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According to a proposal by Robert Gilpin, international political economy, in the early stages of development referred to as ‘political economy of international relations’, is a recognised subdiscipline of international relations. It emerged in the early 1970s with the growing need for an integrated approach to political and economic phenomena and processes. It enjoys the status of a subdiscipline because of its specified scope of research, its methodological and theoretical identity as well as the high degree of institutionalisation in the form of associations and research groups, sections and committees, journals dedicated to this issue alone and highly developed didactics under programmes of education in international relations.
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The article aims to analyse the monetary power of the PRC in terms of influence and autonomy in international relations. The object of the analysis is the in ternationalization of the yuan. The article attempts to answer the following questions: do the Chinese authorities keep a consistent policy of liberalization in order to increase the internationalization of the RMB? And if so, did they abandon their policy in the years 2015–2016? The author also analyses how the Chinese authorities are trying to reconcile the internationalization of the currency with maintaining control over capital account, the financial markets and the exchange rate, which is defined in the article as ‘the Chinese method of currency internationalization’.
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The paper considers the problem of the usefulness of the geoeconomic approach in the studies of Russian foreign policy. It also draws attention to the specific features of Russian geoeconomics, which is an interesting research approach due to the attempt to combine elements of economics and political science. As for Russian foreign policy, the explanatory ability of geoeconomics arises from the fact that in the Russian version it has strong ties with geopolitics, which is still very popular in Russia. It is also due to the important role of the Russian state in many areas of social life and above all in the economy. The statist model of economy and the centralization of the Russian state make it somehow predestined to implement the rules of geoeconomics.
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The article presents the reasons why the United States and the European Union maintain sanctions against Russia in light of the theory of constructivism. The justification of the need for these sanctions is based to a large extent on Western societies’ perception of Russia as a non-democratic country and a potential aggressor. In this context foreign policy priorities are developed, based on the national interest constructed in the individual countries. But the Russian society is also developing an opinion of the West’s actions on the basis of historical experience, to a large extent sharing their government’s belief that the countries imposing sanctions on Russia seek to weaken it, especially in terms of its position in the international arena. The constructivist perspective adopted here makes it possible to take into account, apart from the determinants of international politics and economic motives, the opinion of societies, which is very important for the construction of nationalinterest and for continuing the adopted principles. This makes it also possible to answer the research questions: why do both the United States and the European Union maintain and from time to time also increase the sanctions against Russia despite the economic and political losses it entails for them? Why do governments believe that this is in their national interest, and why is this belief shared in many countries by a large part of public opinion?
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Although indigenous peoples are an important and large group of citizens in Latin America, the region seemed to be neglecting them for many decades. This has changed recently, thanks to both internal and external factors. The agenda for indigenous peoples found its place also in Latin American regional organizations. The paper focuses on two of them: the Andean Community (CAN) and the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). The aim of the research is to compare their policies on indigenous peoples by answering the following research questions: 1) What share of the population of the member countries of CAN and Mercosur do autochthonous inhabitants constitute?; 2) What actions for indigenous peoples were undertaken in the member countries of CAN and Mercosur?; 3) Since when and to what extend have CAN and Mercosur been working on the agenda for indigenous peoples?; 4) Which of the two organizations is more active in the abovementioned field and what are the probable causes of the differences in their engagement? The research uses a comparative approach, and it is mainly based on critical analysis of primary and secondary sources.
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The article addresses the issue of operational code in foreign policy studies, from the point of view of an individual decision-maker. It presents the conceptualisation of operational code as an instrument of foreign policy analysis, its evolution and application in studies of the decision-making process. By identifying the convictions that constitute the operation code of political leaders, including through the implementation of computer software, we could explain the choices and decisions that individuals take in the process of decision-making in foreign policy. The article includes a case study in which operation code has been used as an instrument to establish the system of convictions of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, which determined his decisions taken with regard to the Iraq War in 2003.
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Utilitarianism had big influence on the consolidation of the principles of economic thought – especially the development of its axiomatic position: the idea of the nature of man as a politically and economically free, rational and egoistic individual; a product of European philosophy and history: the Enlightenment, positi vism, utilitarianism, the French Revolution or British empiricism and liberalism. The adoption of the concept of ‘homo oeconomicus’ was the starting point for reflection on economics for the classical school, for the neoclassical school, and to this dayit keeps shaping the understanding of economic phenomena. The classical fathers of utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Francis Edgeworth, were all eminent economists. Those principles, typical of the ‘Western’ civilisation, became the cornerstone of the newly forming principles of political economy. The extent to which the principles of utilitarianism interfered with the development of economics as a science determined the direction of this development, at the same time providing a methodological and terminological instrument explicating the nature and mechanics of economic phenomena. The utilitarian doctrine introduced the notion of happiness into economics, defined in this discipline as utility – the foundation of the marginal revolution; it is considered the source of welfare economics and the distribution theory; it directly shaped the concepts of state and law in economics, it developed the theory of international trade, and its consequentialism provides a direct link between economic actions and moral rules. Given all the above, utilitarianism is a very handy instrument for understanding and explaining economic phenomena, especially in the sphere of culture, which gave rise to it and where it developed. It allows for a fuller examination of the international reality in the sphere of trade, finance or the flow of the factors of production.
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This article focuses on the functioning of OPEC, which was the first attempt at unification of oil extraction and at imposing global control on it. Taking ad - vantage of the considerable demand for energy resources, it was able to exert considerable pressure on the market and even to use the ‘black gold’ as an instrument in the economic struggle faced with unfavourable policy of foreign countries.It seems, however, that the trends in world economy and the constantly improving and more consciously conducted energy policy of importing countries have contributed to the marginalisation of OPEC, which has proven unable to regulate the current excess oil supply crisis on its own. Additionally, the emergence of new players in the market, especially the United States, contributed to the end of ‘oil prosperity’ and transformation of the producer market into a consumer market, where prices are shaped by demand and not as it used to be – by supply. The author further describes the emergence of the organisation in order to present the evolution that took place over almost six decades.
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The Transatlantic Alliance has played a key role in establishing a world order based on the principles of integrated markets and the free flows of people, goods and money. Now, the long movement towards market liberalisation has stopped, borders are being fortified, national sentiments are on the rise, and globalisation is commonly contested in the political debate in both Europe and the United States. The position of the transatlantic actors was historically founded on the successful implementation of the global framework, so the question arises whether the retreatfrom globalisation will end their pre-eminence in global affairs. This article sheds light on the recent political and social changes in Europe and in the United States, which have been wavering between partnership and rivalry as they are confronted with global issues beyond their bilateral agendas.
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Recent tendencies in the interpretation of International Humanitarian Law applied in non-international armed conflicts show that we are witnessing a return to the concept of a total war, according to which attacking any person and any object that supports the war effort of an enemy is legally justified. The article first discusses the problem of classification of armed conflicts, then it addresses the problem of human targets and subsequently of object targets. In conclusion, apart from a summary of argumentation, there are suggestions of changes in the law of targeting in order to guarantee effective protection of civilian population.
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Throughout history, war has always caused human and material losses. The latter includes some valuable cultural goods destroyed or plundered by the fighting parties. Over the years, despite the existence of a legal basis and the identification of the perpetrators, the issue of punishing those guilty of such offenses was either ignored or considered secondary in both national and international jurisprudence. Judgements concerning those responsible for human death were predominant. A major change of approach was brought by the war in the former Yugoslavia. The Court created after the war was the first to sentence the offenders guilty of the destruction of cultural property. After the war in Mali, in turn, the International Criminal Court became active in this respect by convicting the person responsible for similar acts in that country.
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Coups d’etat are highly complicated processes with noticeable tendency to recurrence. The paper purpose is to verify „coup contagion” theory, „coup trap” theory and „coup cascade” theory in perspective of the author’s quantitative arrangements concerning the period 1946-2017. Moreover author takes an attempt to answer the question about real correlations of a coup d’etat appearance and it’s recurrence. As a result of the analysis it has been confirmed, that in specific historical circumstances and social and political conditions, coups may cause the „coup trap”, to become a source of „contagion” for regional neighborhood, and even global dimension. Worth of attention is also „cascade coup” phenomenon, where in short term – maximally 3 years between last events – occurs serial coups d’etat.
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