Mika Aaltola

Reactions to pandemics are unlike any other global emergency; with an emphasis on withdrawal and containment of the sight of the infected. Dealing with the historical and conceptual background of diseases in politics and international relations, this volume investigates the global political reaction to pandemic scares. By evaluating anxiety and the political response to pandemics as a legitimisation of the modern state and its ability to protect its citizens from infectious disease, Understanding the Politics of Pandemic Scares examines the connection between international health governance and the emerging Western liberal world order. The case studies, including SARS, Bird Flu and Swine Flu, provide an understanding of how the world order, global health governance and people’s bodies interact to produce scares and panics. Aaltola introduces an innovative new concept of ‘politosomatics’ based on the relationship that links individual stress, strain, and fear with global circulations of power to evaluate increasingly global bio-political environments in which pandemics exist. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of International Relations, Global Health, International Public Health and Global Health governance.

An Introduction to Global Politosomatics

Understanding the Politics of Pandemic Scares

This book investigates complex regressive dynamics in contemporary Western democracies. They include not only severe polarization in domestic politics, but also efforts by external autocratic powers to co-opt the increasingly digitalized political processes in the West. The discussion on democratic vulnerability and regression has rarely been historically and theoretically reflective. The aim is to fill this relative void by drawing on classical sources to inform about the political anxieties and agitations of our present time as the Western world moves towards new critical elections. The key concept of the analysis, a Thucydidean brink, refers to a critical point where the attraction felt towards an outside geopolitical competitor becomes stronger than the political affinity felt towards one’s domestic political opponent. As political polarization, societal decomposition and the collusive tendencies grow in strength, political factions and political candidates in western societies can be(come) drawn to autocratic actors. Perhaps most alarmingly, the resulting nexus between democracies and autocracies can further intensify mutual regression and form downwards-sloping spirals that are not ultimately under any strategic control. This book draws from the experiences of recent elections in major Western democracies to illustrate the widening and deepening underlying regressive tendency.

The "Thucydidean Brink" in Regressive Geopolitical Competition

Democratic Vulnerability and Autocratic Meddling

Sören Scholvin

Mikael Wigell

Starting from the key concept of geo-economics, this book investigates the new power politics and argues that the changing structural features of the contemporary international system are recasting the strategic imperatives of foreign policy practice. States increasingly practice power politics by economic means. Whether it is about Iran’s nuclear programme or Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Western states prefer economic sanctions to military force. Most rising powers have also become cunning agents of economic statecraft. China, for instance, is using finance, investment and trade as means to gain strategic influence and embed its global rise. Yet the way states use economic power to pursue strategic aims remains an understudied topic in International Political Economy and International Relations. The contributions to this volume assess geo-economics as a form of power politics. They show how power and security are no longer simply coupled to the physical control of territory by military means, but also to commanding and manipulating the economic binds that are decisive in today’s globalised and highly interconnected world. Indeed, as the volume shows, the ability to wield economic power forms an essential means in the foreign policies of major powers. In so doing, the book challenges simplistic accounts of a return to traditional, military-driven geopolitics, while not succumbing to any unfounded idealism based on the supposedly stabilising effects of interdependence on international relations. As such, it advances our understanding of geo-economics as a strategic practice and as an innovative and timely analytical approach. This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, international political economy, foreign policy and International Relations in general.

The Revival of Economic Statecraft

Geo-economics and Power Politics in the 21st Century

Reactions to pandemics are unlike any other global emergency; with an emphasis on withdrawal and containment of the sight of the infected. Dealing with the historical and conceptual background of diseases in politics and international relations, this volume investigates the global political reaction to pandemic scares. By evaluating anxiety and the political response to pandemics as a legitimisation of the modern state and its ability to protect its citizens from infectious disease, Understanding the Politics of Pandemic Scares examines the connection between international health governance and the emerging Western liberal world order. The case studies, including SARS, Bird Flu and Swine Flu, provide an understanding of how the world order, global health governance and peopleâe(tm)s bodies interact to produce scares and panics. Aaltola introduces an innovative new concept of âe~politosomaticsâe(tm) based on the relationship that links individual stress, strain, and fear with global circulations of power to evaluate increasingly global bio-political environments in which pandemics exist. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of International Relations, Global Health, International Public Health and Global Health governance.

Mika Aaltola

About

Books

Join the club