Alexander Cooley

The NGO scramble: Organizational insecurity and the political economy of transnational action

of transnational actors are largely optimistic, suggesting they herald an emerging global civil society comprising local civic groups, international organizations (IOs), and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). This new civil society, moreover, is widely assumed to rest upon shared liberal norms and values that motivate INGO action and explain their supposedly benign inouence on international relations. The NGO Scramble The NGO Scramble Alexander Cooley and James Ron

Contracting States: Sovereign Transfers in International Relations

List of Illustrations and Tables ix Preface xi Chapter 1. Incomplete Sovereignty and International Relations 1 Chapter 2. A Theory of Incomplete Contracting and State Sovereignty 19 Chapter 3. Severing the Ties That Bind: Sovereign Transfers in the Shadow of Empire 48 Appendix 3.1. Overseas Basing Deployments of France and Britain since 1970 97 Chapter 4. Incomplete Contracting and the Politics of U.S. Overseas Basing Agreements 100 Chapter 5. Incomplete Contracting and Modalities of Regional Integration 142 Chapter 6. Further Applications and Conclusions 186 Bibliography 207 Index 225

Countering Democratic Norms

Abstract:Over the past decade, the international backlash against liberal democracy has grown and gathered momentum. Authoritarians have experimented with and refined a number of new tools, practices, and institutions that are meant to shield their regimes from external criticism and to erode the norms that inform and underlie the liberal international political order. These global political changes and systemic shifts have produced new counternorms that privilege state security, civilizational diversity, and traditional values over liberal democracy. The effects of these changes are most visible in the narrower political space that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are facing, the shifting purposes that regional organizations are embracing, and the rising influence of non-Western powers as international patrons.

Ranking the world : grading states as a tool of global governance

1. The emerging politics of international rankings and ratings: a framework for analysis Alexander Cooley 2. Just who put you in charge? We did: CRAs and the politics of ratings Rawi Abdelal and Mark Blyth 3. Corruption rankings: constructing and contesting the global anti-corruption agenda Mlada Bukovansky 4. Measuring stateness, ranking political orders: indices of state fragility and state failure Nehal Bhuta 5. Lost in the gray zone: competing measures of democracy in the former Soviet republics Seva Gunitsky 6. Winning the rankings game: the Republic of Georgia, USAID, and the Doing Business Project Sam Schueth 7. Conclusion. Rating the ratings craze: from consumer choice to public policy outcomes Jack Snyder and Alexander Cooley.

Thinking rationally about hierarchy and global governance

Recent scholarship on globalization has conflated methodological critiques of rationalism with ontological arguments. American rationalist paradigms of IPE, it is argued, are too state-centred and utilitarian to offer convincing explanations for emerging non-state forms of global governance. In response, this essay argues that rationalist theories do provide important theoretical tools to understand the political economy of globalization, even in its hierarchical forms. An examination of the changing forms of contractual relations between international organizations and non-governmental organizations, the functions of international credit rating agencies, and the growth of offshore tax havens, shows that underlying utilitarian incentives for political behaviour can be uncovered and explicated, even within these non-state forms of contemporary global governance. Consequently, the appropriateness of any given IPE method should depend upon the research question asked, not pre-existing assumptions about the inherent advantages of either rationalist or non-rationalist approaches.

“The Empire Will Compensate You”: The Structural Dynamics of the U.S. Overseas Basing Network

Many commentators refer to the U.S. overseas network of military installations as an “empire,” yet very few have examined the theoretical and practical significance of such an analogy. This article explores the similarities and differences between the basing network and imperial systems. We argue that American basing practices and relations combine elements of liberal multilateralism with “neo-imperial” hegemony. Much, but far from all, of the network shares with ideal-typical empires a hub-and-spoke system of unequal relations among the United States and its base-host country “peripheries.” But Washington rarely exercises rule over host-country leaders and their constituents. Historical examples suggest that this combination of imperial and non-imperial elements has rendered the United States vulnerable to political cross-pressures, intermediary exits, and periodic bargaining failures when dealing with overseas base hosts. Moreover, globalizing processes, especially increasing information flows and the transnational networking of anti-base movements, further erode U.S. capacity to maintain multivocal legitimation strategies and keep the terms of its individual basing bargains isolated from one another. Case studies of the rapid contestation of the terms of the U.S. basing presence in post-Soviet Central Asia and post-2003 Iraq illustrate some of these dynamics.

Engagement without Recognition: A New Strategy toward Abkhazia and Eurasia's Unrecognized States

The Russia–Georgia war of August 2008 had repercussions well beyond the South Caucasus. The war was the culmination of Western tensions with Russia over its influence in the post–Soviet space, whil...

Base Motives The Political Economy of Okinawa’s Antimilitarism

The Japanese prefecture of Okinawa has witnessed a great deal of protest activity against the U.S. military bases on the island. Antibase sentiment is regularly expressed by the local press and the local cultural and educational institutions. A brutal 1995 crime committed by U.S. military personnel on the island inflamed public opinion against the bases. Yet the U.S. base presence endures, and the antibase activity of the late 1990s was defused rather quickly into tacit continuing acceptance by Okinawans of the base presence, even as U.S. bases elsewhere in the world closed in response to protest activity. What explains this puzzle? The authors argue that the Japanese government’s unique system of “burden payments” provides incentives to Okinawans both to highlight the negative effects of the U.S. presence and to support the continuation of the bases for economic reasons. The trilateral base-bargaining relationship serves the interests of Washington, Tokyo, and a politically critical majority of Okinawans themselves

Great Games, Local Rules

How ‘central’ is Central Asia in contemporary world politics and what is the region’s exact strategic importance? Over the last years countless media stories and commentators have resurrected the metaphor of the new ‘Great Game,’ invoking analogies with the high-stakes competition between Russia and Great Britain in the nineteenth century for regional influence and control. In this iteration, the players are different: rather than from London and St. Petersburg, the capital of imperial Russia, the protagonists take orders from Moscow, Washington and, most recently, Beijing. In this framework, Russia, the United States, and China are in a winner-takes-all battle to secure vital strategic interests such as energy resources and access to critical military bases. Moreover, the pendulum in this new Great Game seems to regularly swing back and forth. After the ouster of Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April 2010, Moscow was viewed as ascendant in the region, just as the United States was widely credited with orchestrating the so-called Colored Revolutions of the mid-2000s.

No Way to Treat Our Friends: Recasting Recent U.S.–Georgian Relations

The tragic August conflict between Georgia and Russia has initiated a wave of accusations about which side was to blame for the outbreak of full-scale war. The war and its aftermath have ratcheted tensions between the West and Russia, as the international community pressures Moscow to withdraw its troops from Georgian territory and abide by its ceasefire obligations. Russia’s reckless decision to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia not only contravenes international law regarding sovereign statehood, but if allowed to stand, would establish the unacceptable precedent that countries can justify military intervention in the territory of a neighbor by invoking the rights of their ethnic citizens. Not surprisingly, Moscow has found little support in the international community for its heavy-handed actions, even among countries friendly to Russia. Yet, as analysts focus on the Russian-Georgian relationship, the questions of how the United States*/ Georgia’s friend and patron*/ failed to anticipate the conflict and prevent its escalation need to be addressed. Two unequivocal, but ultimately flawed, principles guided recent U.S. policy towards Georgia. First, the United States supported the Saakashvili government, rather than promoting