Straus Fellow
Academic Year 2009-2010
Andrew Hurrell
Andrew Hurrell is Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and a Fellow of Balliol College. His research covers theories of international relations, with particular reference to international law and institutions; global and regional governance; and the history of thought on international relations. He also has a long-standing interest in Latin America and in the role of developing countries in international society. Publications include: On Global Order: Power, Values and the Constitution of International Society (2007); Inequality, Globalization and World Politics (1999, co-edited with Ngaire Woods); and Order and Justice in International Relations (2003, co-edited with Rosemary Foot and John Gaddis).
Research Project
Emerging Powers, Global Order and Global Justice
My research focuses on emerging powers and global governance. This follows directly from my 2007 book On Global Order: If this is how global governance has evolved, what have been the roles, positions and policies of emerging powers? How far has their behavior been in line with the expectations of either institutional or systemic liberalism of the 1990s? How, if at all, is their position today different from that of rising or revisionist powers in early periods? The project focuses on two countries, Brazil and India, and three regimes (WTO, nuclear proliferation, and climate change).
The research addresses three central questions. First, to what extent have these countries looked to international institutions as potential ‘pathways to power’? Second, what have been the strategies that they have employed within institutions to achieve their preferred outcomes – inter-state bargaining coalitions; negotiating techniques; transnational coalitions with NGOs; issue framing (especially use of arguments relating to both substantive and procedural justice); and insider activism (exploiting specific procedures within institutions, especially informal norms and grouping). And third, what explains the choice of particular strategies: domestic interest group pressure; external structural constraints and incentives; or institutional adaptation (both instrumental learning and the possibility of deeper enmeshment and socialization)?
During my year at the Straus Institute I plan to take forward this agenda through a broader historical examination of the processes by which Western ideas of international order and global governance have been transposed into different national and regional contexts and of the mutual constitution of ideas and understandings that have resulted from that interaction. The research will examine and evaluate the sorts of international society norms and global governance practices that have been, or might be, pressed both by emerging powers and by other social forces -- as the balance of global power becomes more open, as the structure and stability of global capitalism become once more matters of serious political contestation, and as all states and societies are forced to confront shared global problems that will increase the demand for new forms of governance and cooperation.
