Happymon Jacob to be Visiting Fellow at Hokkaido University

Happymon Jacob will be Visiting Fellow at Hokkaido University from December 10. He explains:

I will be on leave from JNU from 10 December to 28 March and will be in residence at the Slavic Research Center of the Hokkaido University, Japan as a Visiting Fellow. As a Visiting Fellow I will conduct research on: "India’s Search for Great Power Status: Structural Incentives and Domestic Constraints". I will be part of a project on “Comparative Research on Major Regional Powers in Eurasia” funded by the by the Japanese Ministry of Education and Science.




The project that I will be part of will conduct a comprehensive and systematic comparison of major regional powers in Eurasia, including Russia, China and India, and analyze the sustainability of these countries as regional powers. In addition, the comparative analysis will take into account the historical background of these powers as Empires. The objective of the research project is to explore and identify pressing issues in contemporary Eurasia and beyond, such as security, ethnic conflict, religious confrontations, environmental problems and poverty, by paying special attention to the role of these regional powers in the world order.



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Atul Mishra on some recent works on Hobbes

Atul Mishra, a CIPOD PhD candidate, has contributed a nice little essay to the CIPOD Blog. Read on for Atul's comments on a couple of recent essays on Hobbes . . .


Atul:

Revisions are in order. Global power shifts to the East. And history has become curiously interesting again, for the nth time. The New Historians in Israel are questioning the foundations of conventional national history. Some in Russia are trying to resurrect (or reestablish) Stalin. Armenians are trying to dig out a history the Turks claim never happened. It is not just recent events which are set for retelling. We are also being told that Henry V’s victory at the Battle of Agincourt, fought all those years ago in 1415, may not have been so splendid and heroic after all. The subcontinent is no stranger to revisionism in history either. Two recent articles have sought to revise – or at any rate add to – our understanding of Thomas Hobbes, the author of Leviathan (the book and the idea).


Corey Robin, who teaches at CUNY and has earlier written a very readable history of fear, has reviewed Quentin Skinner’s Hobbes and Republican Liberty for The Nation. Corey interprets Hobbes, in the light of Skinner, as one of the first of the modern counterrevolutionaries. Indeed the very first. Hobbes’s prescription and preference of establishing order in situations of civil war is well known. More interesting is the way the article establishes Hobbes’s counterrevolutionary credentials.


Much against the prevailing (and evolving) ideas of republicanism and democracy, Hobbes ingeniously argued that the sovereign’s absolute and undivided power emerges from the contract individuals enter with one another. This theory of consent is well known and so is its basic problem: the apparent irreconcilability of fear and freedom.


Not so, says Robin. Hobbes redefined the idea of will as voluntary. Which means: “If I chose security over rights, then the fact of choosing this is an expression of my will – voluntary and free.” It’s a complex argument Robin makes. An engaging wordplay – “democratic distemper”, “the counterrevolutionary is a pastiche of incongruities” are examples – and his efforts to contextualize Hobbes for modern times make it a good read.


The other article, “More Revisions in Realism: Hobbesian Anarchy, the Tale of the
Fool and International Relations Theory” is by Giulio M. Gallarotti of Wesleyan University and has been published in the latest issue of International Studies. If you thought the likes of C.B. Macpherson, Leo Strauss and Skinner had read all that was apparent and hidden in Hobbes, revise your thoughts.


Gallarotti argues that a close reading of the section on the tale of the fool in Chapter 15 of the Leviathan renders Hobbes’s logic of anarchy more problematic than has been appreciated. With the help of game theory, he suggests that cooperation is possible even in Hobbesian state of nature. Implications of this new interpretation are that there are reasons to see Hobbes as the first early modern neoliberal and constructivist. This synthesis of the realist, neoliberal and constructivist elements in Hobbes can lead us towards a new vision of international relations. Gallarotti’s term for it is Cosmopolitik.
Note: You would need subscription to read Gallarotti's article online.

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Rajagopalan attends the Regional Powers Conference at Sciences Po, Paris

Cross-posted from Rajesh Rajagopalan's The Real World


I recently attended the third conference of the Regional Powers Network (RPN) project, organized by the Sciences Po, Paris (8-9 October 2009).

The RPN is a multi-year project that aims to examine, both theoretically and substantively, the role of various regional powers in the global system. The project brings together the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) of the University of Hamburg, the University of Oxford, and Sciences Po, Paris. The first conference, titled "Ideas, Interests, Resources and Strategies of Regional Powers – Analytical Concepts in Comparative Perspective" was held in Hamburg last September. Professors Alka Acharya and Ummu Salma Bava from SIS attended that conference. The second conference, Regional Powers and Global Orders, was held in Rio de Janeiro was held in April this year. The one I attended was titled "Regional Powers and Regional Order" and I presented a paper on Pakistan as a regional power and a global problem. I stuck to to the first part: Pakistan as a regional power. I argued that unlike much of the literature on regional powers, which saw regions and regional powers as subjects and victims of global powers and processes, regional powers (indeed, smaller powers in general) are quite adept at pursuing their regional agenda by using and shaping global power interests. The paper is still in draft form, though . . .
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Patrick Bratton on 'Coercive Signalling'

Patrick Bratton gave an interesting talk at CIPOD on September 30, 2009 on 'the effects of governmental structure on coercive signalling'.


Bratton is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Program Chair for Political Science and International Relations at Hawaii Pacific University. He has done a considerable amount of work on coercion in international politics. He provided the abstract of the presentation pasted below:

The Effecs of Governmental Structure on Coercive Signalling

How does governmental structure affect the ability of a state to send clear coercive messages and to orchestrate those signals into coherent messages? This presentation shall review the concept of coercion and previous studies done by the author and his collaborator on the effects of governmental structures on coercion. Several studies indicate that democracies, in particular presidential democracies with a division of powers like the United States, are poor at sending clear signals and orchestrating those signals into coherent messages. There has been an assumption that both authoritarian and parliamentary governments are more effective. The presentation will compare the effects of these three types of governments on signaling and orchestration: (1) Presidential divided/shared powers systems; (2) Westminster parliamentary democracies; and (3) authoritarian governments. It uses examples from: the US War with Vietnam, the 1982 Falklands War, and the 1995-96 Taiwan Straits Crisis.

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Rajesh Rajagopalan at the SAIIA 75th Anniversary Conference

Cross-posted from The Real World.


I attended the South African Institute of International Affairs' 75th Anniversary conference, 'Africa in a New World: Geopolitics, interdependence and leverage', 17-18 September in Johannesburg and made a presentation on 'Moving the Center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific'.

I did not have a written paper but my notes are posted below.

Introduction
Is the center of gravity of global politics moving from Atlantic to the Pacific? Is there also a power transition away from the US? I suppose the answer is yes to both, though the first shift is much more prominent and relevant than the second.

Shifting from Atlantic to Pacific
Since US both an Atlantic and a Pacific power, the shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific does not hurt the US. Can the shift to Pacific or Asia-Pacific lead to a different type of international politics, different from a European style of international politics? In other words, would Asia’s rise lead to a new (more harmonious?) international political culture or would Asia’s future be Europe’s past? But little sign of any dramatic change in Asian int’l politics. Insecurity and the consequences of insecurity no different in Asia. US presence/alliances keeps lid on more extreme insecurities

Nature of current international order
Is the curret system unipolar, multipolar or what? Unipolar-in purely material terms, because difference in wealth and power between dominant power and everybody else is greater than at anytime since end of the Roman Empire. But does this disparity lead to greater American control?

Not necessarily; being a GP ain’t what it used to be because:
• Ideology of nationalism
• Norms (legitimacy) of resistance
• Democratisation of firepower makes conquest difficult
• Nuke allow even small/weak states (NKorea) to counter US

Nevertheless, US capacity to control still immense. Example: US-Ind nuke deal; US changed global rules for just one country, demonstrates what power can do. So though US can’t get its way always, US dominance should not be underestimated

Moving towards multipolarity?
Obviously, US declining in relative terms since 1945, but not against the same power:
1940-1960s vis-à-vis Europe
• 1960-80s vis-à-vis Japan/southeast Asia
• 1980s-current vis-à-vis China, India
• This suggests that current challengers might not displace US

History of rise/fall of GPs illustrate that these are mostly internally determined; so difficult to predict; three lessons, however:
• GPs/hegemonies/empires last long, maybe hundreds of years
• Have not usually been balanced by other power (Roman, Chinese, Mughal etc, not balanced by others)
• GPs have usually declined for domestic/economic reasons, not because of other GPs
So US decline inevitable, but when, how impossible to predict. Assumption that US would quickly decline not valid.

What if multipolarity happens? Speculations about the future:
• Multipolarity may lead to greater insecurity and war
• Major players could become regional hegemons, dominating neighborhoods
Could lead to more insecurity
• Nevertheless, nukes likely to prevent direct combat between nuke powers, as in bipolarity
• But, as in bipolarity, it could lead to proxy wars, support for insurgents etc, because nuke war no longer possible
• Global norms/institutions could potentially suffer with no one (GP) to care for them.

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More from Prof. Mattoo on India's Pakistan Policy

Prof. Amitabh Mattoo has a new OpEd essay on India's Pakistan policy in the Hindu.

Prof. Mattoo argues that there are multiple Pakistans and India needs to recognize that reality. In addition, he points out that the recent Pew survey suggests that most ordinary Pakistanis want good relations with India.

Read the full essay here . . .
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Amitabh Mattoo on India's Pakistan policy

Prof. Amitabh Mattoo recently published an essay in the Financial Express on Indian policy towards Pakistan.

He argues that different policy proponents (he calls them the subedars, the the saudagars and the sufis) need to come together to fashion a policy that would simultaneously maintain deterrence, seek engagement and be open to radical change within Pakistan whenever possible. The full essay can be found here. Comments and discussion welcome . . .
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Himadeep Muppidi to talk at CIPOD on 'The Colonial Signs of International Relations'

Himadeep Muppidi, Associate Professor of Political Science at Vassar College, will give a lecture at CIPOD on Wednesday, 12 August, at 11:00 am.

Prof. Muppidi completed his MA and MPhil at SIS, and PhD at the University of Minnesota. His book, The Politics of the Global, was based on his PhD and published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2004. His talk will be based on his forthcoming book.
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Dr. Siddharth Mallavarappu to lecture on 'Human Rights and Global Governance'

On August 12th, at the invitation of the German Development Institute, Bonn, Dr. Mallavarapu will be addressing young professionals participating in a Global Governance School . . .

The participants are drawn primarily from the newly emerging economies of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Dr. Maalavarapu's presentation shall focus on various sources of skepticism articulated by the Global South with regard to mainstream international human rights thinking. While engaging the idea of human rights, the presentation shall also audit key human rights actors, institutions and prevalent practices. The objective of the presentation is to help stimulate further reflection about some of the limits of the contemporary rights discourse.
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Scott Sagan to lecture on 'No First Use'

Scott Sagan will be delivering a lecture on 'The Case for No First Use' based on his recent essay of the same title in Survival. The lecture will be held in Room 203, SIS Building, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, at 3:00 pm on 5 August 2009 (Wednesday). No invitations are required to attend.

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