The insights of social psychology are not thoroughly integrated into international relations theory, yet social psychology has much to offer. Social psychology provides a conceptualization of a number of varieties of trust – moralistic, strategic, and generalized – and their opposites that implicitly drive the logic of major works of international relations. It also reveals the empirical presence of a number of different types of trusters who make different assumptions about the trustworthiness of others and consequently show markedly different propensities towards cooperation. The rough correspondence between these different ‘social orientations’ and the logics of the three approaches of structural realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and constructivism suggest that individuals carry a crude paradigm in their minds. Metatheoretically, the implication for international relations theory is that scholars capture a part but not the totality of world politics, the behavior of those who trust (or do not trust) in a particular way that matches the logic of their paradigms. Theoretically it suggests a research agenda at multiple levels of analysis, utilizing all of the types of trust and trusters. I review the work of others that offers some preliminary evidence for its plausibility, suggest some hypotheses of my own, and address potential theoretical objections.

International Relations (IR) is uneasy about its status as a ‘science’. Throughout a long history of attempts to legitimate the field as ‘scientific’, IR scholars have imported multifarious positions from the Philosophy of Science (PoS) in order to ground IR on an unshakable foundation. Alas, no such unshakable foundation exists. The PoS is itself a contested field of study, in which no consensus exists on the proper foundation for science. By importing foundational divisions into IR, the ‘science’ debate splits the discipline into contending factions and justifies the absence of dialogue between them. As all foundations require a leap of faith, imperial foundational projects are always vulnerable to challenge and therefore unable to resolve the science question in IR. In this article, we seek to dissolve rather than solve the ‘science’ debate in IR and the quest for philosophical foundations. We argue that IR scholars should adopt an ‘attitude towards’ rather than a ‘position in’ the irresolvable foundational debate. Specifically, we advocate an attitude of ‘foundational prudence’ that is open-minded about what the PoS can offer IR, while precluding imperial foundational projects, which attempt to impose a single meta-theoretical framework on the discipline. This requires knowing what PoS arguments can and cannot do. As such, foundational prudence is post-foundational rather than anti-foundational. A prudent attitude towards philosophical foundations encourages theoretical and methodological pluralism, making room for a question-driven IR while de-escalating intra-disciplinary politics.

What gives a particular state the right to exercise jurisdiction and enforcement power over a particular territory? Why does the state of Denmark have rights over the territory of Denmark, and not over the territory of Sweden, and vice versa? This paper first considers a popular argument that purports to ground state territorial rights in citizens’ rights of land ownership. On this view, the state has jurisdiction over territory insofar as its people owns the territory, and delegates jurisdictional powers over their land to the state. It is argued that we should reject this approach, because it is unable to explain: (a) how the state can establish a continuous territory; (b) why later generations consent to the state’s jurisdiction; and (c) why non-consenting property owners cannot secede.

Rather than considering state jurisdiction to be derived from the people’s prior property rights, this paper claims that we should consider state jurisdictional rights over territory to be primitive. It defends an alternative Kantian account of territorial rights. On this view, a state’s claim to jurisdiction over territory is justified if that state imposes a system of property law that meets certain basic conditions of legitimacy. This Kantian approach, it is argued, allows us to make better sense of state territorial rights.

Current approaches for understanding and analyzing religion in international politics insufficiently incorporate the role of ethics in the practices of religious actors. Primordialist approaches essentialize religion, instrumental approaches consider it to be an epiphenomenon, and cosmopolitan approaches a priori downgrade alternative ethical constructs as insufficiently universalist. An approach to religion that begins with a constitutive understanding of religious belief and economic, social, and political practice as outlined in Weber’s Sociology of Religion, is more helpful. However, because Weber’s method insufficiently addresses ethical intentionality, the ‘neo-Weberian’ approach I advance here incorporates the concepts of ‘common good’ and ‘popular casuistry’ into socio-historical contextualization. This approach provides a way to understand and theorize how religious adherents connect religious guidelines to moral action that avoids the essentialization of religion which is often characteristic of other perspectives.

‘Structure’ in the discipline of International Relations, for all the criticism of Kenneth Waltz’ work, still typically means the Waltzian triad of ordering principles, functional differentiation, and distribution of capabilities. I argue, however, that this triad not only does not in Waltz’ particular presentation but cannot provide an adequate account of political structures. In its place I sketch a five-part framework of the elements of political structures. Three types of structural differentiation are identified: vertical differentiation, which establishes hierarchical ranking; horizontal differentiation, which establishes non-hierarchical segmentation; and unit differentiation, which assigns certain types of actors a privileged status. Two dimensions of structural elaboration are also identified: norms and institutions and technology and geography. This framework highlights the central place of ranking in international political structures, developing a tripartite account of ‘ordering principles’ that identifies autarchic, single-hierarchic, and heterarchic systems. It also draws attention to the diversity of international orders and opens structural analysis to the concerns and contributions of constructivism.

Even though the notion of ‘world politics’ has become increasingly widespread in the discipline of International Relations, its deployment in the disciplinary discourse has been highly problematic. This article argues that the impasse of the discourse on world politics is owing to its commitment to a political ontology of identitarian pluralism, most forcefully articulated in the work of Carl Schmitt, which limits the political imagination to the binary opposition of the preservation of international anarchy and its hierarchical domestication in the world state. As long as politics is cast in identitarian terms, it is impossible to conceive of the universal dimension of political praxis other than in terms of the universalization of some particular content, i.e. as a hegemonic project. We shall then outline the pathway towards a non-identitarian understanding of world politics through an engagement with the universalist themes in the philosophy of Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben. We shall reconstitute the authors’ alternative to identity politics that rehabilitates the notion of universalism from ‘postmodern’ criticism and reconstructs the category of the universal in non-identitarian or generic terms of indiscernibility and ‘whatever being’. The paper concludes with a discussion of the practical dimension of generic world politics as a radically egalitarian process of the emergence of the world community of ‘whatever singularities’.

This article shows that Andrew Moravcsik’s ‘nonideological’ formulation of a liberal theory of international relations is itself deeply ideological – both in terms of his own criteria and in terms of a broader conception of ideology. The source of this outcome lies in Moravcsik’s mistaken conception of ideology. While ideological knowledge is indeed particular rather than general, it shares this feature with all political knowledge. In the political sphere, it is therefore not general knowledge that transcends the limits of ideology but rather an explicit engagement with these limits. A nonideological study of liberalism would thus require an historical account of the origins and development of liberalism in the context of its struggle with internal and external competitors. While such a study would not constitute a liberal theory of international relations in general, it would provide a general theory of liberal international relations – and would thus be highly relevant in the context of a liberal world order.

Political entrepreneurs reside at the core of international relations (IR) theory. Structures might constrain agents, but entrepreneurs can remake and transform these structures, contesting norms, shifting identities and creating space for significant political change. Despite this, IR theorists note that key questions about entrepreneurs remain under-theorized. Under what conditions are political entrepreneurs likely to emerge? Who is likely to succeed as an entrepreneur, and how do entrepreneurs produce structural change? I argue scholars could strengthen their answers to these questions by drawing from the growing program of social network theory. Networks influence entrepreneurship in three ways. First, networks provide certain actors – brokers – with resources to effect change. It is not an actor’s attributes or interests but her position, then, that enables entrepreneurial behavior. Second, networks create the conditions of entrepreneurship. While certain networks are extremely stable, others contain contradictions that allow entrepreneurs to emerge. Finally, network theory posits structural mechanisms – including mobilization, polarization, and yoking – to explain political change.

From an international political theory perspective, this paper assesses the justifiability of ascribing human rights obligations, in the form of international or extraterritorial law, onto transnational corporations (TNCs). The major policy prescriptions in favour of extending human rights duties to include TNCs become deeply problematic when considered in light of advocates’ claims that human rights rules, rather than a sovereign’s legal rules, are necessarily the rules that are truly authoritative and/or in line with a ‘global rule of law’. This paper discusses concepts such as authority, human rights and the rule of law, and juxtaposes these concepts: firstly, with one another; secondly, with the legal status quo about jurisdiction over companies; and thirdly, with corporations’ de facto transnationality in the contemporary international system. This paper discusses key similarities and differences between companies, states, and individuals, and highlights the relevance of these distinctions to those agents’ potential human rights duties. This paper concludes by arguing that the ‘TNC and human rights’ project is well worth pursuing, but according to different theoretical foundations than those currently endorsed by legal and policy analysts, and it suggests important directions for future research.

This article considers the question of whether and to what degree citizens are responsible collectively for the actions of their state. In contrast to current accounts of collective responsibility, which focus on causality or affect as means for transmitting responsibility, the article develops an alternative account, the ‘authorized state’ model. This model, drawn from core intuitions of the social contract tradition, sees collective responsibility as being transmitted through the state as the agent or representative of its citizens. Having developed this model as an ideal type, the article then assesses under what circumstances the model is most applicable. The article finally applies the model to the US war in Iraq to assess the collective responsibility of US citizens for the outcomes of that war.

Monteiro and Ruby (2009) argue that International Relations (IR) scholars should look to adopt a more ‘tentative attitude’ towards the philosophy of science (PoS) frameworks in IR. This is an attractive and timely call for more open-minded PoS argumentation in the field. Yet, the logic of Monteiro and Ruby’s argument is not (rather characteristically of PoS debates) infallible. As other commentaries in this forum show, it is not self-evident that Monteiro and Ruby’s account is ‘post-foundational’, or that it is premised on an accurate reading of existing PoS positions in IR. However, I do not here wish to elaborate further on the critiques that could be made of the internal coherence of Monteiro and Ruby’s argumentation or their reading of core philosophical schools. Instead, I want to discuss a different kind of an issue raised by Monteiro and Ruby’s intervention: their treatment of the interaction of political forms of argumentation and PoS debates.

While the strategic objectives of those who organize suicide terrorism may be explained in rationalist terms, the choice of those who volunteer to be candidates for death is far more problematic, given the high premium, at least within international relations theory, on survival as the ultimate rational end. The rational choice model also makes it difficult to take language or emotion into account as factors in constituting the meaning of the act. This article begins with an observation: In Western discourse the acts of human bombs tend to be referred to as ‘suicide terrorism’ or ‘suicide bombings’; by contrast the terminology of ‘martyrdom operations’ is more prevalent in the Arab and Muslim Middle East, or among Islamists in the West. The first section of the paper examines the importance of context for understanding the rationality of an action. The second explores ‘martyrdom’ and ‘suicide’ as two distinct frameworks for giving meaning to an act of voluntary death in the post-9/11 world, and the emotional dynamics that link these two ‘games’ to a larger structural logic. The third section further develops the structural logic that emerges from the interaction of the two. The conclusions analyse the significance of this argument for rethinking both the structural dynamics of this international context, as well as the theoretical model of games.