International Relations Theory

This paper argues that any long-term analysis of Israel's future political economy must distinguish between diplomatic normalization, commercial cooperation, and social legitimacy. Stephen I. Ternyik's proposal usefully connects Israeli domestic polarization, regional geoeconomics, and global power transition, but its "Regional Integration and Inclusive Growth" scenario risks overestimating elite-level normalization while underestimating durable cultural, political, religious, historical, and moral resistance to Israel among surrounding societies. The central claim is not that Israel cannot sign agreements or build selective economic corridors. It is that integration without popular legitimacy remains structurally fragile. Saudi Arabia is the decisive Gulf actor, and its normalization position is constrained not only by diplomacy but also by Arab public opinion, the Palestinian question, and the post-Gaza legitimacy crisis. The paper proposes a fourth scenario: "Transactional Integration Under Legitimacy Deficit," in which technology, energy, and Gulf investment proceed selectively but remain vulnerable to shocks from Palestine, Gaza, Jerusalem, Western youth politics, and Israel's declining moral image.

This paper accepts that authoritarianism, religious instrumentalization, nationalism and militarized populism require serious criticism wherever they appear. It argues, however, that anti-authoritarian discourse becomes ethically dangerous when it is absorbed into security-centred narratives that treat whole societies as legitimate targets of coercive pressure, military punishment, sanctions, fragmentation or externally designed regime change.

Taking as its point of departure Parchizadeh and Emami’s article on Turkey’s post-Islamist authoritarian turn, the paper develops a broader methodological and ethical critique. It does not defend authoritarian regimes. Rather, it rejects both authoritarian apologetics and civilizational weaponization. The central argument is that critique of regimes must remain distinct from the punishment, humiliation or destruction of the societies living under those regimes.

The paper proposes a civic and third-generation framework for anti-authoritarian critique grounded in contextual humility, civilian protection, historical memory, cultural plurality and local agency. It argues that the task of the scholar is not to make war easier to justify, but to make human dignity harder to ignore.

This article develops the second stage of the algorithmic colonialism framework by distinguishing data colonialism from algorithmic colonialism. Data colonialism explains the extraction of human life as data. Algorithmic colonialism explains what can happen after extraction: the conversion of data into systems of prediction, behavioural steering, social classification, epistemic filtering, dependency, and identity capture.

The central argument is that the contemporary colonial frontier is not only land, labour, or raw materials, but increasingly the behavioural and identity structure of the human being. Artificial intelligence, platform infrastructures, recommendation systems, predictive analytics, biometric technologies, automated governance, and digital dependency do not merely observe society. Under conditions of unequal power, they may participate in organising attention, shaping preference, ranking visibility, directing behaviour, and mediating the conditions through which individuals and communities understand themselves.

The paper builds on debates around digital colonialism, data colonialism, surveillance capitalism, the colonial matrix of AI power, Indigenous data sovereignty, linguistic marginalisation, and global AI governance. It extends these debates through the IAAP framework, Identity in the Age of Algorithmic Power, which analyses identity capture across four domains: memory, emotion, choice, and behaviour. The paper argues that decolonising AI requires more than data protection, ethical principles, or technological inclusion. It also requires protection of human agency, cultural memory, epistemic autonomy, behavioural freedom, and the capacity of societies to shape their own digital futures.

Writing in the context of the call for greater diversity, this short commentary makes a dual argument about the need to 'un-discipline' the discipline of International Relations. First: I return to an argument I made many years ago: the need to 'Forget IR Theory' and to explore the key issues in global politics without being constraint by the boundaries of existing debates. Key political problems, from climate change and pandemics, are far too complex to be understood as uniquely international phenomena and through the lenses of disciplinary debates. Second: to un-discipline is not to abandon the study of international relations. Quite the contrary, forgetting the constraining boundaries of academic disciplines can involve engaging back with the discipline of International Relations but, crucially, not on its own terms and not through the debates that have pre-set the boundaries of what is and is not thinkable. Un-disciplining is a process that entails convincing disciplinary scholars of the need to see key dilemmas in global politics in new and creative ways.

This dialogue centres on engagement between Hegelian dialectics and Advaita trialectics, a concept rooted in Ancient Indian philosophy. Brincat explores the development of dialectics in Ancient India and its relevance to International Relations (IR) theory. The discussion engages Hegel’s Logic, the purpose of dialectics within it, and the idea of ‘the unity of opposites’. Shahi introduces Advaita trialectics as a non-dualist approach to understanding reality, challenging the Western subject–object dualism and advocating for a ‘single hidden oneness’ or brahman, clarifying that Advaita trialectics anti-sceptically presupposes brahman as a hypothesis to reconcile contradictions while speculatively investigating the ‘multiplicity of being’ within it. Brahman is the ultimate reality, with apparent multiplicities being provisional, aiming for a subject–object collapse in an extra-rational state. This framework bridges existing divides in IR by fostering a ‘Global self–other/s relationality’ where harm to others is understood as harm to oneself, offering an inclusive approach for global thinking. Brincat raises the danger of epistemologically how we can know something that is beyond relations in the phenomenal world and advocates for the indispensable role of doubt and scepticism within dialectical inquiry, drawing on ancient traditions ranging from Jainism’s Syādvāda and the materialist Cārvāka school to Kant’s warnings against the ‘pretensions to transcendent insight’ to guard against dogmatism and misuse associated with grand meta-ontologies. The dialogue examines the potential of these philosophical systems for knowledge production, scepticism versus anti-scepticism, and their potential to address politico-social divisions and racism in global politics.

Paper acadêmico sobre as dimensões histórica, jurídica e diplomática da Questão Malvinas Resumo O texto analisado, atribuído a Roger Lorton e intitulado "Falklands Wars: Timeline History of the Falkland Islands. 74 days in 1982. Trial by Combat", apresenta a guerra de 1982 como o episódio moral e jurídico decisivo da Questão Malvinas. A narrativa enfatiza a operação militar argentina de 2 de abril de 1982, a reação do Reino Unido, a Resolução 502 do Conselho de Segurança e o sofrimento da população local durante a administração militar argentina. Esses elementos são relevantes para a história do conflito; contudo, não resolvem a disputa de soberania subjacente. A debilidade central do documento é metodológica: ele utiliza a ilegalidade, a imprudência política e as consequências humanas do recurso argentino à força em 1982 como se esse episódio pudesse extinguir o título histórico-jurídico argentino ou legitimar retroativamente o ato britânico de força de 1833. Este paper sustenta que a guerra de 1982 e a disputa de soberania devem ser examinadas em planos jurídicos distintos. A proibição do uso da força constitui uma norma fundamental da Carta das Nações Unidas; porém, constatar que houve uso da força em 1982 não equivale a adjudicar o título territorial. A própria Organização das Nações Unidas, por meio da Resolução 2065 (XX) da Assembleia Geral e de resoluções posteriores, reconheceu a existência de uma disputa de soberania entre a Argentina e o Reino Unido. O enquadramento correto não é, portanto, escolher entre aprovar a ação militar de 1982 ou aceitar a soberania britânica. O enquadramento correto é reconhecer a persistência de uma disputa territorial originada no deslocamento da autoridade argentina em 1833, seguida por protesto argentino contínuo e por um mandato de descolonização que exige negociações bilaterais entre os dois Estados, levando em consideração os interesses dos habitantes das Ilhas Malvinas.

This article examines the geopolitical, energy, and security implications of the recent escalation between the United States, Israel, and Iran, with a particular focus on its systemic impact on global stability. Drawing on a mixed-methods approach that combines qualitative geopolitical analysis with quantitative indicators related to energy markets and military capabilities, the study explores how regional conflicts in the Middle East generate far-reaching global consequences. The analysis highlights the strategic centrality of the Strait of Hormuz as a critical energy chokepoint, through which a significant share of global oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) transit flows, thereby amplifying the vulnerability of international energy markets to geopolitical disruptions. It further examines Iran's asymmetric military capabilities-including ballistic missiles, drones, naval assets, and proxy networks-as key instruments shaping regional power dynamics and deterrence strategies. In addition, the study assesses the growing risk of nuclear escalation by analyzing recent developments in Iran's uranium enrichment program, the reduction of nuclear breakout time, and the evolving strategic postures of regional and global actors. The findings suggest that the current crisis reflects a broader transformation of the international security environment, characterized by increasing multipolarity, hybrid warfare, and intensified geopolitical competition. Ultimately, the article argues that contemporary conflicts in strategic regions such as the Middle East must be understood as multidimensional and systemic phenomena, requiring integrated analytical frameworks and coordinated policy responses. The study concludes by emphasizing the need for renewed diplomatic engagement, strengthened multilateral governance, and enhanced mechanisms for managing global energy and security risks.

Terrorism in Question crafts a political anthropology of post-9/11 “new terrorism” by investigating who needs the category of terrorists and offering a global framework to understand anthropology, Islam and terrorism. In contrast to their depiction as antimodern, barbarian and fanatic, this study theorizes “Muslim terrorists” as radical friends of equality and visionaries of an unrecognized ethical politics. Marshalling fieldwork with media practitioners and refugees, participant observation of counterterrorism conferences in India and Oslo, and encounters with terrorists, it reorients anthropology to elevate its public voice. This book shows how fieldwork, poetry and political theory come together to exemplify decolonized knowledge.

Goal 16 of the UN sustainable development goals, which calls on the global community to “build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels,” can be conceptualized as aiming at fostering communicative action, a concept developed by Jürgen Habermas to describe a mode for coordinating society grounded in deliberation. However, Habermas simultaneously provides an account of the structural transformation of the public sphere that suggests a hard limit on the capacity of mainstream capitalist liberal democracies to foster genuine communicative action in the relationships between institutions, individuals and communities. This paper therefore argues for the critical role of prefigurative politics, in which communities strive to internally embody desired socio-political forms rather than focusing on changing the wider socio-political order, as a vital resource for generating examples to inform institutional progress. The prefigurative example of the Baha'i community ...

This paper provides a detailed anatomical dissection, critical evaluation, and forward-looking analysis of Adler-Nissen and Liebetrau's (2026) agenda-setting article "Big Tech as World Makers: A Research Agenda for International Political Sociology." Drawing on the full public abstract and the authors' related scholarship, it examines the paper's theoretical framing, methodological orientation, and proposed research programme. The review identifies significant strengths in its reflexive, transversal, and sociologically attuned approach while noting limitations inherent to agenda papers (breadth over depth, limited empirics). It contrasts the work with leading global scholarship on surveillance capitalism, data colonialism, algorithmic governance, and weaponised interdependence. Finally, it outlines concrete pathways for future research, emphasising empirical operationalisation, Global South perspectives, and integration with emerging AI infrastructures. The analysis underscores the timeliness of treating Big Tech not merely as actors but as active co-producers of global political orders.

Andreas Eckert reviews my book The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought: French Sociology and the Overseas Empire (2023) in German translation (Die kolonialen Ursprünge moderner Sozialtheorie. Französische Soziologie und das Überseeimperium, 2024) along with Onur Erdur's book Schule des Südens. Die kolonialen Wurzeln der französischen Theorie (2024).

This paper offers a respectful academic response to the concept of “operational hybrid identity” proposed in the discussion of Atenius IH-001 and the human face of hybrid authorship. The response does not reject the use of artificial intelligence in research, writing, analysis, or conceptual development. Rather, it challenges the linguistic and conceptual inflation through which artificial intelligence is sometimes moved beyond its scientific category and re-described as part of a “hybrid identity” or “hybrid authorship structure.” The central argument is that artificial intelligence should remain within its proper scientific category: a machine-based, engineered, computational, algorithmic system created, trained, instructed, and deployed by human beings. To describe the relationship between a human author and an AI system as a “hybrid identity” risks a category error unless the term is used only as a loose metaphor. A human being and an AI system do not belong to the same ontological class. The human is a living, conscious, morally responsible being endowed with reason, intention, memory, conscience, and ethical choice. AI, by contrast, is a technological artefact operating through mathematical models, data structures, statistical inference, programmed architectures, and computational procedures. The more accurate formulation is not “hybrid identity” but “human authorship assisted by algorithmic systems.”

In this article, we invest in the conceptual development of transversality to establish it as the key analytical tool for examining the international from the perspective of international political sociology. We engage in this work for two main reasons. First, to strengthen IPS as a field with unique con- cepts that facilitate a new understanding of international relations, serving as more than just a common ground for various critical perspectives. We believe transversality is one of the key concepts that shape IPS’s approach to international issues and which remains underexplored in our field. Our second motivation concerns the challenge of exploring the potential of transversality to conceptualize the international in an alternative manner. As transversality has largely been mobilized descriptively, IPS has strug- gled to sustain a critical engagement with the international as a problem. This limitation has contributed to a tendency to presume the obsoles- cence of the international and to replace it with ostensibly “alternative”spatialities that often reproduce the global as an unexamined background condition. We propose transversality as a concept capable of reactivating the critical purchase of IPS by overcoming the slumber into which “the problematization of the international”has fallen over the past 20 years.

During their high-stakes meeting in Beijing this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly asked US President Donald Trump if the two countries could overcome the "Thucydides trap". This phrase, popularised by contemporary US political scientist Graham Allison in the early 2010s, is used to describe how two countries can drift toward war when an existing superpower feels anxious about an emerging one. Allison had China and the SHARE বাংলা

In a matter of three years Armenia lost a war with Azerbaijan and parts of its own territory, before finally losing Nagorno-Karabakh itself. The massive expulsion of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, following a nine months-long suffocating siege imposed by the Azerbaijani military, will add to the layers of collective trauma of the Armenians. This series of losses not only marked a military defeat and a forfeiture of land but it also meant the collapse of political ideas on which Armenia’s independence was first constructed, and upon which Armenian political thinking was based.

En el siguiente artículo se discuten las corrientes teóricas de las relaciones internacionales junto al Análisis de Política Exterior. Se sostiene que para la comprensión del comportamiento de los estados en materia internacional, es necesario realizar estudios que vayan más allá del análisis separado de los factores externos-internos e intereses objetivos-subjetivos que explican su accionar. Para ello, se propone una aproximación a la política exterior que incorpora las teorías constructivistas y críticas de las relaciones internacionales, como forma de obtener una visión amplia pero parsimoniosa del comportamiento externo del Estado.

Despite some idealistic views, the emergence of the multipolar world order is being accompanied by increased tensions and conflict. Drawing on data from a worldwide expert survey (IHES), this article analyzes IR experts' perspectives on the current transformation of the global system. Current global changes are seen as similar in intensity to those which accompanied the First World War. However, there is no clear path for states seeking higher international status to exploit this historic momentum. The article shows that increased revisionism is perceived as associated with a higher risk of losing international status. According to experts, such downfalls tend to happen faster than ascents. The prevailing assessment among international experts warrants caution against pushing for change. This article briefly analyzes the impact of such shared vision on the policies of the World Majority countries visa -vis great powers.

Can a nation like Japan strengthen security posture without sacrificing distinctive identity? Japan's postwar identity was never simply a constitutional arrangement. It became a form of strategic credibility recognized around the world. If Japan abandons the identity that made it distinctive in the postwar era, the loss will not belong to Japan alone. The world already possesses many nations capable of projecting military power. What it increasingly lacks are societies capable of projecting restraint.

This paper analyses the role of popular masses in politico-diplomatic contexts during the Middle Roman Republic, principaly through several North African episodes described in Appian’s Punica. It argues that Appian portrays the Carthaginian crowd as a decisive yet illegitimate political force, characterized by irrationality, violence, and emotional excess. By examining assemblies, riots, diplomatic crises, and public acts of collective violence, the paper explores how the historian links mass participation to civic degeneration and institutional collapse. Finally, it reassesses these narratives in light of modern debates on popular participation in ancient political systems.

After Vitoria-Gasteiz (2022) and Toulouse & Albi (2024), the Universitat de Girona is holding this Third Gathering of Roman Republican Historians from the Hispanic and French scholarly traditions. Organised by Martin Galinier (Perpignan), Jesús Huertas (Girona), and Toni Ñaco del Hoyo (ICREA-Girona), this colloquium benefits from the support by Department of History and Art History (Girona), Institute of Historical Research (Girona), Social Council of the University (Girona), and  the ACROSS Alliance (European Cross-Border University).