This book seeks to offer a general interpretation and critique of both methodlogical and substantive aspects of International theory.

Once considered a question of an international order based on consolidated statehood and homogeneous social communities within national borders, global order has become a question of alternative political articulations, resistance movements, and cultural diversity, among others. This book first critically analyzes the conditions for the struggles of theorizing global normative order in political and IR theory. Second, to make sense of the presence of difference and possibility for global normative order in view of the simultaneous absence of first foundations, the study draws on post-foundational thinking based on the seminal work of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and Argentine political theorist Ernesto Laclau. Finally, the author develops a theoretical framework for a hauntological approach to global normative order that provides an alternative and theoretically coherent explanation for the emergence of global order. This is of interest to scholars as well as practitioners (including activists) concerned with global social relations, global political discourse, and the construction of global identity and normative order(s).

How do states sustain international order during crises? Drawing on the political philosophy of Lyotard and through an empirical examination of the Anglo-American international order during the 1956 Suez Crisis, Bially Mattern demonstrates that states can (and do) use representational force--a forceful but non-physical form of power exercised through language--to stabilize international identity and in turn international order.

Historical approaches to the study of world politics have always been a major part of the academic discipline of International Relations, and there has recently been a resurgence of scholarly interest in this area. This Oxford Handbook examines the past and present of the intersection between history and IR, and looks to the future by laying out new questions and directions for research. Seeking to transcend well-worn disciplinary debates between historians and IR scholars, the Handbook asks authors from both fields to engage with the central themes of 'modernity' and 'granularity'. Modernity is one of the basic organising categories of speculation about continuity and discontinuity in the history of world politics, but one that is increasingly questioned for privileging one kind of experience and marginalizing others. The theme of granularity highlights the importance of how decisions about the scale and scope of historical research in IR shape what can be seen, and how one sees it. Together, these themes provide points of affinity across the wide range of topics and approaches presented here. The Handbook is organized into four parts. The first, 'Readings', gives a state-of-the-art analysis of numerous aspects of the disciplinary encounter between historians and IR theorists. Thereafter, sections on 'Practices', 'Locales', and 'Moments' offer a wide variety of perspectives, from the longue durée to the ephemeral individual moment, and challenge many conventional ways of defining the contexts of historical enquiry about international relations. Contributors come from a range of academic backgrounds, and present a diverse array of methodological and philosophical ideas, as well as their various historical interests. The Oxford Handbooks of International Relations is a twelve-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and innovative engagements with the principal sub-fields of International Relations. The series as a whole is under the General Editorship of Christian Reus-Smit of the University of Queensland and Duncan Snidal of the University of Oxford, with each volume edited by specialists in the field. The series both surveys the broad terrain of International Relations scholarship and reshapes it, pushing each sub-field in challenging new directions. Following the example of Reus-Smit and Snidal's original Oxford Handbook of International Relations, each volume is organized around a strong central thematic by scholars drawn from different perspectives, reading its sub-field in an entirely new way, and pushing scholarship in challenging new directions.

Bringing together an international team of contributors, this volume draws on international political theory and intellectual history to rethink the problem of a pluralistic world order. Inspired by the work of international political theorist Nicholas Rengger, the book focuses on three main areas of Rengger's contribution to the political theory of international relations: his Augustine-inspired idea of an 'Anti-Pelagian Imagination'; his Oakeshottian argument for a pluralist 'conversation of mankind'; and his ruminations on war as the uncivil condition in world politics. Through a critical engagement with his work, the book illuminates the promises and limitations of civility as a sceptical, non-utopian, anti-perfectionist approach to theorizing world order that transcends both realist pessimism and liberal utopianism.

This thoroughly revised Handbook presents an up-to-date political and philosophical history of global constitutionalism. By exploring the constitutional-like qualities of international affairs, it provides key insight into the evolving world order.

Jorg Friedrich presents an important new introduction to the existence and relevance of European approaches to IR theory and sets an agenda for the progressive development of a 'Eurodiscipline' of IR studies.

Situated within the wider post-secular turn in politics and international relations, this volume focuses not on religion per se, but rather explicitly on theology. Contributions to this collection highlight the political theological foundations of international theory and world politics, recasting theology and politics as symbiotic discourses with all the risks, promises and open questions this relation may involve. The overarching claim the book makes is that all politics has theology embedded in it, both in the genealogical sense of carrying ineradicable traces of rival theological traditions, and also in the more ontological sense of being enacted by alternative configurations of the theologico-political. The book is unique in bringing together a diverse group of scholars, spanning knowledge areas as varied as IR, political theory, philosophy, theology, and history to investigate the complex interconnections between theology and world politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, international relations, intellectual history, and political theology.

Focused on a set of overlapping international orders of regional scope present in the Middle East and North Africa, this book argues that rules and primary institutions have sanctioned the foreign behavior of the sub-system’s international actors since 1945. The author avoids recent IR trends focused on narrow case studies, instead providing a comprehensive overview of the MENA’s regional politics. The normative content and evolution of multiple international orders are examined, constituting the intra-Arab order, the Arab-Israeli order and the Arab-Iranian order, as well as the expression of the global order in regional interactions. Drawing on Area Studies and English School and constructivist IR theories, the author argues that a plurality of overlapping regional orders have coexisted since 1945, not just one as is commonly suggested in the literature. Each of these orders is integrated by different participants and has developed its own differentiated norms and institutions setting parameters on legitimate behavior. This analytical proposal helps make sense of foreign relations otherwise labeled as incoherent. The book has wide appeal, accessible both to students wishing to learn about the politics, history and sociology of the Middle East, as well as to specialists seeking original research on the functioning of the MENA’s regional orders.

This book provides a pre-history of Russia's war on Ukraine and Europe’s relations to it, illuminating the deep roots of the EU’s neighbourhood crisis as well as the migration crises the Union created in the last decade. To do so, the book employs a new and innovative framework that allows for a comprehensive, yet nuanced analysis of borders and a more cogent interpretation of their socio-political consequences. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship the book analytically examines the key common elements of borderscapes and links them in related arrays to allow for nuanced evaluation of both their particular and cumulative effects, as well as interpretation of their overall consequences, particularly for issues of identities and orders. The book offers a significant conceptual and theoretical advance, providing a transferable conceptualization of borderscapes to guide research, analysis, and interpretation. Drawing on the author’s experience in policy, practice and academia, it also makes a methodological contribution by pushing the boundaries of reflexivity in interpretive International Relations (IR) research. Analyzing three main sites in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the book challenges conventional critical wisdom on EU bordering in the Schengen zone, at its external frontiers, and in its Eastern neighborhood. In so doing, it sheds new light on the politics of post-communist transitions as well as the contemporary politics of CEE. It also shows how EU bordering and its relations to identities and orders created great benefits for many Europeans, but also hindered the lives of many others and became self-defeating. This book is a must-read for scholars, students, and policy-makers, interested in a better understanding of Critical Border Studies (CBS) in particular, and International Relations in general. It will also appeal to anyone interested in CEE or wishing to get a deeper understanding of Russia’s war and the fight for Europe’s future.