The Oxford Handbook of International Relations offers the most authoritative and comprehensive ov... more The Oxford Handbook of International Relations offers the most authoritative and comprehensive overview to date of the field of international relations. Bringing together an impressive collection of international relations scholars, this Handbook debates the nature of the field itself, critically engages with the major theories, surveys a wide spectrum of methods, addresses the relationship between scholarship and policy making, and examines the field's relation with cognate disciplines. The Handbook takes as its central themes the interaction between empirical and normative inquiry that permeates all theorizing in the field and the way in which contending approaches have shaped one another. In doing so, the Handbook provides an authoritative and critical introduction to the subject and establishes a sense of the field as a dynamic realm of argument and inquiry.
The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, 2008
This article explains the Handbook's broad approach and advances a series of arguments about ... more This article explains the Handbook's broad approach and advances a series of arguments about the nature of international relations as a field, arguments informed by a reading of the rest of the book. The book is concerned, in particular, with three interrelated questions. What is the nature of the theoretical endeavour in international relations? How have the empirical and the normative aspects of theories interacted to shape individual theories and the debates between them? And finally, has there been progress in the study of international relations, and if so in what sense?
How can humans beings organize their social relations to enhance individual and collective securi... more How can humans beings organize their social relations to enhance individual and collective security and physical well-being and to enable the pursuit of common goals and the management of common problems? This is the perennial question of governance, a question confronted by all social groups, in all cultural and historical settings, a question underlying the greatest debates in Western and non-Western social and political thought, a question that fuels the most heated — and at times violent — disputes within and between societies. Yet despite its persistence, the question of governance is now being posed in a fashion unique in human history. We are now confronting the problem of global governance. In the words of the UN Commission on Global Governance, a myriad of problems and processes — from persistent economic underdevelopment to environmental collapse — are demanding ‘better management of survival, better ways of sharing diversity, better ways of living together in the global neighbourhood that is our human homeland’.1
International Relations: A Very Short Introduction, 2020
Throughout history, war has had a profound effect on the structures and practices of political au... more Throughout history, war has had a profound effect on the structures and practices of political authority. ‘War’ explores the connections between war—purposive, organized violence—and the organization of political authority. It discusses how war shapes such organization: it was central to the emergence of sovereign states in Europe, and the international community has routinely used war to secure the existing system of states. War-making has also been a prime marker of political authority. Finally, war has been the principal object of authoritative control in international relations. Together, these connections have profoundly affected the global organization of political authority, and vice versa.
International Relations: A Very Short Introduction, 2020
International relations has traditionally focused on external relations between sovereign states.... more International relations has traditionally focused on external relations between sovereign states. Yet not all important relations are between sovereign states and not all important politics is external. ‘What is international relations?’ explains that this VSI’s focus is on the global organization of political authority, and on the human and environmental consequences of such organization. This invites both analytical and ethical questions: how did political authority come to be organized in a particular way? How have large-scale ways of organizing political authority at times fostered human well-being, but also produced hierarchies and exclusions? What are the limits of sovereign authority, when should human rights be protected, and what obligations do we have to address the climate emergency?
International relations affects the security, economic fortunes, rights and freedoms, and environ... more International relations affects the security, economic fortunes, rights and freedoms, and environmental well-being of all of us. The recent transformation from a world of empires to today’s sovereign states, meshed in a complex array of international institutions, has far-reaching consequences. International Relations: A Very Short Introduction untangles this constantly evolving subject, exploring the changing ways that political authority has been organized and maintained globally. Throughout, Christian Reus-Smit provides the theoretical and historical tools to understand the origins and dynamics of contemporary international relations, and sheds new light on the nature of global political change.
The global organization of political authority remains complex and shifting. We can ask any numbe... more The global organization of political authority remains complex and shifting. We can ask any number of fascinating questions about this organization, from how and why it changes over time to its relationship with organized violence and inequalities of gender, race, or ethnicity. But how are we to answer them? One response would be to begin by looking at the relevant facts; but what facts should be included and excluded? ‘Theory is your friend’ argues that theory is essential to these tasks. It surveys six prominent theoretical perspectives on international relations: realism, liberalism, constructivism, the English School, feminism, and post-colonialism. All are centrally concerned with the global organization of political authority.
At the core of the Anglo-American West, what some still imagine to be the cutting edge of moderni... more At the core of the Anglo-American West, what some still imagine to be the cutting edge of modernity, lay unfinished cultural conflicts and persistent practices of political accommodation. Contests over collective identities, over the extent of commitments to the autonomy of the individual, and over the standing of distinct cultures within single polities – all were hardwired into the most basic social and political processes of a still promising and still potentially global project. Larger systemic implications may be drawn from the essentially pluralist practices, including open-ended negotiation, through which unique cultures defined, defended, and integrated themselves within Anglo-America. One promising way to draw out those implications is to look comparatively at the evolution of such practices within key bilateral relationships constitutive of something that may rightly be remembered as Anglo-American civilization.
The liberal international order is a fragmented institutional complex, comprising often disparate... more The liberal international order is a fragmented institutional complex, comprising often disparate elements. One of these is a distinctive institutional approach to the global organization of cultural difference. This approach combines universal Westphalian sovereignty (and the pluralist interstate order it facilitates) with international human rights norms that seek to protect the cultural freedoms of individuals. I term this institutional amalgam “global pluralism”. Like many elements of the liberal order, such pluralism is now under challenge, confronted by resurgent ethno-nationalism, politicized religion, and civilizational chauvinism. The key question is whether global pluralism has the adaptive capacities to withstand such challenges. This article develops a theoretical framework for comprehending these institutional capacities. Conceiving global pluralism as a “diversity regime,” I argue that such regimes always rest on social “recognition contracts,” and that these give them...
This chapter sets out the central argument of Culture and Order in World Politics. It provides de... more This chapter sets out the central argument of Culture and Order in World Politics. It provides definitions of cultural diversity and international order, and makes the case for an expansive conception of the latter. It then revisits four key propositions from Reus-Smit’s On Cultural Diversity (2018), on which this volume builds. It goes on to detail four elaborations of these propositions, informed by the analyses provided in contributors’ chapters. These concern the productive power of diversity regimes, the connection between cultural diversity and legitimacy crises, the complex relationship between political centralization and intolerance, and the plural and multiscalar nature of diversity regimes.
The Oxford Handbook of International Relations offers the most authoritative and comprehensive ov... more The Oxford Handbook of International Relations offers the most authoritative and comprehensive overview to date of the field of international relations. Bringing together an impressive collection of international relations scholars, this Handbook debates the nature of the field itself, critically engages with the major theories, surveys a wide spectrum of methods, addresses the relationship between scholarship and policy making, and examines the field's relation with cognate disciplines. The Handbook takes as its central themes the interaction between empirical and normative inquiry that permeates all theorizing in the field and the way in which contending approaches have shaped one another. In doing so, the Handbook provides an authoritative and critical introduction to the subject and establishes a sense of the field as a dynamic realm of argument and inquiry.
The Oxford Handbook of International Relations, 2008
This article explains the Handbook's broad approach and advances a series of arguments about ... more This article explains the Handbook's broad approach and advances a series of arguments about the nature of international relations as a field, arguments informed by a reading of the rest of the book. The book is concerned, in particular, with three interrelated questions. What is the nature of the theoretical endeavour in international relations? How have the empirical and the normative aspects of theories interacted to shape individual theories and the debates between them? And finally, has there been progress in the study of international relations, and if so in what sense?
How can humans beings organize their social relations to enhance individual and collective securi... more How can humans beings organize their social relations to enhance individual and collective security and physical well-being and to enable the pursuit of common goals and the management of common problems? This is the perennial question of governance, a question confronted by all social groups, in all cultural and historical settings, a question underlying the greatest debates in Western and non-Western social and political thought, a question that fuels the most heated — and at times violent — disputes within and between societies. Yet despite its persistence, the question of governance is now being posed in a fashion unique in human history. We are now confronting the problem of global governance. In the words of the UN Commission on Global Governance, a myriad of problems and processes — from persistent economic underdevelopment to environmental collapse — are demanding ‘better management of survival, better ways of sharing diversity, better ways of living together in the global neighbourhood that is our human homeland’.1
International Relations: A Very Short Introduction, 2020
Throughout history, war has had a profound effect on the structures and practices of political au... more Throughout history, war has had a profound effect on the structures and practices of political authority. ‘War’ explores the connections between war—purposive, organized violence—and the organization of political authority. It discusses how war shapes such organization: it was central to the emergence of sovereign states in Europe, and the international community has routinely used war to secure the existing system of states. War-making has also been a prime marker of political authority. Finally, war has been the principal object of authoritative control in international relations. Together, these connections have profoundly affected the global organization of political authority, and vice versa.
International Relations: A Very Short Introduction, 2020
International relations has traditionally focused on external relations between sovereign states.... more International relations has traditionally focused on external relations between sovereign states. Yet not all important relations are between sovereign states and not all important politics is external. ‘What is international relations?’ explains that this VSI’s focus is on the global organization of political authority, and on the human and environmental consequences of such organization. This invites both analytical and ethical questions: how did political authority come to be organized in a particular way? How have large-scale ways of organizing political authority at times fostered human well-being, but also produced hierarchies and exclusions? What are the limits of sovereign authority, when should human rights be protected, and what obligations do we have to address the climate emergency?
International relations affects the security, economic fortunes, rights and freedoms, and environ... more International relations affects the security, economic fortunes, rights and freedoms, and environmental well-being of all of us. The recent transformation from a world of empires to today’s sovereign states, meshed in a complex array of international institutions, has far-reaching consequences. International Relations: A Very Short Introduction untangles this constantly evolving subject, exploring the changing ways that political authority has been organized and maintained globally. Throughout, Christian Reus-Smit provides the theoretical and historical tools to understand the origins and dynamics of contemporary international relations, and sheds new light on the nature of global political change.
The global organization of political authority remains complex and shifting. We can ask any numbe... more The global organization of political authority remains complex and shifting. We can ask any number of fascinating questions about this organization, from how and why it changes over time to its relationship with organized violence and inequalities of gender, race, or ethnicity. But how are we to answer them? One response would be to begin by looking at the relevant facts; but what facts should be included and excluded? ‘Theory is your friend’ argues that theory is essential to these tasks. It surveys six prominent theoretical perspectives on international relations: realism, liberalism, constructivism, the English School, feminism, and post-colonialism. All are centrally concerned with the global organization of political authority.
At the core of the Anglo-American West, what some still imagine to be the cutting edge of moderni... more At the core of the Anglo-American West, what some still imagine to be the cutting edge of modernity, lay unfinished cultural conflicts and persistent practices of political accommodation. Contests over collective identities, over the extent of commitments to the autonomy of the individual, and over the standing of distinct cultures within single polities – all were hardwired into the most basic social and political processes of a still promising and still potentially global project. Larger systemic implications may be drawn from the essentially pluralist practices, including open-ended negotiation, through which unique cultures defined, defended, and integrated themselves within Anglo-America. One promising way to draw out those implications is to look comparatively at the evolution of such practices within key bilateral relationships constitutive of something that may rightly be remembered as Anglo-American civilization.
The liberal international order is a fragmented institutional complex, comprising often disparate... more The liberal international order is a fragmented institutional complex, comprising often disparate elements. One of these is a distinctive institutional approach to the global organization of cultural difference. This approach combines universal Westphalian sovereignty (and the pluralist interstate order it facilitates) with international human rights norms that seek to protect the cultural freedoms of individuals. I term this institutional amalgam “global pluralism”. Like many elements of the liberal order, such pluralism is now under challenge, confronted by resurgent ethno-nationalism, politicized religion, and civilizational chauvinism. The key question is whether global pluralism has the adaptive capacities to withstand such challenges. This article develops a theoretical framework for comprehending these institutional capacities. Conceiving global pluralism as a “diversity regime,” I argue that such regimes always rest on social “recognition contracts,” and that these give them...
This chapter sets out the central argument of Culture and Order in World Politics. It provides de... more This chapter sets out the central argument of Culture and Order in World Politics. It provides definitions of cultural diversity and international order, and makes the case for an expansive conception of the latter. It then revisits four key propositions from Reus-Smit’s On Cultural Diversity (2018), on which this volume builds. It goes on to detail four elaborations of these propositions, informed by the analyses provided in contributors’ chapters. These concern the productive power of diversity regimes, the connection between cultural diversity and legitimacy crises, the complex relationship between political centralization and intolerance, and the plural and multiscalar nature of diversity regimes.
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