Epistemology, ontology, and the study of international regimes

Artículo publicado en RUGGIE, John, Constructing The World Polity, Capítulo 3, Rouledge, Londres, 1998, ISBN: 0415099900. Traducido y reproducido con autorización de la editorialNuestra discusión está organizada de la siguiente manera. La primera sección resume los antecedentes inmediatos al enfoque sobre los regímenes internacionales, demostrando su carácter evolutivo. La sección segunda explora varios de los problemas epistemológicos comunes que las aproximaciones teóricas dominantes en Relaciones Internacionales exhiben, y de los cuales la literatura sobre regímenes no se halla exenta. La tercera sección muestra cómo estos problemas generales afectan al análisis de regímenes específicamente, y plantea algunas modestas sugerencias sobre cómo afrontarloOur discussion is organized as follows. The first section summarizes the immediate antecedents to the focus on international regimes, demonstrating their evolutionary pattern. Section two explores several core epistemological problems exhibited by the dominant theoretical approaches in international relations, from which the regimes literature is not exempt. The third section shows how these general problems affect regimes analysis specifically, and it makes some modest suggestions for how they might be dealts wit

International Organization: A State of the Art on an Art of the State

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Resilience, resistance, infrapolitics and enmeshment

A great deal has been written in the International Relations literature about the role of resilience in our social world. One of the central debates in the scholarship concerns the relationship between resilience and resistance, which several scholars consider to be one of mutual exclusivity. For many theorists, an individual or a society can either be resilient or resistant, but not both. In this article, we argue that this understanding of the resilience–resistance connection suffers from three interrelated problems: it treats resilience and resistance as binary concepts rather than processes; it presents a simplistic conception of resilient subjects as apolitical subjects; and it eschews the ‘transformability’ aspect of resilience. In a bid to resolve these issues, the article advocates for the usefulness of a relational approach to the processes of resilience and resistance, and suggests an approach that understands resilience and resistance as engaged in mutual assistance rather than mutual exclusion. The case of the Palestinian national liberation movement illustrates our set of arguments

A tale of two cognitions: The Evolution of Social Constructivism in International Relations

Abstract Constructivism in International Relations (IR) is popular, but constructivists seem disappointed. Allegedly something has been lost. Such criticisms are misplaced. There was never a uniform Constructivism. Since constructivism is socially constructed, to argue that constructivism has evolved “wrongly” is odd. This paper explains the dissatisfaction with constructivism followed by a second reading of its evolution as a tale of two cognitions. These two cognitions distinguish genera in the constructivist “family”. A criticism against one genus based on the cognition of the other is unfair. A focus on cognitions and the use of genera helps in perceiving constructivism’s future evolution