The new anarchy: globalization and fragmentation in world politics

This is the final version. Available on open access from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this record.Modern international relations theory has consistently underestimated the depth of the problem of anarchy in world politics. Contemporary theories of globalisation bring this into bold relief. From this perspective, the complexity of transboundary networks and hierarchies, economic sectors, ethnic and religious ties, civil and cross-border wars, and internally disaggregated and transnationally connected state actors, leads to a complex and multidimensional restructuring of the global, the local and the uneven connections in between. We ought to abandon the idea of ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics, ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ once and for all. This does not remove the problem of anarchy but rather deepens it, involving multidimensional tensions and contradictions variously described as ‘functional differentiation’, ‘multiscalarity’, ‘fragmegration’, disparate ‘landscapes’, the ‘new security dilemma’ and ‘neomedievalism’. Approaching anarchy from the perspective of plural competing claims to authority and power forces us to think again about the nature of global order and the virtues of anarchy therein. Will the long-term outcome be the emergence of a more decentralised, pluralistic world order or a quagmire of endemic conflict and anomie

Occupy and the constitution of anarchy

This is the final version. Available on open access from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this recordThis paper provides the first comparative reading of the minutes of the General Assemblies of three iconic Occupy camps: Wall Street, Oakland and London. It challenges detractors who have labelled the Occupy Wall Street movement a flash-in-the-pan protest, and participant-advocates who characterised the movement anti-constitutional. Developing new research into anarchist constitutional theory, we construct a typology of anarchist constitutionalising to argue that the camps prefigured a constitutional order for a post-sovereign anarchist politics. We show that the constitutional politics of three key Occupy Wall Street camps had four main aspects: (i) declarative principles, preambles and documents; (ii) complex institutionalisation; (iii) varied democratic decision-making procedures; and (iv) explicit and implicit rule making processes, premised on unique foundational norms. Each of these four was designed primarily to challenge and constrain different forms of global and local power, but they also provide a template for anarchistic constitutional forms that can be mimicked and linked up, as opposed to scaled up.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC

Anarchism and Global Ethics

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Routledge via the DOI in this record.Anarchists are relative newcomers to thinking theoretically in IR, even more so in respect of ethical theorising. In this chapter I will contextualize recent developments in anarchist moral and normative theorizing in International Relations within wider discussions of the same in the broader social sciences. I will identify three broad moves within this mutual and related set of developments. First, there is a small but important rights tradition of anarchist ethics. On the whole anarchist reject the rights tradition of theorizing ethics, given its association with social contract theory. But it is important to understand the criticisms mounted by anarchist rights theorists so that we can see how human rights and related universal norms common to more mainstream discussions of ethics are engaged and rejected. Secondly, and more persuasively, there has been a move to locate anarchist ethics within the broader tradition of virtue ethics. This practice and community-oriented account of ethics is central to understanding how actually existing anarchist communities, understand the development of norms of right behavior. Finally, and critically, building on a broader suspicion of ethics and morality amongst poststructuralist theorists, the broad and complex convergence of ‘post-anarchist’ ethical theorists in IR approach ethics from the perspective of the development and construction of political subjectivity and the possibilities of resistance embodied in competing fields of action. These traditions pull in different directions, but underlying them all, I will argue, is a defense of anti-oppression, or non-domination. How this plays out in specific empirical cases relevant to students of International Relations will be the focus of the final part of the paper

Freedom

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Palgrave Macmillan (Springer) via the DOI in this record.In this chapter I survey the ways in which anarchists have understood the concept of freedom. I argue that anarchists have understood freedom in three ways, which often overlap and combine. Anarchists understand freedom negatively, as freedom from domination, positively, in terms of the enabling conditions of freedom, and freedom with or freedom in, or the necessary institutional parameters for freedom. This latter conception of freedom is arguably more central to the lived anarchist movement than many have recognized, pervading the major anarcho-syndicalist unions and most anarchist groups. I link it to negative and positive accounts of freedom in order to defend a wide and plural account of anarchist accounts of freedom. The institutional focus of the paper also enables an approach to freedom that takes inter-group freedoms seriously, and allows us to link anarchism more coherently to the dynamics of international relations. Each of these aspects of the problem of freedom in anarchist politics demands a reappraisal of the constitutionalizing practices of anarchist groups, and I conclude by pointing to some of the most recent research on this topic

Justice and EU Foreign Policy

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record.In this article I argue that the contemporary normative analysis of EU foreign policy is predominantly Kantian. This, I argue, is highly problematic, because at the heart of Kantian and neo-Kanitan accounts of ethics is a moral universalism that ought not to animate EU foreign policy unless that foreign policy desires to be neo-colonial. I set out why this is the case by developing an account of ethics derived from the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre. MacIntyre’s account of ethics is both critical of Kantian universalism and provides a constructive alternative for evaluating moral behaviour and I use both sets of insights to evaluate neo-Kantianism in EU studies and liberal universalism as a suitable foundation for an ethical foreign policy of the EU

Introduction: Pluriversalisty, Convergence and Hybridity in the Global Left

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this recor

Taxing the Informal Economy: The Current State of Knowledge and Agendas for Future Research

This paper reviews the literature on taxation of the informal economy, taking stock of key debates and drawing attention to recent innovations. Conventionally, the debate on whether to tax has frequently focused on the limited revenue potential, high cost of collection, and potentially adverse impact on small firms. Recent arguments have increasingly emphasised the more indirect benefits of informal taxation in relation to economic growth, broader tax compliance, and governance. More research is needed, we argue, into the relevant costs and benefits for all, including quasi-voluntary compliance, political and administrative incentives for reform, and citizen-state bargaining over taxation