Kharkevich Maxim

“Social Caging” as Condition of Peace in World Politics

The article proves that the structural reasons for the decrease/ increase in armed violence at the societal and international levels are the same. Researchers usually examine conflicts at these levels separately, so there is no general explanation for the change in their dynamics. The article attempts to offer such an explanation based on two interconnected approaches — international historical sociology and the English School of International Relations Theory. The essence of the explanation is the effect of “social caging” described by Michael Mann. Due to the mechanism of social learning, the pres- ence of restrictions that impede exit from social interaction leads to a gradual decrease in violence and increase in cooperation between actors. At the level of society, the functions of the “cage” are performed by the state, at the level of states — by the global capitalist system (in the economic sphere) and the international society (in the political sphere).

Having analyzed the explanatory power of the concept of “social caging” on historical examples, the author shows that it fully explains dynamics of civil conflicts: the stronger the state, the lower the likelihood of their occurrence. In the case of interstate relations, the situation is more complicated, because the international society exists at two levels — global and regional. The effect of the global international society is most profound for the relations between the great powers. The behavior of other states is regulated by “social cages” that take shape within individual regional security complexes. As a result, the downward trend in the number of military clashes is most pronounced between the great powers. At the regional level, this trend applies only to centralized security complexes, while standard security complexes lack in unambiguous trends in the dynamics of interstate conflicts.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2020-96-1-28-49

Pages: 28-49

Regional Governance: Experience of Constructing Multi-Level Model of Comparative Regionalism

The article presents a model for comparative study of international political regions, which assumes a constitutive dependence of the type of regionalism on the type of statehood. The model is based on the characteristics of micro-regional dynamics, namely, the specifics of the regionalization of states of pre-modernity, modernity and post-modernity. Using Marxist interpretation of state as a relationship between social classes and interest groups allowed the author to combine micro, meso and macro levels of analysis within a single comparative matrix. According to his conclusion, states of pre-modernity, modernity and post-modernity are formed due to the evolution of social relations at the micro level, and their regionalization leads to the formation of a system of regional governance of the appropriate type. This model offers a more important heuristic value than the theory of “new regionalism”, because, unlike the latter, it explains both non-European and European versions of regionalism.

DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2017-85-2-129-145