The epistemologies of international interventions are receiving increased attention. An emerging literature on knowledge production in peace- and statebuilding has questioned any given authority of western epistemologies in conflict contexts. However, this article argues that by not interrogating into the conditions of producing representations, the literature paradoxically leaves interveners’ representations and knowledge forms intact. The article develops a conceptual framework for a reflexive analysis of how phenomena in conflict contexts are made known and representable. The framework’s value is illustrated in an analysis of the epistemic practices and their conditions of possibility that from 1995 to 2015 produced the ‘informal economy’ as interventionary object in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The multifaceted work of production included international standard-setting procedures, survey distributions and a development of calculative techniques. Conditioned by this work, various ‘informalities’ were produced as interventionary object, with distinct stakes brought into the respective object through the acts of producing it.
The ‘rise of China’ ranks among the most widely addressed contemporary topics in the field of International Relations. The majority of studies focuses on questions of ‘power shifts’ from West to East—in particular from the US to China—commonly premised on assessments of China’s rapid economic growth. However, it is rarely taken into consideration that the last comparable debate was conducted only a few decades ago, when Japan was proclaimed the new ‘Number One’. The neglect is even more remarkable given the striking similarities in the US discourses on first Japan and then China as not only an ‘unfair economic player’, but also a ‘threat’ to US global preeminence. In turn, the similarities seem puzzling given the differences in the bilateral relationship between the US and Japan in the past, and the US and China more recently. This article analyses parallels in these discourses by taking a view that goes beyond the economy as material capabilities and interests common in research on ‘rising powers’. Instead, focusing on the role of identity, it contends that the similarities in articulating Japan and China as threats stem from them not adhering to the US model of liberal democratic capitalism, while being economically successful on their own terms.
This article seeks to bridge the gap between the literature on international organisations (IO) and the field of crisis management (CM) by focusing on two themes: how crisis conditions lead organisations to centralise decision-making and how this subsequently affects an international organisation’s autonomy. We do this based on two dimensions inspired by the CM literature, that is, the degree of the perceived time pressure and the precrisis legal institutional framework. The plausibility of the analytical framework is assessed on the basis of three cases: the WHO’s dealing with the SARS crisis; the European Commission’s dealing with the Mad Cow Disease crisis; and the UN’s handling of the humanitarian crisis in the Great Lakes region. The results show that the perceived time pressure affected IO autonomy in so far as higher time pressure that rendered IO autonomy stronger, whereas with regard to the institutional framework no stringent pattern could be seen. Moreover, based on our findings, we propose that IO autonomy in crisis situations also depends on the framing of an issue in terms on impartiality, on the extent to which the IO in question is subject to politicisation, as well as on the degree to which it possesses specific technical expertise.