The BRICS in the Contemporary Global Order: Objectives, Capabilities, and Limitations

For the first time in the history of mankind several powers emerge simultaneously in different latitudes and can interact intensively. The Contemporary Global Order has presented significant changes among which highlight the absolute and relative decline of American power, and the emergence of new actors who have greater agency power in their international relations. One of these actors is the so-called BRICS that brings together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. For this reason the aim of this investigation is to analyzing the effective and potential power of the BRICS in the Contemporary Global Order. The methodology is it is situated inside the analytical eclecticism which is characterized by explaining a certain phenomenon without using a block of explanations sustained in a single tradition, but it takes and re-means the elements that it considers most pertinent for the case study. The article states that the BRICS do not claim or have the capacity to become hegemons. The objectives and capabilities of the BRICS have been especially notable in terms of international political economy, especially in the financial architecture, where China has its greatest power. The BRICS can promote an alternative to the existing game rules in the international system and promote a more plural world. They have the capacity to reform and build international economic institutions that allow a fairer distribution of material resources. They can curb unilateral global power interventions in regional affairs, framing interventions for humanitarian causes within multilateralism and the Responsibility to Protect. In terms of democracy and human rights, they will not make any contribution since their main actors, such as China and Russia, are examples of disrespect for these values.

The Schools of Thought Problem in International Relations

Many scholars are dissatisfied with the tendency of research and teaching in the field of international relations to be framed as clashes among competing schools of thought. I examine two prominent options for reform that relate to the schools and offer one element of an alternative path forward. The first option, which I term analytical singularism, calls for the abandonment of the IR schools and their replacement with a single, uniform framework for the study of international relations. By virtue of a constricted ontology and partialist epistemology, this option is plagued by omitted variable bias and underspecified modeling of important international processes. The second option, analytical eclecticism, suggests that improved IR studies might emerge from the consideration of interactions between causal factors that are drawn from the different IR schools of thought. Analytical eclecticism holds promise but faces serious challenges arising from its preference for qualitative methods and context-specific epistemology. I then outline a process of collaborative challenges between adherents of the different IR schools as one way by which we might advance research in international relations.

Beyond metatheory?

Metatheory is out of fashion. If theory has a purpose, we are told, that purpose is the generation of practically relevant knowledge. Metatheoretical inquiry and debate contribute little to such knowledge and are best bracketed, left aside for the philosophers. This article challenges this all-too-common line of reasoning. First, one can bracket metatheoretical inquiry, but this does not free one’s work, theoretical or otherwise, of metatheoretical assumptions. Second, our metatheoretical assumptions affect the kind of practically relevant knowledge we can produce. If our goal is the generation of such knowledge, understanding how our metatheoretical assumptions enable or constrain this objective is essential. Today, the most sustained articulation of the ‘bracket metatheory thesis’ is provided by analytical eclecticists, who call on the field to leave behind metatheoretical debate, concentrate on concrete puzzles and problematics, and draw selectively on insights from diverse research traditions to fashion middle-range theoretical explanations. Yet by forgoing metatheoretical reflection, analytical eclecticists fail to see how their project is deeply structured by epistemological and ontological assumptions, making it an exclusively empirical-theoretic project with distinctive ontological content. This metatheoretical framing significantly impedes the kind of practically relevant knowledge eclecticist research can generate. Practical knowledge, as both Aristotle and Kant understood, is knowledge that can address basic questions of political action — how should I, we, or they act? Empirical-theoretic insights alone cannot provide such knowledge; it has to be integrated with normative forms of reasoning. As presently conceived, however, analytical eclecticism cannot accommodate such reasoning. If the generation of practical knowledge is one of the field’s ambitions, greater metatheoretical reflection and a more expansive and ambitious form of eclecticism are required.

Decolonizing Educational and Social Development Platforms in Africa

This essay aims to engage, mainly from theoretical perspectives with analytical eclecticism, a historical and contemporary analysis of African educational and social developmental contexts. It relays the real colonial connections that are still attached to this context. The essay relates the historical location as well as the socio-cultural embeddedness of the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which may have indirectly facilitated the initial entry of colonialism. It critically locates the thick philosophical and epistemological problematics that have previously and again, post-factually limited the foundational reconstructions, and by extension, the relevance of Africa’s learning and related possibilities for achieving social well-being. At the end, the essay calls for the urgent decolonization of Africa’s philosophies and epistemologies of education, so that learning contexts can aid the now non-delinkable desires, indeed, needs for social development.

Explaining Japanese Antimilitarism: Normative and Realist Constraints on Japan's Security Policy

Since the late 1990s, Japan has sent increasing numbers of its military forces overseas. It has also assumed a more active military role in the U.S.-Japan alliance. Neither conventional constructivist nor realist approaches in international relations theory can adequately explain these changes or, more generally, changes in Japan's security policy since the end of World War II. Instead, Japan's postwar security policy has been driven by the country's powerful antimilitarism, which reflects the following normative and realist factors: pacifism, antitraditionalism, and fear of entrapment. An understanding of the influence of these three factors makes it possible to explain both Japan's past reluctance to play a military role overseas and its increasing activism over the last decade. Four case studies—the revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in 1960, the anti–Vietnam War period, increases in U.S.-Japan military cooperation during détente, and actions taken during the administration of Junichiro Koizumi to enhance Japan's security profile—illustrate the role of antimilitarism in Japan's security policy. Only through a theoretical approach based on analytical eclecticism—a research strategy that considers factors from different paradigms—can scholars explain specific puzzles in international politics.