Dirk Nabers

Power, leadership, and hegemony in international politics: the case of East Asia

The article inquires into the conditions of effective leadership of states in international politics, and develops a framework for the study of so-called (new) regional powers such as Brazil, China, India, and South Africa in processes of regional institution-building. Various theoretical strands will be discussed as to the requirements of effective leadership in international affairs. Most importantly, the relationship between power, leadership and hegemony will be outlined. It is argued that the connection between leadership and hegemony is one of co-constitution. Leadership is necessarily based on hegemony, while hegemony can only be sustained through leadership. Furthermore, it will be shown that both leadership and hegemony are essentially political in character, whereas power has no such insinuation but has to be translated into leadership and hegemony through discursive means. Finally, the analysis asks for the preconditions of leadership in East Asia, using Chinas and Japans roles in East Asian regionalism as an illustration.

Introduction: Regional Powers and Global Redistribution

So-called “(new) regional powers” such as Brazil, China, India and South Africa have become omnipresent as a topic in the study of international relations (IR). In recent years these regional powers have emerged as significant representatives and interpreters of the long-standing aspirations of the South in global affairs. Actively formulated by Brazil, India, and South Africa, this agenda is also supported by China, albeit less consistently. Contributions to this special section highlight different aspects of these global goals, but share the conviction that ‘global redistribution’ provides a useful description of what they entail. As used here, ‘global redistribution’ refers to the goal of systematically reducing the wealth, power, and prestige differentials between nation states that characterise the modern world. In this usage, ‘global’ signifies the scope of the inter-state redistribution that is aimed at. As such, the meaning of the term should be distinguished from another. In studies of the distribution of wealth and income across the world as a whole, global redistribution is used to refer to the evening-out of income and wealth differentials between all the citizens of the world, irrespective of nationality. It is important to distinguish between these two usages. The achievement of the first form of global, that is ‘inter-state’ redistribution, does not necessarily improve distribution in the second sense of the term. In fact, this distinction provides us with an evaluative tool with which to probe the limits of the distributive aspirations of the leaders from the emerging Southern powerhouses. Over the past two decades, all four of the regional powers mentioned above have made some progress in reducing absolute poverty within their countries. However, apart from Brazil, all have seen wealth and income inequalities increase, thus placing increasing strains on their already vulnerable societies. The reasons for these wider disparities are many and at least some have to do with the consequences of rapid economic growth and modernisation that places a premium on

September 11 and the rise of political fundamentalism in the Bush administration: domestic legitimatization versus international estrangement?

This article explores the tension between the role of religious language as a domestic legitimising device for the Bush administration and its adverse impact on Washingtons foreign policy image. It argues that President Bushs political fundamentalism after 9/11 has become a major obstacle to effectively addressing the challenge of international terrorism. It examines the interface between religion and the traditional idea of US exceptionalism, considers the political rise of the Christian right in American politics since the 1970s, shows how 9/11 served as a transformative event in the emergence of political fundamentalism in the White House and explores the impact of the construction of President Bushs ‘war on terror’ policies on the domestic and international environments. The conclusion acknowledges a substantial gulf between the domestic and international responses to President Bushs brand of political fundamentalism, but concedes that these differences have been narrowing over time.

Crisis, Change and the Problem of Collective Self-Defense in Japan’s Security Policy

After the widely reported humiliation in the Gulf War in 1991, when Japan refrained from supporting the United States in any meaningful military way by pointing to constitutional restraints, the government in Tokyo has tried to incrementally change Japan’s defense posture during the subsequent two and a half decades and opted to engage more actively in international security affairs. Far-reaching policy changes became possible through the articulation of several foreign policy crises by the Japanese government in the 1990s and the early 2000s: the first crisis came in 1993 and 1994 with North Korea’s withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the risk of war with the United States; the second crisis was articulated in the aftermath of Pyongyang’s ballistic missile test on August 31, 1998; the third developed with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, setting the stage for major shifts within the institutional structure of Japanese defense policies until today.

Crisis as dislocation in global politics

The article asks how it is possible to conceptualize the ‘crisis of the social’, and how one can best understand the relationship between crisis and social change in global politics. In doing so, it draws on the notion of dislocation to conceptualize crisis as a lack, deficiency or failure in the social fabric. The theoretical approach builds on the work of the late political theorist Ernesto Laclau and his co-authored work with Chantal Mouffe. Two illustrative sections will develop the theoretical model further on the basis of four interrelated and mutually constitutive elements: sedimented practices and dislocation on the one hand, as well as antagonism and the institutionalization within a so-called imaginary on the other. On this basis of an in-depth theoretical analysis, the article will summarize some crucial aspects regarding the nexus between crisis and social change and their implications for the study of global politics.

Introduction: Foucault Meets EU Studies

Since the 1980s, “traditional” orthodoxies of International Relations (IR) have increasingly been challenged by critical approaches calling commonsensical assumptions, socio-political rationalities and disciplining concepts into question. In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, critical studies have gained renewed impetus and provided new analytical insights into contemporary politics, which to a certain extent have also been triggered by the publication of Michel Foucault’s late lectures. As they engage with hegemonic ontologies, silences and disciplinary boundaries, the tools developed by Foucault have become precious allies for critically intervening in socio-scientific and political discourses. In spite of audible resistances in “IR”, critical reflexivity remains underperformed in the “subfield” of European Union (EU) studies, with few but noticeable exceptions. Although the “constructivist turn” has been supplemented by what has been dubbed “poststructuralism”, the field still remains parochial and largely haunted by scholars’ “positivist” desire to accumulate true and reliable knowledge about the EU’s peculiar nature and functioning, to assess political effectiveness, to control variables and causality in the domain of European integration while imposing a plethora of neologisms but hardly contested grids of intelligibility on what is commonly viewed as a puzzling political object. The research field remains widely immune to social critique, sticking to institutionand/or statecentric approaches, consequently reproducing narrow understandings of what politics, power and knowledge are and what they do.Whereas Foucauldian perspectives direct our attention to limits and limitations, discontinuous grounds and historico-political emergences of singular practices and rationalities, a readiness to interrogate the assumptions of Eurocentric truths, supposed necessities and familiar ways of doing and thinking still seems marginal in the field of EU studies. This special issue is a follow-up to a workshop which took place at Kiel University in March 2015. The workshop was motivated by a desire to bring junior and senior scholars dealing with the EU and European space(s) through Foucauldian lenses together, in the context of what could be described as a thought-provoking but scattered research community. Our aspiration to have a common debate, however, was not animated by a will to speak with one voice to a European research community we would be critical of. What we wanted instead was to explore and give visibility to the diversity of current Foucauldian

Local Practices of European Immigration: The "Right of Death and Power over Life" in German Asylum Discourses

I draw on arguments put forward by Michel Foucault and other so-called poststructuralist theorists in order to elucidate contemporary local practices of European immigration governance from the perspective of the notions of governmentality and pastoral power. In particular, asylum politics and local discourses on asylum in Germanys northern-most province of Schleswig Holstein will be scrutinised from a post-foundational perspective. Local debates about the establishment of a home for newly arrived asylum seekers in Schleswig-Holsteins second largest city of Lübeck are at the centre of the analysis, which starts with the first public announcement of the plans by the provincial government on 21 April 2015, and ends with its eventual voting out by Lübecks city assembly at the end of June 2015. On the basis of the analysis, broader ethical implications will be scrutinised. The conclusion summarises theoretical findings on community building and subjectification.