Explanation plays a central role in international relations (IR). However, as different conceptions of explanation inform our conduct of practices in IR inquiry, such centrality is far from being a settled matter in the discipline. These conceptions tend to be subsumed under broad dichotomies—such as explanation vs. understanding, constitutive vs. causal explanation, and positivism vs. interpretivism—which

Three tensions are said to exist in my relational theory, i.e. between ontology and behavior, between structure and process, and between substance and procedure. Underlying these tensions is a crucial question: How to identify the subject and object and understand the domination–subordination power relationship therein? These seeming inconsistencies appear if observed through a dualistic lens but may

Sino-Russian relations have thrived in the post–Cold War era. While the relationship has attracted ample academic attention, many of the underlying factors contributing to the bilateral rapprochement over the past three decades remain un(der)explored. This article examines the role played by one of the factors involved in this process: the development of institutional links between the two states.

Strategic competition, or great power competition, has become a new buzz-word in international politics. Yet, few studies have undertaken any systematic examination of what caused its return to the centre stage of international relations. This study hence formulates a parsimonious structural explanation of renewed great power rivalry. Relying on the insights of neorealism and its two structural variants—defensive

The debate on how neoclassical realism (NCR) has fared as a new brand of realism and supposedly a more rigorous approach towards foreign policy has become increasingly acerbic. Most NCR critics have challenged NCR’s epistemological positions, and few have scrutinised NCR’s methodological practice. This essay seeks to fill the void and focuses on the latter. My aim is both critical and constructive

There is currently not only a retrogression of the global economy and governance in progress but also one of international morality, which the growth of populism has destructed. Moral retrogression has yet to arouse the same level of awareness among policymakers and the public as has economic retrogression. Scholars like Yan Xuetong, Joseph Nye, and Richard Ned Lebow, however, have discerned this problem

Given Washington’s vast expenditure during its 20 years of operations in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s ascent to power in August 2021, after defeating the Afghan National Security Forces, generated strong feelings of shame and anxiety for the USA. Coupled with a dissonance between the US withdrawal and its narrative on fighting terrorism, this eventually culminated in an ontological security crisis for

Samuel Huntington’s famous prediction in 1993 of “clashes of civilisations”, amid that decade’s rosy expectations of “liberal peace”, sparked wide criticism for its rebutting of the then-conventional wisdom of globalisation, global governance, and democratic peace that defined the so-called “liberal” international politics of the 1990s. However, events in recent decades have corroborated his stark

Abstract The past few years have witnessed that the success (or failure) of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) depends to a large extent upon engagement with and responses from recipient countries. The article explores the impact of Southeast Asian countries’ domestic socio-political factors on their foreign policymaking and BRI projects in Southeast Asia. Based on comparative political sociology,

What are the institutional features that incentivize established powers to join rising powers’ new institutions? Going beyond alliance versus rivalry, this paper develops a novel theory in answering this question. We argue that the established power must address two primary design issues: 1. how to navigate the control and burden-sharing trade-off and 2. how to limit the potential diffusion of power

How do unbalanced nuclear alliances provide extended nuclear deterrence (END) to their members? Why have nuclear alliances chosen certain types of END strategy and not others? Existing accounts regard END as a function of the inter-alliance balance of power, regime type, or institutional design. END strategies inspired by theories focused on regime type and institutional design have not yet materialised

Existing studies suggest that leaders that have earlier been participants in rebellions have a higher propensity for international conflict than leaders with no such experience. This paper examines whether prior involvement in rebellions will induce leaders to initiate international conflicts during domestic strife. I propose a preference modification approach and argue that rebel leaders’ policy choices

The article develops a game theoretical model for the evolution of various regionalism projects. It contends that regionalism in the post-World War II (WWII) world has almost always evolved in the shadow of extraregional great powers (EGPs), with the United States being the principal, but not the only, EGP. As such, how regional great powers (RGPs) and small-to-medium states (SMSs) within a region

Why and how do Southern countries conceive norms in the field of international aid and cooperation in an attempt to craft a symbolic regime that challenges Northern-oriented development agendas? To answer this question, this article engages with the literature on the life cycle of norms and goes beyond the earlier concepts of cascade, localisation, subsidiarity, reluctance, rejection, and contestation

No other text in the intellectual history of International Relations has become as frequent a victim of confirmation bias and selective presentism as has Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Most recently, misinterpretations of the classical treatise have engendered the popular catchphrase, “the Thucydides’ Trap”, and thinkers and politicians’ resultant drawing of erroneous parallels between

Revisionism is an important concept in international relations discourse, and it is especially prevalent in discussions about relations between China and the United States in the context of a possible power transition. Yet, this concept has until recently not received the systematic research attention that it deserves. We present in this essay different strategies that a revisionist state may pursue

Witnessing power shifts among major countries in the world, scholars and policymakers alike are confronted with crucial questions about the international institutional order: Do power shifts expedite the collapse of the order? Who are its major challengers, and why? This article tackles these issues, drawing on rationalist theories of international institutions that include both realist and neoliberal

Why did the Obama administration's attempted pivot (or “rebalance”) to Asia fail? In this article, we argue that three interrelated domestic factors are to blame: hyper-partisanship in Washington, DC; the lack of a compelling foreign-policy narrative to make the pivot intelligible and attractive to a broad slice of the political class and domestic public; and the related failure to convince enough

AbstractThe year 2019 saw the curtain rise on a US–China bipolar rivalry quite different from the Cold War US–Soviet bipolarity. The fundamental difference between the current bipolar rivalry and that during the Cold War is that ideology is no longer the main engine driving international competition, but rather the new digital dimension of strategic competition that is emerging between the United States

Scholarly dialogue between ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ or ‘West/non-West’ in many disciplinary communities has become an issue of discussion in recent decades, spawned in part by increased expectations in many periphery communities of being published in core journals, and complicated by factors such as the linguistic hegemony of English and concerns about access. The International Relations (IR) discipline

Abstract This article discusses the diplomatic practice of gift-giving in the Ancient Near East and Early Modern East Asia. In both cases, gift-exchange served to consolidate the dominant polity’s international authority. The causal relation between gift-giving and authority is typically rendered in terms of generosity inspiring gratitude, but a different mechanism connects diplomatic gift-giving and

Abstract Existing research on mediation finds that mediation by a strong mediator is both more prevalent and more conducive to a negotiated settlement. However, why disputants select a weak mediator remains unclear. From the perspective of the uncertainty mechanism, the nature of mediation is a procedure for sharing private information and reducing disputants’ uncertainty regarding the resolve to continue

While territorial disputes have long been considered essential in the study of interstate conflict, the existing literature has largely overlooked the actual initiation of territorial disputes in the first place. The conventional wisdom holds that, given that the anticipated consequences of dispute escalation are likely to be worse for weaker states than for stronger states, the former should be less

This paper starts from the fact that there is a substantial gap in terms of IR theory production, between the West and the rest. Its aim is to investigate how that gap might be closed, and for this purpose, the paper takes a broad view of what counts as theory. Its method is comparative history: to observe how IR theory has developed not just in the West, which is well-studied, but also in the periphery

10 Abstract This is the first empirical study to evaluate, in combination, the relative impact of the US’s four major foreign policy tools (i.e., military intervention, military assistance, economic sanctions, and economic assistance) on human rights conditions abroad. This study presents a Hegemonic Intervention Hypothesis, which cautions against 15 US action to promote human rights, and a Coercion

There have been noticeable attempts in recent International Relations scholarship to introduce the concept of “hedging” as an alternative to “balancing” and “bandwagoning.” The analytical value of such conceptual innovation is not clear because adding a new term to the already rich mix may cause confusion. This paper argues that to be useful for the analysis of great power politics, hedging should

This article is a contribution to the English School’s theory of primary institutions. It offers an historical and structural enquiry into the meaning of great power management (GPM) as a primary institution of international society as it has evolved since the 18th century. We seek to uncover the driving forces that shape this primary institution, and how they are redefining its legitimacy in the 21st

Informal institutions such as the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) have increasingly been at the forefront of global efforts to counter proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Yet a number of countries with strong non-proliferation credentials and incentives to stop likely proliferators have hesitated to join it. We use insights from alliance theory to explain this counterintuitive situation