What are the desciplinary alternative to international relations that helps solve the "problems" in global governance?
Jan 16, 2013
1 hr 3 min
Human security can be recognized only through its absence. This is one of the oft-quoted observations. How so, is the major concern this week. As a mental exercise, we will reconstruct a profile of a few selected countries by using data available in the following documents, and highlights the epistemological problems associated with the macro (aggregate) data in identifying specific issues.
Dec 26, 2012
58 min
Since “Human Development Report, 1994,” a new sort of language has emerged as a way of highlighting the policy issues that most directly affect the lives of people in the world. Human security, as the condition entailing “freedom from threats and freedom from want,” has gradually occupied many organizations, GO and NGO alike, dealing with a broad range of policy issues. Where does this new perspective come from and take us? We will examine the normative foundation of human security.
Dec 19, 2012
1 hr 7 min
The criticisms of economic development have their roots not only in the perceived income-gap among the nations, but also in other pressing issues that are accompanying policies of economic development. What are the adjustments by the proponents of economic growth policies?
Dec 12, 2012
1 hr 24 min
One of the key issues involved in what appears to be a perpetual experimentation with economic development is the widening gap between the rich and the poor. To what extent, the widening gap discredit the claims of the Bretton Woods System and the current World Trade Organization? How should we evaluate the roles of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund?
Dec 5, 2012
1 hr 31 min
An engine of economic development, the Bretton Woods System, before its tenure expired, is claimed to have enriched the world and installed the basic “infrastructure” for the production and distribution of global wealth by non-violent means. Taking it at face values, what have this system and the ensuing World Trade Organization accomplished?
Nov 28, 2012
1 hr 11 min
An examination of changes in economic development theories reveals a number of assumptions that are needed for their hypotheses to work. These are the assumptions which make most of the development theories unrealistic against the backdrops of former colonies. Nonetheless, the attempts at economic development have never been halted. Why?
Nov 14, 2012
1 hr 18 min
Are there innovative way(s) of reconstructing the issues of “national security” to meet the need of post-Cold War era? What could be “national security” issues when nation-states are no longer the most dominant actors in International Relations?
Nov 9, 2012
1 hr 4 min
A postwar invention, the notion of national security, nonetheless, established itself quickly as the underlying theme for any nation’s external contact. However, a twin questions of what is to be “secured” and from what it is to be “secured” turn the notion practically emptied of manageable contents. As a result, anything could be justified as long as it comes under the promotion of “national security.” Only after mid-1970s, some theorists began questioning the primacy of “national security” in dictating the relations among the nations.
Nov 7, 2012
1 hr 22 min
As misleading as it is powerful, the notion of a “proxy” dominated much of the decision-makers in the United States throughout the Cold War period. There is no other theater of conflict than Vietnam where this notion served to distort strategic thinking of the Western bloc.
Oct 31, 2012
1 hr 28 min
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