Sovereignty is heavily contested by existing states which view the survival of territorial sovereignty as vital to international order and many ethnic groups that see states as an obstacle to their own claims to sovereignty. This article looks at how and why ethnic claims to sovereignty arise. It examines when such claims may emerge, what forms such claims may take, the benefits ethnic groups perceive may accrue, and the implications for the international system and the emerging post-Westphalian international society.

Charles Beitz's Political Theory and International Relations has had an enormous impact on analyses of the ethical issues raised at the global level. It was the first systematic discussion of such ethical issues in the last 50 years if not more. It remains a landmark for a number of different reasons. First, it stands out for the sophistication of its philosophical argument and the meticulous argumentation throughout. The latter is deployed not simply to provide powerful critiques of other perspectives (such as realism and the morality of states). It also puts forward and defends with considerable ingenuity a cosmopolitan theory of distributive justice. A second striking and impressive feature of the book is that it successfully integrates philosophical argument with a deep grasp of the nature of world politics and the empirical and theoretical literatures on salient aspects of world politics.

One of the insights of Constructivism is that our world is, in part, made by what we say about it. We make things what they are by saying what they are. One way is through the use of metaphor; by asserting that one thing is another thing. Does our saying that a state is a person make it a person?

A way to intervene in this discussion is by addressing it not in the abstract, but guided by a cognate question: Can states commit crimes, a uniquely human act? If states can commit and be liable for crimes, they must be able to form intents. If they are indeed persons in the relevant sense, this is no problem; if their personality is trope, however, attribution of criminal responsibility becomes tenuous.

To analyse the issue, I trace the development of the trope of speaking of a group as if it were an individual from Roman Law, through to Hobbes, corporate law and IR Theory. Much hinges on Hobbes' elision of ‘body’ and ‘person’. I conclude that it is too much to expect of a metaphor that it act, that it have reasons, beliefs, and desires, and that these sum to intentions.

This contribution introduces a reconceptualisation of misrecognition that stresses ‘creative agency’ (gift, work, etc.) as a condition of self-consciousness. Drawing on Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit, I argue that recognition struggles are often less motivated by the actors’ desire to have a special status than by the desire to make a ‘contribution’ to society, to ‘give’ something. The content of a socially valued contribution-gift (as per Marcel Mauss) varies from one society to another but it is linked to the very ability of actors to act on their ‘own’ and to shape their environment. Thus, subjects identifying with political units or social groups with little recognised agency, while imagining strong abilities to contribute to a given society, will easily feel slighted. It is impossible to be recognised as ‘subjects’ if one is denied in the ability to ‘contribute’ to a given society. I apply this perspective to the case of French jihadism, based on 13 interviews with prisoners in France suspected to belong to al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. These individuals experience ‘individual’ agency denial inside the ‘national’ community, but also agency denial of ‘Muslim sovereignty’ outside.

Forests, and ways of relating to forests, are critical to the planet, yet largely neglected in IR. In this article, we engage with the debate on the Anthropocene and explore different forms of relationality to forests and Amazonian indigenous symbolism. Drawing mainly on political sociology, political ecology, and anthropology, we approach the Amazon basin as a site where nature, culture, resource extraction, and spirituality are enmeshed, and discuss material and symbolic meanings of the forest. The article starts by briefly reviewing discourses around the Anthropocene. It then looks at Amazonian countries with a specific focus on the classist foundations of socioecological exploitation that underpin anthropocentric attitudes and practices, and analyses the material way of perceiving the Amazon. It proceeds by addressing the diverse symbolism present in indigenous traditional knowledge; symbolism that may help in moving politics and society beyond the dominant attitudes that initiated the Anthropocene. Finally, the article offers possibilities for perceiving the forest differently and intertwining the Amazon's material and symbolic worlds.

In the 21st century, it is a great event in the field of international politics that both China and Africa are marching towards revival and more cooperation among each other. The old international order which centered on the West can no longer meet the demand of the changes of African geopolitical pattern. Therefore, it is high time to establish a multilateral cooperation mechanism concerning Africa's peace and development. The authors argue that there are differences in historical experience, diplomatic ideas and principles as well as extensive common grounds of diplomatic strategy and national interests between China and the West in respect of their relations with Africa. Both China and the West should promote talks which are more open, more cooperative and more conducive to a win-win end. In doing this, they can achieve a win-for-all result for all the parties involved.

The popularity of Foucauldian understandings of government in International Relations (IR) has led to a vibrant debate over the utility of Foucault’s work for the discipline, especially over its applicability outside Western liberal societies. By concentrating on governmentality’s international applicability, however, IR scholarship has neglected Foucault’s account of the foundations of modern social mentalities, apparatuses, and techniques. Foucault frequently based his ideas on historical research, with warfare and military affairs featuring prominently in his accounts of discipline and governmentality.

Based on a problematisation of the military aspects of Foucault’s thought, this article challenges Foucauldian IR scholarship to revisit governmentality’s foundations and reconsider the contemporary relevance of Foucault’s account of government. Foucault neglected the heterogeneity of European militaries, such as their reliance on impermanent, auxiliary, and non-Western forces. He thereby missed the opportunity to develop a more sophisticated account of the relationship between force, the military, government, discipline, and biopolitics. Moreover, this article challengesFoucauldian IR scholarship to revisit the empirical foundations of Foucault’s work and reconsider the geographical and temporal extent of the relevance of Foucault’s account of government as a result.

The central argument of this article is that constructivists in particular underestimate or even ignore the importance of the ‘real’ structural inheritance that shapes state (and the political elites that represent them) behaviour. Even though the future is indeterminate, some outcomes are decidedly more likely than others, especially where policymakers believe they inhabit a strategic universe of zero sum outcomes and where self-reliance and assertion remain important. I suggest that ‘critical realism’ offers a way of accounting for the institutional structures that shape international behaviour. The first half of this article makes the case for a critical realist approach. The second half illustrates the possible importance of this claim with reference to the contemporary geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region.

On Sunday 2 August 1914 the Liberal prime minister, Asquith, received a note from Bonar Law and Lord Lansdowne in which the Conservative leaders offered their ‘unhesitating support’ to the Government in any measures it might consider necessary for the object of supporting France and Russia. Of this communication the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, wrote in his memoirs: “The message was first read and then laid aside; it could have no influence on our discussion. ” In a recent article, Donald Lammers has concluded that “the state of our information does not justify ascribing a high or determining importance to Conservative statements and actions in connection with the British decision to go to war”. In doing so he has added his name to those of Robert Blake, Roy Jenkins, Keith Robbins, Samuel Williamson and Cameron Hazlehurst, who have in his words maintained that “the Conservative letter counted for almost nothing and the relentless march of events almost everything in the way of changing or settling ministerial minds” in the European crisis of late July and early August 1914.

I had no higher ambition for my articleA. Jones, 'Does "Gender" Make the World Go Round? Feminist Critiques of International Relations', Review of International Studies, 22:4 (1996), pp. 405-29. All subsequent page references are to this source, unless otherwise noted. than to encourage the exchange now beginning with Carver, Cochran and Squires' response. Unfortunately, although it was nice to see my dull name in the title, I cannot say I feel any more or less gendered than when I started their piece.

The author argues that the international context provides an apparent environment for the individual experiencing of the state as a distinctive unitary and cohesive actor with its own intentionality and personhood, social relations and coercive resources, manifested not only by actions and force, but also through symbols, figure of speeches and other allusive forms capable of affecting human identity. As a direct personal observation, individual experiencing of states contains an inner, phenomenological plan, though it is not a solipsistic process and depends on people’s shared meanings. Conventional perception of states as anthropomorphic actors regards relations between states as social or interpersonal relations, thus causal attribution and social expectations affect individual experience of states. Being primarily a common-sense phenomenon, individual experiencing of states has a wide-ranging effect on both ‘conventional’ and ‘conceptual’ understanding of international relations. In perception and explanation of international politics, real political developments are often overshadowed by observable, experiential, common-sense causations.

Stafano Guzzini, Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy: The Continuing Story of a Death Foretold, London and New York, Routledge, 1998

Brian C. Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1998

The philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, cautioned many years ago that ‘A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost’. If this injunction is true, then there would appear to be very little hope for the study of international relations. Although there is considerable debate about who constitute the founding fathers – names as different as Thucydides, Grotius and Kant come to mind – without doubt, interest in the seminal thoughts about international relations of such figures has never been higher.

Increasingly, International Relations (IR) theorists are drawing inspiration from a broad range of theorists outside the discipline. One thinks of the introduction of Antonio Gramsci's writings to IR theorists by Robert Cox, for example, and the ‘school’ that has developed in its wake. Similarly, the works of Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, and Jurgen Habermas are all relatively familiar to most IR theorists not because of their writings on world politics per se, but because they were imported into the field by roving theorists. Many others of varying success could be cited as well. Such cross-disciplinary excursions are important because they inject vitality into a field that – in the opinion of some at least—is in need of rejuvenation in the face of contemporary changes. In this paper, I elaborate on the work of the Canadian communications theorist Harold Innis, situating his work within contemporary IR theory while underlining his historicism, holism, and attention to time-space biases.

Derived from the Latin Victoria, which itself can be traced to vino victus, meaning ‘to conquer’, victory evokes a number of close synonyms, principally conquest and triumph. It occupies an ambivalent position in respect of contemporary war. Though in some regards a concept that is essential to the very idea of combat, the notion of winning wars has acquired an ironic ring in the aftermath of two brutal world wars and the advent of nuclear weapons. Victory in war is clearly a contentious subject. Yet scholars of the just war tradition have largely ignored it. This article fills that breach by asking what, if anything, victory can mean in relation to just war? It argues that victory has an aporetic quality insofar as it appears both integral to but incompatible with the just war ethos. As such, it reveals both the limits and possibilities of just war thinking.

The September 11 terrorist strikes prompted renewed interest in a debate about just cause that has been increasingly open since the demise of the Cold War and the shift to a more multilateral and interventionist world order. This article contributes to that debate by looking first into the just war tradition to argue for a conceptual revision that equates just cause with jus ad bellum (just recourse to war). It then seeks to specify the component parts of just cause understood in this way, holding that demonstrable injustice should take the place formerly occupied by just cause in just war theory. Towards the end it uses three real-world cases to develop a mechanism for validating just cause claims. The argument is that a cause is just only when its proponents can convince an international forum of intractable injustice, responsible intervention, and an appropriate balance of contingent factors. The article closes by considering how the current war on terrorism might be assessed in such a forum.

This contribution investigates in some more depth a limited set of the premises on which Wight's argument for a ‘scientific realist’ approach to the study of International Relations (IR) rests, an approach, which, according to him, raises the hitherto unacknowledged centrality of ontological premises to all forms of knowledge and human action. Positing ‘Politics as Ontology’ (the book's subtitle) permits, so Wight's argument goes, the conduct of social science in a way which renders most epistemological and methodological disagreements obsolete, since the latter can be shown to be enabled only by competing, mutually exclusive, relatively incompatible, or unreflectively fragmentary ontological commitments. On this view, clarifying the respective ontological commitments, which underpin – tacitly or explicitly – competing theories yields the prospect of demonstrating relatively precisely what it is that enables disagreements at the levels of epistemology and methodology to arise in the first place. Programmatically, Wight seeks to establish the scientific realist account as a consistent, critical, fallibilist, unified account of scientific practice, reintegrating social and natural sciences in a reconceptualised naturalist scheme.

This article presents drag performance as a queer method of critique in the field of IR, which contributes to a longstanding move in IR to engage with aesthetics, and a more recent move to engage with performance art. The article discusses the author’s making of a performance piece that revisited the EU’s response to Hamas’s success in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. Soft, camp, feminine, and childlike voices; a female body in men’s clothing; and the translocation of bodies in spaces are used in the performance piece to disrupt the coherency of normalised diplomacy. Queer IR theory emphasises the imperative to dismantle logics of normality that prevent creativity in response to political issues. Performative drag practices disrupt anxious attachments to a ritualised discourse of strategic interests that shapes political initiatives. This article comments on other drag moments in politics, such as the anxiety around Jeremy Corbyn’s dress, Barack Obama’s anger translator, and Janelle Monáe’s androgynous articulation of community. The form that research dissemination takes implicates the kind of knowledge that is produced. This article reviews three methodological provocations of drag, an alternative departure point of the ‘what if’, performing a politics of refusal, and a Brechtian technique of estrangement.

Most commentators on the 1949 sterling crisis have viewed it as an episode with implications merely for the management of the British economy. This paper, based on the public records now available, discusses the impact of the crisis on British economic foreign policy. In particular it suggests that the crisis revealed deep Anglo-American differences, centring on the nature of the Marshall Plan, on the international value of the sterling area, and on the proper relationship between the United Kingdom and Western Europe, Ultimately the British succeeded in resolving these disagreements: but this triumph ironically implied both the defeat of British aims in post-war European reconstruction and a long term delusion that great power status could be maintained on the basis of a special relationship-with the United States.

At the beginning of the 1990s the European political scene is in a state of rapid transformation. While the East–West conflict may not be over, it is clearly undergoing a fundamental change from an ideologically charged contest to a ‘normal’ competition between major actors in the anarchical international system. This change may well entail the elimination of some of the most dangerous threats to peace, whilst at the same time generating requirements for a new framework of European and East–West security. As the ideological conflict fades, so the bipolar alliance system which, in spite of all its shortcomings, burdens and injustices, provided some measure of stability to Europe, is also about to vanish.

The undisputed proliferation of international organizations has been interpreted in several ways by members of the scholarly community. Probably most see the explosion in numbers and kinds of actors as a peripheral development; in the realist and neo-realist tradition, the primacy of the state and the state system remains largely unaffected. Others are sceptical of what the trend means and so have developed research agendas examining more closely international organization influence on states and impact on issues. Yet few international relations scholars have paid attention to what this proliferation means for relations among various organizations and its effects on states. However, with so many of these organizations involved in economic development activities, it is very likely that these organizations willingly and sometimes unwittingly encounter each other particularly in Third World countries. Rumours abound of IGOs and NGOs ‘stumbling over each other’ in the capitals of Sahelian countries vying for the attention of too few government officials, leading to negative impacts on policy. In Indo-China, Gordenker finds ‘increasing friction and clogging’ from the rapid expansion of United Nations High Commission for Refugees activities, as they intersect with the International Red Cross, Unicef, and private voluntary organizations. Yet not all interaction is conflictual. Nongovernmental aid agencies in Thailand co-operate closely, as do the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Kenya.