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Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14288/6

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Quartile: search.filters.quartile.Q2Subject: search.filters.subject.International relations

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    PublicationOpen Access
    The operationalization of democracy and the strength of the democratic peace: a test of the relative utility of scalar and dichotomous measures
    (Sage, 2010) Bernhard, Michael; Department of International Relations; Bayer, Reşat; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; 51395
    The idea that democracies are less apt to engage in conflict with each other is a central finding in international relations. Yet the operationalization of democracy in this literature has been relatively unreflective. Since the mid-1990s the majority of studies have used Polity. In this paper we raise substantial concerns about its use, notably that there is a mismatch between conceptualization of democracy as a regime type and using an interval scale to measure it. If our contention is correct, we would expect to find that models that use a dichotomous coding should either pro-vide different results from Polity or at minimum fit the data better. We then test this contention by comparing the results of tests of the democratic peace using Polity in its interval scalar form and several common dichotomous codings of democracy. The tests are supportive of the contention that dichotomous coding better captures the notion of “democracy.” At minimum we believe that findings using Polity should be verified for robustness using a dichotomous coding.
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Politics of critique: understanding gender in contemporary Middle East
    (Elsevier, 2015) Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics
    This paper explores the implications of spatial production of academic knowledge on the Middle East, through the critiques of Orientalist discourses on the "Muslim woman." It begins with an examination of the success of postcolonial studies and scholarship on democratization in challenging racist perceptions and polities in the West. Then it reflects on the ways in which this knowledge production travels and is reconfigured in places where power inequalities are different. This requires a consideration of the regional consequences of either an over-emphasis on differences in agencies of "Muslim women" or a relative silence on issues of gender inequality. The paper's suggestion is to shift the focus from representation and discourse to the structural circumstances in which ordinary men and women's agencies play out; various political mechanisms which participate in the production of acceptable cultural practices; and patterns of resistance, which may defy arguments about culturally specific definitions of agency. This is a quest for making the "exotic" familiar, without exoticizing the familiar.
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Neo-Weberian historical sociology, the English School and differentiated integration in the EU
    (Taylor _ Francis, 2020) Department of International Relations; Ruacan, İpek Zeynep; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 238425
    This article explores the contributions of Neo-Weberian historical sociology of the state and the English School of International Relations theory to our understanding of differentiated integration in the European Union. In doing so, it turns to the English School concept of ‘radial empires’ to establish differentiation as a structural feature of all centralized entities in international society such as the European Union. It then turns to the concepts of ‘sociospatial networks of power’ and ‘despotic vs. infrastructural’ forms of state power from the Neo-Weberian literature to discuss why empires function radially. Subsequently, it links vertical differentiation to the interplay between sociospatial networks of power and horizontal differentiation to the interplay between despotic and infrastructural forms of state power in the member states of the European Union. Crucial insights for understanding differentiation can be gained from engagement with these concepts not least for understanding Brexit which links with the United Kingdom’s particularly high infrastructural power.