Why is paris not on ir

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Fully realise your academic potential by immersing yourself in French culture and society for three years. Improve your employability as well as your capacity for postgraduate study by developing valuable transferable skills from your international experience while studying in a UK institution in Paris, the gateway to continental Europe. While the world is not fragmenting into regions, it is also not moving inexorably toward a seamless globality.

Global IR calls for the acknowledgment of regional diversity and agency. Global IR views regions not as fixed physical, cartographic, or cultural entities, but as dynamic, purposeful, and socially constructed spaces Acharya Regions and regionalism today are less territorially based or state-centric; they encompass an ever-widening range of actors and issues.

The study of regions or areas concerns not just how they self-organize their economic, political, and cultural space, but also how they relate to each other and shape global order.

Indeed, the traditional divide between regionalism and universalism may be breaking down. The study of regions provides a central mechanism for forging a close integration between disciplinary approaches and area studies. Through its intimae link with the study of areas or regions, Global IR effectively synergizes disciplinary IR with its theoretical interests and innovations but perceived lack of empirical richness and the area studies tradition with its strong emphasis on field research but which is seen by its critics as atheoretical.

As noted above, giving regions a central place in Global IR does not mean assuming that the world is being fragmented into regions or regional blocs.

Much recent speculation holds that the global power shift and the relative decline of the United States create a frenzy of bilateralism and regional bloc-building similar to the exclusionary blocs of the pre-World War II period Ikenberry Such forms of inter-regionalism might help to bridge the gulf between geographic clusters. Fifth, a truly Global IR must eschew cultural exceptionalism and parochialism.

Exceptionalism is the tendency to present the characteristics of one's own group society, state, or civilization as homogenous, unique, and superior to those of others Acharya Claims about exceptionalism frequently fall apart not just because of the cultural and political diversity within nations, regions, and civilizations. Similarly, exceptionalism often justifies the dominance of the powerful states over the weak. American exceptionalism, seemingly benign and popular at home, finds expression in the Monroe Doctrine and its self-serving global interventionism.

Some efforts to invoke the Chinese tributary system as the basis of a new Chinese School of IR raise similar possibilities Acharya , a. The development of national and regional schools of IR can broaden and enrich IR. But if it takes the form of exceptionalism, it also challenges the possibility of Global IR. Finally, Global IR takes a broad conception of agency Acharya a , a.

Various IR theories have denied the agency claims of the non-Western societies. This self-serving, ahistorical, and brazenly racist formulation by the European colonial powers ignored the fact that even the most sophisticated forms of statecraft already existed in many early non-Western civilizations.

Their advocates rightly criticize mainstream theories for excluding the Global South, but do little exploration of alternative forms of agency from the latter, since recognizing that agency might risk undermining the central part of their narratives.

While global disparities in material power show no signs of disappearing, we need to adopt a broader view of agency. In Global IR, agency is ideational as well as material. It goes beyond military power and wealth and avoids privileging transnational norm entrepreneurship. Agency is ideational as well as material.

Scholars have long contested the meaning of agency in IR. Some challenge the positivist, statist-anthropomorphist understanding of agency state as person, state as agent. Scholars increasingly recognize the agency claims of a broader category of actors other than individuals and states—and argue for a more complex understanding of what constitutes the agency of the state Wight — While we should welcome these broadenings of agency, I call for a still broader conception.

The early constructivist conceptions of agency did not tell us much about how the intersubjective meanings or rules might empower political actors in the non-Western world, including individuals, states, and nonstates actors.

We need a framework of agency that allows space for recognizing the material and ideational roles of both Western and non-Western agents. To develop such a framework, we need to accept that an act of agency involves resistance and rejection, and not just the strengthening of the status quo in world politics. An agent-oriented narrative in Global IR should tell us how actors state and nonstate , through their material, ideational, and interaction capabilities, construct, reject, reconstitute, and transform global and regional orders.

Some examples might include the role of non-Western actors in the following: 1 challenging great-power dominance in creating and managing global and regional order; 2 re-interpreting the global norms of sovereignty, such as non-intervention and their adaptation and application to the local and regional contexts and more broadly to a wider international setting; 3 constructing new rules of sovereignty to support and strengthen global rules and institutions, especially when these rules are being challenged or undermined by their original formulators to serve their own changing interests; 4 conceptualizing and implementing new pathways to security and development, which reflect the distinctive predicament and concerns of the victims of insecurity, poverty, and inequality; and 5 creating and maintaining regional institutions and orders that offer a framework for conflict reduction and resolution in different regions and compensate for the limitations of the UN system.

Viewed as such, agency is not the prerogative of the strong. It can manifest as the weapon of the weak. Agency can be exercised in global transnational space as well as at regional and local levels.

Agency can take multiple forms. It can describe acts of resistance to and localization of global norms and institutions Acharya , Agency also means constructing new rules and institutions at the local level to support and strengthen global order against great-power hypocrisy and dominance Acharya b.

Agency involves conceptualizing and implementing new approaches to development, security, and ecological justice. Recent research shows that developing countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa played a significant but hitherto unacknowledged role in the creation of postwar norms and institutions related to universal human rights, sovereignty, international development, disarmament, and universal participation Global Governance — Africa created a form of regionalism to maintain postcolonial boundaries Acharya —74, b India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the first to propose a nuclear test-ban.

And the origins of the Responsibility to Protect R2P norm, usually attributed to a Canadian-proposed commission, cannot be understood without its African context and advocacy.

Some of these acts of agency—which have involved rejecting attempts by the major Western powers to create privileged space for their interests as well as collaborating with them to organize and manage global governance—are not just for specific regions or for the Global South itself, but are important to the world order as a whole.

Using this broader framework of agency, we can find that the South has had a voice. Mainstream IR theories can no longer afford to ignore them. The idea of Global IR recognizes the voices and agency of the South and opens a central place for subaltern perspectives on global order and the changing dynamics of North—South relations. Analyze changes in the distribution of power and ideas after plus years of Western dominance.

Engage with subjects and methods that require deep and substantive integration of disciplinary and area studies knowledge. They are by no means exhaustive. To some extent, they reflect the intellectual challenges and questions that I have faced and tried to address.

The idea of Global IR should remain a broad umbrella, open to contestation, interpretation, elaboration, and extension.

But the six themes are a good starting point for discussions and debates that are necessary for the broadening of our discipline. Let me elaborate them briefly.

Global IR scholarship is founded on a comparative historiography of international systems and orders. This calls, first and foremost, for discarding the Westphalian mindset when it comes to analyzing the past, present, and future of IR and world order. As Hui argues, the tendency among Western IR theorists to regard centralization hierarchy and empire, for example, the Chinese empire after the Warring States period as aberrations, while decentralization the Westphalia model is seen as the norm of international system is misleading.

Because of the hegemonic position of the Westphalian model, IR scholars have long ignored other types of international systems and orders with a fundamentally different dynamics of power and ideas Buzan and Little , This last featured closely interacting political units with a more ritualistic rather than legalistic and proprietorial view of state sovereignty Acharya b. Historical patterns of interstate relations in the non-Western world should be viewed as sources of IR theorizing, especially if they can be conceptualized in a manner that would extend their analytical utility and normative purpose beyond a particular region.

Let me offer one example of where such research might lead to. The example involves a comparative analysis of the classical systems in the Mediterranean and the Eastern Indian Ocean, roughly the region of contemporary Southeast Asia. For a long while, IR scholars have looked to the Mediterranean region as an inspiration and source for theory development. Examples include balance of power theory—Thucydides's account of the Peloponnesian War, the Rome-Carthage rivalry, etc.

By contrast, IR scholars pay no attention to classical interactions in the Indian Ocean region. Yet comparing the classical Mediterranean region and classical Indian Ocean challenges us to rethink the concept and practice of power, legitimacy, and international orders, all of which are central concepts in IR.

The two regions displayed very different approaches to provision of collective goods by the leading power. The Roman Empire promoted trade by conquering all littoral states and directly controlling the trade routes, with Rome itself as the major if not the only beneficiary. By contrast, the Indian Ocean trade, until the advent of the European imperial powers in the sixteenth century A. Trade flourished without the direct intervention of a hegemonic power. Hence, the Indian Ocean system suggests a less coercive role of material power in the making of international systems and orders.

Second, the two regions displayed different patterns and modalities when it came to the flow of ideas. The two cases thus offer two different images of hegemony and legitimacy in the making of international systems.

The Mediterranean example conforms to the mainstream Western theories that stress how a materially hegemonic power creates and manages international systems and orders. The Indian Ocean suggests how local agency and localization of ideas and institutions including religious, cultural, and political shape international systems and orders.

A second theme for Global IR scholars relates to the shape of international change. A key question here is whether the emerging world order will be either a reconstituted form of American hegemony or a replay of nineteenth and early twentieth century European multipolarity or Cold War bipolarity for that matter. The real question is not whether the United States itself is declining, but whether the world order the United States created and managed is ending irrespective of the decline or revival of the United States as a nation.

Some argue that the American-led liberal hegemony Ikenberry will persist and might even co-opt its potential challengers like China and other emerging powers. But it may be more plausible to think of fundamental shifts in the rules and institutions of global order, including the possibility of a decentered world where no single power, be it United States or China, exercises hegemony.

Scholars base a good deal of the speculation and debate over international order since the end of the Cold War on patterns and lessons derived from Europe before World War II Mearsheimer ; Layne ; Wohlforth Yet this Eurocentric understanding, which sees a return to multipolarity, may turn out to be quite wrong. The world today is much more complex than the European state-system. Its great or rising powers are more diverse and geographically more dispersed just think of the BRICS or the G members.

And these rising powers are also predominantly non-European. They have distinct and diverse cultural and historical experiences that inform their conceptions of and approach to world order. Hence, the tendency to conceptualize the emerging world order in terms of European history is wrong-headed. The emerging world order is better described as a multiplex world Acharya a.

As with a multiplex theater, there would be a variety of plots ideas, worldviews , actors, producers, and directors of world politics. The key players in international politics today are not just the great or rising powers. They also include regional powers, international institutions, nonstate actors good and bad , and multinational corporations.

Interdependence in this multiplex world is complex and multidimensional, comprising not just trade, but also financial flows and transnational production. It has multiple layers of governance, global, inter-regional, regional, state, and substate. It might give more play to regions, regional powers, and regionalisms than the American-led order.

The advent of the multiplex world order is at least partly a result of the relative improvement in the economic conditions in the non-Western world.

Some of these are directly associated with the so-called rising powers or emerging powers, a group spearheaded by the likes of China, India, Brazil, South Africa, etc. Economic change extends beyond the emerging powers of the South. The South has increased its share of the global output from one-third in to about half now.

But these positive signs in the South should not blind us to persisting and new challenges. Global poverty remains a significant problem, and inequality is rising. Income inequality is rising in all but four member countries of the G20, even while it is falling in many low-income and lower middle-income countries Oxfam Brazil, Indonesia and, on some indicators, Argentina have recorded significant progress in reducing inequality over the past 20 years.

By contrast, China, India, and South Africa have all become less equal over time; inequality levels in Argentina and Brazil still remain high. Of late, the advent of groups like the G is redefining the nature of North—South relations.

The West dominates it, with too many European members and not enough representation from the developing world.

And while pitched as an effort to bridge the North—South divide, it creates a new polarization within the South: between the Power South and the Poor South. A key challenge for Global IR is to avoid such hubris and investigate marginalization in its broader and newer forms.

We must attend to marginalization in the context of relations between states, within states, within groups, and within various subdisciplines and movements in the field. A revisionist genealogy of comparative regionalism is a third area of concern for global IR scholarship. While regionalism is a worldwide phenomenon, the theoretical literature on regionalism narrowly frames the phenomenon in Eurocentric terms.

Historically, regionalism takes a variety of forms and functions, including the following:. As an approach to conflict-management: a subset of, or alternative to, the universalism of the UN. As an approach to suppress nationalism and prevent return to war through economic and political integration Western Europe after As a platform for advancing decolonization and national liberation, for example, The Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi and and the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung in To promote economic development through regional self-reliance and intraregional linkages, for example, most regional economic groups among developing countries.

Fragmentation of the global liberal order into trading or economic blocs as is currently being feared by the defenders of US hegemony. The true pioneers of regionalism were not European, but Latin American. They were the most vocal advocates of regionalism in the framing of the UN Charter at the San Francisco Conference, where the United States expressed a strong preference for universalism. Ideas of regionalism were by no means confined to Europe, even though some of these ideas did not initially find concrete or durable institutional forms.

The theories of IR applied to regional institutions and interactions—such as liberalism, neoliberal institutionalism, and constructivism—as well as theories of regionalism per se , such as functionalism, neofunctionalism, and transactionalism, are for the most part derived from the Western context, ideas, and practices. They have not proven to be of much value in explaining the evolution and performance of regionalisms in the non-Western world. Regionalism is no longer geared mainly to achieving trade liberalization or conflict-management, but also to managing transnational issues such as the environment, refugees, migration, human rights, counter-terrorism, internal conflicts, etc.

The proliferation of regional groups and the expansion of their tasks introduces a greater variety and diversity to the design and operation of regional bodies. Not only is there greater variation between the EU model and the rest of the world, but also between and among regionalisms in different parts of the world, such as Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.

For example, African regionalism embraces the R2P norm, while Asian regionalism resists it. Asian economic regionalism is more market driven than that associated with Europe's intergovernmentalism and supranationalism.

Latin America's is more geared to democracy promotion than Asia's. Africa's regionalism has done more in the area of security and collective intervention, Asia's in market integration, and Latin America's in democracy promotion. Global IR scholars should conceptualize and investigate these diverse forms of regionalism. Regionalisms in the multiplex world should no longer be judged in terms of how well they achieve EU-style integration.

Global IR scholarship should rise above the false divide between area studies approaches and IR as a discipline with its distinctive theories, methods, and empirical terrain. In many other parts of the world, IR has evolved on the back of area studies Alagappa It is more productive to seek ways of building convergence and synergy between the two approaches. Many scholars in the social sciences today combine disciplinary approaches theory and method with area studies knowledge.

The former includes scholars whose main interest is in IR broadly, but who also study specific regions because of some novel and interesting trend or phenomena, such as new patterns of economic change, geopolitics, and cooperation.

These scholars were not trained in the area studies tradition, which assumes a lifelong devotion to a country or region, and mastery of its languages and culture, but they offer novel insights and develop tools of analysis that are useful to both area specialists and disciplinary IR scholars.

Indeed, a growing number of such scholars now recognize the need to move beyond a traditional area studies approach focusing on a single country or region and embrace theoretical and comparative investigations. While their primary focus remains area studies, they also contribute to the conceptual and analytical development of IR as a discipline.

A challenge for such scholarship is to come up with concepts and insights from one regional context that may also have analytical relevance beyond that region. This is by no means an impossible demand. Increasingly, we have a growing number of scholars who are interested in the comparative study of such transnational issues in different countries and regions, employing theoretical tools and methods from a variety of disciplines.

Then, there are those scholars who are trained as specialists on one country or region, but investigate such issues comparatively and across traditional area boundaries. A fifth concern of Global IR scholarship that deserves greater attention is the diffusion of ideas and norms.

Early constructivist theory privileged transnational norm entrepreneurs, who usually came from the West, and regarded non-Western societies and actors as passive targets, or norm takers.

This view has begun to change with new wave of norm diffusion scholarship Acharya , , b. This literature gives more play to the role of local actors, which may include both state and nonstate knowledge networks, social movements actors at regional, national, and substate municipal, village, etc.

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