Sartre’s concept of freedom should not be omitted from debates in political thought. His is a valuable ‘technical and philosophical’ concept rooted in questions of existence and being.
During the 1970’s, Spain and Portugal made the political transition from corporatism to democracy. Spain is often viewed as the paradigm case for the transition to democracy model. If Spain’s experience was the generalizable case for the transition to democracy, wouldn’t Portugal’s path to democracy be similar because of the two nations’ similarities? Both countries shared a common geographical setting, history, religion, and corporatist dictatorships. However, markably different factors caused the political changes, producing different government and social structures in each society. Spain and Portugal may have similarities, but these factors cloud the very different processes that occurred in each country’s transition to democracy, bringing the appearance of correlation when in fact there is little.
This essay argues that, for the English School, war is an essential component of international relations that is regulated by “norms”. Prominent English School thinkers believe that war should be waged with reference to morality and justice (with rules formulated to that effect) and that the purpose and existence of war is as an instrument of international society used to enforce international justice.
The international system, comprised as it is of a society of sovereign states, necessarily stands as a barrier to universal morality. The ideal of cosmopolitanism, envisioning humanity as a singular and unified moral community, is impossible in a world where the primary political unit is the state.
In short, a similar emphasis on power, the contingency of truth, and reflexivity of scientific communities lead to a shared skeptical view of unidirectional ‘progress’ in science.
Power is pervasive; it belongs to no-one. Its main medium of control is surveillance. Bentham’s Panopticon is, on the whole, a suitable analogy for Michel Foucault’s conception of power. It encompasses the essence of Foucault’s work on power, though it does not represent it in its entirety.
There is no strategic theory that can, yet, fully replace the classical strategists Sun Tzu and Clausewitz. The information age and modern technology have not altered the fundamental nature of war. As long as the nature of war remains unchanged, it is the same phenomenon that Sun Tzu contemplated millennia ago and that Clausewitz studied in the nineteenth century.
IN 1992, Milton Friedman asked: “how many more fiascos will it take before responsible people are finally convinced that a system of pegged exchange rates is not a satisfactory financial arrangement for a group of large countries with independent political systems and independent national policies?” Maybe the Greek debt crisis is the fiasco.
It is clear then that the Non Proliferation Treaty has enjoyed some success in curbing nuclear proliferation; most states have signed and abide by the rules of the NPT. The example of the A.Q Khan network as a non-state actor taking an active role in proliferation is a classic example of how the NPT is not effective at dealing with the problems the post cold war world faces.
Britain was certainly not innocent. Although it was not an overt aggressor in the run up to conflict, its policy of manipulation and inaction was very damaging. Britain may have not started the war but at the very least it did little to avoid it.
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