In this paper, I assume that global intergovernmental organizations (GIGOs) function as "enablers" of interstate liberal politics by way of their multilateral institutional frameworks. To support this view, I recall and adapt the classical concept of "polyarchy," coined in the early 1950s by...

Research on Chinese International Relations (IR) theory has produced a variety of discourses, including post-positivist analyses, contributions by area specialists and China watchers, and articles by Chinese IR scholars. These strands, however, hardly overlap or communicate with each other. To...

With the beginning of the post‐Maoist era, the focus of Chinese foreign policy shifted from ideology and revolution to pragmatism and reform. Chinese scholars in the field of International Relations (IR) are now encouraged to develop abstract scientific analyses of China's international...

The effects of organized labor on regime change in developing countries are not clear‐cut. Optimists argue that union agitation is conducive to both democratic transition and consolidation processes. Pessimists hold that unions will support any regime that is conducive to their demands....

Um die Gestalt und die Funktionsweise politischer Herrschaftssysteme zu verstehen und zu erklären, ist es notwendig, deren informelle Elemente - die neben formalen Elementen existieren und mit diesen interagieren - in den Blick zu nehmen. In der Tat haben sich die Politikwissenschaft und die...

This paper starts from the assumption that geostrategic and security interests alone are not sufficient to explain China's foreign policy choices. It argues that ideas about what China's role as an actor in the increasingly globalized international system should be, and about world order in...

The politics of contestation on the part of secondary regional powers such as Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela towards Brazil as the regional leader oscillate between competition and cooperation, inasmuch as the South American region has one regional power and is a zone of negative peace...

With China's emergence as a global economic and political power, it is commonly assumed that its leadership's influence in international politics has increased considerably. However, systematic studies of China's impact on the foreign policy behavior of other states are rare and generally...

This paper provides an overview of the landscape of Chinese foreign policy think tanks, classifies them according to the activities they pursue, and offers some explanations as to how they have developed their particular characteristics - both at the level of individual institutes as well as in...