How the West was One: Representational Politics of NATO

Klein, Bradley S.

doi:10.2307/2600572

Cited by 55 publications

(20 citation statements)

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“…One of the most striking aspects of the Cold War period generally in Western Europe, and of the role and emergence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in particular, was the manner in which a distinctive security discourse effectively unified allies in response to a perceived Soviet threat (Klein 1990;see also, Waever 1996). While it has become increasingly commonplace to emphasise the socially constructed nature of security threats (Buzan, Waever and de Wilde 1998), and while there is clearly a link between the increased regionalization of security issues and the ending of the Cold War in particular (Buzan and Waever 2003;Lake and Morgan 1997), it is important to remember that the deepening of economic and strategic ties in Western Europe had its genesis in the immediate aftermath of the war, and was a consequence of contingent geo-political forces, rather than the inevitable structural logic of the bipolar system.…”

Section: Re-thinking Regionalism: Theoretical Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking regionalism: Europe and East Asia in comparative historical perspective

Beeson¹

2005

Journal of European Public Policy

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Abstract:Regionally-based processes of political and economic integration, security cooperation, and even social identification have become increasingly important and prominent parts of the international system. Nowhere have such processes gone further than in Western Europe. Somewhat surprisingly, similar patterns of regional integration have been steadily developing in East Asia -a region many observers consider unlikely to replicate the European experience. What are the factors that encourage regional political cooperation and economic integration? Are there common forces encouraging such outcomes in very different geographical areas and at very different moments in history? This paper uses an historically grounded comparative approach to examine the historical pre-conditions that underpinned the formation of the European Union, and then contrasts them with the situation in East Asia today. While the overall geopolitical and specific national contexts are very different, the East Asian experience may ultimately generate relationships and structures that are more like the European Union's than some of the sceptics imagine.One of the most widely noted and counter-intuitive features of the contemporary 'global' era is that it has a distinctly regional flavour. While it is true that some of the globalisation literature has been over-heated and over-generalised, the persistence -if not the intensification -of regional processes is still striking and somewhat surprising. Whether it is measured by trade and investment flows, political cooperation, or even the development of regionally based security communities, it is clear that regionally-based interactions are central components of the international order at the start of the twenty-first century.While there is now a substantial and growing literature on regionalism (see, Mansfield and Milner 1999), this generally focuses exclusively on the 'new' variety, which gathered pace in the aftermath of the Cold War's end, and which is primarily

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Section: Re-thinking Regionalism: Theoretical Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking regionalism: Europe and East Asia in comparative historical perspective

Beeson¹

2005

Journal of European Public Policy

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“…These encounters related to and produced an important corpus of literature, lying at the intersection between critical social theory (Ashley, 1987;George and Campbell, 1990), political theory (Walker, 1980; and a variety of critical perspectives on the discipline of International Relations, including contributions by Richard Ashley (1981, David Campbell (1998), Michael Dillon (1996, James Der Derian (1987), Jim George (1989, Bradley Klein (1990), Josef Lapid (1989), and Michael Shapiro (with James Der Derian, 1989) among others. These 'dissident' perspectives engaged at the general level with the way in which Western social sciences were embedded in the specific political narrative of modernity, turning to International Relations to stress its "backwardness" (George, 1994) and its dependence upon the sovereign account of the possibilities and limits of political life (Walker, 1993).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Approaches to Security in Europe: A Networked Manifesto

Collective¹

2006

Security Dialogue

284

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In the last decade, critical approaches have substantially reshaped the theoretical landscape of security studies in Europe. Yet, despite an impressive body of literature, there remains a fundamental disagreement as to what counts as critical in this context. Scholars are still arguing in terms of "schools" while there has been an increasing and sustained crossfertilization among critical approaches. Finally, the boundaries between critical and traditional approaches to security remain blurred. The aim of this paper is therefore to assess the evolution of critical views of approaches to security studies in Europe, discuss their theoretical premises, investigate their intellectual ramifications and examine how they coalesce around different issues (such as state of exception). The paper then assesses the political implications of critical approaches. This is done mainly by analysing processes by which critical approaches to security percolate through a growing number of subjects (such as development, peace research, risk/crisis management). Finally, ethical and research implications are explored. IntroductionHIS MANIFESTO IS THE RESULT of collective work. The author of this article is a network of both junior and senior researchers referred to as c.a.s.e. collective who share an interest in critically examining contemporary practices of security. The aim of this paper is to collectively assess the evolution of critical views of security studies in Europe, discuss their theoretical premises, examine how they coalesce around different issues, and investigate their present -and possibly future -intellectual ramifications. The specificity of this text thus lies in the very way it has been thought and written through a networked collective. The article is driven by two broad motivations. First, the authors share the view that, over the past two decades, important innovations in the study of 'security' have emerged among European scholars in particular (Waever 2004a). Although the genesis of these innovations involves scholars on both sides of the Atlantic, these approaches have arguably gained momentum and density in Europe, leading to the emergence of distinctive European research agenda(s) in the traditionally US-dominated field of 'security studies'. Conequently, it was hence felt that time had come to evaluate these 'European' approaches both in order to increase their exposure and to push them further in specific directions. Second, the aim of working and writing as a collective, a network of scholars who do not agree on everything yet do share a common perspective, is based on the desire to break with the competitive dynamic of individualist research agendas and to establish a network which not only facilitates dialogue but is also able to speak with a collective voice. In this sense, the article can be read as a 'manifesto'. 2 In order to understand the composition of the text, we believe it is important to briefly explain its genesis. After the COST Paris Training School, paper givers and additional PhD candid...

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“…Ultimately, the concessions made to meet these expectations resulted in splitting the emergent constructivist current into two separate streams (Hopf 1998: 171;Wight 2002: 40f ). 3 There were those who belied the disciplining expectations and continued to draw on philosophical arguments in order to theorise normative transformations in international politics (Kratochwil 1989;Onuf 1989), discursive representations in security policy (Klein 1990;Campbell 1992;Weldes et al 1999) or the constitution of collective identities (Neumann 1996(Neumann , 1999. Conversely, constructivist norm researchers followed thoroughly the course that Keohane had outlined.…”

Section: The Emergence and Split Of Constructivism In Irmentioning

confidence: 98%

Lost in translation: a critique of constructivist norm research

Hofferberth

Weber

2014

J Int Relat Dev

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In their attempt to explain change in international politics, an emerging group of scholars in the 1990s emphasised the importance of 'non-material factors'. Questions about the creation, evolution, and impact of norms obtained a prominent place in their theorising. Cast in a constructivist frame, this norm research promised to be a viable alternative to established approaches and while it has indeed broadened the perspective on state behaviour in International Relations, we argue that at the same time it entailed major conceptual and methodological problems which have not yet been spelled out comprehensively. Mainly, the insight that norms are constantly renegotiated in social interaction has been lost in the translation of social-theoretical claims of early constructivism into empirical research agendas. The ensuing research is best characterised as a cultural-determinist framework which is ultimately ill-equipped for the initial proposition of explaining change. We develop this critique by reconstructing the theoretical and methodological decisions of constructivist norm research. We then propose to re-conceptualise the connection between norms and action and suggest an interpretive methodology that allows delivering on the ambitious promise to explain processes of normative change in international politics. We illustrate this claim by reviewing constructivist norm research on 'humanitarian interventions' and by outlining a relational-processualist perspective on this issue.

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How the West was One: Representational Politics of NATO

Cited by 55 publications

References 56 publications

Rethinking regionalism: Europe and East Asia in comparative historical perspective

Rethinking regionalism: Europe and East Asia in comparative historical perspective

Critical Approaches to Security in Europe: A Networked Manifesto

Lost in translation: a critique of constructivist norm research

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