FOREIGN POLICY BETWEEN UNIVERSAL AND SOCIAL VALUES

Oxford Bibliographies, 2019

Ideology is a prototypical “contested concept,” though competing definitions can generally be sorted into pejorative and nonpejorative categories. Pejorative definitions consider ideology to be a set of false beliefs about the world and how it operates, typically facilitating exploitation or injustice. Nonpejorative definitions consider ideology to be something neutral (or its normative dimension to be undetermined a priori), a kind of systematized thinking about politics or political economy; a worldview. It is the latter definition that is most common in international relations scholarship outside of the Marxian tradition, and it will be used here. Values are commonly defined as rank-ordered ideas about what is desirable, transcending specific situations, that guide behavioral choices and influence evaluations. Given these two definitions, values are subsumed under ideology; they form the normative dimension of ideology. For example, A may value both self-determination and democracy (and A may see elections as a means of ensuring self-determination); but if A’s ideology pictures the international system as dominated by a superpower that regularly interferes in elections, she may support the decision of a less powerful state to avoid elections to evade the superpower’s interference. Ideology, as a systematized way of thinking about politics, can help adjudicate conflicts between values—as in this example, between self-determination and democracy. International relations scholarship has traditionally overlooked the influence of ideology and values on foreign policy and public opinion about foreign policy. Considerations of power maximization and balancing were commonly hypothesized to overwhelm any influence of ideational factors, such that the latter could be safely ignored as mere epiphenomena of the former. More recently, the variously named ideational, interpretivist, or constructivist turn in international relations has opened the way for IR scholars to investigate the effects of ideas within the international system. Foreign policy analysis, operating at a less abstract level, has been more open to ideational factors as influences on policymakers. Yet a great deal remains to be explored about the way ideology and values constrain and influence foreign policy decision-makers, and public opinion (which, in turn, may constrain and influence decision-makers). Ideology and values can be conceptualized at the micro level as beliefs held by individuals and at the macro level as widely shared beliefs (akin to “social representations”) enforced, inculcated, and/or reproduced by institutions.

India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs, 2020

Krishnan Srinivasan, James Mayall and Sanjay Pulipaka (Eds.), Values in Foreign Policy: Investigating Ideals and Interests. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, 293 pp. ISBN HB 978-1-78660-749-2. PB 978-1-78660-750-8.

3rd Southeast Europe & East Med. Program Visit to Washington D.C. Meetings with think tanks & Conference, Roundtable Discussions at U.S. Organizations based in Washington D.C. Monday, March 14, 2022

ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION led by Alan Makovsky, Senior Fellow for National Security & Int’l Policy, Center of American Progress Jason Isaacson, Chief Policy and Political Affairs Officer, American Jewish Committee, USA Dr. Elizabeth Prodromou, Faculty Member, The Fletcher School at Tufts University Participants Damon Wilson, President & CEO, National Endowment for Democracy, USA Athanassios G. Platias, Prof. of Strategy, Dept. of Int’l & European Studies, University of Piraeus, Greece Merve Tahiroglu, Turkey Program Coordinator, Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), USA

A New Construction of Ricardian Theory of International Values, 2017

This is the second draft before English revision prepared for a chapter of a coming book. The detailed reference will be given in a comment on this paper when the book is published.

Sixty Years after Bandung Conference the world has been changing rapidly. Bandung Spirit has successfully completed decolonization physically. However, contemporary International Relations (IR) is still dominated by the powerful Western countries both with their values and theories of IR. Thereafter, there is increasing needs for Non-Western countries to develop their own IR theories to challenge Western IR theory that put Non-Western nations more as objects. The authors believe that non-western IR theories will become significant contribution for the discipline of IR and become essential input for Non-Western policy makers in formulating foreign policies. Furthermore, the authors argue that the development of Non-Western IR theories should be rooted by the local values on Non-Western countries. Thus, this paper will examine the importance of Non-Western countries’ local values in the discourse of developing Non-Western IR Theories. The Author argues that Non-Western IR theories will be plural as every Non-Western country has their own local value. However, the same background as post-colonial countries that is manifested in Bandung Spirit will become connector of Non-Western IR theories.

In light of recent discussions of cognitive and ethical dilemmas related to International Relations (IR) scholarship, this paper proposes to engage the “problem of values” in IR as a composite question whose cognitive treatment requires the objectivation of the more profoundly institutional and social processes that subtend its emergence and evolution within the discipline. This analysis is hereby offered as an exercise in reflexive scholarship. Insofar as the question of values constitutes a defining cognitive and moral concern for reflexive knowledge itself, the paper also points to the need for its reformulation within an epistemic framework that is capable of moving beyond reflexivity to reflexivism proper, understood as a systematic socio-cognitive practice of reflexivity.

During the last decade, constructivism has evolved as the main international relations and foreign policy. As a social theory, of rationalist theories that actors pursue their exogenously consequentiality. Instead, in its explanation of foreign policy of a logic of appropriateness. Norms, i.e. value-based, shared the independent variable of constructivist foreign policy theory. preferences, define collective goals and prescribe or proscribe behavior. Constructivist foreign policy theory draws upon two research emphasizes the influence of norms that are shared by embodied by regional or function-specific international international organizations and final acts of international norms. Societal constructivism, on the other hand, stresses the domestic society. Indicators for societal norms are the election platforms, parliamentary debates, and public opinion data. In order to arrive at sound theory-based predictions about, and behavior, constructivism must be able to identify ex ante the Germany's foreign policy behavior which it seeks to explain. Two an assessment of their relative strength. The first is the is shared among the units of a social system. The second criterion a norm discriminates between appropriate and inappropriate medium level of both commonality and specificity if a based on it. Since constructivism posits that foreign policy actors abide by refutes the neorealist claim that German foreign policy behavior increase in the wake of the end of the Cold War and of unification. According to constructivism, Germany's foreign policy is likely to change only to the extent to which the relevant norms have themselves changed.

Recently Western countries, particularly the EU and US, have been adjusting their policy towards unacknowledged/partly acknowledged post-Soviet states. This was principally caused by the five-day-long Georgian-Ossetian war of August 2008. This article discusses the reasons behind the EU's policy of ‘engagement without recognition’.

Refugee Survey Quarterly, 2002

The three main conclusions of this paper are the following: (1) Domestic and international order is based primarily on shared political values, rather than on geopolitics, ethnicity or purely material interests. This was the case in the 20 th century and is likely to be the case also in the 21 st century. (2) Political stability and a peaceful international order do not require a complete uniformity of political values and of political philosophy. Pluralism and differences in political objectives, values and perceptions are essential features of free political communities. This is true not only between states but also within each state: in fact, some of the most lively divergences and debates take place not between but within states. At the same time, there is a need for common shared political values, for universal values, values that James Huntley summed up under the title of Pax Democratica 1. (3) Finally, the world has made considerable progress towards not only identifying, but also respecting a series of fundamental positive universal values. It is important to stress that these values, of which humanitarian values are an important example, should not be considered as relevant only for a limited group of countries. In my paper I will deal with four main issues: (1) The first one is the importance of politics and of political order; (2) The second issue is what we can call the paradox of the 20 th century. This is the contrast between unprecedented violence and oppression, on the one hand, and unprecedented freedom, prosperity and cooperation, on the other hand, i.e. the contrast between "political evil" and "political good" that marked so deeply the last hundred years. (3) The third section deals with domestic and international order(s) in the 20 th and the role of values. (4) The fourth, concluding section deals with the challenge of political order in the 21 st century and the question of universal values, with particular emphasis on the role of humanitarian values in this context.