The academic discipline of International Relations (IR) has long pondered the questions of what it means to act in international politics and who can do so. However, the particular way in which IR has approached the problem of agency has somewhat masked important dynamics in international politics. By approaching the question of agency as an analytical problem that needs to be resolved before engaging with empirical material, IR has failed to see that who can act is often uncertain and contested. This special issue examines the emergence of international agency as an empirical phenomenon. Rather than analysing what given agents do, the contributions study how practices, performances and networks create and transform agency. In this introductory article, we prepare the ground for this distinct approach to studying international politics. We review how IR has addressed the problem of agency, and we discuss three social–theoretical traditions that see agency as an emergent phenomenon: poststructuralism, performance studies and actor-network theory. Finally, we highlight four insights that emerge from the contributions and challenge how IR has traditionally imagined agency.

中文翻译：

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重新思考国际关系中的代理：表演性、表演和演员网络

国际关系 (IR) 学科长期以来一直在思考在国际政治中采取行动意味着什么以及谁可以这样做的问题。然而，国际关系处理代理问题的特殊方式在某种程度上掩盖了国际政治中的重要动态。通过将代理问题作为一个需要在接触经验材料之前解决的分析问题来处理，IR 未能看到谁可以采取行动通常是不确定和有争议的。本期特刊考察了国际代理作为一种经验现象的出现。这些贡献不是分析给定代理做什么，而是研究实践、表现和网络如何创建和转变代理。在这篇介绍性文章中，我们为这种独特的国际政治研究方法奠定了基础。我们回顾了 IR 如何解决代理问题，并讨论了将代理视为一种新兴现象的三种社会理论传统：后结构主义、表演研究和演员网络理论。最后，我们强调了从贡献中产生的四个见解，并挑战了 IR 传统上想象代理的方式。