International Relations, Ahead of Print. How do status-seeking governments in small states mobilize parliamentary support for participation in US-led warfare coalitions? We argue that the formulation of official invitations by the United States plays an overlooked instrumental role in the domestic ratification game. Invitations can be a strategic tool for governments confronted with divided parliaments to secure support for contributions close to their position. Building on a modified and reversed version of Schelling’s tying hands strategy, we develop a novel invitation game to explain dynami ..read more

International Relations, Ahead of Print. Scholars disagree on whether an anti-mercenary norm exists, whether today’s private military and security companies (PMSCs) fall under its scope, and whether the privatization of security erode parliamentary control over the use of force. We contribute to these debates by conducting a content analysis of parliamentary debates on PMSCs in the UK and US (2001–2019). Our results show that American and British politicians engage in a vehement, bipartisan criticism of Russian PMSCs, whose employees are consistently stigmatized as ruthless mercenaries irrespe ..read more

International Relations, Ahead of Print. This paper explains the ideational foundations of Donald Trump’s rejection of global climate cooperation and its implications for the future of global climate governance. We argue that Trumpism’s antipathy is a fundamental normative challenge to the key ideas that underpin global climate cooperation. Here we explore two specific norm contestations: (1) Collective action versus extralegal sovereignty, and (2) Common but Differentiated Responsibility versus fairness-as-reciprocity. Trump’s aggressive norm rejections are quite novel. His rejection of clima ..read more

International Relations, Ahead of Print. This article compares the EU and China’s approaches to negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs). We show how China’s approach is more gradualist with regards to coverage of issues, and argue that this gives China advantages, which it leverages in later deals. While there are important differences in the scope and approach of EU trade negotiations, we argue that the EU could gain similar advantages by incorporating more Chinese-style gradualism to how it negotiates FTAs. Paradoxically, we argue that mirroring Chinese strategy in this regard could be used ..read more

International Relations, Ahead of Print. Contributing to neo-Gramscian IR and debates regarding world order, this article puts forward Gramsci’s domination as a framework for better understanding the dynamics of a so-called ‘western liberal order’. It shows how Gramsci can be used to explore the power relations of world order that moves beyond Eurocentrism by highlighting the agency of the ‘non-West’ or ‘Global South’. In so doing, it illustrates the contradictions of a liberal world order. To make its case, it examines the relationship between Iran’s Green Movement, and the EU, US and UN sanc ..read more

International Relations, Ahead of Print. The scholarly debate about the Obama doctrine has focused on the extent of military force in Obama’s foreign policy. Offering both a novel definition of presidential doctrines and a reinterpretation of the Obama doctrine, this article shifts the focus from the extent to the purpose of force. More specifically, it claims that the Obama doctrine is better described as a general unwillingness to fight for a reputation for resolve. Unlike most of his predecessors, Obama did not consider the US military as a tool for projecting firmness. Instead, his decisio ..read more

International Relations, Ahead of Print. The parliamentarization of military deployments is a burgeoning area of study but has tended to neglect the peculiar cases of legislatures deprived of any war powers. This article contributes to this literature by examining the curious case of Canada. Since Canadian governments are not required to secure parliamentary support to deploy the military, it analyzes why they occasionally have and increasingly do. We propose and test four hypotheses to explain why and when governments willingly choose to involve parliament in war decisions absent constitution ..read more

International Relations, Ahead of Print. Humour is usually overlooked in analyses of international politics, this despite its growing prevalence and circulation in an increasingly mediatised world, with this neglect also evident in the growing literature on ontological security and anxiety in IR. Humour, though, needs to be taken seriously, crossing as it does the high-low politics divide and performing a variety of functions. In the context of the Covid pandemic we argue that the link between humour and anxiety has been evident in three notable respects: (i) functioning as a (sometimes proble ..read more

International Relations, Ahead of Print. This short article discusses how different fantasy narratives have come together during the Covid-19 crisis in various far-right movements, parties and audiences across the world and how much of these fantasies rely on racialised and gendered notions of a fantastical world-order in which particular forms of emotional governance provide a relief and sense of security to certain societal groups. This involves a close engagement with crisis and crisis narratives in relation to ontological insecurity and anxiety; how such crisis narratives have materialised ..read more

International Relations, Ahead of Print. This contribution to the Forum, Anxiety and possibility: the many future(s) of COVID-19, develops a conception of uncertainty as constituted by cognitive (awareness of possibilities) and affective (mood in which possibility is encountered) dimensions. Based on this conception, it is suggested that the COVID-19 crisis has led to a qualitative leap in our already growing sense of uncertainty, both accentuating our awareness of possibilities that are unforeseen, and rendering us attuned to the world in anxiety rather than fear ..read more