Dialogue: The Need for Theory

R. K. Ramazani is Edward R. Stettinius Professor Emeritus of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. He was among the scholars, writers and artists invited by Unesco to participate in a round table discussion on dialogue among civilisations held during the United Nations Millennium Summit Conference. This essay is based in part on his remarks made at UN headquarters in New York on 5 September 2000.

The emerging paradigm, dialogue among civilisations, is gaining increasing currency in international relations. At inception, it was at least in part the international expression of the aspirations of the Iranian people. Twenty million women and men elected President Mohammad Khatami on 23 May 2024 because his message of domestic social and political democratic reforms resonated with them, especially with young voters. To no small extent, however, these 69 per cent of eligible voters elected him because they also saw in his message the promise to integrate Iranian society into, in his words, “the world culture”.

 

The move to integrate Iran into the international system has taken place at multilateral and bilateral levels. President Khatami’s concept of dialogue was first endorsed overwhelmingly in December 1997 during the Tehran Summit meeting of the fifty-five member-state Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which stressed unreservedly “the need for cooperation, dialogues and positive understanding among cultures and religions while rejecting the ideology of confrontation which creates mistrust and diminishes the ground for cooperation among nations”.

 

Considering the poisoned bilateral relations between Iran and the United States, President Khatami’s televised address to the American people in January 1998 on dialogue among civilisations came as a surprise. He proposed the exchange between the two countries of professors, artists, athletes, tourists and others, a courageous initiative that has since resulted in a snail-paced thaw in US–Iran relations.

 

Finally, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed unanimously by consensus the President Khatami–initiated paradigm of dialogue in its Resolution 53/22 of 4 November 2024 proclaiming the year 2001 as the “United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilisations”. According to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, “governments, the United Nations system, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and other relevant international and non-governmental organizations” were thus invited

 

to plan and implement appropriate cultural, educational and social programmes to promote the concept of dialogue among civilizations, including through organizing conferences and seminars and disseminating information and scholarly material on the subject.¹

 

On 5 September 2000, Unesco launched a programme of discussion about the concept of dialogue among civilisations during the World Millennium Summit at UN headquarters in New York. The morning session, led by President Khatami, was devoted to speeches by heads of state and government and foreign ministers from several countries, including Algeria, Indonesia, Mozambique, Nigeria and Qatar. The afternoon session consisted of a round table discussion among some seventeen “eminent intellectuals” from Japan, the Netherlands, Pakistan, France, Russia, China, the United States and other countries. None of the participants, including myself, represented governments. This essay reflects only in part the expansion of my remarks at this session.

A Theoretical Deficiency

The dialogue concept has been interpreted variously: as part and parcel of the Iranian regime’s “charm offensive” to continue exporting “Islamic fundamentalism” despite the election of the popular reformist, President Khatami; as a tactical device used by reformers to garner international legitimacy in their political struggle with conservative factions; or as a clever move by the regime to break out of its decades-old international isolation and thereby attract foreign capital investment and technology to treat the country’s “sick economy”.

 

These and similar reductionist, superficial and empirically indefensible interpretations arise partly from the lack as yet of a systematic explanation of the civilisational dialogue paradigm as compared with alternative paradigms prevalent in the study of international relations. This theoretical need poses a significant intellectual challenge which must be met before the paradigm can be effectively put into operation. No doubt the formal international endorsement of the paradigm has considerably aided the Iranian foreign policy of reconciliation and détente across the world, especially in the Middle East and Europe. But this is no substitute for meeting the need to conceptualise the paradigm productively.

 

This essay is not intended to perform such a theoretical task. Rather, it aims at identifying a few of the core attributes of the paradigm. I hope this effort will help foster a more coherent discourse, which by definition demands the efforts of many scholars and international think tanks, as noted by Secretary-General Kofi Annan above. These core features of the paradigm are in the nature of interactive propositions and derive primarily from my half-century love affair with the study of Iran’s foreign policy. My interpretation of these attributes is tentative. It is not written in stone. I only hope interested scholars across the world will find it suggestive.

Rejecting Dogmatic Realism

The dialogue concept opposes the chief assumptions of the doctrine of realism in international relations studies, namely, rationality, anarchy and conflict. This will be explained below. Suffice it to say here that I find realism objectionable on other grounds as well. Let me explain why. From Thucydides and Machiavelli to Hans Morgenthau, the concept of material power has dominated realist thought. The traditional realist Morgenthau posited power as an end in and of itself in international politics, and the neo-realist Kenneth Waltz and his disciples view power among nations as a means to security or survival. Even more objectionable to proponents of the dialogue paradigm is the latter part of Waltz’s assumption that states “at a minimum seek their own preservation, and, at a maximum, drive for universal domination”. The centrality of material power in the realist worldview makes the few great powers and superpowers the world’s true players and the overwhelming majority of small and weak states mere pawns in the hands of those very few.

 

Let us see how the realist notion of world domination finds its way into, for example, two of the most prevalent international relations paradigms of our day. Samuel Huntington’s well-known “clash of civilisations” theory and Thomas L. Friedman’s more recent technological globalisation paradigm both mask their underlying realist worldviews.²

 

Huntington’s pessimistic realism claims that the clash of civilisations is replacing the Cold War “as the central phenomenon of global politics”. Most of his critics have faulted his theory either on the ground that states, rather than civilisations, continue to be central to the international system, or that a universal civilisation now exists or is likely to emerge in the near future. In contrast, I have argued elsewhere that, to be sure, civilisations do clash, but they also blend, as exemplified by the historical interaction between Islamic and Western civilisation.³

 

Friedman’s relatively optimistic realism claims that technological advances will shape the emerging international system. By using the terms “era” and “system” interchangeably without defining either, Friedman makes it difficult to know exactly what core organising principles guide the paradigm of technological globalisation, which presumably is to replace the Cold War paradigm. Instead, he simply asserts that today globalisation is “the One Big Thing”. We shall have more to say about globalisation later on.

 

Realism’s assumption of great power or superpower domination of the international system boils down in both paradigms to various forms of US hegemony. In Huntington’s culture-clash theory, two civilisations pose threats to the United States—Confucianism and Islam. The red threat of communism is replaced by yellow and green threats. To resist both threats, the United States must strengthen its military capability. Huntington subsequently advanced a proposition that happens to be similar to my above-mentioned notion of the blending of civilisations. He said, “Interaction and borrowing between civilisations have always taken place, and with modern means of transportation they are much more extensive.” He even went so far as to criticise the “image of an emerging universally Western world” because it “is misguided, arrogant, false, and dangerous”. This might sound like music to the ears of the proponents of the dialogue concept. But it is not, for Huntington also asserts the superiority of Western civilisation in another form—the partnership between Europe and the United States in pursuing a common “Atlanticist policy”.

 

The dialogue concept also rejects the American crusade of technological globalisation, although not the fact of the globalisation process per se. Friedman calls today’s globalisation paradigm “Globalisation Round II”. Round I took place between 1866 and the 1920s and resembled the present one in terms of volumes of world trade capital flow. “The dominant global power” behind the old round of globalisation was Great Britain, the world’s then super‑investor. The dominant power behind today’s technologically driven shrinking world is the United States. The techno-globalisation paradigm may appear to fit neo-liberal thought better than realist thought as compared with the culture-clash thesis, but from the dialogue perspective they are at least kindred paradigms.

Embracing ‘World Culture’

It would be a mistake to assume that the dialogue concept rejects out of hand the reality of power in interstate relations. Rather, it objects to realism because its inflexible rationality leaves little room for cultural values, beliefs, perceptions and other non-material factors that will be considered later; because its assumption of an anarchical world makes little allowance for the influence of global norms and institutions; and because its unalterable conviction of a perpetually conflict-ridden world dismisses the reality of international co-operation. Politics by definition contains both common and conflicting interstate interests. This notion equally applies to interaction among civilisations. To repeat, civilisations intermingle as well as clash.

 

In proposing the dialogue paradigm to the UN General Assembly in September 1998, President Khatami said the

 

Establishment and enhancement of civility, whether at national or international level, is contingent upon dialogue among societies and civilisations representing various views, inclinations and approaches. If humanity, at the threshold of the new century and millennium, devotes all efforts to institutionalise dialogue, replacing hostility and confrontation with discourse and understanding, it would leave an invaluable legacy for the benefit of future generations.⁴

 

The world culture concept is a fundamental factor in the dialogue paradigm. As I interpret it, four basic elements underpin this concept. First, it assumes harmony in diversity. Humankind has long aspired to attain worldwide harmony despite the reality of the great diversity of civilisations and states. George Santayana (1863–1952), an American philosopher, poet and novelist, envisaged a world that could promote harmony of the whole without destroying the vitality of the parts. In a real sense, the UN Charter embodies this time-honoured goal since it provides simultaneously for the two basic principles of universality and national sovereignty.

 

The post–Cold War outbreak of local conflicts and wars reflects the disturbance of the superpower-imposed harmony of the Cold War era. Giandomenico Picco, the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Representative for the United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilisations, has correctly observed that such post–Cold War conflicts as in the Caucasus, the Balkans and East and West Africa do not reflect a clash of cultures. He further notes that “acceptance of the enormous value of diversity, and that diversity is the beginning of growth, are the core of the United Nations”. This means to me that for more than half a century UN member-states have committed themselves to preserve diversity and promote harmony, paradoxical as that may seem in theory. In practice, the two values of diversity and harmony go hand in hand daily in interstate relations across the world.

 

Second, the dialogue paradigm’s assumption of an emerging world culture favours the development of greater inclusivity by international organisations and the principles of international law, making them more responsive to the values and needs of diverse civilisations. To take international organisations first, until recently the principal critics of the power structures of the United Nations and global specialised agencies—especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund—were international organisation specialists. But today the phenomenon of street demonstrations such as that against the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Seattle reveals the widespread popular dissatisfaction with the decision-making processes of existing international organisations. The World Bank and IMF have long been the target of criticism by poor nations, at least partly because they are dominated by the rich countries, particularly the United States. The dialogue concept supports a faster development of more equitable and balanced structures in international public institutions.

 

What is more, the dialogue concept takes joyous note of the international community’s growing awareness of the need for far-reaching structural changes in the United Nations itself. For example, the General Assembly is not empowered to make legally binding resolutions, while the five permanent members of the Security Council can do so. By some accounts, India, Japan and possibly Germany should also be included among the permanent members of the council. Other critics favour permanent seats for such power blocks as the OIC.

 

Neither is the need for a more inclusive law of nations anything new. Third World international law publicists have been the leading advocates of this idea for decades. But it has equally engaged the attention of Western, especially American, scholars. To cite a major and early example from the post–Second World War era, the Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law devoted its entire programme in 1959 to the exploration of “Diverse Systems of World Public Order Today”. The purpose of Myres S. McDougal and Harold D. Laswell, the renowned American scholars who organised the programme, was to identify and appraise diverse civilisations by positing “human dignity” as the overarching goal of international law and international organisations. Islamic civilisation, for example, was included among the major cultures to be explored.⁵ Today’s UN-sponsored dialogue among civilisations could help this long-cherished goal of taking into account norms, cultural preferences and values—especially of non-Western civilisations—in transforming international organisations and international law to be more in tune with a rapidly emerging world culture in an age of unprecedented explosion of information.

 

Third, the world cultural dialogue concept subscribes essentially to a more democratic and peaceful society at the international as well as the national level. The support for a more inclusive and responsive international law just mentioned is matched by encouragement of the rule of law at the national level. Appreciation of the need to develop civil society at home is also reflected in the dialogue paradigm’s goal of developing a “global civil society”. This could be achieved by further developing emerging civil societies within different civilisations as, for example, has been attempted through partnership between the European Union and Mediterranean countries since the landmark Barcelona Conference in November 1995.⁶ Today, half of the world’s countries are considered to be democratic and democracy is spreading to ever greater numbers of societies. Civil society is also expanding. For example, according to the Civil Society Project,

 

from Morocco to Iran and from Yemen to Turkey, citizens meet formally and informally to discuss issues ranging from health and social services to economic policy and political reform … [C]ivil society in the Middle East has emerged as an important topic of debate among scholars, activist, policymakers and citizens alike.⁷

 

In this respect, the dialogue paradigm resembles the democratic peace theory in international politics.

 

Fourth, the dialogue concept shares the worldwide concern with poverty and underdevelopment, both in material and human terms. This is fully compatible with the UN Charter principle that calls upon all member states to exert collective efforts “to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all” (Article 1, Paragraph 3).

 

Collective efforts toward these lofty goals have been legion. For our purposes, a couple of brief examples will suffice. First, the 1992 Rio de Janeiro UN Conference on the Environment and Development made the crucial connection between these two problems, recognising how often environmental hazards obliterate the processes of material and human development. The participation of hundreds of non-governmental organisations lent significant legitimacy to the Rio conference. The deep concern of many participants was driven not only by material but also by moral and spiritual considerations.

 

Second, the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development revealed an unprecedented awareness of the wrenching problems of overpopulation, poverty and infectious disease facing the world. All nations from diverse civilisations committed themselves to improving the lot of the poor for the next twenty years in a world in which some eight hundred million people still go hungry. Once again the usefulness of the concept of dialogue proved itself, even before the United Nations formally proclaimed it as a concern of the international community. The government delegates at this conference represented a remarkable range of beliefs and political philosophies. Yet the conference was a signal success in building global consensus on crucial issues by talking and listening among the participants—i.e., by dialogue. The Egyptian foreign minister summed up the conference’s importance in words that reveal the overriding usefulness of the concept of dialogue among civilisations. The conference, he said, was “a meeting of all cultures and civilisations and it succeeded in adopting a text which was composed by a blend of religions, values and traditions”.

Global Spirituality

Spirituality is more holistic—philosophically, sociologically, psychologically, politically and economically—than all the previous attributes so far considered of the dialogue paradigm. The crisis of modern human civilisation reflects to a significant extent a profound and pervasive imbalance between materiality and spirituality. To state it differently, human civilisation is facing what may be called a fundamental “spirituality deficit”—a deficit that is no less consequential for human destiny in the new century than all other deficits concerning “freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility”. On 8 September 2000, world leaders at the end of the UN Millennium Summit, the largest gathering of its kind in history, considered these latter values “to be essential to international relations in the twenty-first century” and recommended that “a culture of peace and dialogue among all civilisations should be actively promoted”.⁸

 

The roots of this spirituality deficit are inextricably intertwined with the historical development of human civilisation, which it is beyond the scope of this essay or my ability to consider. But the essence of the human civilisational predicament today is paradoxically interwoven with civilisational progress, especially over the past four centuries. The God-centred civilisation of the Middle Ages was replaced by the man-centred universe of the Enlightenment era. Science, it is now feared, is replacing both God and man. Yet science itself is subverting the God it has become by its own theory of relativity. From Aristotle to Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, and from Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz to Hume, rationalism, science, empiricism and other human and material values seemed to conspire to create what Ray Kurzweil, a cutting-edge scientist and author, calls “The Age of the Spiritual Machine”.⁹

 

Today, no single paradigm so graphically reflects the spirituality deficit of our time as technologically based globalisation. Even a crusader for globalisation such as Thomas Friedman acknowledges the concern that there is “a danger that as a result of the Internetting of society, the triumph of all this technology in our lives, and globalization über Alles, people will wake up one morning and realize that they don’t interact with anyone except through a computer”.¹⁰ Even more alarmingly, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has reportedly warned that “just as the globalization of a century ago collapsed into two world wars, so the current globalizing trend may not advance forever”.¹¹

 

Perhaps the ideology of globalisation poses the greatest threat of all to human identity. The French might be faulted for their exaggerated outcry against globalisation as a techno-economic cloak for the “Anglo-Saxonisation” or “Americanisation” of the world. But they cannot simply be accused of “exceptionalism” for their concern at globalisation’s threat to their sense of cultural and national identity. This very same fear sweeps across many countries, from Latin America to East Asia and the Middle East.

 

The concern over techno-globalisation’s threat to the human spirit is partly responsible for the pervasive, paralysing and perilous uncertainty about the future of humankind. At the end of the twentieth century, the literary theorist Homi Bhabha said:

 

[W]e find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. For there is a sense of disorientation, a disturbance of direction.¹²

 

This perception holds true at the dawn of the new century and millennium as well.

 

The emphasis on spirituality in the dialogue paradigm has nothing to do with the desire to impose any particular kind of religious orthodoxy, philosophical preference or cultural hegemony on human society. If it did, it would be antithetical to both the very concept and spirit of dialogue. Rather, it assumes the necessity of interaction among the spiritual cores of all civilisations. On this basis, the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, for example, must strive not only for trialogue among themselves, but also for dialogue with non-Abrahamic belief traditions such as Confucianism, Buddhism and Hinduism. Since more or less all faiths evince a mystical predisposition, it would appear that mysticism could act as a potentially integrative force in forging some modicum of spiritual commonality among diverse human civilisations.

 

Such a conception of spirituality and fraternity can be conducive to promoting the non-material, non-rational and intangible, spiritually based sentiments of love, compassion and, above all, empathy, that is, the ability to put oneself in a fellow human being’s shoes. Science and new technologies might cure millions of sick people stricken by such diseases as cancer and Aids, but ultimately the threat to humanity might also spread. Awareness of the existence of large unseen forces beyond human control might not help cure the patient’s body, but the strength of heart and soul such awareness produces could counter the illusion of material progress as humanity’s ultimate goal. This illusion of indefinite material progress has plunged humanity into two world wars, into the unspeakable tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, into the degradation of the environment, into the ever-deepening divide between rich and poor and, inter alia, into the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The progress of science and new technologies can be a boon, but if they are not effectively managed they can be a bane to humanity.

 

Human civilisation has always sought spiritual solace in some kind of religion. For example, the original one God of the Zoroastrian and Abrahamic religions has satisfied the human quest for the absolute and for transcendental certainty. The East’s often mistaken equation of Western secularism with unalloyed materialism has not helped East–West dialogue. In his brilliant Passion of the Western Mind, American author and philosopher Richard Tarnas reminds us that

 

despite the unambiguous secular character of modern science that eventually crystallized out of the Scientific Revolution, the original scientific revolutionaries themselves continued to act, think, and speak of their work in terms conspicuously redolent of religious illumination. They perceived their intellectual breakthroughs as foundational contributions to a sacred mission.¹³

 

Again, American founding fathers such as Washington, Madison, Franklin and Jefferson believed that religion was necessary for republican government because religion promotes virtue and morality. That was when America was, by today’s standards, a Third World country. Yet even today, when it is the world’s most technologically advanced secular society, a majority of its people continue to profess religious belief, despite the constitutionally based doctrine of the separation of religion and state.

 

To cite two current examples, there is little doubt that former vice-president Al Gore’s unshakeable commitment to protection of the environment has been spiritually inspired. He has written that

 

it is my own belief that the image of God can be seen in every corner of creation, even in us, but only faintly. By experiencing nature in its fullest—our own and that of all creation—with our senses and with our spiritual imagination, we can glimpse, “bright shining as the sun, an infinite image of God”.¹⁴

 

Gore’s vice-presidential running mate in 2000, Senator Joseph Lieberman, has long regretted the decline in moral values in America and has called eloquently for the affirmation of religion. He notes that religious “awakenings” led to such liberal milestones as the Bill of Rights in the eighteenth century, the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century and the civil rights revolution in the twentieth century. And, I might add, to no small extent has spirituality inspired women worldwide to demand their rights in a male-dominated world.

 

The American people, for their part, are reawakening to the importance of spirituality in their lives. Is it any wonder that Jalal al-Din Rumi, the thirteenth-century Iranian poet and spiritual master, should be a best-seller in America today? This reality seems to vindicate André Malraux’s prediction that the twenty-first century will be spiritual or will not be at all. The theologian, philosopher and statesman Mohammad Khatami, author of the dialogue paradigm, concluded his address at the above-mentioned September 2000 Unesco conference by saying, “Let us hope that all human beings should sing along with [the fourteenth-century Iranian poet] Hafiz, this divinely inspired spirit, that: ‘No ineffable clamour reverberates in the grand heavenly dome more sweetly than the sound of love.’”

Core Questions to Ponder

To return to my proposition about the need to theorise in the light of the attributes of the civilisational dialogue paradigm, a few questions come to mind. Before setting these out, let me clarify what I mean by the term “theorise” (Latin, theoria). I have used it in two senses—“theory fitting” (my appellation) and theory building—in order to allow for a more holistic consideration of the subject. Given this distinction, do the attributes of the dialogue paradigm discussed above fit a particular existing theory, or are they suitable for building a new theory?

 

To take the theory-fitting category first, do these attributes fit the traditional theoretical divisions of international relations, namely realism and idealism, or the highly debated neo-realist and neo-liberal theories, or the “constructivist” and “culturalist” theories? As noted, the dialogue paradigm rejects the realist school, both its traditional and new variants. But for reasons already mentioned, it does not do so categorically. On the contrary, it values realism’s emphasis on prudence and especially its emphasis on the self-determination or sovereign independence of state units within each and every civilisation. Yet, the dialogue paradigm, because it emphasises co-operation, harmony of interests despite diversity, and non-material and spiritual factors, also seems to fit idealism. Hence, the question is: Which of these two international relations theories does the dialogue paradigm fit, or does it fit a particular synthesis of the two, which we might call “ideational/realist”?

 

But to look at these attributes of the dialogue paradigm in terms of the “institutional, liberal and epistemic” theories suggested by my colleague and friend Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravcsik,¹⁵ the paradigm can be seen as fitting each and every one of these additional theories as well. It fits the institutional theory because, as observed, it emphasises international law and organisational development; it fits the liberal theory because, as noted, it resembles the democratic peace theory; and it fits the epistemic theory because the very notion of “dialogue” involves talking, listening and learning, and belief systems, especially religiously based spirituality. For these very reasons it may be said that the dialogue paradigm fits the culturalist theory advanced by Thomas Berger and Peter Katzenstein. “Contructivism” is regarded as a “method” rather than a theory and hence is not mentioned here, but it should nevertheless be considered as well.¹⁶

 

Given all this, is the dialogue paradigm a particular synthesis of the core characteristics of the major theories in international relations? In other words, does it amount to some kind of theory-building which eschews monocausalist reductionism and subscribes to multifactoral analysis? If so, it could claim to be a new and creative multiparadigmatic model. In grappling with these questions, however, those international scholars who support the dialogue paradigm must consider seriously the two fundamental criteria advanced by Legro and Moravcsik as the acid test of theory-building—coherence and distinctiveness.

 

This is an important intellectual challenge, particularly in this year of 2001, proclaimed by the United Nations as its year of dialogue among civilisations. Generally speaking, international relations practitioners tend to shy away from theoretical discussions, but it is hard to believe that any state can have a coherent and effective foreign policy without utilising some kind of theory.

Endnotes

1. UN General Assembly, Fifty-Fourth Session, Agenda Item 34, Dialogue among Civilisations, Report of the Secretary-General, A/54/546, 12 November 1999, p. 1.

 

2. See Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996); and Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999).

 

3. R. K. Ramazani, “The Blending of Civilisations”, Middle East Insight 11, no. 5 (July–August 1995), pp. 15–20.

 

4. Statement by H. E. Mohammad Khatami, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, before the Fifty-Third Session of the UN General Assembly, New York, 21 September 2024 [www.gov.ir/year2001/khatamiun.htm].

 

5. See R. K. Ramazani, “The Shi’i System: Its Conflict and Interaction with Other Systems”, Proceedings of the American Society of International Law (1959), pp. 53–60.

 

6. See R. K. Ramazani, “The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership: The Barcelona Framework”, in Reflections on the Identity of Europe: Global and Transatlantic Perspectives, ed. Thomas Row (Johns Hopkins University: Bologna Center, 1996), pp. 55–77.

 

7. See Jillian Schwedler, ed., Toward Civil Society in the Middle East: A Primer (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995), p. 2.

 

8. “Statement by the UN: The Need for Balance”, New York Times International, 9 September 2000.

 

9. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of the Spiritual Machine: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence (New York: Viking, 1999).

 

10. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, p. 377.

 

11. Washington Post, 7 August 2000.

 

12. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 1.

 

13. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), pp. 299–300.

 

14. New York Times, 22 October 2000, quoting Gore’s Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992).

 

15. See Jeffrey W. Legro and Andrew Moravcsik, “Is Anybody Still a Realist?”, International Security 24, no. 2 (fall 1999), pp. 5–55. This creative article provoked considerable scholarly debate. See, for example, “Brother Can You Spare a Paradigm? (or Was Anybody Ever a Realist?)”, International Security 25, no. 1 (summer 2000), pp. 165–93.

 

16. See Jeffrey T. Checkel, “The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory”, World Politics 50, no. 2 (1998), pp. 324–48.