ISA 2009 Convention

February 15-18, 2009

Administration/Faculty/Alumni/Student Presenters

Administration and Faculty

Dr. Simon Reich, DGA Director, Chairs Panel/Presents Paper

Was 9/11 the watershed in integration policy that many commentators presume or were aspects of continuity greater than perceived? And to what extent has integration become a security issue on both sides of the Atlantic in the last decade? Despite the pretense that integration is not an issue in the US, what similarities with Europe prevail? This panel is part of the second stage of a collaborative project on immigration, integration and security organized by the Ford Institute for Human Security at the University of Pittsburgh and the CEVIPOF at Sciences Po (Paris). It will examine the question of forms and effectiveness of Muslim integration as a security measure on both sides of the Atlantic -- both before and after 9/11. The panel is comprised of distinguished US and European scholars who examine questions of both social control and socio-economic and political incorporation -- from issues of the redefinition of integration post 9/11 (Patrick Ireland) to Transatlantic comparisons of various aspects of integration theories, processes and policy consequences (Jocelyne Cesari, Martin Schain, Ariane Chebel d'Appollonia and Simon Reich).

Much recent work on European countries has focused on the security problems of integrating Muslims through means of social control. Far less attention has been paid to the use of social, economic or political means of incorporation as a means of attaining greater security for both minorities and the general population. In this paper, which forms an overview of the joint project between the Ford Institute and CEVIPOF, I shall lay out the central challenges, areas of convergence and divergence, and lessons available to scholars and policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Gabriela Kütting, DGA Deputy Director

This paper examines nature-society relations in seaside tourism. It is exactly ‘on the ground’ that we can observe how environmental degradation and the work of international institutions manifest themselves and where the limitations of understanding lie. The case studies of this paper focus on small and medium sized businesses in tourism in the Mediterranean region in locations where environmental problems exist and are in conflict with the development of a tourism economy. They show that the interplay between international institutions, global civil society and economic actors is often predictably conflictual and suggests that the mode of obtaining capital for tourism investment has a substantial impact on how nature-society relations impact on a particular location and on the equity of social relations between the groups of actors involved. This has important lessons for the development of tourism economies in developing countries.

 

Philip Cerny

The Competition State in the late 20th century went through two developmental stages. The first was the “strategic state” or “developmental state,” combining elements of the Japanese and French models with some aspects of European neocorporatism. The second was that of ideological neoliberalism, or “conservatism,” as it was called in the United States and Britain. The first enabled rapid economic growth in the postwar world economy by targeting state intervention on internationally competitive growth sectors while sheltering and proactively restructuring domestic industries. The second was a reaction to the crisis and recession of the 1970s and 1980s and involved the partial dismantling of developmental interventionism along with an emphasis on marketization and commodification,” both of the economy and of the state apparatus itself. In the 21st century, as globalization and transnational economic integration have expanded from below as well as above, the Competition State has increasingly involved experimentation with new forms of state micro-steering and “compensation” for economic sectors – and for population groups – under stress from new forms of transnational competition. This paper will look at several sectors in brief, focusing on the emergence of what I call “social neoliberalism” in a number of countries across the world, especially in the context of recurring financial crises.

Financial regulation generally arises from trial-and-error reactions to financial crises, while each crisis or set of crises raises new issues as well as reconfiguring old ones in an environment of uncertainty. In an unevenly globalizing international political economy, the transnational dimension is inextricably intertwined with the national, but regulatory regimes are deeply embedded at the national level. This regulation gap has left a number of questions unresolved, including moral hazard, market failure vs. market efficiency, rules-based vs. principles-based regulation, liquidity, etc., each of which arises in unanticipated form during what seem to be increasingly endemic crises. This paper argues that in the context of international politics, financial crises have led to a process of ad hoc convergence at the level of practice that have enabled regulators to temporarily stabilize financial markets while at the same time sowing the seeds of future crises. A transnational version of a Polyanian "double movement" has yet to take shape as politicians, regulators and market actors have been unable to develop a consensus on the rules of the game across borders. The paper will consider evidence from the Mexican, Asian and Russian crises of the late 1990s, the Argentine and Turkish crises of the early 2000s, and the current subprime mortgage-related crisis.

Over the past three decades, the privatization of public functions and services has become standard American practice. This controversial development is seen most visibly in the privatization of security functions, such as with outsourcing to contractors in Iraq. However, privatization extends to a range of other areas, as well. Conventional wisdom suggests this development can be explained by either capitalist accumulation or ideologies of efficiency. Contrary to these dominant explanations, this panel proposes to examine the state logics underlying this transformation. We hypothesize that the world is witnessing the emergence of a new hybrid government-business form in the 21st century. This accelerating process of public-private “hybridization” is exhibited not only by the United States, but also by other states, both industrialized and developing. It is manifest in the outsourcing of social welfare tasks to non-governmental organizations, the phenomenon of “corporate social responsibility,” through which companies, rather than states, propose to protect the environment, human rights, and the transfer of public property rights to private parties. Hybridization represents a form of governmental rule and authority different from earlier episodes, and paper presenters propose to examine these various real-world dimensions in order to build a theory of hybridization of state-capital forms.

Yale Ferguson

As David Held observes: “There is nothing more central to political and social theory than the nature of the state, and nothing more contested.” "The state" is routinely defined and employed to suit the normative and/or empirical ends of scholars and practitioners. "Social science,” Peter Taylor argues, “has been endemically state-centric. Conceived in a world academy dominated by states, the various social sciences have obediently followed agendas in which the ‘society’ they aspire to understand is defined politically by state boundaries.” Yet, far from being a universal feature of world politics, territorial states were a European invention that have dominated the study of IR for only a few centuries. Until a few hundred years ago, most human beings were aggregated and governed by expansive empires, city or village polities, extended families and clans, and nomadic tribal groups. Indeed, in an important sense, much of humanity still is. Our paper briefly traces the evolution of the state in global politics through the historical “princely state, “ the “territorial state,” the “state-nation,” and the “nation-state,” and then compares and contrasts the emerging “post-international state” with the ideal type that continues to dominate IR scholarship. Today, it is variously suggested that the “welfare state” is giving way to a “competition state,” a “market state,” a “virtual state,” and perhaps even a “residual state,” that the “strategic” and “developmental” states are surrendering to the “civilian state,” and that that the “superpower” has become an “empire.” The debate over the nature and significance of the state thus continues, missing, we insist, two central points: First, all polity ideal types, not least the state, accommodate an exceedingly wide range of actual polities. Second, the true nature and significance of any polity depends upon its effective control of persons and other resources in the context of particular issues.

This panel brings together scholars from several disciplines and perspectives to examine the phenomenon of fair trade. While still only a small portion of global trade, fair trade certified products are a dynamic sector of the global economy and growing steadily. The goal of the movement is to empower producers and conduct trade in a less exploitative and more socially responsible manner. Imagining trade in this way can be a challenge for traditional trade theories that focus on the efficient allocation of resources. Therefore, the goal of this panel is to create a multidisciplinary dialogue that can examine a variety of ways to understand this issue. Each author examines fair trade through the theoretical lenses, debates and dynamics of their field and draws conclusions about the effects and success of this movement. The papers acknowledge that the fair trade movement anticipates the future of global economic interactions as individuals become more educated about the problems of globalization. Finally all papers contribute to an overarching theoretical argument which is that fair trade represents a new way to pursue globalization as well as a way to humanize its effects.

Starting point for this second panel is the widely held belief that the international system is best characterized as anarchic and, in practice, dominated by realpolitik. In contrast to this assumption, the papers show that liberal approaches underpin influential movements in international law, the international economy, global civil society, and neoconservatism. In each of these fields liberal policies aim to establish or reproduce a hierarchical international system – defined by unequal international law, exploitation, and arms control – and not an anarchical international system as commonly argued. The concept of 'global civil war' may thus capture the outcome of these policies rather better than the concepts of order or peace.

Richard Langhorne

The Vienna Convention was the culmination of an unusually long process. The issue of codifying diplomatic law occupied minds in the later nineteenth century, fell victim to the problems of the League of Nations and then had to wait for the cold war to reach a particular phase in which both sides could believe that a codification would benefit them. Only then could the initiating conference take place. So much time had passed and so much of the text of the convention had been initially drafted between the wars that what was to be regulated was a diplomatic system on the verge of decline. The paper will examine some of the most significant changes that the last 50 years has brought in order to estimate what matters a contemporary convention would want to address. What emerges most clearly is that a convention created by and for states in order to regulate a system entirely owned by states could not imagine a diplomatic system completely rejected by some important players or having serious episodes of activity conducted by entities who were not states.

 

Students

James Amemasor

The relationship between states and financial markets is a controversial issue in international studies. Scholars have theorized these institutions as two contrasting governing spheres, with states denoting territorially structured political command, and markets representing non-territorially bound economic authority. This relationship is conceived of as parallel and tension-packed. In a globalizing world economy characterized by liberalization of trade barriers, privatization of state assets, and competitive disintermediation of credit practices, neoliberal analysts assert that politicians have lost their power to regulate financial markets. The result, they contend, is that credit markets now ‘rule the roost.’ This paper offers a refutation to such a view and argues that the relationship between these two institutions has always been a marketplace phenomenon rather than a tension-packed one. This paper will examine the neoliberal phase of marketplace relations via the ‘Monterrey Consensus,’ a multi-nodal global arrangement requiring the coordination of resources within the UN development architecture.

Pablo Diaz

In spite of a growing consensus among human rights advocates and UN officials against amnesties and in favor of accountability, amnesties have continued to play an important role in negotiated settlements. Since its inception, the International Criminal Court has had to deal with pre-existing amnesties and even the offer of new ones, in direct contradiction with its mandate to end impunity. In countries where the ICC is not involved, amnesties are routinely touted as an essential tool of conflict resolution. This paper will examine the difficult coexistence of amnesties with war crimes courts and the accountability norm in the first decade of the 21st century.

Theresa Hunt

One of the greatest obstacles to eradicating violence against women (VAW) globally has been the deficit of reliable data on the issue, both quantitative and qualitative. This paper explores how organizations working in response to post-election VAW in Kenya, state-sponsored sexual abuse of Tamil women in Sri Lanka and domestic violence crises across Africa implement information and communications technologies (ICT) to combat gender-based violence, primarily by improving on the collection and quality of data on regional incidents and patterns of abuse. While accessing ICT remains problematic in most regions of the developing world, the projects profiled in this paper, have been able to implement innovative solutions to this obstacle, contributing richer and more reliable information to the international women’s human rights community. In describing and assessing the methods of these organizations, contextual discussions of the gendered “digital divide” and absence of women’s concerns in national IT and Development policies are also offered.

Though the final decades of the 20th century began to see greater movement around the issue of violence against women (VAW), empirical evidence suggests it remains a global epidemic. This has catalyzed the growth of transnational feminism and anti-violence organizations, subsequently increasing states’ confrontations with pressure to ratify global women’s rights agreements. Since the mechanisms of such agreements work not only within the jurisdiction and territory under states’ sovereign control but also construct supranational systems of rights implementation and enforcement, states now confront questions about changes to their authority. The resultant tension created between state sovereignty and the movement of these women’s rights regimes furthers debate about the shifting nature, definitions and applications of sovereignty in the 21st Century. This paper investigates the intersections of anti-VAW regimes, international rights agreements and changing notions of sovereignty within the global system. Notions of “declining sovereignty” as obstacles to the forward movement of women’s human rights regimes are examined, as are ideas about the effectiveness of state-civil society collaborations to eradicate VAW.

Fayth A. Ruffin

Tracing the symbiosis of global politics and international law while analyzing moral considerations contemplated by Hugo Grotius in the fifteenth century, I argue that our emerging global system must move from an international law and politics of coordination and cooperation to collaboration. I explore the continuity of Grotius’ analysis of morality as foundational to a body of law for a “society of (hu)mankind” rather than of states, thereby reserving moral autonomy to the individual while otherwise submitting to state sovereignty. Morality and collaboration unfold as indicia of a just world order by this examination of case studies where change is inherent: environmental governance, humanitarian intervention, security, and trade. Given the rise of non-state actors in these substantive areas, this paper moves away from a deliberate state-centric derivation of Grotius’ work all too common in international relations theory. Rather, I rely upon the continuity of Grotius’ contributions to demonstrate the need for contemporarily reorienting inquiry into transnational law and world politics by injecting moral purpose at the center of evaluative procedures while deconstructing and re-constructing international relations to coalesce with gender and race thereby generating a framework for peaceable, collaborative, and therefore more predictable relations between states and private individuals across a cosmopolitan globe.

William Laventhal

The most recent wave of globalization has brought unevenly distributed economic growth around the world. One of globalization’s more powerful symbols is the container ship. Images of ships carrying thousands of containers of manufactured goods are often associated with Asia, but rarely with Africa or South America. The restructuring of the international economy and development of global supply chains has altered the routes and manner in which goods are traded. Consequently, the transportation infrastructure required for plugging into the global economy has changed significantly. Because of the containerization of trade, port infrastructure is no longer developed in an incremental fashion. High costs, large volumes, and private investment have changed the way that countries improve maritime trade connections. The inability to incrementally develop ports – particularly in countries not on East-West trade lanes – has considerable implications for economic development. This paper will examine the changes in maritime trade and port development. It will focus on the impact for countries on the global periphery. It will also consider solutions such as regional cooperation, international assistance, and market-based approaches.

 

Alumni

Giselle Datz

Robert Kaufman’s work has contributed significantly to our understanding of democratic transitions and of the economic and social reforms that followed. These transitions and reforms were often embedded in a delicate political web, which he has helped untangle and explain. While his work has shed light on Latin American studies his influence extends to comparative work in East Asia and Eastern Europe. This work includes important contributions to our understanding of debt crises, the composition and resilience of democratic institutions, and the varieties of first- and second-generation market reforms. His scholarship is marked by rich collaborations and rigorous analyses with significant policy implications. Hence, Kaufman’s work has been required reading to students of comparative political economy in the last thirty years. Kaufman’s contribution to international studies, however, has not been confined to his rich academic publications. Kaufman has mentored generations of scholars working in many of Political Science’s subfields at both Rutgers and Columbia Universities. The panelists will comment on different aspects of Kaufman’s contributions, especially relating to: International Political Economy, Comparative Politics, Development Studies, and Latin American Studies. Following this year’s theme, it is hardly possible to imagine how research in these four subfields could evolve without exploring Kaufman’s work and anticipating emerging efforts into knowledge building he continues to produce and encourage.

Determining the costs of debt crises through economic modeling or overextensive pooling time series provides little insight into the question about the distributive consequences of these events. I content that “how” a group is affected is contingent on when. That is to say, the costs of default, in particular, for different groups of actors are a function of a sequence of events (from credit rating upgrades locally to interest rate fluctuations internationally) which affect perceptions about the value of debt and the defaulter’s access to new credit in the short to medium terms. The approach developed here unpacks slots of short time periods in order to trace distributive effects related to the Russian and Argentine defaults. It is shown that distributive outcomes are fluid and to a large extent a function of time. That is because gains and losses follow relatively volatile bonds, rather than fixed endowments of factors of production. By unpacking these dynamics, it is concluded that even in the short term, self-reinforcing synchronicities (attached to patterns of path dependence in analysis of the long run) help determine distributive outcomes insofar as financial perceptions are formed based on time incentives.

Robert Saunders

In the wake of the 11 September attacks, significant numbers of youth from Malaysia to Nepal to Cambodia donned Osama bin Laden t-shirts. It was clear that the Saudi-born terrorist had become an international brand, signifying (among other things): violent opposition to Israel and the United States; an alternate form of political Islam; and rejection of Western-imposed globalization on the Third World. Like Che Guevara before him, bin Laden’s face now became synonymous with revolution. While counter-terrorist image-making has been a subject of intense scholarship since 2001, less work has been done on the efforts of international Islamist terrorists to brand their campaigns, organizations, and ultimate goals. Using analytical techniques adapted from the fields of nation/place branding and international business management, this paper explores the image-making, branding, and marketing efforts of transnational Islamist terrorist organizations since 9/11. My aim is to understand the variety of methods that these non-state actors use to “speak” to their various audiences (enemies and allies, alike), as well as the efficacy of such discourses. I focus on the nomenclature of terrorist groups, the mass mediation of terror campaigns through imagery and discursive manipulation, and the use of guerrilla and corporate-style marketing by Al Qaeda and similar organizations to attract members and influence their constituencies.