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38520 results in Cambridge Textbooks

Page 1598 of 1926

  • Chapter 5 - The global system

  • from Part II - Institutions and actors in global politics
  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 122-152

  • Summary

    The previous chapter set the groundwork for our continuing examination of global politics by defining and examining the concepts of state and power. It also considered leaders and how they make vital foreign policy decisions for their states. We are now ready to map the contemporary distribution of power and influence in the modern world. Which states are the most powerful and why?

    To answer this central question, the chapter focuses on key concepts concerning the global system and its changing nature. First, it clarifies terms such as comparative power, polarity, hegemony, and imperialism, along with their importance in contemporary politics. It then examines in detail the six major powers that currently dominate global politics and structure the global system – the United States, China, India, Japan, Russia, and the European Union (which brings together twenty-seven states that in many respects function as one unit) – and surveys the roles of emerging middle and regional powers. We then return to our themes of security and globalization. What are the implications of the new global system for security? What is its relationship with globalization? To answer these questions, we conclude the chapter with a “New Global Security Map” – a conceptual framework of contemporary global politics.

  • Chapter 2 - Global history

  • from Part I - Foundations of global politics
  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 20-55

  • Summary

    The Greek historian Thucydides once said that history is philosophy teaching by examples. A recent scholar commented that perhaps Thucydides should have said “trying to teach by examples,” because often we do not use history well. We miss the real point of its lessons or we follow the wrong precedents. Just think of early prognosticators who thought that because triplanes flew better than biplanes future aircraft would end up with twelve wings! Or think of Thomas Watson, head of IBM, who is alleged to have predicted in 1943 that “I think there is a world market for about five computers”! Prediction is an unpredictable business!

    One thing that history does do well is deepen our understanding of current global problems. It can inform us about the world in which we live, not just the country we inhabit, and in doing so provides an essential foundation for the study of global politics. History tells us not only who we are but who others are (and were) and helps explain our similarities and differences. Everything happens in a historical context. Contemporary events are constrained by the past but they are not determined by it. They reflect continuity with the past but can also break from it. Although history cannot be used to predict the future it can elucidate why relations between countries and peoples take the shape they do and provide clues to what they might be in the future. It can reveal the changing configurations of authority and power over time and the diversity of systems, institutions, actors, and ideas that have dominated global politics.

  • Part III - Global conflict and war

  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 245-246

  • Summary

    Woe to the statesman whose reasons for entering a war do not appear so plausible at its end as at its beginning.

    OTTO VON BISMARCK, GERMAN CHANCELLOR

    Part III examines the causes and consequences of the breakdown of international law and order. The character of war has changed dramatically in recent years not only in terms of technology and strategy but also with regard to the security dilemmas political leaders face when they try to protect their states and their citizens. What has not changed is the need to comprehend the sacrifices that are required as states strive to maintain their security. U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower once said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

    Chapter 9 focuses on international war, its causes, conduct, and consequences. The advent of the nuclear era changed the basic concepts of national security, brought new arms-control issues, and forged new security organizations. With the end of the Cold War, internal wars became more frequent and international terrorism erupted with new intensity. International conflicts since 9/11 have brought new security dilemmas that make security perhaps even more elusive. Issues such as weapons of mass destruction, alliance formation, and the ethics of war are all part of this discussion. Archibald MacLeish, the poet, honored the human cost of war in a poem called The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak where he expressed the wishes of the dying: “We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.”

  • Chapter 3 - Competing theories, methods, and intellectual debates about global politics

  • from Part I - Foundations of global politics
  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 56-86

  • Summary

    Before beginning a study of global politics there are important ground rules to be mastered. Scholars and practitioners possess different world views about the nature of politics. These views are based on diverse schools of thought, each of which has a cluster of ideas that guide their questions and explanations about how the world works and should work. This chapter will lead you through the sometimes daunting maze of competing theories and issues that dominate the study of global politics.

    There is a pertinent analogy in an old Indian story about four blind men who meet an elephant for the first time. They grope about, seeking to understand the beast. One grasps the trunk and concludes it is a snake. Another explores a leg and describes it as a tree. A third finds the tail and envisages it as a rope. Yet another of them touches the elephant's huge side and concludes it is a wall. None can imagine the whole animal. Similarly, scholars and practitioners disagree about which worldview best explains global politics – they describe various aspects of the whole in different ways. Although none has discovered the complete truth, all are communicating vital information about it.

  • Preface

  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp xv-xviii

  • Summary

    With the advent of modern mass communications, readers are bombarded with colorful images of the world's political events. They can ascertain quickly from international news the changing realities around them. However, to make sense of these ad hoc, seemingly disparate events, students need conceptual clarifications, interpretative tools, and a basic understanding of the world and how their own country fits into it. They need to understand global politics as a whole.

    Individuals today are no longer isolated but are active participants connected to the world through Internet and social networking technologies. The vocabulary has changed. Words such as Facebook, Twitter, Apps, and Cloud have meanings today that differ entirely from those less than a decade ago. In other words, at a low level students are already engaged, and to some extent knowledgeable, when they begin to study global politics. They need, however, to be encouraged to understand that making good choices requires being informed and reflective. To do this, they need to read, inquire, debate, and consider; not push facts and ideas into convenient boxes if they do not belong there. As well, the study of global politics is not simply moralizing. Political affairs certainly have an ethical dimension, but they are not solely about morality. And keeping thoughts clear and straightforward and avoiding jargon is vital. As one wag put it, “What did you have for breakfast – the upper part of a hog's hind leg with two ovals encased in a shell laid by a female bird?” Or bacon and eggs?

  • Chapter 9 - War

  • from Part III - Global conflict and war
  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 247-282

  • Summary

    Since no ultimate international authority is in place to enforce the will of the majority of the world's seven billion people, international politics is largely about the capacities and relative powers of the individual states that constitute the global system. Conflict between and among states emerges when interests are challenged and states respond by exercising power in bargaining situations or, occasionally, by threatening or engaging in military confrontation. The search for security is never ending. A writer of the Roman Empire, Vegetius, once recommended, si vis pacem para bellum, “if you desire peace, prepare for war.” In fact, it might be said that states prepare for conflict more than they do for peace and harmony. It is unfortunate that governments often misuse the concept of war for rhetorical purposes – as when they speak of a war on drugs, poverty, or terrorists – a practice that does little to illuminate the nature of war.

    This chapter builds on the concepts of old and new security dilemmas to discuss what happens when security fails. Violent state conflicts are frequent, and come in many types, but here we focus primarily on those between and among states. There are many questions to answer, perhaps the most basic of which are the following: What causes war? Can it be prevented or is it inevitable? We use the three levels of analysis discussed in Chapter 3 to determine whether they can advance our understanding of what causes war.

  • Chapter 15 - Global threats

  • from Part V - Global challenges and prospects
  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 470-509

  • Summary

    We have examined global interactions in terms of history, politics, economics, conflicts, and human rights. Beyond these vital topics, and arguably just as significant globally, are the environment we all share, patterns of population growth and aging, and diseases and health issues that know no borders. Clean air, water, and fertile land for growing food are basic requirements for healthy and vibrant life, but there is a growing mismatch between fulfilling these escalating needs of the world's burgeoning population and our methods of achieving economic progress.

    This chapter examines areas in which there are pressing threats to our shared globe: the environment, demographic change, and health. Our first topic, the environment, is extremely complex (Box 15.1). Climate change in particular has become a serious and controversial issue. Energy supply is critical for the global economy, but greenhouse gases emitted from fossil fuels and ozone-depleting chemicals contribute significantly to global warming and atmospheric degradation. We examine these perplexing environmental and energy issues as two sides of the same coin. We then consider alternative energy sources and other important environmental issues including water, agriculture, and biodiversity that also have global impacts.

    Demographic issues underlie and interact with environmental problems today, so our second topic is population trends. Uneven population growth and distribution combined with factors such as aging and international migration have significant implications for the global environment, economic progress, and security. The third and final section of the chapter focuses on world health issues – topics including child and maternal health, contagious diseases, HIV/AIDS, and pandemics. Increasingly, global health is being viewed as an economic development issue and also as a human rights and security issue.

  • Chapter 6 - Global governance in transition

  • from Part II - Institutions and actors in global politics
  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 153-187

  • Summary

    While there is no international authority that can impose laws on people around the globe and force them to be obedient, there is a new kind of global governance in flux. States accept some forms of international law, sign treaties, and even join various international organizations for their mutual benefit or to approve certain norms of behavior, yet none subjects itself to a higher set of decision makers or laws than those of its own domestic authorities. This is illustrated by the fact that international institutions cannot back up their rules, demands, or threats unless member states stand behind them. They do not have courts, police, prisons, or soldiers to enforce their rulings unless states supply them. Simply put, the global community lacks the sinews of sovereignty.

    International law and intergovernmental institutions are intermittently on the minds and in the emotions of informed citizens around the world, because the media carry information about them on a regular basis. Political leaders try to win the support of these international authorities in economic and security matters as they negotiate new treaties, participate in global institutions, and contribute to the evolution of new norms, rules, and practices. Yet the details about how such topics and events are handled or mishandled in international forums are neither covered well by news organizations nor followed closely by the public. Think of events such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military intervention in Libya, violent upheaval in Syria, the war-crime trials in The Hague, prisoners of war held in Guantánamo Bay, torture and humiliation in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, and genocide in Darfur and Rwanda. All of these topics raise issues about international laws concerning war, murder, and torture that are complex and only vaguely understood except by specialists.

  • Part IV - The politics of global economics

  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 365-366

  • Summary

    Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

    DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

    Part IV introduces the international aspects of economics, explaining its importance in the global sphere and relating it to questions of development, prosperity, poverty, and hunger.

    Chapter 12 outlines traditional and scholarly concepts and theories in the field and assesses the contemporary importance of liberal internationalism, economic nationalism, neo-Marxism, and the rise of state capitalism. The prospects for global economic governance are controversial, and they are evaluated in terms of the benefits and criticisms of organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. The current global economic downturn and issues of government debt and financial reform provide a sense of urgency to these global economic issues.

    Chapter 13 deals with global inequalities. It assesses winners and losers among states and peoples in the global economy and discusses issues of poverty and hunger, how they are being addressed by the UN Millennium Development Goals, and what progress is being made. On the basis of income earned per day, more than one of every four people on Earth lives in extreme poverty. The overall gap between rich and poor continues to grow, with 1.4 billion people now living below the global poverty line of US $1.25 per day. Forty-two million people are currently displaced by conflict or persecution.

  • Chapter 7 - Politics beyond the state I

  • from Part II - Institutions and actors in global politics
  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 188-210

  • Summary

    The two previous chapters focus on two major types of actors on the global stage – states and intergovernmental institutions. But these are not now, and never have been, the only players. There are others vying for attention – actors that are not confined by states and that often challenge states rather than support them. In this chapter, therefore, we move beyond states and their institutional creations, such as the United Nations and the European Union, to examine other significant nonstate participants in global politics.

    Around the world today people are mobilizing across state borders to bring about political and social change, pressuring governments to help change social norms. They are forging new connections and organizing new institutions with novel interests. These are transnational actors, sometimes known as transnational advocacy groups (TANs), and their activities across state borders are known as transnational relations. TANs try to exert new pressure on states to alter their interests and change social norms. To do this, they produce new knowledge about issues, frame issues to mobilize popular support, or provide social pressure for policy change. They facilitate cooperation among states by providing information about international agreements and monitoring compliance. Their effectiveness is influenced by domestic political institutions, and they can mobilize social pressures more effectively in democracies than in autocracies. Transnational actors include both legal and illegal institutions that are involved in many types of behavior. Who are they, and what do they do?

  • Chapter 1 - Introduction to global politics

  • from Part I - Foundations of global politics
  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 3-19

  • Summary

    The world faces many threats to human security and prosperity in the 21st century. Many of them are from people; others are products of the economic and physical environment. Recently, the U.S. Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism produced a slim, powerful volume on future world risks. It concluded that we know the threats we face, we know that our margin of safety is shrinking, and we also know what must be done to counter the risks. With similar concern, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, declared that rising temperatures due to climate change would “increase pressure on water, food, and land; reverse years of development gains; exacerbate poverty; destabilize fragile states; and topple governments.”

    This book describes and explains the factors behind these and other global issues and invites readers to consider whether the conclusions and warnings of the U.S. president's advisors and the leader of the world organization were well founded. It challenges readers to study, understand, and evaluate power and responsibility in global politics. The most serious threats today include the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, worldwide terrorist networks, the tenuous end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, armed conflict in the Middle East and North and Central Africa, world financial crises, global climate change, global reliance on oil, global poverty, global infectious diseases, and the rising power of hostile actors on the world stage. These and other issues are, or should be, of deep concern to everyone in all parts of our evermore connected world.

  • Part I - Foundations of global politics

  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 1-2

  • Summary

    We cannot always build the future for our youth but we can build our youth for the future.

    FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, 32ND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

    The three chapters that comprise Part I of this book outline important fundamentals for the study of contemporary global politics. They take a pragmatic approach, highlighting the complexities of the subject and recognizing the contributions of historians and modern theorists. They show the need for a question-driven approach by stressing the significance of history and theory to an understanding of how our disordered world works.

    Chapter 1 discusses three significant topics that profoundly influence the patterns of world politics today: the perpetual quest for security, the march of globalization, and the complex role of states and identities. Together they help us understand the continuities and changes in global politics.

    Chapter 2 shows that the study of global politics requires an understanding of history that is not limited to Europe and North America. It traces the rise and fall of the world’s extended empires and great powers from the earliest recorded history to the end of the Cold War. For many centuries it was not clear whether Asia, Europe, or the Middle East would dominate the world. The rise of the modern state and the economic progress that followed the industrial revolution tipped the scale in favor of Europe and, later, the United States. The chapter traces the historical patterns of interaction of the world’s great powers over time, concluding with the six areas that dominate global politics today: the United States, China, Japan, India, Russia, and the European Union. In Part II we focus on these great powers today and ask whether the balance of power is about to shift again.

  • Part II - Institutions and actors in global politics

  • Robert J. Jackson, University of Redlands, California
  • Book:
    Global Politics in the 21st Century
    Published online:
    01 February 2019
    Print publication:
    16 September 2013, pp 87-88

  • Summary

    Everyone is entitled to his own opinion. He is not entitled to his own facts.

    DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN, U.S. SENATOR

    The five chapters of Part II outline the role and the relative powers of states, their leaders, and their challengers in international affairs, providing an overview of the numerous actors in global politics.

    The first two chapters describe political authority and global power, placing the six major powers – the United States, China, Russia, India, Japan, and the European Union – in the context of contemporary international debates and controversies. Chapter 4 assesses all states and their leaders in terms of their power, capabilities, and decision-making processes. Chapter 5 maps the shifting distribution of state power and influence in the modern world, particularly among the six major powers. Chapters 4 and 5 both confront the issues of comparative advantage and international action.

    Chapter 6 focuses on important aspects of global governance in our interdependent but disordered world – the growth and role of international law and supranational courts, institutions such as the United Nations and the European Union, and functions such as peacekeeping and peace enforcement. Together with other institutions such as the International Criminal Court, these institutions create a landscape of creeping global governance that affects state sovereignty and people everywhere. Realists may downplay the importance of such institutions, and liberals may conclude that these institutions are desirable but not perfect, but both recognize them as increasingly significant and resilient.

  • Chapter 8 - Teaching values

  • from Part 2 - Processes
  • John Buchanan, University of Technology, Sydney
  • Book:
    History, Geography and Civics
    Published online:
    12 August 2019
    Print publication:
    09 September 2013, pp 130-148

  • Summary

    We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

    (Martin Luther King Jr, cited in ABCNews, 2013)

    Consciously, we teach what we know; unconsciously, we teach who we are.

    (Hamachek, 1999, p. 209)

    Learning outcomes

    This chapter aims to contribute to your ability to:

  • understand the nature of values (study of which is known as axiology, from the Greek axios meaning ‘worthy’)

  • become familiar with the role and impacts of values on (social and environmental) teaching and learning

  • develop awareness of opportunities for including values education in your teaching

  • develop knowledge and understanding of some of the larger religious traditions, and ways of teaching about them.

    • Introduction

    This chapter is placed under the topic of processes because the study of values should pervade and permeate all of your teaching. The chapter explores how the heart might be drawn into our studies of society and environment, and at how our hearts might metaphorically respond. As with Civics and Citizenship Education in particular, values education is cognitive, affective and conative (or ‘volitional’; Kriewaldt & Taylor, 2012, p. 304)) in nature. Kriewaldt and Taylor add that values education is ‘one of the most complex and ambiguous aspects of teaching’. A discussion of the federal government’s Northern Territory Intervention, or of funding for non-government schools, for example, might garner vastly different and passionately held views. If you are teaching an issue that you hold dear, it may be helpful to stand back, examine and decode the things that make you so passionate about it.

Page 1598 of 1926