The Struggle For Recognition In International Relations

"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"--

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.

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.

Theories on the origins of war are often based on the premise that the rational actor is in pursuit of material satisfaction, such as the quest for power or for wealth. These perspectives disregard the need for homo symbolicus – meaning the preservation of a positive self-image for both emotional and instrumental reasons. A good reputation ensures authority and material resources. Non-recognition can be as much as an explanation of war as that of other explicative 'variables'. Two empirical studies examining the role of non-recognition in great power conflicts and in international crises will demonstrate the value of this symbolic approach.

In this book Axel Honneth re-examines arguments put forward by Hegel and claims that the 'struggle for recognition' should be at the centre of social conflicts.

Unrecognized states are places that do not exist in international politics; they are state-like entities that have achieved de facto independence, but have failed to gain widespread international recognition. Since the Cold-War, unrecognized states have been involved in conflicts over sovereign statehood in the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, South Asia, the Horn of Africa, and the South Pacific; some of which elicited major international crises and intervention, including the use of armed force. Yet they remain subject to many myths and simplifications. Drawing on a number of contemporary and historical cases, from Nagorno Karabakh and Somaliland to Taiwan, this timely new book provides a comprehensive analysis of unrecognized states. It examines their origins, the factors that enable them to survive and explores their likely future trajectories. But it is not just a book about unrecognized states; it is a book about sovereignty and statehood; one which does not shy way from addressing crucial issues such as how these anomalies survive in a system of sovereign states and how the context of non-recognition affects their attempts to build effective state-like entities. Ideal for students and scholars of global politics, peace and conflict studies, Unrecognized States offers a much needed and engaging account of the development of unrecognized states in the modern international system.

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.

Currently in Bill Gates's bookbag and FT Books of 2018Increasingly, the demands of identity direct the world's politics. Nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, gender: these categories have overtaken broader, inclusive ideas of who we are. We have built walls rather than bridges. The result: increasing in anti-immigrant sentiment, rioting on college campuses, and the return of open white supremacy to our politics. In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American and global institutions were in a state of decay, as the state was captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatens to destabilise the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to 'the people', who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.Identity is an urgent and necessary book: a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continual conflict.