Cfp for ISA 2025 - The ‘New Cold War’ and the Global South: Where’s the Beef?
Lee Jones
Dear colleagues, please see below a call for abstracts for a panel Shahar Hameiri and I intend to submit to ISA 2025, which may be of interest. Please feel free to forward as appropriate.
Call for Abstracts for International Studies Association convention, Chicago, 2-5 March 2025
The ‘New Cold War’ and the Global South: Where’s the Beef?
There is now widespread agreement that geopolitical rivalries are intensifying, with some even heralding a ‘new Cold War’ between the US and China/ Russia. Many see this as potentially positive for the global south, where governments, courted by both sides, could ostensibly extract more benefits from external powers while enhancing their autonomy from them. But is this competition actually playing out in this way? Despite making extravagant promises, Western states still fail to deliver on development financing and infrastructure pledges, ignored UN calls for an ‘SDG stimulus’, rejected African-led demands for greater ‘equity’ in pandemic treaty talks, and make no progress on multilateral reform. Meanwhile, China has vastly reined-in its development financing offer, switching to emerging lending to keep repayments flowing, while dragging its feet in debt restructuring talks, prolonging distressed debtors’ economic agony. Many of the purported benefits from trade, investment and infrastructure deals under China’s Belt and Road Initiative have also failed to materialise.
This panel invites critical reflections on the nature of contemporary geopolitical competition and its implications for the global south. Are big powers’ engagements, concessions, and attempts to cultivate ‘swing states’ living up to the ‘Cold War’ moniker? If not, why, and what does this mean for how we conceptualise this new era in international politics?
Abstracts of up to 200 words should be submitted to Lee Jones (l.c....@qmul.ac.uk) by 27 May 2024.
--
Prof Lee Jones
Professor of Political Economy and International Relations
School of Politics & International Relations, Queen Mary University of London
l.c....@qmul.ac.uk | Call me on Teams | www.leejones.tk | @DrLeeJones
Advice & Feedback hours: click here for info and to book a slot
Latest publications:
- From the Void to COVID: Explaining the Left’s Support for Pandemic Authoritarianism, in Elena L. Lange and Geoff Shullenberger (eds.) COVID-19 and the Left: The Tyranny of Fear (Abingdon: Routledge), 23-39
- China, International Competition and the Stalemate in Sovereign Debt Restructuring: Beyond Geopolitics (with Shahar Hameiri), International Affairs 100:2 (2024), 691-710
- Why the West’s Alternative to China’s International Infrastructure Financing is Failing (with Shahar Hameiri), European Journal of International Relations, OnlineFirst, 22 December 2023
- Taking Control: Sovereignty and Democracy After Brexit (Cambridge: Polity, 2023) – for 30% discount use this code: CNTRL
- Explaining the Failure of Global Health Governance During COVID-19 (with Shahar Hameiri), International Affairs 98:6 (2022), 2057-2076
- COVID-19 and the Failure of the Neoliberal Regulatory State (with Shahar Hameiri), Review of International Political Economy 29:4 (2022): 1027-1052
- Fractured China: How State Transformation is Shaping China’s Rise, with Shahar Hameiri (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021)