Reconsiderations
Conditionality, Asymmetry, and Resistance: The European Union’s Development Policy in Sudan
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Maria Angeles Alaminos Hervas
Relations between the European Union and developing countries underwent profound changes in the 1990s, when political criteria for assistance were introduced linked to cooperation policies, reflecting a set of normative motivations. Changes and clauses of political conditionality were reinforced from 2001 to the mid-2000s. They were shaped by the increasing influence of security policies in the area of development policy. This brought clear problems of consistency deriving from conditionalities reflecting donor states’ interests, as well as other problems of asymmetry in the North-South relations. Sudan was the first country where the EU put into practice its new political orientation, when it reacted to the coup d’état of 1989 and to violations of human rights in the context of the Second Sudanese Civil War. In this paper we analyse how Sudan served as the testing ground for the new orientation of European policies during the decade of the 1990s and the new millennium (namely, the politisation and securitisation of aid), but equally showed the way the EU adapted to a complex conflict scenario and to the lack of interest and cooperation on the part of elites belonging to the Sudanese government.
Interrogating Euro-centrism in International Relations: Nehru and a Critique and Perspective from Global South
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Md Aftab Alam
International Relations (IR) is usually considered a theoretical contribution of the Global North. However, there are contributions in the field of IR in Global South as well. The world has diverse knowledge systems and many ways of understanding the self and realities around. It is in this background that this paper argues that we have our own resources to understand and theorise IR as a discipline in the Global South and it’s time we explore them. The South needs to critically engage with available western knowledge and unravel the possibility of creating alternative IR knowledge and perspectives. The paper explores some alternative methods to understand IR.For example, there is a lack of serious and critical engagement with Nehru’s contribution in IR. It reflects how non-Western perspectives have been marginalized. Nehru’s contribution needs to be revisited and analysed. His worldview represented idealism predominantly, yet realism can also be observed. Nehru linked the domains of policy making as well as intellectual analyses and assessment in IR. This paper explores some of these issues. In constructing a conceptual framework of IR, Nehru played a significant role in India’s foreign policy. His theoretical formulations included Panchsheel, Non-Alignment, colonialism and racism. He differed with the existing dominant IR paradigm, avoided the power blocs, advocated One World, and founded NAM. Critical of power politics, he advocated collective security arrangements and strong international institutions.This study examines how Nehru attempted to democratise IR and has potential of humanizing IR. It explores how a critical rethinking of Nehru’s ideas can help in creating alternative imaginations of IR. The intellectual contributions of Indian IR to Global IR are foregrounded in this disciplinary examination while recognizing its multiple and diverse foundations.
Forgotten Agents of Globalization: Consuls and the Making of the Global Political Economy (1776-1848)
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Simeon Simeonov
Consulates, according to historian Ferry de Goey, are the chief institutions of global capitalism, yet they are absent from current discussions of globalization. This lacuna has generated many misperceptions about the global flows of people, capital, institutions, and ideas. The neglect of consuls in public discourse has effectively “nationalized” debates about immigration control and economic policy. By bringing consuls back in, by looking at nation-states from the perspective of consular offices, and by shedding more light on the forgotten history of consular institutions, this paper makes several important interventions in current debates on globalization. Specifically, I address two important questions: What are the dangers of leaving consulates outside contemporary discussions of globalization? And how can extra-territorial institutions help us rethink (and re-imagine) national debates about globalization? I argue that an emphasis on consulates – rather than, for example, entrepreneurs or national governments – suggests a different narrative of globalization. By analyzing evidence from American, French, British, and Spanish consulates at the turn of the nineteenth century – the birth of the modern world – I argue that globalization was an institutional process shaped by peripheral Atlantic bureaucrats. I stress that such things as passports, customs declarations, and consular certificates provided radically new ways of conceptualizing an emerging global political economy of capitalism. They also testified to the global reach of the nation-state. Clashes between nation-states about means of identification, about discriminatory tariffs, and about the surveillance of foreign migrants, unleashed a series of military confrontations that shaped the modern international system.
