Europe’s (post-)colonial borders have been recently marked by a profusion of cases of violence against racialised migrants with the use of police dogs, following a continual process of integration of canines into the border apparatus of violence. Engaging simultaneously with the recent post-colonial literature on border and migration security and the incipient domain of animal studies, this article investigates the colonial and racial origins and effects of this phenomenon. Contextualising the weaponisation of dogs at Europe’s borders today within a much longer history of racial violence, the article shows how canines have been systematically deployed by colonial and white supremacist powers against racialised bodies as tools to enact and secure racial order. Attentive to the ways in which modern humanness has been predicated upon its removal from the food chain, the article argues that the use of police dogs at Europe’s borders operates by reinforcing the non- or less-than-human status of racialised migrants by marking them as ‘animal-like’ and ‘edible’ bodies. Conceptualising this method as ‘the politics of edibility’, the article then shows how the exposure of migrants to the threat of ‘dog bites’ functions as a form of reinforcing racial hierarchies in a Europe traversed by racial anxieties.

Contemporary technology oligarchs are reshaping global power through their control over critical infrastructures, political institutions, and ideas. Across six essays, this forum examines the territorial, temporal, and ideational ambitions of Silicon Valley billionaires, highlighting how individuals like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg exercise unprecedented influence over states and societies. From charter cities and network-states to cloud computing and satellite systems, these oligarchs leverage personal wealth, technological mastery, and monopolistic control to bypass traditional state authority, turning themselves into quasi-sovereign actors. The essays situate these developments within historical and theoretical frameworks, comparing oligarchic power to early modern chartered corporations and the logic of state formation, while emphasizing the novel dimensions of control unique to the 21st century. Collectively, the essays demonstrate how individual technology oligarchs consolidate authority in ways that challenge traditional international relations theory, revealing a global order increasingly shaped by the ambitions and delusions of private actors.

There is a paradox in global environmental governance that policymaking must ‘follow the science’ while environmental change is itself characterised by scientific uncertainty. This paper addresses this paradox by embracing that uncertainty. We bring International Relations (IR) into conversation with animal studies to further develop conceptual debates on integrating non-human actors. We focus on avian cultures to understand the nexus between bird crime, flyways, and global environmental governance. We analyse how bird migrations along flyways disrupt mainstream systems of knowledge production that global conventions rely on. Zooming in on bird crime along flyways, we demonstrate that crime relies on offenders’ understanding of avian cultures. We synthesise those findings with an analysis of the Convention on Migratory Species, as the only global convention that integrates animal cultures to develop more effective responses to wildlife crime. Our analysis demonstrates that international conservation overlooks the exploitation of avian culture for criminal activity, rendering policy responses less effective, particularly in contexts of scientific uncertainty. Integrating animal cultures can address scientific uncertainty and promote multispecies learning, creating more effective forms of global environmental governance. Ultimately, this renders the non-human visible and makes it possible to explore the implications for multispecies entanglements in IR.

Technology is of increasing importance for international cooperation, yet theory development in rationalist International Relations has not kept pace. I develop a theoretical framework for explaining cooperative outcomes in the international regulation of technology. I propose that uncertainty and the distribution of material capacities create a severe international collective action problem for novel technologies, which precludes robust cooperative outcomes and thus limits joint gains from the appropriation of technological benefits and from the mitigation of technological risks. While the severity of the collective action problem attenuates over time, in principle enabling greater ambition in cooperative outcomes, sociotechnical lock-in reduces the capacities and incentives of state actors to deviate from pre-existing rules. This leads to incremental change whereby rules harden over time but do not change significantly in terms of their regulatory substance. While early regulatory interventions are hampered by collective action problems, late interventions are constrained by lock-in. These temporal dynamics create a tendency towards systemic inefficiency in international technology regulation. I illustrate this argument using the cases of nuclear power and synthetic biology.

Complementing readings in International Relations (IR) that understand Covid-19 as an Anthropocene effect, this article observes the pandemic as a laboratory for engagements with Anthropocene experience. It argues that the pandemic turn to dreams renegotiated the conditions of experienceability of Anthropocene temporality. Exploring the scientific, archival, and practical registers on which dreams attracted interest during the pandemic, the article traces how dreams were valued for their promise of capturing the affective exposure of subjects to the pandemic present. This conditioning of experienceability on the limits of the human subject resonates with the relational turn in IR and its affirmation of being-in-relation as a condition for becoming attuned to the Anthropocene. Drawing from Koselleck and Foucault, the article understands this resonance as indicative of a shared archive of experiments in transcending modern accounts of temporality. For this archive, rendering an Anthropocenic present experienceable requires a shift from the distanced account of a modern author-subject to a subject that gauges its own exposure to the present. Despite this ambition of the turn to dreams, the article also flags its constraints, observing how this turn regularly tipped back into reaffirming the modern subject.

In the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and under the growing threat of planetary cataclysm, an array of prominent intellectuals grappled with the significance of nuclear war for the human condition and reflected upon the possibilities of escaping its peril. Following on the early interventions of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, the collected thoughts of Karl Jaspers, Hans Morgenthau, and Günther Anders outline a philosophical current of ‘nuclear existentialism’ preoccupied with the nihilistic ‘being-towards-species-death’ entailed by the advent of the Bomb. Faced with the apparent negation of reason in bringing about the means of its own destruction through the scientific piercing of nature’s innermost workings, the nuclear existentialists end up reaffirming, however precariously, a teleological conception of history in which the apocalyptic fear of the Bomb figures as the necessary condition for the ultimate realisation of human freedom. In the light of the contemporary resurgence of nuclear anxiety, this article surveys and critically assesses the corpus of nuclear existentialism, drawing upon the distinctive existential phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas to trace a potential alternative for thinking life and death under the Bomb.

The involvement of private actors in global policymaking has received significant scholarly attention in IR. Existing accounts have shown how entities such as corporations, businesses, and philanthropies build their authority to become legitimate actors and shape global politics. This paper argues that contemporary global dynamics, such as the financialisation of development and the rise of multistakeholderism, have ushered in a trend where private actors are not only seen as legitimate delegated authorities but also embraced as fully fledged political equals indispensable for addressing societal problems. To understand this shift, it is necessary to move beyond an examination of legitimation strategies to interrogate, instead, how private actors shape what are seen as ‘apt’ or ‘deviant’ ways of knowing and acting upon problems. Through an examination of what I call ‘political normalisation’ in the field of global food governance, I show how through concrete practices – individualising social problems, defining institutional aptness, and cultivating the landscape – private actors not only cultivate a perception of themselves as rightful global governors but also shape the parameters of what rightful governing ought to be. More broadly, this shift invites us to further complicate the public–private divide and assess the novel ways through which private actors ‘do’ politics.

This article seeks to deepen understanding of the global politics of reactionary discursive formations, which at the current conjuncture increasingly coalesce around self-victimising articulations of racial nationalism and a rejection of social justice struggles, often delegitimated as ‘elitist’ in Western core contexts or ‘Western’ in postcolonial spaces. Drawing on insights from feminist and postcolonial scholarship on racial entanglements, masculinism, and Occidentalism, I argue that racialised and gendered imaginations about an emasculated and overly multiracial West and, relatedly, renewed East/West binaries enable reactionary discourses in both Western societies and elsewhere through adaptable mechanisms of mediating between the international and the domestic. I then extend an analysis of global racial entanglements and gendered East/West binaries to Chinese anti-baizuo discourse from both online nationalists and dissident intellectuals, which provides a prime example of how grammars of global reactionary discourse are localised in different political projects and ideological constellations. It demonstrates how reactionary imaginations of the West are instrumental for animating narratives of racial-civilisational hierarchy and masculinist notions of politics and society hostile to egalitarian and emancipatory ideals in a ‘non-Western’ context. Moreover, by highlighting overlaps and divergence in the refashioning of dualistic constructs in American and Chinese ‘anti-woke’ narratives, I show that reactionary discourses operate not only across the geopolitical divide, but also through it, invoked by opposing political forces sharing ethnonationalist and masculinist logics in processes of mutual othering to perpetuate antagonistic identities. The article contributes to the intersection between critical research on the global right and postcolonial International Relations (IR).

Through the paradigmatic case of post-revolutionary Iran, this article argues critiques of power-laden human rights politics epitomised by Makau Mutua’s 2001 ‘Savages, Victims, and Saviors Metaphor of Human Rights’ when combined with states’ anti-imperialist victim branding, and uncritical anti-imperialist solidarities give rise to a reactionary politics I call the ‘Reverse Savages, Victims, Saviours metaphor of human rights’. Here, anti-imperialist-branding states and their constructions of culture are recast as victims, and the state is treated as synonymous with the population it rules. Western imperialism, the human rights corpus, and those deploying human rights conceived of as extensions of Western imperialism are recast as the savages. Finally, leftist thinkers, anti-imperialist thought, and the resisting victim state and its constructions of Indigenous culture become the saviors. This politics eclipses local populations’ agency and lived experiences by (1) diminishing the moral weight of both the state’s transgressions and the human rights paradigm, (2) interrupting a sustained focus on the anti-imperialist-branding state’s acts of subjugation, (3) defining non-Western populations through essentialist notions of their culture as traditional saviourism does (but valorising rather than vilifying it), and (4) adhering to notions of moral complexity which deny or obscure the elements of moral clarity encompassed.

States increasingly confront security threats from exiled economic elites who retain power through offshore wealth, political influence, and informational leverage. This paper introduces the concept of weaponised legal dependence to explain why and how states file commercial lawsuits against their own citizens in foreign courts – particularly in global legal hubs like London – to neutralise these transnational plutocratic threats. While conventional tools of transnational repression (e.g., extradition, abduction, information warfare) target dissidents’ legitimacy or messaging power, only foreign litigation can directly constrain the material assets that underpin a plutocrat’s influence. However, initiating extraterritorial claims is costly, risky, and entails a partial surrender of sovereignty to liberal jurisdictions. I argue that states resort to these legal strategies when they face power parity with plutocrats – situations where neither side has hierarchical control, prompting political conflict to spill into foreign legal systems under the guise of commercial dispute. Drawing on 60 interviews with legal practitioners and case studies from Russia and Kazakhstan, this paper shows how states instrumentalise the credibility of liberal legal institutions to reclaim offshore assets and delegitimise their rivals. In doing so, illiberal regimes exploit liberal infrastructure, turning courts meant to enforce commercial norms into battlegrounds of domestic power politics.

Critical International Relations Theory (CIRT) is in ‘crisis’. Some argue for a recovery of ‘the inspirational quality’ of Horkheimer and Adorno’s first-generation negative critique. Certainly the challenge of right-wing populism begs questions of CIRT’s ‘consolatory’ cosmopolitanism. I have two concerns however. First, these proposals underplay the reasons why first-generation theorising failed; secondly, CIRT risks throwing the second-generation Habermas–Linklater ‘baby’ out with the ‘bathwater’ at the moment it has particular value. I do two things. I look back to pre-Habermasian Critical Theory, but I set a future agenda based on the Pragmatism of John Dewey. This helps CIRT realise the emancipatory potential in IR’s recent ‘practice turn’, addressing concerns that CIRT is disengaged. It also brings balance to negative and positive critiques, offering a novel challenge to critical/problem-solving binaries in ways that speak to real-world challenges like climate change. Second, I look forward from Habermasian-inspired theory to the third-generation (and Pragmatist-inspired) ‘recognition theory’ of Honneth. This brings a critical edge to IR ontological security studies, further develops the praxeological branch of CIRT, and better informs the political left’s response to the alienating effects of the liberal international order and the rise of right-wing populism.

This article theorises Indigenous feminist relational freedom that emphasises the ways in which relations and structures of domination disproportionately impact women and gender-diverse people, including through gender-based violence and environmental harm. The theory of relational freedom critiques both one-dimensional conceptions of Indigenous relationality and the conventional framing of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination through the lens of non-interference, a concept rooted in political autonomy grounded in liberal thought. While non-interference correctly emphasises the need for Indigenous autonomy from state intervention, it falls short in addressing the deeper aspects of Indigenous freedom. Western interference has long impacted Indigenous life, which has led Indigenous self-determination discourses to focus on avoiding state intervention. However, while this emphasis on political autonomy is valid, it does not account for structural forms of domination, particularly underlying inequalities that perpetuate subordination within these structures. These structures range from state institutions that dispossess Indigenous communities to internal systems of gender-based domination that marginalise Indigenous women and LGBTQ+ individuals. The persistence of these structures significantly impedes the full realisation of Indigenous self-determination. The article ultimately theorises Indigenous feminist relational freedom within broader frameworks of feminist relational autonomy and citizenship and Indigenous gift relations, exploring practical approaches for applying the principles of relational freedom within Indigenous governance.

This article proposes a theoretical framework for explaining the motivations behind the early adoption of international public policy innovations. While there has been a proliferation of transnational policy diffusion studies, there is less research on why some governments become early adopters when new international policy norms are promoted. Most research on the topic looks only at monocausal explanations without considering their interactions in a coherent, integrated framework. The article proposes four motivations for early adoption: normative, reputation, competition, and locking-in. The framework is then illustrated by application to the early adoption of business and human rights policy innovations, with Colombia and Ecuador serving as two cases for comparative analysis. The article advances understanding of early adoption and policy diffusion by highlighting particularly important explanations for what motivates early adopters to begin processes of subsequent diffusion and suggesting how motivations may interact to strengthen the case for early adoption.

How can we understand the audience agency and securitisation processes that can induce anxiety? The Copenhagen School of security studies conceptualises an audience as possessing political agency which is contingent on their capabilities to respond to securitising moves. Drawing on Anthony Giddens’s approach to ontological security, we argue that there is another type of agency supplementing political agency. Ontological agency refers to exercising control over the stability and continuity of one’s everyday routines and practices to minimise disruption to these routines caused by securitisation. Because routines of day-to-day life are central to bracketing sources of anxiety, people may choose to overlook and not react to securitising moves designating threats and implementing emergency measures that can undermine ontological security. We illustrate the analytical purchase of ontological agency by using unstructured observations of South Korean people’s responses to military practices that securitise North Korea. Our observations reveal that there is latent anxiety regarding North Korea that manifests in varying degrees ranging from inaction when routines are not disrupted by securitisation to outward bursts of emotional reactions and breakdown when securitisation practices disrupt people’s basic routines. This raises implications about the importance of ontological security driving the success or failure of securitisation and the politics of existentialism.

The academic imprint of Susan Strange, long considered a pioneer in the field of IPE, no longer resonates with contemporary debates about the organization and structure of the global political economy. We argue that her analytical framework continues to be a productive way to think about important current developments, most importantly in relation to what can now be called the digital age and its emergent form of capitalism. We therefore modify and update Strange’s framework to highlight its unique analytical potential, and to set out the operational principles of what we want to call a ‘neo-Strangean’ framework of authority. We then apply it to what Strange identifies as the finance or credit structure. By focusing on a core domain of political-economic power, we demonstrate our principal claim that a neo-Strangean framework of authority points towards an understanding of how new actors and imperatives are reshaping the global political economy. We close by outlining the analytical benefits that a neo-Strangean research agenda promises for the field of IPE, which for us centre on emphasizing the dynamics and disruptive consequences of a knowledge-infused global political economy in a way that pays sufficient attention to ideational and material factors.

Despite ongoing attempts to fragment and eliminate the Palestinian people, Palestinians persist on their lands and continue to uphold their right to return home. In this article, I suggest that vital to this persistence are Palestinian feelings of belonging to and longing for Palestine. Together, these constellations of feeling form what I call affective sovereignty. Through this concept, I argue that such feelings constitute a sovereign Indigenous Palestinian claim to the land. That is, a Palestinian Indigenous sovereignty is sustained, affirmed, and reproduced in part through feeling. I track forms of affective sovereignty through the practices of Palestinian graffiti and hip-hop music. I find in these aesthetic practices four interrelated themes that together express an affective sovereignty. First, I analyse expressions of belonging to the land of Palestine. Next, I turn to expressions of belonging to the Palestinian people, particularly those that express unity across the geographic fragments of Palestine. Third, I analyse expressions of longing for Palestine from the condition of exile. Finally, I explore how these feelings are drawn into more directly resistant expressions of Palestinian sovereignty, suggesting that affective sovereignty forms the molten core of Palestinian resistance.

This article contends that investigating relationalities between business continuity management (BCM), staff behaviours, and bureaucratic resilience advances understandings of the survival of international organisations (IOs). Drawing on in-depth interviews, a global staff survey, and a discourse analysis of United Nations (UN) reports and applying a post-colonial feminist theoretical approach foregrounding care ethics to the study of IOs, the article examines how the UN Secretary-General’s Alternative Working Arrangements directive to close physical offices and open ‘virtual offices’ was implemented in the first 18 months of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is contended that BCM is necessary for IO survival, since if the IO bureaucracy is unable to be productive and maintain its spheres of influence during a crisis, it risks losing power and authority. Between March 2020 and August 2021, staff facilitated IO survival organically, from the bottom up, in four ways: demonstrating good performance and productivity; being adaptable and resilient; maintaining personal spheres of influence; and building communities of care within the UN. However, the UN’s neoliberal, technocratic approach to business continuity and bureaucratic resilience-building neglected staff care needs. Consequently, IO survival is predicated on staff performing as exploited gendered and racialised ‘neoliberal subjects’, revealing a chronic structural crisis rooted in the UN bureaucracy’s hierarchical composition and unequal employment regime.

This paper considers what anti-colonial surrealist praxis can provide those of us interested in the nexus of aesthetics and world politics. Thinking beyond the commonly held notion of surrealism as a European cultural movement, I engage with the writings of 20th-century anti-colonial surrealists, namely, Suzanne Césaire, Aimé Césaire, and René Ménil. In doing so, I argue that anti-colonial surrealism is beyond a movement, a selection of methods, a genre or a set of ideas. Instead, I aim to position anti-colonial surrealist praxis as an epistemology that allows us to move beyond the limitations of representation, both by surfacing historical intimacies (rather than gaps) between content and form, while also questioning the demarcation between art and politics. I illustrate my argument’s resonance in the contemporary political moment through an engagement with aesthetic interventions produced by Sai, an artist exiled from contemporary Myanmar. Sai’s absurdist creative interventions and material drawn from in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations allow me to demonstrate the political possibilities of an ‘anti-colonial surrealist praxis’ approach, in its conception of aesthetics as co-constitutive, rather than only representative, of the political.

Scholars continue to demonstrate the enduring relevance of structural power when analysing contemporary international affairs such as US–China rivalry, transformations of global finance, and the increasing significance of cyber power. Yet, in this paper, I find that the everyday foundations of structural power remain vastly unexplored. While work on structural power and everyday research might be seen as opposites, I argue that there are important interactions between these two approaches to international power. Everyday forces and everyday agents constantly inform and shape structural power. This highlights a mutually dependent relationship between power in the international system and the everyday. In this paper, I therefore advance a new theoretical framework that explores these links between the mundane dynamics of the everyday and world affairs. It conceptualises the state as a mediator between the two levels and stresses how a perceptual selectivity favours certain parts of the everyday over others. I illustrate the usefulness of this theoretical approach and the continued relevance of structural power by exploring how intersections between everyday life and patterns of production in parts of the US have contributed to recent disruptions to American structural power and the way it is being deployed on the international stage.