Karl Kautsky’s Ultra-Imperialism shaped his understanding of European colonialism and Great Power competition. In the early twentieth century, Kautsky argued that explanations for world disorder stemmed from what liberal and bourgeois politics avoided— harmonizing class relations and making their states more democratic. He characterized that the capitalist bourgeois approach to world order would be via international cartels and monopolies. They were ideologically and economically unable to offer alternatives routes to peace. He predicted that in an ultra-imperialist world order, the great powers would deepen their exploitation of the world’s resources and working class labour. In situating Kautsky in his context, this article connects his socialist republicanism with his aspirations for a Society of Nations, and finds that he imitated form August Ludwig von Rochau’s Realpolitik, in that he delineated a political strategy to build a socialist world order through his political activism. This paper then calls into view that analytical discussions of Great Power competition have to consider the politics within states. Ultra-Imperialism has hitherto been underexplored but it provides a potential route to understand the causes and character of the emerging polycentric world order.
The rise of revisionist powers is deemed to be a haunting recurring pattern of international politics. When the power transition is ripe — the logic goes — they usually challenge the international order and strive to change it with a more beneficial one. The article aims to provide a preliminary test of the concepts and notions produced so far by the International Relations (IR) literature on revisionism. As it will be seen, IR theory displays persistent fallacies regarding many aspects, both substantive and methodological. As for the former, revisionism as a concept features problem of fuzziness and scalability. As for the latter, data and measurement are still troubling the research on the topic. These hamper a useful theory-driven contribution on contemporary great power competition as well as an empirical contribution to a more general theorization on revisionism. Finally, the article aims to sketch unexplored avenues of research that could advance the scholarship on the topic.
Narratives of international decline are common in great powers, from Margaret Thatcher’s promise to reverse Britain’s decline to John F. Kennedy’s handwringing about the decline of the United States vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. What are the consequences of narratives of international decline? I argue that declinists, more often than not, choose policies that can be characterized as expansionist and pugilistic—policies of “punching back” against decline—rather than policies of retrenchment (or “pulling back”). Declinist narratives often sustain policies of global expansion to save face, regain lost glory, and reverse decline. First, it is typical of declinists to envision and draw upon a time of past glory. Second, there are psychological reasons, particularly with respect to prospect theory, for why we would expect declinists to pursue expansion rather than retrenchment. Finally, from a political coalitional perspective, there are more incentives to expand than retrench. I examine this argument by comparing narratives of international decline and foreign policy consequences in three cases: the declinism of Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, and Donald Trump. This paper has implications for contemporary debates about US decline and the policy consequences of narratives more generally.
As challenges to the values and norms of the international order keep emerging, this paper analyses the tools that the United States has at its disposal to avoid further marginalizing challenging voices of the liberal international order. Despite recognizing the transitional stage in which the global order is, and the creation and strengthening of ideational margins within it, few studies have looked at the impact of adapting American grand strategy on international social processes, particularly to reduce these margins. The paper thus aims at answering the following question: how can the United States influence international social processes by adjusting its grand strategy at a time when its role is increasingly contested?
The study hypothesizes that the United States needs to adapt its policies in order to impact current processes of socialization in order to continue to lead regionally and systemically. Only a US grand strategy characterized by maintaining a world order structured around the United States which gives more autonomy and responsibilities to others can be successful. Building upon the English school (in particular pluralism and solidarism) and leadership theory the paper argues in favor of a mutual accommodation process with allies and (potential) challengers and deviant members of the international system. In fine, the analysis assesses the need for Washington to focus on an integrative multilevel type of leadership in its grand strategy. This form of American leadership, characterized by co-ordinating leadership of varying types and varying degrees, although less dominant would be more pragmatic and acceptable to others and far more subtle.
Among the quips of Winston Churchill, his lapidary sentence “[i]f Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least one favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons” surely deserves a high rank. It reminds us of the importance of juridical discourses and practices of alliance —often motivated by animosity towards a third party rather than inherent friendship between polities— in the global history of international law. Yet, in the contemporary literature of this field, one finds little reference to the theory and history of alliance-making —or breaking, for that matter. One can contrast this with an older tradition of literature (for instance, what we now understand as the 18th century “Law of Nations”, or 19th “classical international law”) which was critically concerned with the law and practice of inter-polity alliance. In this project, I interrogate how the categories of alliance were exorcised from international legal scholarship precisely during the same period in which coalitions, confederations, and military associations increasingly gained a salient role in the creation and maintenance of international order. By rewriting the law of alliances back into the history of the discipline, I trace some of the (dis)continuities that have haunted the quest for international organization.
This paper examines whether the recent (re)prioritisation of great power competition (GPC) as the focus of Washington’s strategic planning has impacted its practices of designing and developing loitering munitions. Despite the increasing prominence these systems have been given in recent Pentagon defence planning, IR scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to the history of loitering munitions and what their study can tell us about the dynamics involved with great power competition. Drawing from Science and Technology Studies scholarship, the first section of this paper conceptualises loitering munitions as a ‘social-technical system’ which can reflect the geopolitical priorities of their manufacturers. International practice theories are then applied to the processes of loitering munition development in four different periods: (1) the Cold War; (2) the ‘unipolar moment’ which followed the Soviet Union’s collapse; (3) the Global War on Terror; and (4) the period of renewed GPC which has crystallized since 2014. The final section of this paper connects these empirical findings to the larger debates on the interactions between technological change and world politics. It reaffirms the role which international politics can play in shaping technological innovation and forecasts Washington’s continuing investment in loitering munitions as a major tool of GPC.
This paper argues that an overlooked pathway via which major powers are drawn into conflict with each other is via competition over small states and territories. When a major power seeks to monopolize a subordinate, preventing others from pursuing their interests in its territory, norms of open subordinate governance are challenged. To address this violation, threats and force may be used. Moreover, the monopolizer is perceived as having revisionist preferences for international order, meaning future interactions are understood in this context. Three pathways to war open up, firstly, monopolization itself may involve the significant use of force, secondly, major powers may immediately respond with force, and thirdly, future interactions will involve greater suspicion and threat-making, increasing the probability of war. This argument is evaluated through quantitative examination of rising power disputes between 1816 and 2010, and comparative case study analysis of the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese wars. Contestation of the norms of subordinate governance play an important role in shaping the probability of major power conflict, and provide insight into the behaviour of the major powers in the contemporary international order.
Georg Schwarzenberger’s oeuvre has remained significantly underexplored in the literature despite his as one of the most important thinkers in international relations and international law of the twentieth century. Ahead of their time, his works reveal a picture of law that transcends academic boundaries, challenging conventional portrayals of both realism and international law. Through a detailed examination of the works of this theorist, this paper offers an analysis of the fundamental aspects of his theory of international relations and international law. It explores the elements at the heart of Schwarzenberger’s theory of international relations, which, though examined infrequently, retain their relevance in today’s international society. Through this exploration of Schwarzenberger’s works, this paper argues that his theory of international relations provides a powerful commentary on the fundamental structure, nature, and problems of international law. It points to and reveals issues that have remained at the heart of international law until today, offering a sophisticated and self-conscious interrogation of the relationship between law, power, and politics.
Starting from the everyday life concept as the context of symbolic and behavioral interaction, people use symbolic resources and also behaviors that have particular meanings elated with the context characteristics. routines are part of the everyday world, and the start question is: How these routines are influenced by data?
We function in certain spaces and use various objects. Many people have everyday access to many technological devices that improve their possibilities to exchange information. In our contemporary world of life, the digital resources are omnipresent. In this sense, a multiplicity of connections are established. Sociability is dependent on “interconnectivity”, which changes the prevailing modes of social production of meaning. It will be a very important to know how the self and identity construction receive the influence of the digital environment.
There is a domestication of technology in the family context. Technology is processed, interpreted and used within the framework of home paradigms. There is a discussion beetween specialists about the age in which could be used the digital technologies. But in general terms, many families many families allow their iittle children the use of mobile devices
One feature of the contemporary postmodern world is the algorithmizing of everyday family in which data are part of the environment. life. The presence in the home of technological resources such as Alexa changes the standards of access to knowledge. Of course, it is worth analyzing the impact of the use of artificial intelligence at an early age, Lately, the impact of the GPT 3 chat has been discussed in specialized circles.
Unpaid household labour is a major social and economic activity that underpins families and households and is essential for social functioning. At the individual level, household labour is critical to health and well-being, but it is also very time consuming and shared unequally within households. The rising demand for robots to assist with domestic work, such as robotic vacuum cleaners, indicates that some people are turning to digital technologies to solve the work-family crunch.
Despite the increasing digitalisation of domestic work, we know little about individual attitudes to domestic smart technologies and how these vary by personal and family characteristics. This issue is important because differential acceptance of domestic technology could potentially deepen existing workload inequalities across genders and classes, could expose some segments of the population to privacy risks, and transform family interactions.
This paper provides the first picture of acceptability of domestic technologies to UK adults. It is based on a vignette survey we are conducting, which was sent to 12,000 UK respondents selected to match a nationally representative sample on several core demographic characteristics. Our vignettes describe a fictitious family situation where respondents have access to smart technologies that can do housework and care work and are asked to decide whether they would like to use the smart technology. We expect a complex picture to emerge where respondents vary in how acceptable they believe domestic automation to be depending on their family situation, the task at hand and their own characteristics. Preliminary results indicate diverse patterns of acceptability. To give one example, partnered respondents are more open to automating housework, compared to care work. Single respondents are equally open to automating housework and care but are keen to do pet care themselves.