This chapter evaluates the relationship between war and society. The tendency to define war as fighting has led humanity to collectively condemn and attempt to curtail war horrors through international laws and regulatory practices. It is therefore easy to see why states around the world see preparing for war and waging it as vital to their security. The chapter focuses on three key questions: where is war? How is war possible? What (or who) does war secure? Asking these questions enables a deeper understanding of the choices that societies make about why, when, and where to fight and prepare for war; how the choices of actors and their actions make war possible; and the benefits and costs to people's security that wars can bring about. Indeed, such questions can help us to evaluate whether we should continue to prepare and wage war, and for what purposes.
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7. War and socio-political orders
Victoria M. Basham
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1. International Relations Theory and the Middle East
Fred H. Lawson
This chapter discusses the different theories and approaches that characterize the study of international relations. Mainstream theories focus on the ways that states interact with one another in circumstances where no overarching authority governs their behavior — in other words, under conditions of anarchy. These theories include structural realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and the scholarship on relational contracting. An important alternative perspective — the English School — argues that, even under anarchic conditions, there is a high degree of orderliness in world affairs. Meanwhile, proponents of constructivism assert that states take shape in specific historical contexts, and that the conditions under which states coalesce and become socialized to one another play a crucial role in determining how they conceive of themselves and formulate their basic interests. Scholars of the Middle East have so far addressed only a fraction of the many theoretical debates and controversies that energize the field of international relations.
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3. States
This chapter examines how states have very different preferences in global environmental politics. These state preferences are formed and shaped in a co-evolving process at both the domestic and international levels. Domestically, a rational choice analysis shows how environmental vulnerability and the costs of abatement contribute to defining a state's national interests in environmental politics. But the rational choice model, though useful, has its limits. It often presents the state as a unitary and monolithic actor, whereas in fact states come in multiple institutional forms and are made up of numerous actors with varying and sometimes conflicting interests. Several international factors also play an important role in shaping state preferences. Some of those international factors revolve around how states interact with one another in international negotiations. Indeed, state preferences can be revised during international negotiations via states' interactions in working and contact groups, with negotiating chairs, in coalitions, and through leadership efforts.
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4. The nation state and multicultural citizenship
Atsuko Ichijo
In modern politics as well as international relations, the most significant unit is referred to as the ‘state’ or more often the ‘nation state’. While the crisis of the nation state has been a staple in discussions on politics since the late twentieth century, there is no doubt it remains the most powerful unit/actor in politics in the first half of the twenty-first century. This chapter examines what the nation state is, and how it has evolved to occupy such a prominent position in our life. It also highlights various challenges that the nation state faces in the contemporary world, particularly in response to the increased movement of people across the globe and the spread of neoliberalism, as a way of assisting further understanding of this important unit/actor in politics.
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14. Can States Be Terrorists?
Kieran McConaghy
This chapter discusses how states use political violence and asks whether this sort of action could be considered terrorism or not. It lists the core points of study related to state acts of violence. These include instances of threatened acts of violence, state approval of violent acts, and the psychological impact of state and non-state acts of violence. State terrorism has become marginalized because the focus has been primarily on certain types of non-state political violence. States frequently sponsor or assist violent groups internationally when such acts serve their foreign policy objectives. The chapter examines examples of governments taking advantage of state terrorism. This tends to happen in totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, but also with colonial powers and liberal democracies too. The chapter clarifies how an accurate definition of terrorism is dependent on intent, which is difficult to determine for state and non-state actors.
