Mlada Bukovansky

The hollowness of anti-corruption discourse

ABSTRACT As part of an overall focus on governance in international political economy, the corruption issue has catapulted from the margins of academic and policy discourse on international affairs to a position as one of the central problems facing transition economies and the developing world today. But the irreducibly normative character of anti-corruption discourse is in tension with the predominantly rationalist, technical and instrumental justifications for open markets which have long dominated the academic and institutional discourse on international political economy. A survey of the anti-corruption consensus reveals omissions and oversights which cause analysts to evade and obscure, rather than directly engage, core problems of politics and ethics; this may have practical consequences for anti-corruption efforts. Republican political thought, though not without its own risks and flaws, may balance and correct some of the omissions and oversights of liberal and rationalist discourse on corruption.

American identity and neutral rights from independence to the War of 1812

In recent international relations theory debates, constructivists have argued that explanations based primarily on interests and the material distribution of power cannot fully account for important international phenomena and that analysis of the social construction of state identities ought to precede, and may even explain, the genesis of state interests. This claim has proved difficult to operationalize empirically, though some persuasive results are now emerging. This article analyzes the relationship between state identity and state interest in the development of American neutral rights policy from U.S. independence to the War of 1812.

Legitimacy in International Society

Legitimacy in International Society. By Ian Clark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 288p.

Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture

55.00. Ian Clarks book offers the most comprehensive analysis of legitimacy in international relations available today, in the process breathing new life into the concept of international society. Organized into two main sections—a historical review of major peace settlements and an analysis of contemporary international society—the book develops a framework designed to disentangle the complex threads of discourse that make up both scholarly and public discussions of international legitimacy. The author refines and brings the tradition of the English School into direct dialogue with mainstream U.S. international relations discourse, to productive effect.