International Relations Literature Research Articles

Commitment and compromise in Danish cyber and tech diplomacy

Abstract This article explores the emergence of norm promotion strategies through an in-depth, partly autobiographical case-study spanning almost a decade of Danish cyber and tech diplomacy. The article engages the norms literature in International Relations and highlights the significance of the frequently overlooked internal negotiations that take place within the bureaucratic structures of norm entrepreneurs. Despite Denmark's favourable position and aspiration to become a norm entrepreneur in cyberspace, internal dynamics characterized by varying levels of commitment and compromise in negotiations over cyber norm promotion strategies resulted in both failed norm promotion attempts and fundamental alterations to a previously successful initiative. The article advocates for increasing analytical attention to the internal dynamics of norm entrepreneurs, positing that such examination not only offers a more nuanced perspective on the initial stages of a norm's life-cycle, but also furnishes an additional indication of a norm's robustness. Methodologically tracing the practices of civil servants as they negotiate their continuing commitment to norm-entrepreneurial strategies, particularly in response to domestic political changes or external events, provides norms scholars with valuable insight into the potential weakening or strengthening of a norm.

Reclaiming what is ours: Elite continuity and revanchism

Abstract What explains the revanchism of (post-)imperial states? This question has renewed salience amid Russia’s expanded war against Ukraine in 2022. In this article, we conceptualise revanchism as a foreign policy preference that involves reclaiming territory once controlled. We also advance a new explanation for revanchism that emphasises elite continuity in those states that experience territorial loss. Elite continuity matters because the ruling political class in (post-)imperial states, which was socialised under the old regime, preserves certain beliefs about world politics and the perceived legitimacy of their territorial claims. We show that elite continuity between the Soviet and post-Soviet political leadership in Moscow helps explain Russia’s revanchism better than those alternative explanations that we derive from the International Relations literature. To substantiate our argument, we compile a novel dataset to operationalise elite continuity across regimes and use discursive evidence and other indicators of elite attitudes towards the desirability of reclaiming lost territory. We also discuss the applicability of our theory to other cases.

Brain worlds: information order and interwar intellectual cooperation

Information is ubiquitous in International Relations (IR), but typically gets treated as a self-evident epistemic resource. A burgeoning IR literature on the politics of knowledge resists such reification, but has not thus far examined information as such. Mobilising its constructivist premises in historical perspective, this article argues that information is not just an epistemic resource but also an ordering concept. The article examines its emergence in and around the interwar League of Nations Organisation for Intellectual Cooperation (OIC), a predecessor of UNESCO. It focuses on two notable but neglected proposals – Paul Otlet’s Mundaneum and H.G. Wells’ World Brain – which considered advances in microfilm storage and bibliography as opportunities to rethink global order. Worried about a crisis of ‘intelligence’ and reducing political conflict to information gaps, Otlet and Wells introduced systems that mimicked imperial global order: information could be organised, curated and shared to ‘diffuse the European mind’. To both, information was not just an epistemic resource but a means of global ordering. Crucially, promoting a world united by information was entirely compatible with infrastructurally reproducing an imperial division of the world by degrees of ignorance. League officials rejected the utopianism of these proposals but held on to the pacifying promise of information. Recovering this history shows how historical perspective allows us to contextualise artificially disembedded IR concepts and objects of governance. It also puts hopes for information as inherently pacifying into perspective: without considering the broader political embeddedness of information, such hopes risk leaving underlying hierarchies intact.

Meet Me in the Middle: Evaluating Middle Power Cyber Doctrine and Strategic Culture Through the Cases of Canada and Australia

The global expansion in reliance on information and communication technologies has thrust the digital world of cyberspace into the forefront of strategic security discourse. Meanwhile, the responsibilities, capabilities, and strategic interests of middle powers have been fraught with ambiguity and debate in international relations literature. While existing studies examine how the cyberspace domain has become an increasingly competitive arena for geopolitics and strategic competition between and among great powers, there remains a dearth of literature evaluating cyberspace objectives and behaviour for middle powers. This paper aims to fill this gap, drawing on prior frameworks of analysis used for great power cyber studies, alongside extant middle power literature, to employ the theoretical lens of strategic culture toward evaluating the unique behaviour of middle powers in cyberspace. This paper thus suggests that cyberspace presents scholars with an outlet to further examine and define middle powers in the international realm, as well as middle powers with opportunities to assert and potentially expand their position in the global order, while protecting and promoting their distinct interests. This paper also incorporates a synthesis of quantitative and qualitative cyber data, and the deployment of a Most Similar Systems Design to assess two middle power case studies: Canada and Australia. The findings help to challenge and refine our understanding of what roles, capabilities and objectives define middle power behaviour in cyberspace, as well as provide insight into the implications that the rise of cyber operations and security considerations might have for Canadian and Australian grand strategy, and middle power strategic culture more generally. Ultimately, this study serves to refine past theoretical assumptions in the context of a novel and expanding domain for statecraft and competition, and identify a foundation from which the principles of a more coherent and effective cyber doctrine for middle powers might be pursued.

Changing and yet the same? Italy’s foreign policy ideas and National Role Conceptions in a populist age

ABSTRACT The foreign policy objectives of nations typically stem from their perceptions of global dynamics, often shaped by specific National Role Conceptions (NRCs). This study considers these conceptions as articulated in the programmatic speeches of Italy’s Prime Ministers and Foreign Affairs Ministers from 2016 to 2022, a period marked by the governance of five administrations, some supported by populist parties. The primary objective is to discern the NRCs underpinning Italy’s foreign-policy objectives and strategies, aiming to identify significant departures from the approaches of previous governments. Additionally, the research aims to ascertain whether recent Italian foreign policy exhibits traits characteristic of populist agendas as discussed in the International Relations literature. The key finding reveals notable consistency, reflecting internal coherence and continuity in Italy’s foreign-policy framework. Populist narratives, it appears, remain largely confined to the domain of rhetoric, exerting minimal influence on actual foreign policy directives. However, this continuity also implies a limited capacity to adapt to the rapidly evolving global landscape, potentially undermining the efficacy of Italy’s foreign policy in the future.

The Empire Cites Back: The Occlusion of Non-Western Histories of IR and the Case of India

The call for a ‘global’ and ‘post-Western’ international relations (IR) discipline is rightly gathering momentum, yet arguably this research agenda contains presumptions as to the absence of a historical tradition of IR thinking in places such as India. Turning attention to marginalized histories of Indian IR, this commentary on the global IR debate offers a historical corrective to these presumptions and calls for greater attention to extra-European disciplinary histories. In so doing, important patterns of co-constitution reveal the connected histories of disciplinary development that challenge the analytical categories that often characterize the global IR and post-Western IR literature. A more historicized global IR debate offers a fruitful research agenda that explores the multiple connected beginnings of IR as a global discipline responsive to a variety of intellectual lineages, encompassing a variety of political purposes and revealing entanglements of imperial and anti-imperial knowledge.

Practice diffusion in China’s two-pronged engagement in global technical standardization

In the context of intensifying geopolitical rivalry, China’s transition from rule-taker to rule-maker in technical standard-setting has generated deep contention with established stakeholders in the Global North. This article analyses how China, as a latecomer to global technical standardization, has navigated this increasingly contested arena of global economic governance. Building on the ‘practice turn’ literature in International Relations and a conceptualization of standard-setting processes as shaped by ‘communities of practice’, this article argues that ‘practice diffusion’ is of crucial significance for China’s rising standards power. Just as it sees mastery of global standardization practice as a key dimension of increasing its influence in established standards developing organizations, China has also begun to diffuse its standardization practice abroad in the effort to lay the foundations of a China-centric standardization regime. The article develops this argument by identifying four specific mechanisms of practice diffusion – learning the basics, learning to lead, learning within the region, learning to build – and by illustrating the role that each has played in Chinese stakeholders’ evolving engagement in global technical standard-setting.

The reality and power of international law: Georg Schwarzenberger’s forgotten theory of International Relations

Georg Schwarzenberger’s oeuvre has remained significantly underexplored in International Relations literature despite his status as one of the most important thinkers in International Relations and international law of the twentieth century. Ahead of their time, his works reveal a picture of law that transcends academic boundaries and challenges the traditional portrayal of both realist theory and international law. Through a detailed examination of the works of this theorist, this article offers an analysis of the fundamental aspects of his theory of International Relations and international law. It explores the elements at the heart of Schwarzenberger’s theory of International Relations, which, though examined infrequently and practically forgotten, retain their relevance in today’s international society. Through this exploration of Schwarzenberger’s works, this article argues that his theory of International Relations provides a powerful commentary on the fundamental structure, nature and problems of international law. It points to and reveals issues that have remained at the heart of international law until today, offering a sophisticated and self-conscious interrogation of the relationship between law, power and politics. In doing this, this article challenges our understanding of realism as a theory that is unable to account for international law and highlights Schwarzenberger’s continued relevance today.

The Triple Helix Model for Industry-Education City Integration in China: A Development Approach

Urbanization, vocational education, and industry in China have been influenced by policy and economic changes. This article outlines potential solutions for the integrated development of urbanization, vocational education, and industry in China. By integrating the development ideas of the triple helix model based on international related research literature, this article proposes a development model for China’s industry-education city integration. Taking the Liuzhou rail transit industry-education city as an example, this article adopts a comprehensive and sustainable development approach, including urban management, industry-education integration, and industry innovation and entrepreneurship, centered around the characteristics of urbanization, vocational education, and industry. The development of China’s industry-education city through the triple helix model has brought about innovations in education, industry, urban form, policy, technology, and social culture, which can help China’s urbanization, vocational education, and industry achieve spiral development.

Spiral to Surveillance: The Effect of INGOs on Levels of Peacekeeper Misconduct

Abstracts Over the last twenty years, the international relations literature has sought to understand the conditions in which peacekeeping operations (PKOs) occur and the efficacy of their presence. Much work has focused on PKOs’ relationship to civilians in civil conflict, but less is understood about the influences on peacekeeping missions’ quality. If PKOs commit human rights abuses, how might other actors deter exploitive PKO behavior in the domestic context? We argue international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) provide a monitoring and socializing effect on PKOs. Using the Peacekeeper Attributes (PKAT) and Transnational Social Movements (TSMO) datasets, we analyze peacekeeping missions from 2007 to 2013. Through zero-inflated negative binomial regression, we found that the presence of general INGOs decreases rates of misconduct, and human rights INGOs decrease rates of misconduct. However, we find that the presence of women’s rights-focused INGOs does not decrease rates of sexual misconduct among PKO troops.

Do States Really Sink Costs to Signal Resolve?

Abstract Sinking costs to signal resolve has become a vital part of how the field of international relations (IR) understands crisis bargaining. The logic of a resolved state “burning money” to distinguish itself from an unresolved state is well established in theory. But do states choose to sink costs and burn money in practice? We address the question on two fronts. First, we collect and analyze the examples of sinking costs in the mainstream IR literature. We find almost no clear-cut cases of sunk-cost signals. Second, we argue that this is because states typically prefer other signaling strategies. Rather than burning money, states can expend those resources more constructively. In particular, states can invest in improving the probability of victory in war (“balance tilting”), or they can downpay the costs of war. We conclude that balance tilting and downpaying costs plausibly explain a great deal of state behavior in peacetime, in crises, and even in wartime.

Hierarchy and war

AbstractScholars have written extensively about hierarchical international order, on the one hand, and war on the other, but surprisingly little work systematically explores the connection between the two. This disconnect is all the more striking given that empirical studies have found a strong relationship between the two. We provide a generative computational network model that explains hierarchy and war as two elements of a larger recursive process: The threat of war drives the formation of hierarchy, which in turn shapes states' incentives for war. Grounded in canonical theories of hierarchy and war, the model explains an array of known regularities about hierarchical order and conflict. Surprisingly, we also find that many traditional results of the international relations literature—including institutional persistence, balancing behavior, and systemic self‐regulation—emerge from the interplay between hierarchy and war.

Explaining the Unexplainable: Theorizing the Starving of the Disabled Other

ABSTRACT Every year, stories emerge of cases involving the starvation of disabled people, such as Ann Marie Smith in 2020 in Adelaide, Australia. Despite this, starvation practices against disabled people remain under-theorized. This may reflect that starvation as a topic is largely confined to international relations literature (e.g. during war), or conversely, in medicalized accounts pathologising the individual body (e.g. anorexia, Munchausen syndrome by proxy). More broadly, the “unique” starvation practices against disabled people are sidelined as rubrics of “neglect” or “abuse” take precedence, meaning we fail to engage with the specificity/particularity of starvation practices as forms of violence. Starvation practices against disabled people in interpersonal (or familial) contexts are qualitatively different; this article addresses this gap by providing a preliminary theorization of such violence. We survey the existing literature before invoking two frames – “Vulnerability and Harm by Design” and “Disability’s Deathly Status” – which we suggest provide an account of starvation as a form of violence. Rather than conceive these practices through an individualizing lens, we consider the broader social and institutional norms and practices that facilitate this conduct. We then turn to the promise of crip utopian futures in collective efforts to resist these cycles of violence and to promote interdependent, accessible, and crip socialities/futures.

A Psychoanalytic Approach to Turkish Foreign Policy: Crisis, Disorder, and Disorientation

ABSTRACT What explains Turkey’s current foreign policy disorientation, causing the country to swing from one position to another in a relatively short period of time? We argue that rational arguments do not provide comprehensive explanations of the fluctuations in Turkish foreign policy. By utilising a psychoanalytic approach, this study argues that the relentless radical developments that unfolded at home and abroad in the past decade paralysed the Turkish leadership, disrupting their sense of order in international politics while detaching them from important geopolitical realities. Under this neurotic condition, Turkey’s leadership has engaged in a constant seek for recognition as a key regional player irrespective of how controversial these efforts may be. In making sense of this case, this study builds on the ontological security literature in International Relations and contributes to the existing debates on foreign policy crises by integrating a Lacanian notion of jouissance to the ontological security framework. It shows that the jouissance approach offers a productive lens which captures how an ontologically insecure state like Turkey follows disorderly conducts in international politics and gains satisfaction from it as a way to reassure its ruptured sense of actorness at times of multiple crises.

The Bay of Bengal Subzone Within the Indo-Pacific: Historical Relevance and Present Orientation

Paradigms and conceptualisations are essential tools used in international relations literature. Such conceptualisations, however, continue to be heavily dependent on Western epistemology and strategically oriented. Such theoretical models and projections fail to adequately conceptualise the Indo-Pacific region. The neglect of local connectivity and subregions within the Indo-Pacific world has resulted in a relative understudy of the Bay of Bengal zone, a crucial subregion within the Indo-Pacific. The essay argues for a more holistic approach by amalgamating present strategic concerns with indigenous versions of regional projections developed historically. Only by grasping the significance and relevance of past build-ups, it would be possible to understand the Bay of Bengal zone and its effectiveness in creating a vibrant and dynamic Indo-Pacific region.

Reading Security Imaginaries as Fantasies – Loss, Desire, and Enjoyment in the Military Quest for Explainable AI

What does the Lacanian notion of fantasy offer to the study of security imaginaries? The article answers this question by introducing a fantasmatic reading strategy illustrated by a case study of the US narrative of ‘technological revolutions of war’ that has recently been fueled by a growing demand for ethical and explainable artificial intelligence in military applications and weapon systems. The article offers a Lacanian comment to the expanding International Relations literature on security imaginaries. It demonstrates how a fantasmatic reading encompasses both a discourse analytical tracing of background understandings employed by many security imaginary scholars and an affective tracing at the margins of discourse that captures the force with which subjects continue to invest in – and patch the constitutive gaps of – a security imaginary. In studying security imaginaries through fantasies, we propose zooming in on three analytical moves: analyzing the continuing construction of a lost utopia in security discourses; following the specific objects of desire that is organized around its own inevitable failure; and locating the mode of enjoyment encountered at the boundaries of the socially acceptable norms. Concevoir les imaginaires de la sécurité comme des fantasmes : La perte, le désir et la jouissance dans la quête militaire d’une IA explicable

SİHA’ların Muharebe Etkinliğini Artırmak: Kapsamlı Askeri ve Teknolojik Sistemlere Entegrasyon İçin Alternatif Bir Analiz

While the use of armed unmanned aerial vehicles in both international military operations and internal security operations has been increasing in recent years, debates on the role of armed unmanned aerial vehicles in the international relations literature remain limited. While some experts consider armed unmanned aerial vehicle technology as a groundbreaking or game-changing development, others argue that the impact of this technological development is limited. This study presents an alternative assessment and new suggestions for increasing the effectiveness of armed unmanned aerial vehicles in conflict zones without positioning this study on any side of the ongoing debate in the literature. This study argues that armed drones should be supported by skilled military experts and modern military and electronic systems in order to make them more effective in conflicts. In order to test the accuracy of this hypothesis, this study examines Türkiye’s intervention in the Libyan Civil War, Türkiye’s Operation Spring Shield in Syria’s Idlib province, and Türkiye’s cooperation with Azerbaijan in the 44-day Patriotic War as case studies. Ultimately, the case studies uphold the hypothesis that the deployment of skilled military experts and modern military and electronic systems to support drones in combat increases their effectiveness.

From Petrodollar to Energy-Yuan: Currency Internationalization in the Light of Original Institutional Economics

The present article relies on an original institutional economics perspective of the international monetary system to argue that contrary to what is generally maintained in international relations literature, China’s effort to internationalize the renminbi has not stalled after its inclusion in the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Special Drawing Rights in 2015. This argument rests upon on the evaluation of the global petroleum market as a possible reinforcement of China’s establishment of the renminbi as an international unit of account and means of payment through its participation in both fossil and renewable energy markets. To that end, we analyze China’s energy-yuan strategy aimed at both fostering renminbi internationalization and securing energy provision.

What Shaming Reveals: Examining Qatar’s Response to Being Shamed as the Host of the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup

AbstractThis Article considers how the ranking of states, as perpetuated by the international legal order, may play a role in the considerations of those targeted by global naming and shaming campaigns. To do so, it examines Qatar’s response to being shamed in the lead up to and during the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup. Drawing from international relations literature on status and adopting a critical approach to unpack the prevalence of the hierarchal structuring of states in the contemporary international legal order, the Article claims that the practice of shaming, as a human rights enforcement strategy, inevitably pushes target states to question their status within the international legal community. This could, counterproductively, lead to negative outcomes for the rights of the very individuals these campaigns seek to protect. Furthermore, the Article sketches out a theoretical argument for why certain states may consider the enactment of cosmetic legal reforms to be an attractive strategy for countering a global shaming campaign.

Nexus of Strong Presidentialism and Philippine Foreign Policy: The Case of the Duterte Presidency's Hedging toward China*

During the Duterte presidency from June 2016 to June 2022, the government of the Philippines limited its affinity with the United States and pursued an ostensibly pro‐China policy. This bold move took place amid the ongoing US–China rivalry. This paper carries out a retrospective examination of Duterte's China policy from the perspective of Philippine domestic politics. Specifically, we assess the international relations literature on hedging as a foreign policy strategy and argue that domestic factors play a major role in filtering systemic influences and leaving state leaders with sufficient room for strategic discretion and maneuvering. This is particularly the case with the Philippines, where strong presidentialism gives clout to the president in foreign policy development. We argue that much of the “audacious” behavior in the foreign policy of the Duterte government can simultaneously be understood as pragmatic, as it was believed to better serve the regime's short‐term goals. While the alliance with the United States remained largely intact, the Duterte government emphasized its success in stabilizing Sino–Philippine relations.