Abstract Global Politics presents an approach to global politics that incorporates an historical context in the discussion of global issues, while also integrating the mainstream theoretical approaches. The world is becoming an ever-smaller place, the text argues, because of globalization, finance and economics, technology, media, and the many global issues that transcend borders. The first chapter looks at why global politics matters. The second chapter delves into the theory side of global politics. There follow chapters on nation states, integration and disintegration, international organization, war and terrorism, and security. This naturally leads on to a discussion about international law and justice. The last few chapters then cover the global political economy and human rights. Finally, the last chapter looks at global ecology.

Climate change is transforming everyday around the world. From how we live our daily lives to how we grow our food, where we can build our homes, and even how we protect ourselves and those we love, climate change is forcing us to reconsider long-held beliefs and habits. In this paper, we map and analyze four sea-level-rise (SLR) scenarios for countries in the Northern Mediterranean to explore numerically and visually increasingly likely climate threats to the region. We argue that climate change generates primary (direct), secondary and even tertiary impacts that indicate that securitization has occurred, even if some policy-makers choose to ignore that reality.

Did “America First” construct America irrelevant? Answering this question has been the subject of much debate in the popular press, the policy community, and scholarly circles. That asked, it is worth remembering that scholars and policymakers have long argued that one of the most enduring and important aspects of the US role in the world is American structural power. Perhaps nowhere has the Trump administration's approach to world affairs been more notable in perhaps diminishing US structural power than in withdrawing from multilateral forums. On an individual level of analysis, however, Trump's ever-changing, whiplash style of leadership made allies and adversaries less certain about American actions, intentions, and the direction of future policy trajectories. These issues point to the possibility that such impacts were more about Trump being Trump and less about a decline in American structural power. Only time will tell whether President Biden is able to rebuild from that structural wreckage. With these ideas in mind, the forum editors asked scholars representing diverse voices and perspectives to provide varying analyses of America First, specifically in light of the emergence of multiple global challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic to racial reckoning through the climate crisis and more. As you will see, each author brings a decidedly different lens to the questions we pose below and also generates divergent analyses of the present and the future.

This chapter chronicles the use and impact of securitization moves relative to environmental security and in particular climate change. We advance the argument that the securitization of climate change can and does play a vital role in presenting the impacts of climate change as first-order security threats endangering the survival of people and the states in which they live. Environmental security threats have shaped and will continue to shape current policies regarding climate change and related security challenges such as climate refugees, forced migration, and statelessness that will need to be engaged in the coming years. This chapter provides an empirical assessment of these security concerns posed by climate change to the Caribbean region, and in particular to Small Island Developing States (SIDS). In doing so, we also consider the ways in which the securitization process highlights the vulnerabilities and grave security threats posed to SIDS by the acceleration of climate change. With the survival of SIDS at stake, the issue is whether the global community is equipped to adapt to the policy challenges presented by climate change.

ABSTRACT Land use/cover change (LUCC) is a major threat to ecosystems. It may affect the abundance and distribution of species. Despite the importance of LUCC to ecological patterns and processes, few quantitative projections are available for use in ecological modelling. To fill in this literature gap, we constructed a LUCC model for Long Island Sound Watersheds (LISW) and explored the potential effect of the future LUCC on the range size of an invasive species (glossy buckthorn, Frangula alnus). We first applied the multi-layer perceptron–Markov chain model to predict the future LUCC in the LISW area within New England, USA, and then used the predicted land use/cover data as input into a species distribution model to simulate the future range size of glossy buckthorn. Our results indicate that under the current LUCC trend, there is a continued loss of forest and an increase of developed land in the near future, and this LUCC affects the relative suitability for glossy buckthorn.

Abstract One of the long-standing debates between diplomatic historians and social scientists focusing on diplomacy and negotiation turns on what we know and how we know it. While diplomatic history points to the necessity of micro-level approaches rooted in the details of discrete and idiosyncratic negotiations and interactions, social science strives to identify broad aggregate patterns gleaned from a cross section of such activities. The primary benefit of the latter approach is the same as this volume: namely, the advancing of empirically grounded theory. This disjuncture in the study of diplomacy and negotiation helps explain why international relations as a field has spent so little time studying diplomacy—and, as a result, why negotiation and diplomacy remains undertheorized. The overarching objective of this entry is to draw attention to contributions to the negotiation theorizing gleaned from the macro-level social scientific analysis of diplomacy and negotiation. Undoubtedly the range, depth, and quality of this work exceeds its visibility within the mainstream study of negotiation. By necessity, we have elected to draw connections between some of the more prominent examples of the quantitative empirical study of negotiation processes and outcomes and prevailing theoretical arguments in the field of international negotiation and cooperation. In doing so, we hope to draw attention to if not help close the gap between theory and practice in the study of negotiation and diplomacy.

When confronted with the demands of global climate change, what causes some policy-makers to move the climate adaptation agenda forward in their communities, while others seemingly get little accomplished? To answer this question, we first discuss work on policy-drivers in a coupled human-natural systemic context. This summary review of past research helps us develop a set of competing and complementary explanations for why some communities aggressively pursue climate adaptation policies, while others do less. Following the discussion of policy-drivers, we then undertake an aggregate-level analysis of data collected across the 169 towns in Connecticut regarding climate adaptation, thus linking policy to its fundamental global cause. The quantitative data are augmented with interview data from policy-makers and activists from around the New England region.

Using the conceptual framework of Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviors (KABs), we develop a structured aggregate analysis of the essays in this volume. Building from the KAB analysis, we examine how the Long-Term Ecological Research Program (LTER) program altered career paths (or not), perhaps changed original scholarly directions, and led to more integrative and important research over the course of careers. Our primary finding is that the LTER program has successfully affected ecological research careers, mostly because the involved participants were predisposed to thriving in an interdisciplinary environment. Every scholar can point to events or experiences in his or her career that had a significant impact on his or her intellectual trajectory. For example, the authors of this chapter began collaborating as a result of a happenstance phone call in 1998 that led to more than 15 years of fruitful scholarly interactions centering around online international studies education in middle school through college environments. About a decade ago, one (Boyer) made a distinct turn in his scholarly agenda away from political economy and toward environmental inquiry. The other (Brown), a psychologist by training, has spent large portions of his career in K–12 and college settings working to promote research-based educational practices. The point is, many scholars develop their careers in ways unimagined early on, some by happenstance, as in our own case. With this type of “we know intellectual change happens, but how do we understand it?” in front of us, this collection of essays by participants in the LTER program provides a rich body of data on which to develop a macro-level analysis of patterns of intellectual evolution in environmental research. We will begin by laying out the conceptual framework of KABs as a means to develop a structured aggregate analysis of the chapters in this volume. In using this conceptual framework and associated qualitative methodology, we hope to provide insights into whether participation in the LTER program did in fact affect the scholars involved in the enterprise and, if so, in what ways.

The aim of biodiversity conservation is the protection of flora and fauna. Within the borders of a given state, such protection is usually facilitated by national laws. In the last 50 years, international legal instruments have sought to recognize transboundary ecological degradation. Solutions need to address the globalization of ecological damage through a paradigm shift in the conceptualization of state sovereignty and biodiversity. The boundary conflicts between Venezuela/Guyana and Guyana/Suriname are examined here for a conceptualized transboundary conservation initiative termed the Guiana Shield Ecoregion Reserve (GSER). Public goods theory is applied to facilitate greater understanding of the value of ecosystem services, carbon sequestration, and similar outputs from ecosystems. The proposal for a GSER might serve as a model for other transboundary conflicts where biodiversity conservation and its implicit provisioning of public goods might be a uniting paradigm for action.

The Long Island Sound Watersheds (LISW) are experiencing significant land use/cover change (LUCC), which affects the environment and ecosystems in the watersheds through water pollution, carbon emissions, and loss of wildlife. LUCC modeling is an important approach to understanding what has happened in the landscape and what may change in the future. Moreover, prospective modeling can provide sustainable and efficient decision support for land planning and environmental management. This paper modeled the LUCCs between 1996, 2001 and 2006 in the LISW in the New England region, which experienced an increase in developed area and a decrease of forest. The low-density development pattern played an important role in the loss of forest and the expansion of urban areas. The key driving forces were distance to developed areas, distance to roads, and social-economic drivers, such as nighttime light intensity and population density. In addition, this paper compared and evaluated two integrated LUCC models—the logistic regression–Markov chain model and the multi-layer perception–Markov chain (MLP–MC) model. Both models achieved high accuracy in prediction, but the MLP–MC model performed slightly better. Finally, a land use map for 2026 was predicted by using the MLP–MC model, and it indicates the continued loss of forest and increase of developed area.

Land use and land cover (LULC) patterns play an important role in the establishment and spread of invasive plants. Understanding LULC changes is useful for early detection and management of land-use change to reduce the spread of invasive species. The primary objective of this study is to analyze and predict LULC changes in Connecticut. LULC maps for 1996, 2001 and 2006 were selected to analyze past land cover changes, and then potential LULC distribution in 2018 was predicted using the Multi-Layer Perceptron Markov Chain (MLP_MC) model. This study shows that the total area of forest has been decreasing, mainly caused by urban development and other human activity in Connecticut. The model predicts that the study area will lose 5535 ha of deciduous forest and gain 3502 ha of built-up area from 2006 to 2018. Moreover, forests near built-up areas and agriculture lands appear to be more vulnerable to conversion. Changes in LULC may result in subtle spatial shifts in invasion risk by an abundant invasive shrub, Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii). The gain of developed areas at the landscape scale was most closely linked to increased future invasion risk. Our findings suggest that the forest conversion needs to be controlled and well managed to help mitigate future invasion risk.

Climate change is the signature global issue of our time. This is not just because of climate change itself, but also because of the host of socioeconomic and physical impacts that will result from rising temperatures globally. But fundamentally for scholars of international relations, climate change confronts the policy limitations of sovereignty and its implications for global action directly. Because of the lack of effective global and even national climate change policy action, policy initiatives to confront climate change must focus on levels below the global, even though economic models suggest that global policy provision might be the most efficient way to target the implications of climate change. Thus, this study centers on the complexity of climate change policymaking by focusing attention on the evolution of climate change policy action in the New England region, the State of Connecticut, and its municipalities.

Problem-based learning (PBL) is an instructional design approach for promoting student learning, understanding and knowledge development in context rich settings. Previous PBL research has primarily focused on face-to-face learning environments, but current technologies afford PBL designers the opportunities to create online, virtual, PBL environments. The GlobalEd 2 Project is an example of a PBL environment that combines the positive characteristics of both face-to-face and online environments in a 14-week simulation of international negotiations of science advisors on global water resource issues. The GlobalEd 2 PBL environment is described examining the impact it has had on middle school students' interest in future science education experiences, self-efficacy related to writing in science and self-efficacy related to technology use for academic purposes using a pre-test post-test design. Analyses using ANOVAs of gain scores and ANCOVAs of subgroup differences demonstrate a positive impact on the science interest and self-efficacy of 208 middle-grade students from urban and suburban schools.