional integration, its membership, objectives, organs, as well as the successes and weaknesses of the AU. In the second section, it proceeds to probe the existence and outcome of integration in Africa by exploring the explanatory and predictive propositions of the federalist, functionalist, neofunctionalist and intergovernmentalist approach. The paper finds that although the Constitutive Act creating the AU, came closer to what could be considered a constitution-like treaty, African states are weary of transferring their sovereignty to a supranational body. The findings, taken in contexts with the poor level of integration and slow implementation pace of AU’s lofty objectives, indicate that integration in Africa is best explained by the intergovernmentalist approach (including their newer versions). The paper argues that the intergovernmentalist approach, which puts the state at the epicentre of the integration process, explains why African states guide their sovereignty jealously despite their avowed profession to shed it. It is accounts for the low level of intra-African trade and the elusive spill over, marked by some utopian gravitation towards a political union. As initially proposed by Stanley Hoffmann and redefined by Andrew Moravcsik, intergovernmentalism suggests that governments control the level and speed of integration. Thus, the paper concludes that since the most important decisions of the AU are taken by the member states, they will try to control the integration process according to their own interests and African states are unlikely to surrender their hard earned sovereignty for an uncertain union of African states. It is recommended inter alia that the AU should re-examine its realities within the intergovernmentalist approach to determine the attainability of its lofty goals and re-clarify before them before it becomes irrelevant from incapacity.

This paper presents a critical assessment of the Nigerian Technical Aids Corps (TAC) as a foreign policy tool. Based on data from secondary sources such as textbooks, journals etc the paper traces the establishment of TAC in the late 1980s and the factors that led to its adoption as a novel instrument of Nigeria’s foreign policy. The policy shift was partly the result of growing criticism of the country’s cash-driven aid diplomacy towards developing countries of the global South in the face of shrinking oil export earnings. Using the linkage theory of foreign policy, which explicates the nexus between domestic processes (politics, religion, economic, cultural etc.) and the external situation towards which foreign policy is directed, an appraisal of TAC reveals that the formulation and implementation of the TAC scheme, overlooked critical domestic realities in defiance of the linkage theory of foreign policy. Looking at the economic domestic condition of Nigeria, the high level of poverty incidence in Nigeria – a country faced with running a tight budget of huge public expenditure – also means that the TAC’s scheme appears to be an unsustainable economic policy that does not subscribe to the ‘charity-begins-at-home’ mantra. The paper concludes by asserting that: like the post-Cold War review of aid policy by states in the Western and Eastern bloc to the Third World, the time has come for Nigeria to review its aid diplomacy to one that has a higher percentage of concrete to symbolic or intangible benefits. Hence, the TAC scheme, with very little tangible benefits should be reviewed in this direction to, at least, achieve a balance between tangible and intangible benefits. A key recommendation in this regard, is that the TAC volunteering period should be divided into two: one year at the rural or state level in Nigeria and one year abroad.

This paper is concerned with understanding positivism and neopositivism as epistemological frameworks in political scholarship. The study seeks to explore the roots of positivism and neopositivism, their general premise, propositions and criticisms. Ultimately, the focus is to investigate the application of positivism and neopositivism in the field of international relations (IR). The basic message of the paper is to present the view that the two terms are conflated as positivism. They represent paradigms of similar evolving thought patterns, only separated by their period of emergence. The work concludes that although, positivism has contributed significantly to the philosophy and methodology of research in IR, there is need for a methodological pluralism in IR scholarship, due mainly to positivism’s observable inherent weaknesses. I argue that since IR is interdisciplinary in character, the IR researcher should be open to a variety of perspectives and approaches – normative or empirical – in order to fully explicate and provide an enhanced understanding of the phenomenon of international relations.