This article addresses the issue of the information revolution and international affairs. It makes three arguments. First, the evolution of a global digital information network is likely to diminish state capacity and autonomy, but the specific nature of the effects of new information technologies are indeterminate because the technology and the politics are inextricably intertwined and the technology itself is not yet ‘complete’. Second, the effects of a mature digital information infrastructure are best understood as the outcome of a three-way political struggle between centralized political authorities (states), centralized economic entities (firms) and individuals as both consumers and citizens. Third, in spite of the indeterminacy of technological change, a matrix of possible outcomes can be constructed. The globalization argument is partially correct: state capacities will drop, relatively speaking, and firm capacities will increase unless states and people can reconceptualize their relationship and guide technological development to suit their interests. The article analyses three representative pieces of a mature global digital information network—the physical network media, cryptography, and digital money—to show how the new information technologies are deeply political and their effects therefore indeterminate.

The article deals with NATO's intervention in Kosovo. Instead of focusing on the military and diplomatic interventions, the article looks at how NATO developed a humanitarian interest in providing assistance and protection to the Kosovo Albanian refugees. In the name of the refugees—and to a lesser extent, of internally displaced persons—NATO entered a humanitarian field and was partly transfigured into a humanitarian agency during the crisis in Kosovo. The political significance of NATO's humanitarianism was that its reputation for competence and its image of respectability and honour depended to an extent on how well it supported the international assistance to the Kosovo Albanians. The stakes were not limited to the immediate Kosovo context, however. The symbolic struggle for reputation and honour resonated directly in the political struggle for the conservation and transformation of the European security complex. The success of the humanitarian operation became an additional element of demonstrating the value of military capital for acquiring political authority in the definition and management of security problems in post-Cold War Europe.

The title of this article brings together two terms, the latter, ‘international ethics’, is instantly recognizable as referring to a distinct aspect of the academic study of international relations with its own canonic tradition and debates. The former term, ‘feminist’, is much less familiar, and for many normative theorists in international relations refers to a political movement and set of ideological positions whose relevance to international ethics is far from clear. It is therefore necessary to engage in some preliminary explanation of the term ‘feminism’ and how it has come to be linked to ‘international ethics’ in recent scholarship in order to set out the argument of this article. It is only in the last fifteen years that theoretical perspectives under the label of feminism have come to be applied to international relations, although they have a rather longer history within other social sciences and, significantly, within ethical theory. Feminism as a political movement comes in a variety of ideological forms and the same is true of feminism within the academy. The common theme which connects diverse theoretical positions under the label of ‘feminism’ is the claim that paying attention to the ways in which social reality is ‘gendered’ has a productive impact on how it is to be understood, judged and may be changed. What counts as ‘productive’ is related not simply to the goal of enriching understanding and judgment as such (by drawing attention to its gendered dimension), but to the explicitly political goal of exposing and addressing the multiple ways in which both women and men are oppressed by gendered relations of power. It is clear, from the first, therefore, that there is a powerfully normative agenda inherent in any perspective labelled as ‘feminist’.

Environmental change is a global phenonemon caused by, and increasingly acting as a constraint upon, human activity. Thus analysis of the determinants of human behaviour is necessary to the understanding of global environmental issues. In this respect the salience of gender to global-change issues has frequently been noted. However, attempts to 'put gender on the agenda' of global environmental politics have resulted in, not the incorporation of gender, but the addition of women. This article attempts to explain this apparently unintended outcome through examining ways in which human agency and social structures interact in framing issues and setting agendas.

Regionalism, and more generally multilateralism, is commanding considerable attention in the policy and intellectual communities. In the security domain, this interest can be traced to a number of developments. One is the regionalization of international security brought about by the dramatic change in the dynamics of the international political system. In the absence of a new overarching and overriding global-level security dynamic, domestic, bilateral and regional dynamics have become more salient and have to be addressed in their own terms. It is now much more necessary and possible, for example, to discuss security in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East in regional and sub-regional contexts, quite independent of a global dynamic or developments in other regions. While the interests and linkages arising from the involvement of external powers must still be taken into account, the context is qualitatively different from the Cold War era, when the dynamics of the superpower conflict permeated and in many cases subsumed the local dynamics of conflicts.

This article starts from the premise that empathy is an inherent part of social and political life but that this is not sufficiently theorised in International Relations (IR). Building on the burgeoning debates on emotions in world politics, it argues that the study of empathy should be developed more rigorously by establishing an interdisciplinary and critical framework for understanding the experiences and processes of empathy in IR. The central contribution of the article is twofold: firstly, it highlights limitations of the dominant perspective on empathy in IR, and secondly, it argues that a range of meanings may be attributed to empathy when examined within the sociopolitical conditions of particular contexts. Drawing on research on the conflict in Israel and Palestine, the article identifies and articulates two such alternative interpretations: empathy as non-violent resistance and as a strategy of normalisation.

Aside from the more mundane purpose of telling us where to eat, sleep and sightsee in foreign lands, guidebooks communicate an ethical vision that sees travel as the key to reducing cultural differences and inequalities. This article argues that Lonely Planet guidebooks in particular encourage a form of ‘responsible independent travel’ that both reflects and produces a powerful discourse of humanitarianism. By examining the controversy over Lonely Planet’s publication of guidebooks to Burma, this article uncovers the problematic colonial logic embedded in that ethical vision.

The debate on the reform of the Security Council can be conceptualised as the most recent episode in the evolution of World Governing Councils (WGCs), that is, the highest-level intergovernmental bodies charged with regulating the international use of violence. Building on a historical comparison of key formative and transformative moments – 1815, 1919, 1945, and post-Cold War – we argue that the modern evolution of WGCs is characterised by increasing inclusiveness. More specifically, we show that the number of participants involved in deliberations has constantly risen; that legitimating principles have gradually tilted in favour of ‘input legitimacy’; that the constitutive rules and procedures have steadily gained in transparency; and that the WGCs themselves have comprised an expanding membership with a decreasing number of veto points. At the theoretical level, these converging trends can be explained by the existence of a ‘ratchet effect’ whereby new norms and practices of inclusion accumulate over time. However concrete and long lasting, the democratic gains registered in the process must be cast in terms of historically specific politics and struggles rather than in terms of lofty ideals promoted by altruistic norm entrepreneurs.

In this paper, I argue that there is an emerging consensus among realists that the US should abandon its hegemonic strategy and adopt an offshore balancing strategy. Here, Iraq and the so called war on terrorism (or ‘long war’, or ‘global counter-insurgency’, as some American officials sometimes refer to it) have been the catalysts. Increasingly, it is recognised that US aims in the Persian Gulf/Middle East – and the American military presence in the region – have fuelled terrorism, and caused Iran to self-defensively seek to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. A number of leading realists now argue that the best strategy for the US is to extricate itself from Iraq, reduce its regional footprint, and adopt an offshore balancing strategy.

Chairs have a significant potential effect on the bargaining structure and conduct of multilateral negotiations, addressing collective action problems that arise in decentralised bargaining. We examine the role of the Chair as a policy entrepreneur in multilateral negotiations, identifying the parameters that increase the Chair's entrepreneurship potential and condition the outcome of the Chair's entrepreneurial activities. We cluster the identified parameters in three groups of organisational attributes, comprising the Chair's mandate, available resources and (formal) constraints, in particular decision-making rules. We use this typology to analyse four important case studies within the UN setting.

This article critically examines the question of whether poverty has been reduced in recent years, and if so, whether this is a result of neoliberal and/or globalisation friendly policies. The first section problematises at least some claims made for poverty reduction and the second section questions any causal link between ‘pro-globalisation’ policies and poverty reduction. The third and final section considers in detail the nature of the contemporary global economy, and in examining the evidence concerning capital flows shows how, contrary to the claims made by neoliberals and some globalisation theorists, capital is not dispersing throughout the world. Moreover, even when the ‘correct policies’ are adopted, this is unlikely to happen. I then conclude by suggesting why ‘actually existing globalidation’ does not alleviate, and may indeed intensify, global inequalities.

R. B. J. Walker recently noted that far from its largely accepted status as an ‘essentially contested’ concept, state sovereignty is instead an essentially uncontested concept. This is a seemingly paradoxical comment for an international relations theorist to make in light of the recent revival of academic scrutiny concerning sovereign statehood. Rather than marking an inattention to recent trends in the sovereignty literature, Walker's statement is a commentary on the way sovereign statehood has been studied. Walker writes of sovereign statehood:

Donald Trump assumed office in January 2017, committed to revamping US foreign policy and putting ‘America First’. The clear implication was that long-held international commitments would be sidelined where, in Trump’s view, the American interest was not being served. NATO, in the crosshairs of this approach, has managed to ride out much of the criticism Trump has levelled against it. Written off as ‘obsolete’ by the American president, it has fared better in the Trump era than many commentators had predicted. NATO exemplifies a tendency in US foreign policy, which pre-dates Trump, where open criticism stops short of abandonment. This pattern has continued since 2017 and indicates a preference for voice over exit. As such, it suggests that Trump’s foreign policy is not always as illogical as many have assumed. Logic is borne of institutional context: Trump has chosen to articulate voice where institutionalisation makes exit unviable. Institutional resilience in general and NATO’s case specifically has a wider relevance, both for transatlantic relations and international order.

The development of a ‘practice turn’ in International Relations promises to reconstitute IR theory around the study of embodied practices. Despite occasional references to Judith Butler’s work, the contributions of feminist and queer theory are under recognised in existing work. In this piece I note the distinctive approach to gender as a practice represented by Butler and other feminist/queer theorists for its emphasis on intelligibility and failure, particularly the importance on ‘competently’ practising gender in order to established as an intelligible subject. Given the centrality of ‘competency’ in ‘practice turn’ literature, theorising practice from the perspective of ‘gender failures’ sheds light on the embedded exclusions within this literature. To demonstrate the stakes of this critique, I discuss airport security practices, a growing area of interest to IR scholars, in terms of the experiences of trans- and gender non-conforming people. I argue that such practices ultimately complicate success/failure binaries. I conclude by considering the political stakes of practising theory in IR and how competency in theory is similarly marked by the exclusion of feminist/queer work.

Rudolf Kjellén was an important political scientist during the first half of this century. He is perhaps the most influential Scandinavian political scientist ever. Together with the political geographer Fredrich Ratzel, Kjellén was the founder of the German geopolitical school. All his major works were translated into German, but they were, to my knowledge, never translated into English. They were important sources of inspiration for the leading geopolitical theorist and military general, Karl Haushofer.Karl Haushofer, Grenzen in ihrer geographischen und politischen Bedeutung (Berlin Grünewald: Kurt Vowinckel Verlag, 1927); Dan Diner, ‘Grundbuch des Planeten’—Zur Geopolitik Karl Haushofer, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte,32: 1 (1984), pp. 1–28; Barbro Lewin, Johan Skytte och de skytteanska professorerna[Johan Skytte and the Skyttean Professors]. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis (Skrifter utgivna av Statsvetenskapliga föreningen i Uppsala, 100), (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1985); Rainer Sprengel, ‘Land und Meer—Eine diskursanalytische Betrachtung’, WeltTrends (1994), pp. 61–84. By the time of his visit to Sweden in 1935, Haushofer was about to publish the 25th German edition of Kjellén's Die Grossmächte [The Great Powers].Edward Thermænius, ‘Geopolitik och politisk geografi’ [Geopolitics and Political Geography], Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift, 19 (1937), pp. 213–328. The idea that states were not fixed juridicial entities but dynamic organisms competing on the international scene, was something that appealed to Haushofer. He was to fuse this thought with Ratzel's concept of Lebensraum, that was later to reach Hitler.

The tendency of all debates is to exaggerate and to overkill, to claim and condemn too much. Then when the smoke has lifted and guns have been silenced, those who remain discover that the world is more complex and answers less certain than the debaters had led them to believe. It is as though worthy causes could not advance unless carried on the backs of overstatements. Think back in your lifetime to the progress which has been made toward desired ends: minority rights, women's liberation, the rights of the working man. Whenever movement has occurred, it has come in response to politics, propaganda and pressures. It has come because someone with a credible, sometimes noble cause planned and organized, but in their action almost always overdid at the price of generating reaction and counterattack. It may be stretching a point to compare thinking and political movements with wars and yet there is action and reaction, attack and counterattack in all three areas reminding us of Sir Herbert Butterfield's words:

This article offers both a critique and reconstruction of cosmopolitan democracy. It argues that cosmopolitan democracy promotes an excessively individualist account of political life and a functionalist approach to political community that are likely to undermine the kinds of national communities and citizens that are most likely to mobilise against global injustices. It argues that the alleviation of global injustices depends on the rescuing and reframing, rather than weakening, of national identities so that they take on a more cosmopolitan character. Cosmopolitan democracy is dependent upon cosmopolitan nationalism, based on a commitment to common liberty and justice at home and abroad.

Cosmopolitanism has been argued to be a crucial component of peacebuilding, both with regard to its aims as well as its staff. In a universalist-liberal understanding of the concept, cosmopolitanism is the optimal mind frame for peacebuilders to rebuild post-war societies, due to the tolerance, justice-orientation, and neutrality regarding local cleavages that the concept entails in theory. This article argues, however, that cosmopolitanism cannot be understood outside of its social context, therefore requiring sociological empirical analyses. Drawing on three such sociological concepts, namely elite, glocal, and localisable cosmopolitanism, the article analyses empirically through interviews with peacebuilders in Kosovo whether and in which form these international civil servants display cosmopolitan worldviews. The study concludes that while in theory the localisable variant would be best suited to contribute to locally sensitive, emancipatory peacebuilding, this form of cosmopolitanism is absent in practice. Given the novel, exploratory character of this analysis of hitherto uncharted terrain, the article also discusses in detail how the findings were obtained and in how far they are generalisable.

Even though a vibrant literature on gender in international relations has developed over the last decade, students of international sanctions have not explored sanctions from a gendered perspective: analyses tend to have been either gender-neutral or gender-blind. By the same token, however, feminist scholars of international politics have not included sanctions in their empirical investigations. This article examines sanctions from a gendered perspective. Using conclusions suggested by the feminist IR literature, we examine the case-study of the sanctions against Iraq, and demonstrate the degree to which these measures had deeply gender-specific impacts, ranging from differential deprivations to declines in dowry wealth. We conclude from the Iraqi experience that the gendered effects of sanctions have considerable implications for sanctions theory.

The debate on peacebuilding is deadlocked. Leading scholars of ‘fourth generation’ peacebuilding, who take Liberalism to task for creating what they refer to as crises in peacebuilding, have themselves been challenged by those they criticise for over-stating Liberal failure and failing themselves to produce the goods in terms of an alternative. But behind this debate, it seems that both approaches are asking the same question: how can stable, legitimate, sustainable peace be engineered? This article engages critical theory with problem-solving social sciences. It proposes that the crises in orthodox post-conflict peacebuilding are genuine, but there are approaches that might put flesh on fourth generation concepts without bringing the Liberal edifice down, shifting the debate away from ontology and ideology and returning it to the people in whose name it is held.