YCISS Research

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10315/1303

The Centre for International and Security Studies is a research unit of York University dedicated to the study of international peace and security issues.

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 83

Open Access
A Survey of Game Theory Models on Peace and War
(YCISS, 1990-03) O'Neill, Barry
This paper will present a survey of game theoretical applications to peace and war relevant to the continuing debate on the theory's place. (Some contributions are by Deutsch, 1954, 1968; Waltz, 1959; Quandt, 1961; Snyder, 1961; Shubik, 1968; Robinson, 1970; Rosenau, 1971; Junne, 1972; George and Smoke, 1974; Plon, 1976; Martin, 1978; Wagner, 1983; Maoz, 1985; Snidal, 1985a; Hardin, 1986; Larson, 1987; Jervis, 1988a; O'Neill, 1989b; and Rapoport, 1989.) The review will be non evaluative, and will focus on the areas chosen for applications rather than developments in the mathematics. It will be fairly comprehensive in the international relations (IR) section, and include the main subjects in the military operations part. In regard to IR, I examine the mutual influences of the mathematics and the conventional theory or policy questions. The military section notes the interaction of game applications with new military strategy and technology. A companion paper (O'Neill, 1990b) surveys introductory writings for each game theory subfield that might be relevant to IR.
Open Access
Completing Europe's Internal Market: Implications for Canadian Policy
(YCISS, 1990-03) Mutimer, David
The 1992 project in Europe promises to be one of the most significant developments of the contemporary international political economy, and Canadians need to be ready to meet the challenges and opportunities it presents. The focus of the present paper is to consider these challenges and Canada's response from the perspective of government trade policy. While obviously industry will need to consider the specific effects of the 1992 project, it is for the government to set the broad goals for the Canadian economy in light of a changed international environment. This paper's object is to examine, first of all, the recent patterns of the trading relations between Canada and the EC, and the current trade policy of the Canadian government, and thus the expectations Canada has for the future of this trading relationship. Having considered the context of the trading relationship, the project to complete the internal market by 1992 will be examined. The paper will then consider the expectations and the likely results of the programme, and how these results will influence Canada's position. Finally, a set of conclusions will be drawn from this analysis for the conduct of Canadian trade in the face of 1992.
Open Access
Institutional Change and the New European Politics: The European Community, European Political Cooperation and the Western European Union
(YCISS, 1990) Mutimer, David
The object of this paper is to examine a small section of these political questions. There are several pressures building for a more united and independent Western Europe. The market completion will almost certainly result in a more politically united Community. The lessening of East-West tensions and the growth of West-West tensions are already impelling Europe to take a more independent and unified approach to its foreign and security policy. If Europe is to respond to these pressures and begin pursuing European policies in its foreign and security affairs, there will need to be an institutional focus for such policy. There are already institutions in place, which are designed to provide fora for the consideration of these very policy areas. The European Political Cooperation (EPC) is an intergovernmental body whose function is to coordinate the foreign policies of the members of the EC in order to work toward a European foreign policy. In addition, the Western European Union (WEU) was originally founded to act as a focus for the development and execution of a European security policy. While the WEU had fallen into obscurity, it is still available and, in fact, has been recently reactivated. The central question of this discussion, therefore, is what role can be foreseen for the European Political Cooperation and the Western European Union in the new European politics.
Open Access
A Survey of Military Cooperation among ASEAN States: Bilateralism or Alliance?
(YCISS, 1990-05) Acharya, Amitav
The question of whether a military/security arrangement binding the ASEAN states, if it is to take place, should be constructed within or outside the formal framework of ASEAN itself remains an open and thorny issue. But the issue itself has received little systematic treatment in the literature on Southeast Asian regional security. This is largely due to two factors: a general unwillingness among policymakers in the ASEAN states to release information on military matters in the name of national security, and second, the political sensitivity surrounding the specific subject of intra-ASEAN military links. As a result, debates on ASEAN security and defence cooperation have been marred by a paucity of reliable information. This paper, based on extensive primary research, is intended to fill the information gap and facilitate efforts by scholars towards more conceptual generalizations on the subject.
Open Access
The "Modern" State in the Middle East: The Need for a Human Face
(YCISS, 1993-06) Ben-Dor, Gabriel
In my original formulation, I warned against two salient dangers to the state in the region. On the one hand, I felt that a state captivated by a particularistic social force and harnessed to its own radical purposes would be inhuman in pursuing the goals of that force, be it an ethnic group, a tribe, or a religion. The fact that an ethnic group disguises itself in colourful ideological mumbo-jumbo (as is the case of the Baath "party" in Iraq and Syria) does not make matters any better, but only obfuscates the issues. On the other hand, I also felt that if a state attempted to operate in a vacuum, devoid of all social content, it would end up with the deification of the state for its own sake, which I consider a classic case of fascism. In neither case would we have a state structure that is sensitive to the human needs of the population: It would not look after the proper interests of the inhabitants, namely peace, prosperity, security and a sense of dignity and well-being. Indeed, these commodities have been in a short supply in the Middle East, and I am afraid that the Middle Eastern state has not served well the cause of promoting human values. It is this issue that I now would like to explore.
Open Access
Amplifying the Social Dimensions of Security
(YCISS, 1993-11) Workman, Thom
Initially, a group of scholars began to systematically redefine the concept of security in a manner that directed attention towards the limited opportunity that "military" responses offered to "security" problems. Their primary activity was to redefine security in terms of an expanded idea to "threat," with the implication of these efforts necessarily questioning the appropriateness of military solutions - a politically important position given the thrust of Reaganism at that time. With the emergence of a clear post-positivist trend within IR by the late 1980s, however, a number of scholars began to address redefinitional efforts along axiological, conceptual and empirical grounds. These latter efforts - herein identified as an Alternative school - yielded important intellectual sanction for political movements, including women's organizations, aboriginal peoples, labour groups, the urban poor and the ecological movement, that often broach ideas of security within the context of a broader transformative agenda. International relations scholarship is arriving at the point, that is, where the breadth of intellectual activity regarding security reflects its polypolitical imbrications at the global and local levels. An exposition of the full scope of this novel critical line is the primary purpose of this paper.
Open Access
Peacekeeping and the Politics of Postmodernity
(YCISS, 1993-11) Williams, Michael C.
This paper attempts to explicate in a cursory fashion the ways in which theories of peacekeeping are embedded in a much broader set of assumptions about the nature of domestic politics and international relations. These assumptions are inextricably intertwined - both theoretically and practically - with their emergence in what is commonly now referred to as 'modernity'. The theoretical and practical status, not to mention content, of modernity is itself a matter of no small debate. Whether we are now in, entering, or beyond a condition of modernity, high modernity, late modernity or post-modernity is a controversy creating an increasing amount of heat, if a depressingly small amount of light. Yet despite the excesses to which it often leads, the question is an important one since it goes to the very core of how we understand contemporary political life. Still, anyone who wants (is foolish enough?) to invoke such broad concepts faces a series of potential pitfalls. How, after all, does one give adequate concrete content to a concept as broad as 'modernity', let alone its purported successors? Although this treatment will at one level be philosophically inclined, it will not take up directly the myriad controversies between modern and post-modern philosophies of knowledge, ethics or power. Rather, it will seek to outline in general terms the ways in which modernity embodies a set of categories concerning time, space and (in this regard) their political corollary: sovereignty. The representations of these categories of experience specific to modernity are central in coming to terms with the theoretical and practical elements constitutive in the emergence of the modern state system and with the transformations currently underway within it.
Open Access
Passing Judgement: Credit Rating Processes as Regulatory Mechanisms of Governance in the Emerging World Order
(YCISS, 1993-11) Sinclair, Timothy
This paper argues that certain knowledge-producing institutions located in the American financial industry - debt-security or bond rating agencies - are significant forces in the creation and extension of the new, open global political economy and therefore deserve the attention of international political economists as mechanisms of "governance without government." Rating agencies are hypothesised to possess leverage, based on their unique gate keeping role with regard to investment funds sought by corporations and governments. The paper examines trends in capital markets, the processes leading to bond rating judgements, assesses the form and extent of the agencies' governance powers, and contemplates the implications of these judgements for further extension of the global political economy and the form of the emerging world order.
Open Access
Gender and International Relations: A Selected Historical Bibliography
(YCISS, 1994-03) Boutin, Kenneth
This bibliography is intended to provide a comprehensive reference source for materials which address the question of gender in the study of International Relations, or which employ gender in the analysis of questions examined by this field. It presents a cross section of materials representative of the richness of the field of gender and International Relations in terms of subject, approach and period of focus. A varied selection of books, academic and professional journal articles, review essays, public documents, bibliographies, biographical materials, theses and unpublished conference papers are referenced in this bibliography. The analytical and descriptive materials included represent a wide range of theoretical and normative approaches. These are largely in the English language, though a limited number of French sources are provided as well. The materials dating from as far back as the first half of the nineteenth century as well as to those of more recent vintage have been included. Epistemological materials and those concerned with the philosophy of science have generally been excluded from this bibliography. The selection of materials provided is comprehensive, but is by no means complete.
Open Access
Reimagining Security: The Metaphors of Proliferation
(YCISS, 1994-08) Mutimer, David
'Proliferation' appears to have been developed as a central image in the new international security agenda in the time between Krauthammer's article and the recent NATO summit. The spur to the construction of this image was the war in the Gulf. In the first section of this paper, I trace the construction of the image of proliferation in the pronouncements and practices of the Western states following the Gulf War. This image of proliferation as a security problem is, as Krauthammer noted, a perception of the state of the world. That perception is a metaphorical one, as the image of a security problem which is created is grounded in metaphor. In the second section I discuss the nature of image and metaphor as they relate to the constitution of international security. Finally, I examine the particular metaphors of the proliferation image, in order to show how they shape the understanding of a problem, and the policy solutions which are developed in response.
Open Access
Security and Self Reflections of a Fallen Realist
(YCISS, 1994-10) Booth, Ken
Personal experience has always been an explicit feature of feminist theorising. Making sense of one's own life has been seen as a way of making sense of the lives of others. The personal, the political, and the international are a seamless web. In this chapter I want to make some reflections, in a similar spirit, about self, profession and world politics. Instead of purporting to describe or explain the world 'out there', as is one's professional training, I want to reflect on the world 'in here'—as 'part of our innermost being' (Berger, 1966, p.140). This is academically and temperamentally a somewhat difficult thing to do. It is especially out of line with the traditions of several decades of strategic studies, which involved 'telling it as it is'—'it' begin a realist account of the purported state(s) of the world. As a profession, security specialists have not been particularly self-reflective. We have sometimes been invited to think the unthinkable, yet 'we' have been out of bounds. At what is thought to be a period of `intellectual crisis' in `security studies', `we' should not be. For most of us we are our last and most difficult frontier. Hence the personal nature of this paper, which attempts at the same time to confuse and clarify what it means to study `security' at the end of the twentieth century.
Open Access
Discourses of War: Security and the Case of Yugoslavia
(YCISS, 1994-12) Crawford, Beverly; Lipschutz, Ronnie D.
The agonizing war in the former Yugoslavia, the interminable parlays about what to do, the innumerable threats made and peace plans offered, retracted and made again have all served to highlight the process by which Western decision-making elites have tried to redefine their own, and their countries', security in the post-cold war world. To the question: "What is to be done in Bosnia?" they have answered: "Almost nothing." To the question: "Why?" they have answered: "Because it does not threaten us." And, so, almost nothing has happened. In this paper, we argue that this policy response is directly related to conceptions of "security" and "threats" that have structured the debate on the causes of the war as well as its potential consequences. In turn, widespread acceptance of the dominant view of those causes has justified a policy of relative inaction, in the process virtually precluding future actions designed to prevent such carnage from becoming an accepted feature of global politics.
Open Access
The Periphery as the Core: The Third World and Security Studies
(YCISS, 1995-03) Acharya, Amitav
The tendency of security studies to focus on a particular segment of the international system to the exclusion of another is ironic given the fact that it is in the neglected arena that the vast majority of conflicts have taken place. Moreover, the security predicament of the Third World states challenges several key elements of the national security paradigm, especially its state-centric and warcentric universe. The Third World's problems of insecurity and their relationship with the larger issues of international order have been quite different from what was envisaged under the dominant notion. Against this backdrop, this paper has two main goals. The first is to provide a broad outline of the security experience of Third World states during the Cold War period with a view to suggesting the problems of applying the “dominant” understanding of security in the Third World milieu. The second is to examine ways in which the Cold War experience will benefit our analysis of the prospects for regional conflict and international order in the post-Cold War era.
Open Access
The "New" South Africa in Africa: Issues and Approaches
(YCISS, 1995-03) Swatuk, Larry; Black, David R.
Today, as South Africans work out their post-apartheid future and as the old political and economic barriers with the rest of the continent crumble, it is probable that there will be a sustained increase in political-economic intercourse between the “hobbled leviathan” of the South and its continental neighbours, near and far. What repercussions will follow from this process? To what extent will it enhance prospects for political and economic development in the rest of the continent, and to what extent may it further constrain them? Who will be the main agents and beneficiaries of this expansion of South African-African interchange, and who will be its casualties? And what security consequences, broadly conceived, will result? This essay proceeds from the view that the process by which South Africa is more fully integrated into the continental political economy will defy broad generalisation. Rather, there is likely to be a complex pattern of “winners” and "losers", along with other interests which remain essentially unaffected, which must be explored and illuminated through careful, theoretically-informed empirical study. Furthermore, various non-state actors—both powerful MNCs and capital-rich development banks, and the proliferating institutions and associations of civil society—will be leading forces in this process, posing significant challenges of strategy and relevance to state and inter-governmental organisations.
Open Access
Pandora's Sons: The Nominal Paradox of Patriarchy and War
(YCISS, 1996-01) Workman, Thom
This paper addresses the gender critique of war directly. It argues that the gender critique of war has racked enough to be able to identify a preliminary thesis regarding war and the reproduction of patriarchy. The altered experiences and practices of war, combined with the sometimes dramatic modifications in gender representations (through propaganda, literature etcetera), are considerable. War can produce cultural crises of gender, especially as it throws the historical contingency and cultural arbitrariness of gendered constructs into relief. There is the suggestion that through war traditional gendered constructs can modulate and unwind. An emerging sense of cultural crisis revolving around gender shifts typically accompanies both war and post-war periods. Indeed, much of the initial research on gender and war, in view of the extensive shifts in representations and practices during war, directly or indirectly explores the emancipatory effect of war upon women.
Open Access
Critical Theory and Security Studies
(YCISS, 1996-02) Krause, Keith
Security studies has been among the last bastions of neorealist orthodoxy in International Relations to accept critical, or even theoretically-sophisticated, challenges to its problematic. Recent polemical exchanges in the security studies literature have, however, at least linked the term "critical theory" with security studies, and although they do not necessarily advance the debate, they at least raise the question: what is a critical approach to security studies? My goal in this paper is not to invoke a new orthodoxy of "critical security studies" or to participate in polemical recriminations, but to illustrate what a critical engagement with issues and questions that have been taken as the subject matter of security studies involves. I do this in several steps: (a) a review of the (brief) debate in security studies concerning the contributions of "critical" scholarship; (b) a presentation of the intellectual "foundations" of critical approaches to International Relations; (c) an overview of current research within "critical security studies" that illustrates its ability to generate a challenging and productive research agenda; and (d) a discussion of the intellectual and disciplining power of mainstream security scholarship, and the difficulties this poses for critical challenges. What I will not do is present a critique of traditional research and theory in security studies, except to highlight some of the conclusions of this critique. Since one of the main accusations levelled against critical theory (at least in International Relations) is that it cannot get "beyond critique," I intend to demonstrate that one can find lurking in the interstices of the discipline a wide range of critical scholarship and research that is "about" security (and its core subject matter), but which its authors, or the discipline, refuses to label as such. Simply bringing together these perspectives makes the challenges to orthodoxy more clear, and signals that critical approaches to security studies are more than a passing fad or the idiosyncratic obsession of a few scholars.
Open Access
Eclipse of the Other in Prewar Japanese Discursive Space: Japanese Cultural Identity in the Modern World
(YCISS, 1996-02) Iida, Yumiko
In this paper, I conceive identity as a particular cognitive inclination or a `movement’ of a mind troubled by its need—i.e., the desire for identity—characterized by a retrogressive longing for an idealized past. Here I do not follow the conventional definition of national identity in the field of international politics—the embodiment of the cultural characteristics common to a people. Investigating the development of Japanese prewar discursive space between the rise of the romantic movement circa 1905 and its maturity in the mid-1930s, I found Japanese intellectuals persistently attempted to erase the existence and influences of the Other—the epistemological separation between the subject and the object from which scientific objectivity and the modern conceptions of humanity and history arises—by constantly challenging, denying and eventually dismissing such philosophical traits from the native discursive space. This consistent effort to eliminate the Other matured in the mid-1930s, and the native discursive space came to demonstrate two highly problematic and seemingly paradoxical characteristics: a hermeneutic `play of language’ characterized by an arbitrary linkage among signifiers devoid of meaning, and a `desire’ for subjectivity and an articulation of meaning under the single banner of `Japan’—the cultural essence of the Japanese. Curiously, this development was accompanied by an extremely reductive description of non-Japanese peoples (i.e., Chinese, Korean, and American), in such a way as to affirm the superiority of Japanese culture. I argue that these features were the expression of a Japanese `collective effort’ to reconstruct a lost cultural identity, an attempt to construct an imagined cultural ideal which had until then never existed. This was made possible only by denying the past encounters with and the present existence of the Other and by radically diverging away from the historical world, and as such constituted the discursive preconditions to a fascist logic of action and a mythological belief in the divinity of the emperor.
Open Access
The Evolution of Strategic Thinking at the Canadian Department of National Defence, 1950-1960
(YCISS, 1996-08) Richter, Andrew
The paper will demonstrate that Canadian officials expressed interests in a variety of areas, including both conceptual and empirical strategic contributions. Conceptually, it will be demonstrated that officials began to appreciate the mutually destructive nature of any nuclear engagement prior to their American colleagues, and they therefore began to articulate an understanding of deterrence that was somewhat different from the one which emerged in the United States. Empirically, the paper will focus on Canadian air defence policy of the time, and the strategic concepts that underlined it. It will be demonstrated that the Canadian appreciation of the air defence problem (including both procurement and command concerns) differed from the American model, and that officials approached issues from a distinctly Canadian point of view. While there are other areas of defence policy that could be examined, readers should note that air defence was a vital component of Canadian defence policy in the 1950s, as most of the controversial issues of the period related to this mission (i.e., the Avro Arrow, the BOMARC missile, etc.). Methodologically, observations and findings will be based on an examination of original government documents, many of which have been reviewed for the first time in this paper. This inductive research process will offer security scholars a more complete picture of how defence issues and problems were considered during this period, and will be of considerable benefit in tracing Canada’s Cold War defence orientation.
Open Access
Postfordism in the US Arms Industry: Toward 'Agile Manufacturing'
(YCISS, 1996-12) Latham, Andrew
This paper seeks to illuminate this process of military-industrial transformation. It argues that two powerful motive forces can be identified behind this phenomenon. The first is practical, deriving from both the need to field the kind of increasingly knowledge-intensive weapons deemed necessary to American military superiority in the late twentieth century and the need to contain costs. The second is discursive, having to do with the influence that the ideals of ‘precision warfare’ and ‘postfordist production’ have gained over the collective imagination of America’s managerial, military and military-industrial elites. At one level, the effects of these two forces are difficult to disentangle as the prevailing understanding of the nature of the ‘material’ requirement for victory in war is powerfully shaped by an ideal that emphasises the importance of ‘precision’. Indeed, it is important to recognise that neither material nor discursive forces have absolute primacy in the shaping of contemporary US military-industrial policy; both are playing a prominent role in reshaping patterns of military (product and process) innovation. Nevertheless, it is crucial to our understanding of the development and diffusion of the agile manufacturing paradigm to develop some sense of the way in which these forces are acting and interacting to transform arms production during the contemporary period. Thus, this paper attempts to illuminate this process of militaryindustrial transition by tracing the diffusion of ‘agile’ production techniques through the crucially important US military aerospace industry. Recognising that the terrain explored is far too complex to be mapped properly within the limits of this paper, my goal is not to provide a comprehensive account of the evolution of the American military aerospace industry during the current era. Rather, it is to chart the way in which a key sub-sector of the arms industry is experiencing the crossing of America’s third military-industrial divide. Although it would be preferable to discuss the motive forces driving this transition separately, the way in which these forces interact with one another means that an integrated sketch is all that is possible.
Open Access
The Demystification of Global Finance: A Feminist Interpretation
(YCISS, 1997-03) Mayhall, Stacey L.
There is a need for feminist work to explore the gendered processes and the gendered effects of global finance and global restructuring that is situated at the intersection of IPE, economics, and politics. In order to examine the theory, meta-theory, and practise of global finance through a gender-sensitive lens, I situate my research within a broader feminist project. With a theoretical framework informed particularly by current feminist sociological, post-colonial, critical economic, structural adjustment, and development literature, as well as mainstream political economy literature, I will begin to address the multi-levelled social, political, and economic inter-connections of restructuring processes. These processes and effects come to light, in part, through an examination of the discourse created by economics, IPE, and global finance. As well, utilising a small set of practises associated with global finance, I examine the links between feminist macro-economic policy literature and the operations of finance on a global scale, and conclude by suggesting some potential directions for future research that might promote fresh thinking about IPE and global finance, its discourse, the centrality of ‘the market,’ and the increasingly complex social and political relationship between production and reproduction.