Morality and progress:IR narratives on international revisionism and the status quo

Scholars debate the ambitions and policies of today’s ‘rising powers’ and the extent to which they are revising or upholding the international status quo. While elements of the relevant literature provide valuable insight, this article argues that the concepts of revisionism and the status quo within mainstream International Relations (IR) have always constituted deeply rooted, autobiographical narratives of a traditionally Western-dominated discipline. As ‘ordering narratives’ of morality and progress, they constrain and organize debate so that revisionism is typically conceived not merely as disruption, but as disruption from the non-West amidst a fundamentally moral Western order that represents civilizational progress. This often makes them inherently problematic and unreliable descriptors of the actors and behaviours they are designed to explain. After exploring the formations and development of these concepts throughout the IR tradition, the analysis is directed towards narratives around the contemporary ‘rise’ of China. Both scholarly and wider political narratives typically tell the story of revisionist challenges China presents to a US/Western-led status quo, promoting unduly binary divisions between the West and non-West, and tensions and suspicions in the international realm. The aim must be to develop a new language and logic that recognize the contingent, autobiographical nature of ‘revisionist’ and ‘status quo’ actors and behaviours

Security Policies of India, Brazil and South Africa – Regional Security Contexts as Constraints for a Common Agenda

In the course of the last decade, the IBSA states (India, Brazil, South Africa) have increased their weight in the shifting global order, particularly in economic affairs. Can the same be said about the IBSA states' position in the international security hierarchy? After locating the IBSA coalition in the shifting world order, we analyze its member states' willingness and capacity to coordinate their security policies and build a common global security agenda. In addition, we explore the state of and perspectives on bi- and trilateral collaboration initiatives on defense and armaments between India, Brazil and South Africa. A key reason for the mostly modest results of global security agenda coordination and cross-regional defense collaboration is that the prevailing security concerns of each country are located at the regional level. Therefore, the starting point of an assessment of the prospects of IBSA's security cooperation and its potential impact on the strategic global landscape has to be a comparative evaluation of the regional security environments, focusing on overlaps and potential synergies between the national security policies of the three state actors.Im Verlauf der letzten Dekade konnten die IBSA-Staaten (Indien, Brasilien, Südafrika) ihre Position in der sich verschiebenden Weltordnung erheblich verbessern; das gilt insbesondere für ihren Einfluss auf globale Handelsfragen. Lässt sich ein ähnlicher Aufstieg der IBSA-Staaten in der internationalen Sicherheitsordnung konstatieren? Die Autoren verorten die IBSA-Koalition in der sich verschiebenden Weltordnung und analysieren die Bereitschaft und Fähigkeit der drei Staaten, ihre Sicherheitsstrategien zu koordinieren und eine gemeinsame Sicherheitsagenda zu entwerfen. Ferner werden die Bedingungen und Perspektiven biund trilateraler Verteidigungs- und Rüstungszusammenarbeit untersucht. Im Ergebnis zeichnen sich bisher allenfalls anfängliche Bemühungen bei der Zusammenarbeit im Verteidigungssektor und bei der Entwicklung einer globalen Sicherheitsagenda ab. Ausschlaggebend dafür sind die primär auf der regionalen Ebene liegenden Sicherheitsprioritäten der IBSA-Staaten. Die perspektivische Bewertung des potenziellen Einflusses der Staatenkoalition auf globale Sicherheitsfragen erfolgt demnach vor dem Hintergrund der regionalen Sicherheitsstrategien Indiens, Brasiliens und Südafrikas. Dabei stehen mögliche Überschneidungen und Synergien zwischen den regionalen Sicherheitsstrategien im Zentrum des Interesses

Overconfident Investors, Predictable Returns, and Excessive Trading

The last several decades have witnessed a shift away from a fully rational paradigm of financial markets toward one in which investor behavior is influenced by psychological biases. Two principal factors have contributed to this evolution: a body of evidence showing how psychological bias affects the behavior of economic actors; and an accumulation of evidence that is hard to reconcile with fully rational models of security market trading volumes and returns. In particular, asset markets exhibit trading volumes that are high, with individuals and asset managers trading aggressively, even when such trading results in high risk and low net returns. Moreover, asset prices display patterns of predictability that are difficult to reconcile with rational-expectations–based theories of price formation. In this paper, we discuss the role of overconfidence as an explanation for these patterns