International Relations Lexicon
Our International Relations Lexicon offers the definitions of terms used in the field of World Politics as formulated by the leading experts.
International Organization
“an association of states, established by an agreement among its members, with a permanent apparatus of bodies ensuring their co-operation in the pursuit of the objectives of common interest which primarily gave them the incentive to associate with each other.” (Virally, Michel. L’Organisation mondiale,1972)
International Society
“Group of states conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions.” (Bull, Hedley. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 1977, p. 13)
Regime
“International regimes are defined as principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area.” (Krasner, Stephen. “Structural causes and regime consequences: regimes as intervening variables,” International Organization 36, 2 (Spring 1982), p. 185)
State
“The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.” (Convention on Rights and Duties of States, 1933)
“The state is a relation of domination by means of legitimate violence (or as legitimately regarded) of humans over humans.” (Weber, Max. Politik als Beruf, 1919)
Terrorism
“Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby—in contrast to assassination—the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human targets of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence- based communication processes between terrorists (organization), (imperiled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought.” (Schmid Alex P. and Albert J. Jongman. Political Terrorism, 1988, p. 28)
“Terrorism is illegal violence or threatened violence directed against human or nonhuman objects, provided that it: (1) was undertaken or ordered with a view to altering or maintaining at least one putative norm in at least one particular territorial unit or population: (2) had secretive, furtive, and/or clandestine features that were expected by the participants to conceal their personal identity and/or their future location; (3) was not undertaken or ordered to further the permanent defense of some area; (4) was not conventional warfare and because of their concealed personal identity, concealment of their future location, their threats, and/or their spatial mobility, the participants perceived themselves as less vulnerable to conventional military action; and (5) was perceived by the participants as contributing to the normative goal previously described (supra) by inculcating fear of violence in persons (perhaps an indefinite category of them) other than the immediate target of the actual or threatened violence and/or by publicizing some cause.” (Gibbs, “Conceptualization of Terrorism,” American Sociological Review 54, 3 (1989), p. 330)
“Criminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or serious bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the general public or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.” (United Nations Security Council Resolution 1566 (2004))