Theory seminar: Sonic IR
What role does sound have in the field of IR studies?
Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing From Empires to the Global Era
When do states resort to soft balancing (relying on institutional and economic instruments) rather than hard balancing (relying on formal military alliances and intense arms buildups)? When do they combine both? What are the differences and similarities between the 20th and 21st century cases of soft balancing, one under multipolarity, the other under near-unipolarity?
A Conceptual History of International Relations (CHOIR)
The purpose of CHOIR is to investigate taken-for-granted concepts of international relations....
The emergence of foreign policy
International relations scholarship typically treats foreign policy as a taken-for-granted analytical concept. It assumes either that all historical polities have foreign policies or that foreign policy originates in seventeenth-century Europe with the separation between the “inside” and “outside” of the state. It generally holds that foreign policy differs in essential ways from other kinds of policy, such as carrying with it a special need for secrecy. Halvard Leira argues against this view. The difference between “foreign” and “domestic” policy results from specific political processes; secrecy begat foreign policy. Growing domestic differentiation between state and civil society in the eighteenth century- articulated through a relatively free press operating in a nascent public sphere - enabled the emergence of foreign policy as a practical concept. The concept served to delimit the legitimate sphere of political discourse from the exclusive, executive sphere of king and cabinet. Leira explores these processes in Britain and France, important cases with different trajectories, one of reform, the other of revolution. Historicizing foreign policy like this serves to denaturalize the separation between different forms of policy, as well as the necessity of secrecy. Doing so cautions against the uncritical application of abstract analytical terms across time and space.
Forum: In the beginning there was no word (For It): Terms, concepts, and early sovereignty
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the concept sovereignty for international relations (IR). And yet, understanding the historical emergence of sovereignty in international relations has long been curtailed by the all-encompassing myth of the Peace of Westphalia. While criticism of this myth has opened space for further historical inquiry in recent years, it has also raised important questions of historical interpretation and methodology relevant to IR, as applying our current conceptual framework to distant historical cases is far from unproblematic. Central among these questions is the when, what, and how of sovereignty: from when can we use “sovereignty” to analyze international politics and for which polities? Can sovereignty be used when the actors themselves did not have recourse to the terminology? And what about polities that do not have recourse to the term at all? What are the theoretical implications of applying the concept of sovereignty to early polities? From different theoretical and methodological perspectives, the contributions in this forum shed light on these questions of sovereignty and how to treat the concept analytically when applied to a period or place when/where the term did not exist as such. In doing so, this forum makes the case for a sensitivity to the historical dimension of our arguments about sovereignty—and, by extension, international relations past and present—as this holds the key to the types of claims we can make about the polities of the world and their relations.
What does foreign policy really mean?
This, with other widely used IR concepts, is what Halvard Leira and his project CHOIR team have received funding to explore.
Theory Seminar: Protest Diffusion During the 1919 Egyptian Revolution
Neil Ketchley will discuss his latest article on the diffusion of protest in a population.