A sea change of major proportions is taking place in the historical social system forming the modern world, creating a widespread sense of uncertainty about the present and foreseeable future. In the words of Eric Hobsbawm, as ‘the citizens of the fin de siècle tapped their way through the global fog that surrounded them, into the third millennium, all they knew for certain was that an era of history had ended. They knew very little else’.

In reflecting upon the prospects for world order, in the concluding chapter of The Twenty Years' Crisis, E. H. Carr advised that ‘few things are permanent in history; and it would be rash to assume that the territorial unit of power is one of them’. Based upon his observation that world order was being reshaped by the contradictory imperatives of progressive economic integration and a ‘recrudescence of disintegrating tendencies’, Carr concluded with a confident prediction that ‘the concept of sovereignty is likely to become in the future even more blurred and indistinct than it is at present’.

This article assesses the relationship between money, collective identity, and European integration. The recent move of the European Union (EU) toward a common currency – the euro – seems to contradict the conventional ‘one nation/one money’ assumption about the association between states, territory and money creation. However, from a broad macro-historical perspective, the process of European monetary unification is not as exceptional and unique as it is often made out to be. I argue that the relationship between money and collective identity is reciprocal. On the one hand, money is a purposeful political tool in the construction of identities. On the other hand, in order to function properly, money requires some degree of collective identity among its users. Thus, the article examines the role of the euro as part of an explicit project to facilitate the development of a European identity as well as the required level of European identity necessary for a successful functioning of the euro. The key identity aspect at stake in the relationship between money and identity is not an affective relationship between citizens and country, but rather a relationship of trust. During the process of modernisation, trust has become rather abstract and institutionalised. To support a modern relationship of trust, identity does not have to rest on deep affective feelings of belonging. Diffuse identity, based on utilitarian or contractual factors and as part of evolving hybrid identity structures, is sufficient.

‘a useful conceptual distinction in understanding the motivation for civil war is that between greed and grievance’. thus wrote paul collier in 1999. drawing on statistical data of civil wars since the mid-sixties, his conclusion at the time was stark and unequivocal: ‘grievance-based explanations of civil war’ were ‘seriously wrong’. in seemingly uncompromising terms, he argued instead that the key to understanding why such wars erupt lay in greed and the quest for loot by rebel actors. it most certainly was not to be found in self-serving ‘narratives of grievance’ or in any claim on the part of insurgents to be fighting for justice. the likelihood of greed-driven wars breaking out was particularly high, collier suggested further, in countries that relied heavily on primary commodity exports, had a surfeit of young, unemployed and poorly educated men, and were experiencing a period of rapid economic decline. this, in short, was the ‘greed thesis’ of contemporary civil wars.

It is often suggested that Western peacebuilding in the occupied Palestinian territory has failed because it has not delivered a viable Palestinian state. But if peacebuilding is reinterpreted as a form of counterinsurgency whose goal is to secure a population, then it has not failed – in fact, on the contrary, it has been quite successful. This article therefore critically evaluates the idea and practice of peacebuilding as counterinsurgency by exploring the symbiosis in the philosophy and methods of COIN and peacebuilding, and charts its implementation in the oPt through the realms of governance, development, and security. It argues that peacebuilding in this context operates as another layer of pacification techniques whose goal is to secure the Palestinian population and ensure acquiescence in the face of violent dispossession.

Discourse in the US/West that a rising China threatens world order serves no national interest or international purpose. It subscribes only to Westphalian anxieties about the Other. Drawing on Daoist dialectics, this article shows how we can reframe this issue by revealing the complicities that bind even seemingly intractable opposites, thereby undermining the rationale for violence. By recognising the ontological parity between (US/Western) Self and (Chinese/non-Western) Other, we may begin to shift IR/world politics from hegemony to engagement, the ‘tragedy’ of great power politics to the freedom of discovery and creativity.

‘The study of international relations is not an innocent profession.’1 It is not like the classics, or mathematics, an abstract logical training for the youthful mind. The justification for the place it has gained in the university curriculum rests upon utility, not on aesthetics. The growth of the social sciences in Western universities in the past century, and their remarkable expansion over the past thirty years, has been based upon their perceived contribution to better government, in the broadest sense. ‘The forever explosive relationship between social science and public policy’ has been embedded in the discipline of International Relations from the outset.2

The Brandt Line is a way of visualising the world that highlights the disparities and inequalities between the wealthy North and the poorer Global South. Forty years after its popularisation as part of a call for global reform, is the Brandt Line now a misleading way of representing world politics? This article assesses whether the Global South has lost its distinctiveness and coherence relative to the North since 1980. Existing assessments of global inequality do not settle the question of whether the North–South divide remains relevant for international relations because they overlook the most politically significant measures of inequality. Drawing on power transition theory, this article provides a systematic assessment of the North–South divide in terms of levels of economic development, relative inequality, economic power, and political satisfaction. The evidence suggests that the Brandt Line is largely intact. Although the economic diversity of the South has increased and its collective economic power has risen, relative income rankings remain unaltered and the states of the Global South are as dissatisfied as they were four decades ago. Differential growth rates are reshaping world politics without eroding the North–South divide traced by the Brandt Line.

The issue of ‘interpretive’ approaches to the study of international relations has achieved prominence in recent meta-theoretical discussions of the discipline. It has been suggested, for example, that the work of interpretive theorists, such as Hayward Alker, Richard Ashley, Friedrich Kratochwil, John Ruggie and Robert Cox, represents an approach which is qualitatively different and distinct from the traditional, positivist-inspired approach to the study of international politics.

International Relations have increasingly projected an image of the world where territoriality has lost its organising force. The global movements of people, information, capital and pollution are seen as signs of increasing deterritorialisation. Climate change is one of these issues ‘beyond borders’ that due to its global framing has been established within the international. This article is an investigation into the political geography of the carbon cycle. We approach the tension between the representations of climate space as global and deterritorial on the one hand, and political practices that reterritorialise the climate on the other. We trace the political transformation of the global carbon cycle into ‘national sinks’ and argue that the two tendencies of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation of climate space mirror the spatial assumptions of IR; the national inside and global outside.

Considerable support has emerged over recent years among scholars of international relations for the theory that ‘democracies do not go to war with each other.’ Bruce Russett and Harvey Starr note that over the last two centuries ‘Democracies were very unlikely to fight each other.’ This finding is supported, R. J. Rummel argues, by both ‘Historical studies and empirical social science research’. Some authors hail it as a law—perhaps the only one we have—of international relations. References in the literature suggest that the theory has acquired the status of a received truth. It is ‘the one argument that all the analysts agree on’, concludes Robert Rothstein. ‘Scholars of contemporary international relations are nearing consensus, suggest the Embers and Russett. In the latest, most comprehensive study of the phenomenon, Russett even finds evidence for it in non-industrial societies. Believing the facts of the matter to have been established, theorists have moved on to seek the causal mechanism generating the phenomenon.

IR constructivism maintain that a proper understanding of the way subjects interact with the world and with each other alerts us to the fallacy of conventional IR theory. And yet, for a theory that is so obviously dependent upon a rigorous working of the relationship between social theory and its IR variant, it is curious that, with one or two exceptions, IR constructivists often advance incompatible theories. I argue that the confused manner by which, in particular, ‘soft’ constructivism relates to social theory is not accidental but a necessary component of a theory that asserts, but never proves, the primacy of norms and laws over material considerations, in domestic and international politics.

This article introduces a novel way of conceptualising variations of peace in post-war societies. The most common way of defining peace in the academic literature on war termination is to differentiate between those cases where there is a continuation or resumption of large-scale violence and those cases where violence has been terminated and peace, defined by the absence of war, has been established. Yet, a closer look at a number of countries where a peace agreement has been signed and peace is considered to prevail reveals a much more diverse picture. Beyond the absence of war, there are striking differences in terms of the character of peace that has followed. This article revisits the classical debates on peace and the notion of the Conflict Triangle as a useful theoretical construction for the study of armed conflicts. We develop a classification captured in a Peace Triangle, where post-settlement societies are categorised on the basis of three key dimensions: issues, behaviour, and attitudes. On the basis of such a differentiation, we illustrate the great diversity of peace beyond the absence of war in a number of post-settlement societies. Finally, we discuss the relationship between the different elements of the Peace Triangle, and the challenges they pose for establishing a sustainable peace, as well as the implications of this study for policy makers concerned with peacebuilding efforts.

In a growing number of countries diplomatic systems are being overhauled so that the commercial activities of diplomatic services have been centralised, the commercial activities of diplomats have been extended, and business interests have been formally integrated within diplomatic systems. These changes result directly from the tendency of governments to reorganise, and in many cases merge, their trade and foreign ministries, as well as the strategy of building formal business–government links within diplomatic institutions. While none of these features is unfamiliar to previous diplomatic systems, what is exceptional is the relative neglect of the commercial aspects of diplomacy within diplomatic studies. This lack of attention to the commercial and business elements of diplomacy in traditional theories of diplomacy means that we find ourselves trying to analyse contemporary changes to diplomatic organisation and practice without a suitable conceptual and analytical framework. Highlighting the significance of a political economy approach to diplomacy, and also engaging with orthodox approaches to diplomacy, this article begins to develop some analytical and conceptual tools to better identify, explain and understand changes in diplomatic systems as well as the increased influence of private interests in diplomatic practice now under way.

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was designed to manage the collapse of the Soviet Union and foster post-Soviet cooperation in political, economic, and security spheres. Over a decade into its existence, most analysts would rate it a failure: many post-Soviet states do not participate in CIS ventures, the institutional machinery of the CIS is weak, and Russia, the most dominant post-Soviet state, has tended to favour bi-lateral relationships over multi-lateral institutions. Why is this the case? This article looks at the CIS through the prism of theories of regionalism, demonstrating that the CIS was handicapped on many fronts, including emergent multi-polarity in the post-Soviet space and domestic-level political considerations in many post-Soviet states.

The agent-structure problem is not settled by deciding what proportions to put in the blender. Agents and structures do not blend easily in any proportions, and solutions to the problem tend to be unstable. Alexander Wendt's thoughtful review article makes this clear, identifies some of the difficulties, and boldly sketches a possible resolution of them. Since his relections are addressed in part to our recent book Explaining and Understanding International Relations, we welcome the chance to pursue them further. Greatly encouraged by his many friendly comments, we shall concentrate on those suggestive or critical points which have prompted us to think afresh.

In the context of a greater focus on the politics of migration, the ‘refugee entrepreneur’ has become an increasingly important figure in humanitarian, media, and academic portrayals of refugees. Through a focus on Jordan's Za‘tari refugee camp, which has been deemed a showcase for refugees’ ‘entrepreneurship’, this article argues that the designation of Syrian refugees as ‘entrepreneurs’ is a positioning of Syrians within colonial hierarchies of race that pervade humanitarian work. For many humanitarian workers in Jordan, Syrians' ‘entrepreneurship’ distinguishes them from ‘African’ refugees, who are imagined as passive, impoverished, and dependent on humanitarian largesse. Without explicit racial comparisons, humanitarian agencies simultaneously market Syrian refugees online as ‘entrepreneurs’, to enable them to be perceived as closer to whiteness, and to thereby render them more acceptable to Western audiences and donors, who are imagined as white. This article extends scholarly understandings of the understudied relationship between race and humanitarianism. Furthermore, it asks critical questions about the political work and effects of vision of the ‘refugee entrepreneur’, which it locates within the context of the increasingly neoliberalised refugee regime. ‘Refugee entrepreneurs’ do not need political support and solidarity, but to be allowed to embrace the forces of free-market capitalism.

THERE is no lecture which I could feel more honoured to have been asked to give than one which commemorates the name of Martin Wight. Just twenty years ago I made the same journey I have just made – from Oxford to the London School of Economics – to take up a position as assistant lecturer in the Department of International Relations. I had not done a course of any kind in International Relations, nor made any serious study of it, and as I arrived in Houghton Street I wondered how I was to go about teaching the subject and even whether it existed at all.

The rules of international law governing the legality of the use of force by states (ius ad bellum) and the rales by which international law regulates the actual conduct of hostilities once the use of force has begun (ius in bello) have seldom sat happily together. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, some international lawyers took the view that the development of the ius ad bellum by the Charter of the United Nations had rendered the ius in bello superfluous. This view has, not surprisingly, become somewhat less fashionable of late and the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the 1977 Protocols to those Conventions, and a number of other treaties bear witness to the continuing interest of the international community in regulating the conduct of warfare. Nevertheless, the suspicion remains that ius in bello should have been absorbed by ius ad bellum, that the two subjects are somehow in competition, so that discussion of the former distracts attention from the more fundamental requirements of the latter or implies a lack of confidence in it. Thus, one letter published in The Times at the height of the Falklands conflict castigated international lawyers for engaging in a debate about the law concerning the treatment of prisoners of war on the ground that they should have been devoting their attention to questioning the legality of the whole operation mounted by the United Kingdom.

What can models of interest group behaviour from American politics tell us about the existence, activities, and influence of international non-governmental advocacy organisations (advocacy INGOs) in International Relations? In this article I detail an analogy between traditional American interest groups and advocacy INGOs in order to suggest a new approach to theorising INGOs. American politics theories of interest groups provide insights to questions which International Relations has been unable to answer satisfactorily, including where INGOs are likely to be found; how INGOs will grow in the future; the organisational structure of INGOs; the impact of competing groups on the quality and content of foreign policy and international agreements; and the roles of INGOs in different stages of the policy process. Viewing INGOs as interest groups provides a curative to the tendency to view them as self-sacrificing knights in shining armour. Competing INGOs representing narrow interests can nevertheless contribute to the common good in the form of effective, efficient policy.