This paper explores the relationship between statehood and the international system, with particular reference to the states of sub-Saharan Africa. It suggests, as the title implies, that statehood should be regarded as a relative concept; and that rather than distinguish sharply between entities that are, and are not, states, we should regard different entities as meeting the criteria for international statehood to a greater or lesser degree. Entities which we have been accustomed to regard as states, at least for the purposes of studying them in international relations, sometimes fail to exercise even the minimal responsibilities associated with state power, while those who control them do not behave in the way that is normally ascribed to the ‘rulers’ of states. Entities that are not accorded the status of states, such as guerrilla insurgencies or even voluntary organizations, may take on attributes that have customarily been associated with sovereign statehood. This conclusion carries at least a salutary warning against too readily ascribing the supposedly universal characteristics of states to peripheral areas of the modern global system, in which the categories in which we are accustomed to regard international politics have become blurred. More broadly, given the peculiar and privileged position of states in the conventional analysis of international relations, it may carry significant implications for the idea of international relations itself.

This essay introduces Max Weber’s sociology of modern culture to International Relations. Previous treatments of Weber in the discipline have focused on Morgenthau’s use of Weberian ideas rather than on the differences between their positions. In appropriating Weber’s ‘ethic of responsibility’ for his theory of power politics, Morgenthau neglected Weber’s sociology of ‘rationalization’ and analysis of the displacement of cultural values in modern policy-making. In Morgenthau’s theory foreign policy is judged in terms of consequences for state power, while for Weber policy is judged in terms of consequences for cultural values. This crucial difference in their understanding of the political ethics of realism is anatomized. Using Weber’s sociology of modern culture and often misunderstood view of the relation between science and values, the article then traces the repercussions of Morgenthau’s influential understanding of realism in strategic policy science.

The article uncovers the intellectual link between Morgenthau’s theory of power politics and the German thinkers Max Weber and Carl Schmitt. Through this it sheds light on the forceful claims to objectivity contained in Morgenthau’s theory of power politics. The author reveals how, by combining Schmitt’s ideas of ‘the Political’ with Weber’s ideas on the objectivity of social science, Morgenthau finds an elegant way to overcome the value-determinacy of social science. This enables him to assert the objectivity of (international) political science. The same arguments allow Morgenthau also to formulate a moral defence of the state.

The end of the Cold War is a story that will no doubt be written and rewritten as historians discover evidence that casts light on presently unknown facts, and provide new ‘spins’ on those already known. Indeed, it is quite likely that, like its origins, the end of the Cold War will have its equivalents of orthodoxy and revisionism. Of all the players in this story it is Mikhail Gorbachev who will take the leading role; for some the hero and for others the villain. The story of the Gorbachev era is a controversial one, with the answers to many questions in dispute. Did the West win due to ‘peace through strength’? Was new thinking primarily driven by the need for economic recovery? Was the West too hesitant in its response to Soviet initiatives? For some, the end of the Cold War brought to a conclusion a tragedy in which the two superpowers had embarked upon defensive measures which had led each to believe that the other harboured malign intent; hence Robert Jervis’s assertion that the ‘Cold War may . . . have been an unavoidable tragedy rather than the result of an evil Soviet Union, as the orthodox school has it, or an evil United States, as most revisionists argue’.Robert Jervis, 'The End of the Cold War?', Diplomatic History, 17 (Fall 1993), p. 659. On this interpretation the Cold War was a security dilemma in which ‘each side, in pursuing its own clearly indicated and deeply cherished principles, was only confirming the fear of the other that it was bent on aggression’.Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, 'Origins of the Cold War', Foreign Affairs, 46 (Oct. 1967), p. 45. In this article the story of how this tragedy was ended will be told from the perspective of graduated reciprocation in tension reduction (GRIT). It will focus on whether Gorbachev employed such a strategy and whether it had a role in ending over forty years of hostility.

The end of the Cold War and the transformation of the Yalta security system generated a debate about the survivability of the postwar institutions of security, particularly NATO. This debate is too narrow in its focus. We argue that security has two mutual constitutive elements, the political-military and the economic. The interdependence of these two elements of the future security architecture raises a set of interrelated questions addressed in this article: What are the economic elements of security? How have the changes in the European state system affected the prospects for the institutionalization of security cooperation, broadly defined? Does a stable security architecture require the parallel construction of the economic and military institutions of security?

John Baylis and Steve Smith (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, Oxford University Press, 1997

Charlotte Bretherton and Geoffrey Ponton (eds.), Global Politics: An Introduction, Cambridge, MA, Blackwell Publishers, 1996

Chris Brown, Understanding International Relations, London, Macmillan, 1997

Ian Clark, Globalization and Fragmentation: International Relations in the 20th Century, Oxford University Press, 1997

Brian White, Richard Little and Michael Smith (eds.), Issues in World Politics, London, Macmillan, and New York, St Martin's Press, 1997

Ngaire Woods (ed.), Explaining International Relations since 1945, Oxford University Press, 1996

Michael Elliott, The Day before Yesterday, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1996

John Gerard Ruggie, Winning the Peace, New York, Columbia University Press, 1996

Monteagle Stearns, Talking to Strangers, Princeton University Press, 1996

Warren Zimmermann, The Origins of a Catastrophe, New York, Random House, 1996

Christopher Bennett, Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse, London, Hurst and Co., 1995

Lenard J. Cohen, Broken Bonds: Yugoslavia's Disintegration and Balkan Politics in Transition, 2nd edn, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1995

Mihailo Crnobrnja, The Yugoslav Drama, 2nd edn, London, I. B. Tauris, 1996

Bogdan Denitch, Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia, revised edn, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996

Paul Mojzes, Yugoslavian Inferno, New York, Continuum, 1994

Edgar O'Ballance, Civil War in Bosnia, London, Macmillan, 1995

Sabrina Petra Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to Ethnic War, 2nd edn, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1996

Laura Silber abd Alan Little, The Death of Yugoslavia, revised edn, London, Penguin Books, 1996

Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War, Washington, DC, Brookings, 1995

John Zametica, The Yugoslav Conflict, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1992

Introduction

In 'Does "Gender" Make the World Go Round? Feminist Critiques of International Relations',Review of International Studies, 22:4 (1996), pp. 405-29. Adam Jones claims that 'the most important ... contribution of feminist critiques has been to add a gender dimension to [IR]', but that their success will remain 'mixed' until their 'frameworks are expanded and to some extent reworked'. While Jones's piece is excpetionally wide-ranging, our view is that overall he presents three assertions. The first is that feminism is restricted by its 'standard equation of gender ... with women/femininity'; the second is that the 'classical tradition' is the standard by which feminist contributions to IR should be judged; and the third is that feminism is defective in its treatment of gender, because it does not adequately conceptualize and study men and masculinity.Ibid., pp. 420-1, 407, 405. In this article we take issue with each of these assertions in turn, drawing first on 'feminisms' generally, then using writers in feminist IR, and finally reviewing the literature on men and masculinity, both specifically feminist and otherwise.

I had no higher ambition for my articleA. Jones, 'Does "Gender" Make the World Go Round? Feminist Critiques of International Relations', Review of International Studies, 22:4 (1996), pp. 405-29. All subsequent page references are to this source, unless otherwise noted. than to encourage the exchange now beginning with Carver, Cochran and Squires' response. Unfortunately, although it was nice to see my dull name in the title, I cannot say I feel any more or less gendered than when I started their piece.