Developing States in International Politics

In the last decade the states of the developing world have continued a process of adjustment to a new context in international politics. Responses to the end of the Cold War were overtaken by further developments such as the financial crises of the late 1990s and a turn towards aggressive US unilateralism epitomised in the ‘war on terrorism'. This section will give an account of this process of transition while also identifying continuity and endogenous determinants of international politics within individual developing states. Panels will treat theoretical issues, international institutions and the trajectories of individual developing states. The section will be an international gathering of scholars from a range of ECPR member institutions. The terms of reference allow contributions from Political scientists working in the sub-disciplines of comparative politics, development studies, area studies and international relations. The following questions will set the scholarly agenda: What theoretical innovations would enable us to get beyond the traditional neglect of development in international relations? How have new policy devices employed by the World Bank, IMF and the WTO contributed to a new international politics of development? How have the initiatives of the institutions claiming to govern the international economy been incorporated or resisted by states of the developing world? How has the process of globalisation, in both its discursive and material forms, encouraged developing states to re-orient their foreign policies? How have regional organisations and groupings like the G-21 enabled developing states to defend their autonomy in the international arena? To what extent have the regimes of individual states been able to reshape policy? How do local ideologies shape the international activities of developing states? Are developing states being subsumed in new forms of empire? How do theories of empire transform conceptions of development?