The work of the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci has had a significant impact upon the study of International Relations (IR) over the past fifteen years. Despite the emergence of a distinct 'Italian School' in IR, however, there have been few assessments of the utility of Gramsci's concepts in this area. Our purpose here is to engage with the work of the new Gramscians. We begin by specifying the theoretical attractions of using Gramsci in IR, and then subject the key foundational claims of the new Gramscians to critical analysis. Our principal conclusions are that the Italian school's appropriation of Gramsci is far more conceptually problematic than they acknowledge, and that their use of his framework is difficult to sustain with respect to the scholarship devoted to his ideas. If Gramsci is to be used effectively within IR, closer attention must be paid both to the historical meaning of his work and to the problems raised by it. In short, Gramsci and his ideas must be more thoroughly historicized if his work is to be used to comprehend the multiple dynamics of world order today.

European security depends on the effective collaboration of the five major powers; it will be undermined by the extension of NATO, a policy driven by US domestic politics. The main threats to security are: the breakdown of political and economic stability; unintended nuclear proliferation and/or failure of the START process; Russia's evolving political and territorial aspirations. All three will remain marginal as long as Russia is constructively engaged with the West. NATO expansion threatens that engagement. It is seen by all strands of Russian opinion as violating the bargain struck in 1990 and will likely lead to the withdrawal of cooperation. Invitations to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic cannot be rescinded, but the consequences can be mitigated by refraining from integrating them into NATO's military structure, by ceasing to insist that NATO membership is open to all, and by perpetuating the de facto nuclear-weapons-free zone that presently exists in Central and Eastern Europe. Britain's stance could be pivotal.

This article seeks to contribute to a transatlantic discussion by examining the theoretical and policy claims for and against NATO expansion that have dominated discussions in the United States. American academics have been almost unanimous in opposing NATO expansion, but the arguments they have put forward have often been contradictory. The proponents of NATO expansion, on the other hand, have not been clear in their arguments, and have tended to stress deterrence over reassurance. It is suggested here that there are indeed good reasons to expand NATO. Central European states have legitimate security concerns and so does Russia. However, an expanded NATO's value rests in its ability to reassure not only its new members but Russia and other countries in the region. If its focus remains primarily to coordinate military plans for deterring attacks on its members alone, its expansion will most likely exacerbate security relations in Europe.

Even though a vibrant literature on gender in international relations has developed over the last decade, students of international sanctions have not explored sanctions from a gendered perspective: analyses tend to have been either gender-neutral or gender-blind. By the same token, however, feminist scholars of international politics have not included sanctions in their empirical investigations. This article examines sanctions from a gendered perspective. Using conclusions suggested by the feminist IR literature, we examine the case-study of the sanctions against Iraq, and demonstrate the degree to which these measures had deeply gender-specific impacts, ranging from differential deprivations to declines in dowry wealth. We conclude from the Iraqi experience that the gendered effects of sanctions have considerable implications for sanctions theory.

Environmental change is a global phenonemon caused by, and increasingly acting as a constraint upon, human activity. Thus analysis of the determinants of human behaviour is necessary to the understanding of global environmental issues. In this respect the salience of gender to global-change issues has frequently been noted. However, attempts to 'put gender on the agenda' of global environmental politics have resulted in, not the incorporation of gender, but the addition of women. This article attempts to explain this apparently unintended outcome through examining ways in which human agency and social structures interact in framing issues and setting agendas.

This article examines how the various bodies of Christ, such as the Catholic Church, the Holy See and the Pope, use their spiritual power to define, assign and confine woman as wom(b)an, or woman defined in relation to her body, specifically her reproductive capacities. In particular, it explores how this power was deployed at the UN-sponsored International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD in 1994). It was here that attempts were made by the bodies of Christ to advance the particular - the Catholic articulation of woman, reproductive options and sexuality - as the universal, in the international. The article begins by examining the spiritual sovereignty and the power of the Pope, which is followed with an inquiry into a particular power performance, namely, the Catholic articulation of woman, reproductive option and sexuality. The following section examines the politics of the spiritual as they pertain to the Holy See's words and deeds both before and during the ICPD. The paper concludes by offering some insights into the power relations that mediate the relations among the bodies of Christ, woman and the ICPD.

John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, New York, Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0 19 878070 2

Mohammed Ayoob, The Third World Security Predicament: State Making, Regional Conflict and the International System, Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 1995

Rather than attempt to respond to the many points of detail raised in the discussion piece by Buzan and Wæver in the April 1997 issue of the Review, I shall address what I consider three central areas of dispute, and leave readers to judge whether the conclusion of my original paper, that Buzan's authorship in Wæver et al. subverts the thesis of his People, States and Fear, still holds.Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, ‘Slippery? Contradictory? Sociologically Untenable? The Copenhagen School Replies’, Review of International Studies, 23 (1997), pp. 241–50; Bill McSweeny, ‘Identity and Security: Buzan and the Copenhagen School’, Review of International Studies, 22 (1996), pp. 81–93; Ole Wæver, Barry Buzan, Morten Kelstrup and Pierre Lemaitre with David Carlton et al., Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe (London, 1993); Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, 2nd edn (Hemel Hempstead, 1991). The three questions which are central, in my view, are the objectivism of the concept of identity; the misunderstanding of methodological individualism and its place in directing their line of analysis; and the impact of their ‘identity’ theses on Buzan's distinctions between strong and weak states and mature and immature anarchies. The first two points overlap with Buzan and Wæver's characterization of the dispute; the third is given minor attention by them, but it critically relates to the question of Buzan's inconsistency.Buzan and Wæver, ‘Slippery?’, pp. 241, 249.