Recent works on the role of argumentation in international politics have enriched our understanding of the discursive construction of international legitimacy. Many scholars have recognized the pervasiveness and privileged status of legal claims. Building on these insights, I advance the proposition that the international legitimacy of the use of force has legalized. Legalization implies that successful (de-)legitimation depends on the strategic use of international law, and that alternative legitimacy discourses (such as morality) have been marginalized and play a negligible role in the construction of legitimacy. Thus, the use of force is legitimate to the extent that it conforms to international law. I test this “legalization thesis” against the “hard” case of NATO's intervention in Kosovo in 1999. By revisiting the arguments used by state representatives, I show that, as expected in a legalized legitimacy system and contrary to what has become common knowledge about this case, legitimacy was gained through, not despite, international law. I analyze NATO's strategy of legitimation in detail and reconstruct it as a set of seven strategic moves, all of them appealing exclusively to the international legal discourse.

In response to the political turmoil surrounding the recent refugee crisis, destination countries swiftly implemented new immigration and asylum policies. Are such countercrisis policies effective in mitigating political instability by reducing anti-immigrant backlash and support for radical-right parties? The present study exploits two surveys that were coincidentally fielded during significant policy changes, sampling respondents right before and immediately after the change. I employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the short-term causal effect of the policy change on public opinion within a narrow window of the sampling period. The findings show that both Swedish border controls and the EU–Turkey agreement significantly reduced public opposition to immigration in Sweden and Germany, respectively. In Germany, support for the AfD party also decreased following the new policy. Public opinion time trends suggest that the policy effects were short lived in Sweden but durable in Germany. These effects are similar across different levels of proximity to the border and are accompanied by increasing political trust and a sense of government control over the situation. The findings have implications for understanding the impact of border controls on international public opinion, as well as for assessing the electoral effect of policy responses to global refugee crises.

Radio waves, which are used to transmit information electronically, are a portion of the larger spectrum of electromagnetic waves. They are used for purposes as diverse as telephone, AM and FM radio, UHF and VHF television, air and marine navigation, radar, radio astronomy, meteorology, data transmission, and electronic mail. Some uses of the spectrum entail transmitting or receiving information via satellites orbiting the planet. In order to communicate without interference at any given time, a user must have exclusive access to a frequency over a geographical area determined by the distance that the signals travel to targeted receivers.

This study examines the functionalist approach to international relations, focusing on the proposed relationship between experience in international organizations and attitude change of the participants. The functionalist thesis on attitude change is amplified by reference to social–psychological work on the subject. In terms of functionalist theory, attitude change is essentially seen to be the product of socialization into the international organization. Empirical studies of the attitudes of participants to various international organizations are then evaluated for the extent to which they support the functionalist hypothesis. The evidence indicates that while socialization processes produce some attitude change toward the adoption of an “internationalist outlook,” the likelihood and nature of attitude change is also significantly affected by conflict processes within the organization. The functionalist approach is found to be inadequate in dealing with conflict in the organization as well as in need of greater elaboration with respect to socialization. Revisions are suggested which take into account variations in the sociological structure of international organizationsin addition to processes of socialization and organizational conflict as factors affecting attitude change.

The object of this study is to determine how close to, or how far from, international integration France and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) moved between 1954 and 1965. Results presented here are revealing though probably not astonishing: While some indices of international integration suggest growing assimilation between Frenchmen and West Germans at the societal level, others, paradoxically, show marked deterioration in French and West German coordination and amalgamation at the intergovernmental level. What is important about these findings is that they follow predictably from some theories of international integration and raise questions about others.

How does collective memory shape politics in the domestic and international spheres? I argue that collective memory—an intersubjective understanding of the past—has no inherent meaning and its salience is entirely contextual. What it means politically depends on the historical trajectory through which it came to form and the political exigency for which it is mobilized in the present. I propose three strategies by which social actors mobilize collective memory: framing—negotiating how the past can be interpreted; accrediting—redefining which narrators are authorized to speak; and binding—enforcing the narrative bounds to which narrators must conform. Using this framework, I reassess the failure of South Korea–Japan reconciliation and find that it has as much to do with the mobilization of collective colonial memory in South Korea over the course of its democratization as with Japanese impenitence. Anti-Japanese memory reflects continued domestic political contestation about how South Korea remembers and identifies itself.

Cooperation among militant organizations contributes to capability but also presents security risks. This is particularly the case when organizations face substantial repression from the state. As a consequence, for cooperation to emerge and persist when it is most valuable, militant groups must have means of committing to cooperation even when the incentives to defect are high. We posit that shared ideology plays this role by providing community monitoring, authority structures, trust, and transnational networks. We test this theory using new, expansive, time-series data on relationships between militant organizations from 1950 to 2016, which we introduce here. We find that when groups share an ideology, and especially a religion, they are more likely to sustain material cooperation in the face of state repression. These findings contextualize and expand upon research demonstrating that connections between violent nonstate actors strongly shape their tactical and strategic behavior.

This article adopts economics as a perspective from which to view recent research in international relations. The most telling difference between international relations and economics, it argues, is in the connection between theory and empirical work. The strength of economics is the complementary and mutually supporting character of theoretical and empirical work. In international relations, in contrast, the connections between theory and empirics are looser. As a consequence, research in international relations has not converged to a core of common theoretical assumptions and an arsenal of commonly accepted empirical techniques.

The United States and Canada have now entered a new and more difficult period in their relations with one another. The “Nixon shock” of August 1971 struck Ottawa as well as Japan; conversely, Canadian reluctance freely to supply energy, particularly oil, to the United States has jarred Americans used to taking access to Canadian resources for granted. The extremely high degree of societal interdependence between the United States and Canada ensures that Canada will be strongly affected by American policies. As the two societies experience rapid socioeconomic change, there are bound to be struggles over how to adjust and who pays the price of adjustment. Government regulations are likely to increase on both sides of the border.

Self-determination claims have abounded in the international system since the end of World War II. But these claims have not emerged everywhere. About half of the states in the international system face some challenge related to self-determination today. Why do some states face these demands while others do not? We argue that ethno-national self-determination is one of many identities with which individuals can find affinity. While an international norm related to self-determination has developed globally, its use as a basis for political claims has diffused regionally. Diffusion of self-determination occurs through observation of others using self-determination as a basis of organization, generating a sense of legitimacy, sensitivity to related grievance, and perceptions of tangible benefits related to self-determination identification. We test this empirically on global data on self-determination claims from 1960 to 2005 and find evidence of spatial diffusion, suggesting that self-determination is, to some extent, contagious.

Existing literature on contentious political movements has generally focused on domestic political activity. Using the new Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior–Middle East data set (MAROB-ME), which contains organization-level data for 104 ethnopolitical organizations in the Middle East and North Africa, we analyze the decision of both violent and nonviolent organizations to engage in political activity transnationally. Among the results, we find that diaspora support is associated with transnational nonviolent protest, whereas foreign state support and domestic repression increase the use of transnational violence. The most robust finding, however, is that participation in the domestic electoral process consistently reduces the likelihood that an organization will engage in any political activity abroad.

Based on interviews with 82 national legislators in all nine member states of the European Community, this article examines and analyzes the attitudes and anticipated behavior of the respondents with respect to political integration. In the analysis we pursued four paths: personal motivations, constituency concerns, views of the European Parliament, and a sketch of the history of efforts for direct elections. According to our findings, political integration offers these legislators neither personal-material, electoral-partisan, nor institutional-prestige rewards that are unambiguous. Nevertheless, the interviews also show considerable expression of support for an expanded level and scope of decision making by the Community institutions and for political union. This might be explained by the attractiveness of a United Europe as a forum in which small and medium powers are able to act as a great power. However, the nation state provides things even more basic to political classes: an identity, immediate access to available power, and opportunities for more power.

This article examines the voting behavior of the exceptionally small states (population less than one million) in the UN General Assembly. It uses modified Rice-Beyle techniques (Index of Cohesion and Index of Agreement) to measure the cohesiveness of 23 ministates in four issue-areas: political, colonial, economic, and social, humanitarian and cultural. Ministate voting patterns are compared with those of the US, the USSR, the former colonial powers, and the African-Asian caucusing group. The study's major findings are that: 1) there is greatest ministate cohesion on colonial and economic issues and less cohesion on social, humanitarian, and cultural questions. Political issues divide the ministates; 2) the ministates and the USSR vote similarly on colonial and economic questions, whereas the ministates' voting is more similar to that of the US and the colonial powers on social, humanitarian, and cultural issues. On political issues the ministates are neither a bloc nor the subservient clients of the superpowers; 3) with few exceptions ministate voting patterns are similar to those of the African-Asian group in the UN. These findings extend the generalizations of Kay, et al., with reference to the concerns of the newer nations. In addition, the findings indicate that size alone does not appear to be a significant differentiating variable. The existence of shifting alignments and majorities in different issue-areas underscores the political sophistication and relative independence from large power pressure of ministate voting in the UN.

The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance is primarily a forum for bilateral bargaining between the Soviet Union and each of the other CMEA countries. The bilateral negotiations are conducted with tremendous concern for Soviet long-term preferences and for the short-term economic-political stability of East European countries. The CMEA provides the Soviet Union with an effective but cumbersome politico-economic policy-making apparatus that is becoming less effective and increasingly cumbersome over time. From the East European perspective, the CMEA tends to solidify the positions of the East European leaders yet generate long-term economic costs. What are the preferences upon which the CMEA is constructed? How are CMEA characteristics related to these preferences? What are the economic costs and benefits to member countries in static and dynamic terms? Why have costs for all member countries risen over time? How is intra-CMEA trade likely to change during the next decade?

The States parties to this Constitution declare, in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations, that the following principles are basic to the happiness, harmonious relations and security of all peoples:

Designed as a collective instrument to raise the standards of health and well-being of all peoples throughout the world, a new World Health Organization was launched, under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council, by the International Health Conference, which met at Hunter College, June 19 to July 22, 1946.

In recent years political scientists have given increasing attention to the phenomenon of legitimacy, defined, following Richard Merelman, as the quality of “oughtness” perceived by members of a political system to inhere in the system's authorities and/or regime. The more the regime is regarded as morally proper and elicits generalized favorable attitudes from its constituency—i.e., is perceived to be legitimate—the more the members are predisposed to comply with directives of the authorities even when they are under no serious compulsion to do so or their own immediate self-interest does not so dictate.

All prescriptive decision-making epistemologies are rooted in worldviews. If the worldview assumptions of an epistemology are not congruent with the world in which decisions are to be made, that epistemology ought not to be granted prescriptive authority. The rationalistic wortdview is described in two versions, classic and modified, together with the prescriptive decision-making epistemologies that depend on them. The classic version is firmly grounded in the assumptions of the 18th century Enlightenment; the modified version is more pragmatic in orientation. Both emphasize order, clarity, empiricism, and logical analysis. An alternative, nonrationalistic worldview concerns itself with novelty, incongruity, intuition, and subjective awareness. Foreign-policy decision theorists routinely assume that the foreign-policy world contains a mixture of rationalistic and nonrationalistic elements but are reluctant to grant decision makers the intuitive and subjective capabilities that, together with logical thinking and empirical observation, are necessary to operate in such a world. This reluctance inhibits the development of a prescriptive decision-making epistemology suitable for a mixed world. Analytical psychology provides one avenue for exploring the prescriptive implications of a more comprehensive psychology. It is clear that in a world with important nonrationalistic elements, true rationality requires that nonrationalistic capabilities and skills be both appreciated and developed.

A notable gap in existing analyses of the United Nations is the relative absence of systematic treatments of the links between the Organization itself and the international system in which it operates. These links constitute a complex dual relationship, both sides of which are worthy of serious analyses. The functions and activities of the United Nations are molded by the fundamental dimensions and dynamic processes of the international system. At the same time, however, the United Nations is itself an actor in the system and it is sometimes able to influence its environment significantly. Throughout the history of the United Nations the impact of the systemic environment on the Organization has far surpassed the impact of the Organization on the system. Nevertheless, the influence of the United Nations on world politics should not be underestimated, especially in its more subtle and intangible forms.