Bureaucrats, Ayatollahs, and Persian politics: explaining the shift in Iranian nuclear policy

Defying a 2003 agreement to halt its nuclear program, Iran resumed its nuclear activities in 2005 despite the objections and sanctions of a concerned international community. Theoretical frameworks in international relations may suggest the strategic environment, regime type, and international institutions as key variables to explain foreign policy-making. In this article, it is argued that nuclear decision-making in Tehran cannot be understood through a "black-box"model that would assume Iran to be a unitary rational actor that knows its capabilities, interests, and wants. Instead, one must investigate the changes in the domestic decision-making and bargaining process through a bureaucratic politics model. Although some point out hardliner President Ahmadinejad as the sole decision-maker, we argue that a single individual could not have changed the course of the entire country; there were coalitions and struggles among multiple actors within the regime. Analyzing two different eras within the case of Iran, we argue that the shift in bureaucratic coalitions among the Supreme Leader, the President, the Revolutionary Guards, the Atomic Energy Agency of Iran, and the Supreme National Security Council explains the shift in Iranian foreign policy. In our conclusion, we draw several implications of this argument for the scholarly literature and offer policy-prescriptive advice

Hidden politics of power and governmentality in transitional justice and peacebuilding:The problem of ‘bringing the local back in’

This paper examines ‘the local’ in peacebuilding by examining how ‘local’ transitional justice projects can become spaces of power inequalities. The paper argues that focusing on how ‘the local’ contests or interacts with ‘the international’ in peacebuilding and post-conflict contexts obscures contestations and power relations amongst different local actors, and how inequalities and power asymmetries can be entrenched and reproduced through internationally funded local projects. The paper argues that externally funded projects aimed at emancipating ‘locals’ entrench inequalities and create local elites that become complicit in governing the conduct and participation of other less empowered ‘locals’. The paper thus proposes that specific local actors—often those in charge of externally funded peacebuilding projects—should also be conceptualised as governing agents: able to discipline and regulate other local actors’ voices and their agency, and thus (re)construct ideas about what ‘the local’ is, or is not

Model, event, context: globalization, Arab social movements, and the modeling of global order

In this article I scrutinize a particular discursive strategy that attempts to straightjacket the new social movements in the Arab uprisings. Rather than being open to new forms of polities and alternative modes of economic and social organization, an emerging governmental and scholarly discourse calls for a model of development for the Arab world. I argue that this model limits political imagination; and that it is the effect of a late modern logic that seeks to impose a particular form of politics in global political life. In, and through, the language of an archetype, these social movements, and the emerging polities, are being tamed to inherit the tensions and fragilities of a certain form of political and economic globalization

Why does Turkey seek European Union membership? a historical institutional approach

Notwithstanding the troubled past and uncertain future of its relations with the European Union (EU), Turkey persists in its bid for membership in the EU. What accounts for Turkey’s continuing pursuit of EU membership? We argue that the historical and institutional trend of modernization has locked Turkey into a pattern of domestic and foreign policies which is difficult, if not impossible, for current policymakers to break or reverse. As part of its modernization process, Turkey chose to follow a Western-oriented foreign policy, which became entrenched during the Cold War era with increasing returns or positive feedback from its overall engagement with the West and Europe in particular. Hence, the policy choices of Turkish policymakers about the EU are constrained by historical and institutional factors

NATO, Turkey, and the missile defense system: a utilitarian and path dependent explanation of an entrenching alliance

A critical junction in Turkey’s NATO membership arrived in 2010 with the NATO Council’s decision in its Lisbon summit to build a missile defense shield system. After many deliberations, in September 2011 Turkey finally agreed to participate in NATO’s missile defense shield system by hosting its radar site This paper investigates the main dynamics of the Turkish decision to commit to the NATO missile defense system by hosting the radar site on its territory. From a realpolitik point of view, Turkey's participation in the missile shield presents IR theorists with a theoretical puzzle as the utilitarian calculations do not seem to indicate a positive sum gain. From a historical institutionalist point of view, the Turkish decision could be seen as a result of a path dependent process. We use these alternative yet complementary explanations with the ultimate aim that together they could enable us to assess the Turkish decision in a more coherent fashion

The path to an entrenching alliance: utilitarianism and historical institutionalism in committing to NATO's missile defense system

A critical juncture in Turkey’s NATO membership arrived in 2010 with the NATO Council’s decision, at its Lisbon summit, to build a ballistic missile defense system. After many deliberations, Turkey fi nally agreed to participate in NATO’s missile defense by hosting the system’s radar site in September 2011. Th is article investigates the main dynamics of the Turkish decision to commit to the NATO missile defense system by hosting the radar site on its territory. From a realpolitik point of view, Turkey’s participation in the missile shield presents us with a theoretical puzzle as the utilitarian calculations do not seem to indicate a positive sum gain. From a historical institutionalist perspective, the Turkish decision could be seen as a result of a path-dependent process. Assessing these alternative approaches, we bring together the strength of each school’s theoretical toolbox in order to off er a complementary explanation of Turkey’s commitment to the alliance