Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1,500 titles.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
This chapter argues that the international order shows tangible signs that it is moving towards the return to bloc politics with the strengthening of a Western bloc and the potential rise of an Eastern bloc. While the Western bloc is a cohesive yet small entity, which has realized since the war in Ukraine that much of the world is unpersuaded by its narrative, the ‘political East’ could potentially represent a greater number of people, but it is unlikely to achieve a level of political cohesion similar to the one seen in the transatlantic region in the post-Second World War era. Part of the issue, it is argued, is the lack of a recognized leader in Asia and the fact that China is not keen to make formal alliances. Such a scenario dangerously reinforces a security dilemma at a time when the US and China appear to be developing irreconcilable narratives about world politics.
The purpose of this chapter is to unpack the geopolitical impact of interdependence on US–China relations and explore how this is the source of both tensions and deterrence. Ultimately, this demonstrates that interdependence is not a harmonious relationship but is characterized by relations of power. Furthermore, the first part of the chapter shows that interdependence between the US and China is uneven, to the extent that in some areas the US leads while in others China does.
Considering this situation, the chapter puts forward the argument that the idea of limiting interdependence or even pursuing decoupling between the US and China has been, to varying degrees and in different ways, one possible option pursued by both governments throughout the 2010s. This is particularly apparent in the case of the US, but also, more tacitly, with China.
This book has sought to make sense of the contemporary relationship between the US and China. While this has become a hot topic discussed in many fora by an increasing number of pundits, it continues to be a complex phenomenon in international politics, in as far as this relationship is characterized by deep economic interdependence and major security concerns. Before Trump was elected president of the US in 2016, however, the academic debate on US–China relations was not as lively as it is today. There has been an acceleration of production as the two countries are entering a security dilemma whose influence will be a challenge to escape; in parallel to this, many pundits have been deploying the phrase New Cold War as they see many similarities with the confrontation that involved the West and the East between 1947 and 1991. Therefore, this book has attempted to both disentangle the crux of the problem of US–China relations and, at the same time, to contribute to the most recent academic discussions on the topic. With the majority of the debate leading to a polarization between those who see the concept of a New Cold War accurately reflecting US–China relations and those who find it methodologically flawed, and with a group of middle-ground contributions which remain undeveloped, this book has sought to contribute to the latter from a different perspective. Firstly, contrary to any other contribution, it provided a thorough conceptual analysis of the Cold War. Secondly, it intentionally avoided a comparative analysis between the Cold War and the New Cold War, acknowledging that this would involve too many important differences and similarities to be of any rigorous value.
This chapter builds on a definition of Cold War to explore International Relations theory, in search of an approach that could make sense of the coexistence of both competition and cooperation or restraint in great power relations.
In particular, this chapter will seek to understand how the coexistence between competition and cooperation, but also restraint, has been taken into account in International Relations scholarship. In this regard, this chapter argues that there does not appear to be, in International Relations theory, an approach that is especially focused on explaining the coexistence of competition and cooperation, or competition and restraint, or even conflict and peace. Here, the book seeks to close the gap by investigating what realism and liberalism have to say about this aspect of international politics. As an alternative, the chapter articulates the concept of an economy–security conundrum.
Furthermore, the chapter includes a review of the literature of debates on US–China relations, outlining competing schools of thought on the New Cold War.
This chapter problematizes the phrase ‘Cold War’ to show that this is not just a monolith, that is, a space- and time-specific concept. Rather, it can be deconstructed in several ways to show that if it is a more malleable term than it seems, then there is an academic rationale (and perhaps even a right) to employ it in different contexts as this book does. By doing so, this chapter confirms that, in the past, scholars and policy makers might have thought about the Cold War in too black-and-white terms. In conjunction with the rest of the book, this chapter provides a fertile terrain for developing fresh thinking through International Relations theory.
On 18–19 March 2021, the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met senior Chinese officials, including Blinken’s counterpart Wang Yi, at a summit in Anchorage. Observers from all over the world hoped that bilateral relations would improve after their deterioration under the previous administration of Donald J. Trump. Instead, the Anchorage summit was an ill-tempered one characterized by US protests over repression in Hong Kong and the persecution of Xinjiang’s Uighur population, and Chinese rebukes over the US’ domineering and hegemonic behaviour. This meeting indicated that worsening diplomatic relations between Washington DC and Beijing were not purely the product of Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda (let alone his erratic conduct of foreign affairs and his often racist and Sinophobic outbursts on camera and on Twitter); there were also structural factors behind Sino-American tensions and the relationship between the US and China was now comparable to that between the US and the Soviet Union during the latter half of the 20th century (McCurry 2021; BBC Two 2021). This was confirmed by the recent Interim National Security Strategy, in which Biden argued that China ‘is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system’ (The White House 2021, 8). Indeed, the Anchorage fallout was not the only one in the post-Trump era. In December of the same year, at the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Biden administration announced a diplomatic boycott as a reaction to China’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses, to which the Chinese authorities responded that US diplomats were not even invited in the first place.
The last decade or so has seen US-China relations enter a negative spiral. The evolution of this complex relationship has triggered a fast-growing debate on whether this is a New Cold War.
Building on a deconstruction of concepts such as cold wars and Cold War, this book illustrates how the relationship between the US and China has been a “marriage of convenience” - with both cooperation and competition - for years, but also that we might be close to the end of it. The US and China, it is argued, are locked in a “new type of cold war” where mechanisms of deterrence and competition differ compared to those of the Cold War, and which makes the return of bloc politics possible.
This chapter zooms in on the most competitive if not conflictual dynamics of the relationship between the US and China, while emphasizing that even within this sphere there are limits to confrontation. It argues that US–China relations in the 2010s were progressively militarily conflictual within the First Island Chain and the Western Pacific; yet, when moving away from this confined region, military tensions declined. This is because China lacks the necessary strategic depth to challenge US power, in addition to an interest in taking international leadership responsibilities. To an extent, throughout the 2010s the US was also seeking to deter China in a cautious manner, or was facing the challenge of dealing with allies that were not convinced about the idea of containing China. At the same time, while the possibility of war between the US and China was always remote if one considers the geography of the whole world, it is true that the stakes within the First Island Chain were high. This condition has not changed in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine.
Chapter 3 zooms in on the conceptual and historical fundamentals of US–China relations. This is necessary to equip the reader with more precise tools to understand the contradictory coexistence of cooperation and competition, and of economic and security interests, as was shown in the previous chapter. While the liberal order provides the context to these contradictions, this chapter shows that US and Chinese grand strategies, over many decades, have come to embody such a tension, as they sought in very different ways to rise and master international relations in a world order deeply impacted by capitalism. Consequently, this tension has emerged in the contemporary history of US–China diplomatic relations, that is, since the rapprochement of 1972 until today, when Washington and Beijing were capable of taking major steps forward from both an economic and diplomatic perspective while important differences, for instance on political systems and on Taiwan, remained.
This chapter contributes to critical reflections on the political meanings embedded in claims to represent victims and survivors of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) and the nature of the platforms meant to share their voices. It problematizes the role of victims’ rights advocates in light of the United Nations (UN’s) victim-centred approach to SEA. It reflects on the constitution of the political space within which UN advocacy on SEA emerged from 2004 to 2021, analysing how victims have been discursively represented in official UN policy documents. It then explores the status of the practice of the victim-centred approach through the work of the Office of the Victims’ Rights Advocate. The author argues: first, that advocating on behalf of victims/survivors and paternity claimants is restricted conceptually and practically by the limited political will evidenced by the underprioritization of resourcing for and access to complaints mechanisms and support; and, second, that the UN’s new advocacy efforts are both necessary for advancing political will and a problematic filter through which the voices of victims, survivors, children fathered by peacekeepers and the mothers of those children are heard.
