The politics of agency , David Hayes

david hayes — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 02:20:37 +0000

Fred Halliday, the scholar of international relations now based at IBEI, the Barcelona Institute of International Studies, has since 2004 written almost seventy columns for openDemocracy that present compendious and richly detailed insight into globalpolitics and conflicts. His latest article addresses what he regards as an under-recognised theme, one that he argues has current relevance in the context of the Georgia-Russia war: the autonomy of "local agents",including small states often regarded as mere outposts or proxies of larger powers, in launching ill-starred adventures that can havecatastrophic effects.

In characteristic fashion Fred Halliday invokes a range of historicaland international experiences to build his case - from Cyprus to Korea, Israel/Palestine to Cuba, Iraq to the author's native Ireland. In arguing that to make sense of political events and conflicts around the world there is a need to focus on the agency of more than empires, hegemons, and behemoths, Fred Halliday also presents a challenge:

"There is still a reluctance among many analysts of international relations to believe that local and / or 'small' actors in a political situation - in this case the Georgian leadership - have their own agency, freedom of manoeuvre, and responsibility (a flaw that is shared by that particular kind of American - and of course 'anti-American' - leftist for whom everything that happens in the world must by definition be the United States's responsibility: an understudied genre of vulgar imperialism)."

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The politics of agency , David Hayes