This article suggests that various dimensions of the larger project of global governance are incoherent and illegitimate. Three dimensions of global governance - the provision of global public goods; processes of transnational regulation; and efforts to spread universal human rights - are examined and found to be deficient in terms of the ability of affected populations to participate in decisions over value trade-offs. Citizens' rights to participation in democratic processes often have been diminished as the locus of political decision making has shifted: on the one hand, to institutions beyond the territorial borders of the nation state; on the other, away from political institutions and towards "global civil society," which seems oddly intolerant of diversity. But if global governance is anti-pluralist and disenfranchising, it risks devolving into an imperial project. Hence, the paper concludes with a plea for a return to international politics as a control on the threat of empire.

Michael Desch asserts that the strategic use and abuse of a "Holocaust Analogy" is responsible for the United States' unconditional support of Israel and a misguided commitment to combat genocide. Guided by a false sense of guilt, he argues, American decision makers have lost sight of the national interest. 1 The argument fails to persuade. First, Desch's depiction of the Holocaust analogy is unsubstantiated and idiosyncratic. Second, uncovering an historical connection between an abandonment myth and American foreign policy cannot provide guidance in making what are essentially moral judgments. Third, empirical claims premised upon the existence of an objective, or value-free, conception of the national interest are ill-suited to the task of adjudicating competing moral claims. Hence, "The Myth of Abandonment" constitutes a misuse, indeed an abuse, of social science.

This dissertation explores the puzzle that international environmental regulations seem to develop dynamically despite the close involvement of business actors in their making. First, the dissertation asks to what extent international regulations are designed to really exert control over corporate environmental conduct. I conceptualize the notion of regulatory stringency, develop a novel stringency index, and use it to gather data on the regulation of environmental impacts of maritime shipping and offshore oil and gas production. The descriptive statistical data analysis finds that numerous regulations go beyond window-dressing as they require improvements in environmental performance and aim at eliciting compliance with these requirements. Among several patterns of regulatory variance, the analysis shows that international organizations with strong business participation produce relatively high shares of stringent regulation. Second, the dissertation asks how and to what extent business and its environmental practices can influence or shape contentious decisions in international regulatory design. I develop the theory of argumentative coproduction which posits that corporate environmental practices can tip the scales when regulators argue over technology. Building on psychological assumptions about consistency-seeking decision-makers, I argue that progressive environmental practices of first-mover companies provide powerful evidence for the feasibility of more stringent regulation. My theory differs from models which highlight ideas of activists and scientists or interests and power resources of materially dominant corporations and states as drivers of regulation. The explanatory power of the different models is probed in two qualitative case studies of shipping regulation by the International Maritime Organization. The case studies find that the empirical observations are most congruent with argumentative coproduction. In the regulation of nutrient inputs from passenger ships in the Baltic Sea, arguments for demanding standards prevailed thanks to the development and uptake of new sewage treatment technology by a few first-mover firms. In the regulation of fuel use in Arctic shipping, the voluntary transition to cleaner fuels by ever more companies facilitated the development of a ban of heavy fuel oil. The findings suggest that international environmental regulations develop dynamically not despite but because of business involvement in negotiations. The dissertation concludes that green first-mover businesses are constructive partners in international environmental politics and should therefore be involved more systematically into regulatory processes.

Because of a lack of transparency and the high complexity of administrative processes, arms acquisition is an area with a high risk of corruption. The aim of this paper is: 1) to provide a typology of cases of corruption in compensatory trade agreements, so called arms trade offsets, that have become integral parts of most arms trades; and 2) to analyze tools possessed by government agencies concerned to prevent or detect corruption. Based on an analysis of all major English-speaking newspaper articles between 1980 and mid-2012, the results show that only a few different types of corruption typically exist in arms trade offsets. Also, the lack of transparency leads to an unusually high amount of questionable allegations. Contrary to most other scholarly articles on corruption, this paper argues that there may be no need for new and stricter anti-corruption policies in this area, but that the usage of basic performance management and already existing due diligence tools could be helpful.

Review of “Authoritarian Russia: Analyzing Post-Soviet Regime Changes“ by Vladimir Gel’man

Behavioral IR is enjoying newfound popularity. Nonetheless, attempts to integrate behavioral research into the larger project of IR theory have proven controversial. Many scholars treat behavioral findings as a trove of plausible ad hoc modifications to rational choice models, thereby lending credence to arguments that behavioral IR is merely residual, empirical, and hence not theoretical. Others limit their research to cataloging outcomes consistent with the basic tenets of behavioral models. Although this expands the empirical base, it is insufficient for theoretical progress. In this article, I explore various answers to the question of when rational choice or behavioral assumptions should guide efforts to build IR theory. I argue that no single answer trumps all others. Examining the various conditions under which actors reason highlights the importance of macrofoundations. Macrofoundations condition the effects of microprocesses and help identify relevant scope conditions for both rational choice and behavioral models of decision-making. Examining the various purposes of IR theory also provides answers to the question of when rational or behavioral assumptions are likely to be most useful. Although many behavioral scholars premise the relevance of their findings on claims of empirical realism, I argue that under certain conditions, deductive theorizing on the basis of as-if behavioral assumptions can lead to powerful theories that improve our understanding of IR and may help decision-makers promote desired ends.

Ever since it started in the early 1990s, the latest debate on United Nations Security Council reform has divided EU member states. This division has created a huge stumbling block for progress. It has also hampered the deepening of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy. This article discusses recent developments in both the UN and the EU. In particular, it sketches out how the EU can become a key power broker by reconciling the conflicting Italian and German positions towards a common European UN policy. The creation of semi-permanent SC seats seems to be the most promising solution in the short term. Moreover, such an interim approach also promises to achieve a single EU seat in the long run.