This forum seeks to honor the contributions of a scholar who has greatly influenced international relations (IR) scholarship on transnational relations and constructivist research: Thomas Risse. Best known for his pathbreaking studies on the importance of transnational actors, the power of international norms and ideas in international relations, and the influence of domestic structures on international

This article contributes to two debates about international relations (IR) as a discipline: first, how global is IR, and how is it structured? Second, what is the state of theory in IR? We conducted (co-) citation analyses of both Web of Science (WoS) and—for the first time— non-WoS publications from Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. With regard to the first question, we find

Recent discussions of humanitarian intervention in international relations (IR) have often focused on the evolution of norms, and the development and contestation of the responsibility to protect (R2P) framework. While beneficial in tracing this process, most of these studies tend not to incorporate an analysis of colonialism, race, sexuality, or gender. While postcolonial studies of humanitarian intervention

Why do some near crises tip over into full-blown crisis and others do not? This paper considers existing scholarship and identifies four key barriers to using quantitative analysis for tipping-point analyses: strategic indeterminacy; the incentives for conflict parties to avoid inefficiencies; the paucity of cases; and the availability of quality data. Due to these challenges, many do not perform well

Why do commanders tolerate sexual violence by their subordinates? Commander tolerance allows military sexual violence (MSV) to persist in times of peace, war, and post-conflict peacekeeping. However, most of the previous studies on MSV have focused on perpetrators’ criminal motives while neglecting the role of commander tolerance. In this article, I offer a tripartite general theory of commander tolerance

How do leaders create legitimacy in international organizations (IOs)? It is widely acknowledged that legitimacy matters to IOs, but little research examines internal self-legitimation—the creation of legitimacy for staff, rather than for external audiences—and who specifically undertakes these self-legitimation activities in IOs. This paper fills these gaps by examining the particular role of leaders

Security scholars have traditionally viewed emergency as a state of exception that triggers a struggle for survival, justifying the breaking of rules and excesses of state power. While there have been attempts to decouple security from its survivalist logic, emergency has remained an analytical blind spot in security studies. The dominance of an elite-centric, exceptionalist paradigm in the study of

We examine publications on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in nine leading political science journals across three decades (1990–2019) to evaluate the scope of political science engagement with the region since the 1990s and analyze trends in research interests, developments in the use of empirical methods, and authorship patterns. Our data highlight significant gaps in the geographic and substantive

The conceptualization of taboo within international relations (IR)—that is, what we understand to be taboo—is inadequate. Specifically, current analysis fails to sufficiently distinguish between taboo and non-taboo forms of prohibitory norm, where this failure often facilitates a tendency (explicit or implicit) to comprehend the concept primarily in terms of actor compliance with a taboo in question

This article explores the non-straightforward role of data about attacks on health in creating policy and normative change to safeguard access to healthcare and protect healthcare providers in conflict. Acknowledging the importance of data as a key component in the quest to reduce instances of attacks, we take this one step further, asking: what is the relationship between data, action, and change

Competition policy has been a central forum for contesting the uneasy relationship between capitalism and democracy since the late nineteenth century. From the earliest policy debates, concerns that robust competition policies aimed at limiting economic concentration would disadvantage domestic producers featured prominently. This dynamic creates an international cooperation problem over competition

Dictators, rebel commanders, and mafia bosses frequently delegate gruesome and immoral tasks to their subordinates. However, most individuals want to avoid such work. This analytical essay proposes an institutional logic to understand how dictatorships, insurgent organizations, and criminal gangs get their evil work done nonetheless. We argue that common features of organizations produce mundane career

The responsibility to protect (R2P) is often referred to as a new concept on the basis that it provides both states and the international community responsibilities, rather than merely rights, to protect populations from mass atrocities. As this article argues, this claim of novelty is overstated. And yet, R2P has comprised an important development in human protection over the past two decades: it

The growing literature on ontological security theory (OST) in international relations, ontological security studies (OSS), is characterized by great internal diversity. This internal pluralism is one of its greatest strengths, but it is also potentially confusing, for example, when different works using an ontological security lens arrive at contradictory conclusions without it being obvious why.

Despite the imperative to pay attention to the words we use as a routine dimension of research, the methodological and pedagogical tools illustrating how to work on our own use of language are largely missing within and beyond international relations (IR). To address this gap, we develop a method—the “Reflexive Review”—which adds a linguistic and reflexive dimension to the common practice of a literature

Globalization is facing widespread condemnation at a time when worldwide crises ranging from climate change to pandemic policy increasingly demand a coordinated response. Rising nationalist, populist, and anti-globalization movements in many of the world's richest nations are placing great pressure on the international system pioneered by Western democracies following World War II. This special issue

Despite the steady increase in environmental provisions being included in trade agreements to address potential environmental risks associated with increased trade, growing public concern about environmental issues has given rise to major public protests against various trade agreements. However, facing the widespread backlash against the liberal international economic order, pro-trade leaders have

Many of the most visible examples of the backlash against multilateralism, globalization, and democracy do not target free trade, investment, or elections directly, but the judicial institutions that were created to protect the rights of traders, investors, and citizens. Is the backlash against globalization and democracy really a backlash against the growing ideological convergence on rule of law

The rise of nationalist and populist movements throughout the world has led to concerns about the future of the liberal international economic order. Central to these worries is the belief that nationalist and populist publics and their leaders will reject open trade, which has been a cornerstone of the global order. Yet despite these fears, very little empirical research has been conducted on the

It is safe to say that much of international law—the bedrock of the international order—has been shaped by the Western legal doctrine. How does the Islamic legal tradition relate to international law? What are Islamic law states’ (ILS) stance toward the global order and international relations? This article offers a fresh perspective of similarities and differences between international law and Islamic

Polarization has been a prevalent phenomenon in US politics, yet its foreign policy implications remain understudied. A common assumption is that polarization undermines the utilization of United States’ material power via a coherent grand strategy. In this article, I argue that polarization does not make the United States incapable of enacting a foreign policy per se but instead affects US foreign

Recent assessments of relations between states and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) claim a global wave of state crackdowns, raising questions about the continued authority and influence of NGOs. The works reviewed here challenge the idea of a pattern of global conflict, demonstrating a range of ways in which states work with, through, and alongside NGOs. They also demonstrate that the diversity

Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is a rapidly emerging method in the field of International Relations (IR). This raises questions about the strengths and pitfalls of QCA in IR research, established good practices, how IR performs against those standards, and which areas require further attention. After a general introduction to the method, we address these questions based on a review of all empirical

Two decades after the “war on terror” was first waged, there is little conceptual clarity about what it means to win a war. Indeed, despite the burgeoning literature on endless war and victory, there is no substantive engagement with how these themes intersect when thinking ethically about the question of war and what passes for peace. This forum seeks to spark a conversation to address this gap. Bringing

The literature on global international relations (IR) has argued that the discipline develops in the footsteps of world politics, but no sustained attention has been given to more immediate causes such as the funders that pay for IR teaching and scholarship. These donor–recipient relations have only attracted the attention of authors interested in cultural hegemony and those contributing to the recent

Most wars now take place within states instead of between them. In many cases, this requires humanitarians to contend with non-state armed groups in order to access civilians. While armed groups are widely perceived as a threat to the delivery of humanitarian aid, they vary in the extent to which they allow or hinder humanitarian access. Current understandings of this variation revolve around armed

Since the passing of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security more than two decades ago, there has been a global push to bolster the inclusion of women in these processes. When women are selected into peace delegations for the wrong reasons, they—like men—can hinder or stall progress. Yet, very little work has analyzed which women are included in peace processes

While research on armed conflict focuses primarily on violence and suffering, this article explores the practices of love and care that sit alongside these experiences of harm. Motivated by our omissions to pay sufficient attention to love and care in our research to date, we ask: How can centering practices of love and care illuminate different pathways for understanding the remaking of worlds in

The term “coup” has been used to describe a diverse range of events. Although recent decades have seen the academic study of coups focus on an increasingly narrow type of military intervention in politics, the general public, governments, and international organizations frequently apply the coup label to a broader set of antidemocratic actions. This was dramatically illustrated after the overrunning

H D Emmanuel. De Groof. State Renaissance for Peace: Transitional Governance under International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 392 pp., $125.00 hardback (ISBN: 978-1108499767).

Aliaksei Kazharski. Eurasian Integration and the Russian World: Regionalism as an Identitary Enterprise. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2019. 208 pp. $70.00 (ISBN 978-9633862858).

This article systematically explores key theoretical and political, and epistemological and methodological considerations regarding men undertaking feminist fieldwork and research. This has become increasingly relevant as men working on exploring the gendered analysis of armed conflict and peacebuilding has become relatively routine recently. Yet, there is a dearth of systematic research on this topic

The study of international norms from a social constructivist perspective has been one of the major conceptual innovations to the discipline of international relations (IR) over the past forty years. However, despite the concept's ubiquity, there is only a limited understanding of the large-scale trends in research associated with its rise. This analytic essay interrogates conventional wisdom, using

Constructivist theories of norm dynamics offer a variety of analytical tools to understand the complex processes of norm emergence, diffusion, and evolution over time. As the literature has developed, though, it lacks a general framing of the interconnections between norms, norm clusters or configurations, and principles or “normativity.” This article advances a new three-dimensional model of constructivist

Inequality is a major international development challenge. This is so from an ethical perspective and because greater inequality is perceived to be detrimental to key socioeconomic and political outcomes. Still, informed debate requires clear evidence. This article contributes by taking stock and providing an up-to-date overview of the current knowledge on the impact of income inequality, specifically

This article explores the link between populism and hierarchies in international relations by examining the recent foreign policy-making in Turkey and Hungary—two countries run by populist leaders. We argue that when populists bring populism into foreign policy, they do so by contesting the “corrupt elites” of the international order and, simultaneously, attempt to create the “pure people” transnationally

How and with what effects do institutions diffuse between international organizations (IOs)? An emerging literature extends a key insight of the study of diffusion processes among states to the international level, establishing that the adoption of institutions in IOs is regularly conditioned by the choices of other IOs. Yet, this literature neglects a key contextual difference between the two settings:

This forum provides an outlet for an assessment of research on the delegation of war to non-state armed groups in civil wars. Given the significant growth of studies concerned with this phenomenon over the last decade, this forum critically engages with the present state of the field. First, we canvass some of the most important theoretical developments to demonstrate the heterogeneity of the debate

Despite broad recognition that peace and sustainability are interrelated, the pathways of their relationship remain ambiguous or nascent at best. We synthesized the literature relevant to the linkages between the two by framing our analysis around the pillars of positive peace and the dimensions of sustainability. Our review reveals that while the existing studies describe the conditions where peace

Recent international relations scholarship has adopted the perspective of organizational ecology (OE) to explore a range of questions related to organizational emergence, strategy, and death. These studies draw attention to organizational competition as the mechanism underpinning important transformations in global governance. We argue that existing work in IR that uses OE has overlooked the importance

This forum reimagines polycentric governance. It develops ideas of “ordered polycentrism” that can help international relations scholarship make fuller sense of contemporary governance of global affairs. How can we theorize the implicit bonding forces that bring deeper order to the surface disorganization of polycentric governance? We offer a key corrective to actor-focused institutionalist understandings

This paper explores the question of what drives proxy alignment in war and argues that current proxy war scholarship needs further thinking to go beyond focusing on the principal–agent theory and individual actors’ motivation analysis. Rather, there is a need to look at the generative mechanisms of proxy alignment as a process that constitutes patterns of friend–enemy relations. The paper argues securitization

Lee Melissa M.Crippling Leviathan: How Foreign Subversion Weakens the State.Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2020. 264 pp., $39.95 hardback (ISBN: 978-1501748363).

Mantilla Giovanni. Lawmaking under Pressure: International Humanitarian Law and Internal Armed Conflict. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2020. 264 pp., $42.95 hardcover (ISBN: 978-1501752582).

Philpott Daniel. Religious Freedom in Islam: The Fate of a Universal Human Right in the Muslim World Today. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 305 pp., $38.95 Hardcover (ISBN: 978-0190908188).

Why does a state change its foreign policy objectives and who is responsible for instigating such change? According to Hermann, four primary change agents are central to this process: leaders, bureaucracies, changes in domestic constituencies, and external shocks. This paper argues that the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is a complementary policy process framework that can explain foreign policy

Can there be a “radical IR?” Scholars have given little attention to the question of the following: where is radicalism in the discipline? I argue that not only is it possible to think about radical international theory, but that it is necessary in the contemporary world. International theorists have to grapple with developments of fundamental change, including the so-described decline of the (neo)liberal

Questions regarding the political significance of international relations (IR) and how scholarly practice relates to/constitutes a political practice appear newly resonant, but are longstanding concerns. This article utilizes the growing literature on temporality within international politics to analyze the political potential of these intellectual interventions and generate new ways of framing scholarly

Baele Stephane J., Boyd Katharine A., Coan Travis G. (editors). ISIS Propaganda: A Full-Spectrum Extremist Message. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 2020. 304 pp., $45.00 paperback (ISBN: 978-0190932466).

Kurki Milja. International Relations in a Relational Universe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2020. 240 pp., $85.00 hardback (ISBN: 978-0198850885).

Geopolitics has become a key site for articulating the limits of existing theories of international relations and exploring possibilities for alternative political formations that respond to the challenges posed by massive ecological change and global patterns of violence and inequality. This essay addresses three recent books on geopolitics in the age of the Anthropocene: Simon Dalby's Anthropocene

It is impossible to talk about race in international relations (IR) without acknowledging the early and groundbreaking intervention of a couple of special issues, followed by conversation-changing book anthologies. Despite these contributions, mainstream IR continues to marginalize the valuable work of non-white institutions and people, while minimizing the role of race and racism in the discipline

Sabelo J.Ndlovu-Gatsheni. Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa: Turning Over a New Leaf. London and New York: Routledge. 2020. 188 pp., $160 hardback, $44.05 ebook (ISBN: 978-1003030423).

The study of deterrence presents a number of challenges, mainly to do with identifying deterrence success and defining how deterrence works. Studying cyber deterrence presents even greater challenges, as traditional deterrence challenges are exacerbated and interactions in the cyber domain create further difficulties. When studying cyber deterrence, scholars face uncertainty not only in identifying

Pass Jonathan. American Hegemony in the 21st Century: A Neo Neo-Gramscian Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2019. 276 pp., $39.96 paperback (ISBN: 978-0367661915).

Hom Andrew R.. International Relations and the Problem of Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 320 pp., $85.00 hardback (ISBN: 978-0198850014).

What determines the consequences of economic sanctions? Is there a common explanation for these consequences? This article provides a comprehensive review of the fragmented literature focusing on the consequences of sanctions. We critically discuss the complex relationships between types of sanctions and sanction senders and their targets, as well as the structural factors that account for the specific