International Politics Of Recognition

The origins of international conflict are often explained by security dilemmas, power-rivalries or profits for political or economic elites. Common to these approaches is the idea that human behaviour is mostly governed by material interests which principally involve the quest for power or wealth. The authors question this truncated image of human rationality. Borrowing the concept of recognition from models developed in philosophy and sociology, this book provides a unique set of applications to the problems of international conflict, and argues that human actions are often not motivated by a pursuit of utility maximisation as much as they are by a quest to gain recognition. This unique approach will be a welcome alternative to the traditional models of international conflict.

Recognition is a basic human need, but it is not a panacea to all societal ills. This volume assembles contributions from International Relations, Political Theory and International Law in order to show that recognition is a gradual process and an ambiguous concept both in theory and political practice.

"As Bush I took the United States into the Gulf War he proclaimed it an "historic moment" that would afford the United States "the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order." This unipolar moment for the US was anchored in a dense web of economic, political, and military institutions that allowed it to assert its power worldwide. Two decades later the United States still holds this power position but, as history demonstrates, its moment will inevitably come to an end as new great powers, like China, rise and challenge the prevailing international order. Leaders in the United States have emphasized that a strong and prosperous China has the potential to be a stabilizing force in the world. Even so, many analysts worry that as China's power continues to grow, so too will the assertiveness of its foreign policy and territorial ambitions, leading to an inevitable clash with the United States over the terms of the international order. Thus, the challenge facing policymakers-and the subject of this book-is the question of what happens when an established power and a rising power meet? Or, rather, how can an established power manage the peaceful rise of a new major power? This book provides a framework, grounded in the struggle of rising powers for recognition, for understanding the social factors that shape the outcome of a power transition"--

This edited volume explores the different ways in which members of the European Union have interacted with Kosovo since it declared independence in 2008. While there is a tendency to think of EU states in terms of two distinct groups – those that have recognised Kosovo and those that have not – the picture is more complex. Taking into account also the quality and scope of their engagement with Kosovo, there are four broad categories of member states that can be distinguished: the strong and weak recognisers and the soft and hard non-recognisers. In addition to casting valuable light on the relations between various EU members and Kosovo, this book also makes an important contribution to the way in which the concepts of recognition and engagement, and their relationship to each other, are understood in academic circles and by policy makers.

This edited volume examines asymmetric conflict dynamics through the politics of recognition vis-à-vis armed non-state actors. It explores a diverse range of case studies and considers the risks and opportunities that (non-)recognition may involve for transforming armed conflicts.

This new handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the theoretical and empirical aspects of state recognition in international politics. Although the recognition of states plays a central role in shaping global politics, it remains an under-researched and widely dispersed subject. Coherently and innovatively structured, the handbook brings together a group of international scholars who examine the most important theoretical and comparative perspectives on state recognition, including debates about pathways to secession and self-determination, the broad range of actors and strategies that shape the recognition of states and a significant number of contemporary case studies. The handbook is organised into four key sections: Theoretical and normative perspectives Pathways to independent statehood Actors, forms and the process of state recognition Case studies of contemporary state recognition This handbook will be of great interest to students of foreign policy, international relations, international law, comparative politics and area studies. Chapter 19 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Originally published by Hersch Lauterpacht in 1947, this book presents a detailed study of recognition in international law, examining its crucial significance in relation to statehood, governments and belligerency. The author develops a strong argument for positioning recognition within the context of international law, reacting against the widely accepted conception of it as an area of international politics. Numerous examples of the use of law and conscious adherence to legal principle in the practice of states are used to give weight to this perspective. This paperback re-issue in 2012 includes a newly commissioned Foreword by James Crawford, Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.

This book examines claims for recognition of cultural difference from immigrant and Indigenous minorities, highlighting the ways in which they intersect with ideas of national community. Busbridge argues that there is an important, albeit under-explored, relationship between nation and multicultural politics of recognition. Drawing on the Australian context, the book explores how nation features as a productive, if somewhat ambivalent, discursive resource in contemporary Muslim and Aboriginal struggles to be recognised. In demanding recognition, minorities enter into the business of ‘making the nation’ by positing alternative conceptions of national identity, culture and belonging that are more attentive to their differences and claims. This dynamic is engaged as an expression of ‘postcolonial citizenship’. Postcolonial citizenship is imagined in terms of the ways in which minority groups actualise multicultural realities through rewriting ideas of national community. It underlines the critical importance of revising the power relations that deem some groups ‘more national’ and others less so – and which, in Western multicultural societies, are typically tied to notions of the ‘West’ and its ‘others’. This book is an important conceptual, theoretical and political intervention that brings postcolonialism and multiculturalism into dialogue on the increasingly potent issues of nation and national identity. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, politics, postcolonial studies, culture, identity and nation.