BISA 2024 Conference

Name: BISA 2024 Conference
Start: 2024-06-04T09:00:00+01:00
End: 2024-06-07T23:59:00+01:00
Location: No location set

4 Jun 2024, 09:00 → 7 Jun 2024, 23:59 Europe/London

Description

Welcome to the event management area for #BISA2024. Here you can register for our conference in Birmingham. You can purchase either a one-day or a three-day ticket (two-day tickets are not possible). We look forward to welcoming you at BISA 2024.

Contact

conferences@bisa.ac.uk

Tuesday 4 June
- 1
  
  TU Roundtable / Public roundtable: Is the foreign policy of democratic states facilitating the global decline of democratic and human rights standards? Reception 6.15-7pm followed by roundtable 7-8.30pm. Sponsored by University of Birmingham and CEDAR. Although this is open to all conference delegates you need to register in advance to attend at https://www.bisa.ac.uk/events/foreign-policy-democratic-states-facilitating-global-decline-democratic-and-human-rights The Exchange, The Assembly Room
  
  Speakers: Dr Mwita Chacha (University of Birmingham), Dr Petra Alderman (University of Birmingham), Dr Toby Greene (Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics), Professor Catherine O'Regan (University of Oxford), Professor Nic Cheeseman, Professor Toni Haastrup (University of Manchester)
Wednesday 5 June
- 2
  
  05 Roundtable / Charting the Future of PCWP Scholarship beyond the Tübingen School Soprano, Hyatt
  
  In 2016, Nick Robinson and Kyle Grayson convened the European International Studies Association workshop entitled Popular Culture and World Politics – Time, Identity, Effect, Affect in Tübingen, Germany. The event brought together leading and emerging scholars exploring the state of the art in the subfield of popular culture and world politics (PCWP), with a particular interest in questions of methodology and method. One of the central concerns of the workshop was to empower researchers grappling with how to legitimate their research on PCWP within the confines of ‘mainstream IR’. Nearly a decade on – and with a Trump presidency and the Covid lockdowns behind us (or perhaps in our future as well) – the work of what some have deemed the ‘Tübingen School’ has gained greater respect within the field of International Studies. More importantly, it has also seen a welcome diversification of its researchers, subjects of study, methods/modalities, and applications to pedagogy. In line with BISA’s goals for the conference, this roundtable brings together many of the original participants to explore how PCWP scholarship advances knowledge creation and prosocial change in times of global crises. Our specific focus is on how we can move forward with a greater emphasis on promoting equality, diversity, and inclusivity in our scholarship, research practices, course development/deployment, student/peer mentoring, and collaboration with colleagues (particularly those outside of the UK, US, and Australia).
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Chair: Robert Saunders (State University of New York)
  
  Participants: Louise Pears (University of Leeds) , Katarina Birkedal (University of St Andrews) , Nick Robinson (University of Leeds) , Matt Davies (Newcastle University) , Julian Schmid (Central European University) , Erzsebet Strausz (Central European University)
- 3
  05 Panel / Continuity versus change in Japan’s security and defence policies Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: Yee-Kuang Heng (University of Tokyo, Japan)
  
  Chair: Christopher Hughes (University of Warwick, England)
  - Bridging Regional Divisions: Anglo-Japanese Strategic Partnerships in the IndoPacific and Beyond
    
    With Japan under Prime Minister Kishida now, unambiguously, having acquired “tier 1 status” as a diplomatic and strategic actor and the United Kingdom reaffirming its Indopacific ambitions following the publication in 2023 of the Integrated Review Refresh, there is considerable evidence that the bilateral partnership between the British and Japanese governments is stronger than ever. Nevertheless, the scale and scope of the security challenges for the two countries are considerable, whether in Europe, the Middle East or East Asia. This paper will consider to what extent the rhetoric of strengthened bilateral cooperation between the UK and Japan is matched by concrete policy initiatives, while also considering the extent to which rising populism and economic constraints may be limiting the two governments aspirations to strengthen their partnership
    
    Author: John Nilsson-Wright (University of Cambridge, England)
  - Japan’s Joint Military Exercises (JME) as a tool for shaping regional order?
    
    Japan’s National Defense Strategy (NDS) 2022 declared that “the first objective is to shape a
    security environment that does not tolerate unilateral changes to the status quo by force”.
    How might the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) contribute to Japan’s shaping ambitions? The SDF
    was tasked in the NDS to conduct joint exercises with not just its US ally, but increasingly
    “multi-layered collaboration with like-minded countries and others to create a desirable
    security environment”. While the SDF participates in a growing number of bilateral and
    multilateral exercises, there has not yet been a systematic evaluation of the shaping rationale behind these exercises. This paper proposes that Japan’s JMEs shape regional order in support of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) vision through several overlapping inter-related mechanisms :1) operational and training utility to enhance deterrence; 2) building “presence” and trust; 3) enhancing security partnerships and networking to build strategic alignment and signalling 4) promoting and embedding desirable norms of behaviour.
    
    Author: Yee-Kuang Heng (University of Tokyo, Japan)
  - Evolution of Japan’s space cooperation: ambition, strategic environment, and partnership
    
    On 13 June 2023 Japan published its first-ever Space Security Initiative, marking a major milestone in Tokyo’s endeavour to be a credible space security actor. The Space Security Initiative sets the objective of space security as “to promote the peace and prosperity of Japan and the safety and security of our citizens through outer space, together with our ally, like-minded countries, and others to maintain the stable use of and free access to outer space.” This paper focuses on the evolution of Japan’s space cooperation with like-minded states. The cooperation will be examined from the perspective of space capabilities, which are Earth observation, positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), communications, environmental monitoring, and space governance. The paper aims to shed light on the continuity and change in Japan’s space cooperation bilaterally, minilaterally, and multilaterally.
    
    Author: Nanae Baldauff (United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS), Belgium)
  - From Extended Nuclear Deterrence to Collective Deterrence: Japan embarks on a new age of deterrence.
    
    Japan’s release of the three strategic documents lay great emphasis on multilateral security cooperation with regional stability and deterrence in mind as it is committed to regional security more so now than ever before. Considering this new regional movement, this paper studies what this shift means to Japan’s deterrence posture and its implications to regional security. When it comes to Japan's relationship to deterrence, traditionally it usually indicates US extended nuclear deterrence over Japan. While the quintessential form of US extended nuclear deterrence over Japan has remain unchanged since the 1960’s, today there are more deterrent related activities such as large bilateral and multilateral military exercises Japan can utilise (toward a more active form) potentially serving as general deterrence. While in theory this can strengthen Japan’s overall deterrence, it also works the other way around: spiralling a situation rather than deterring it. This paper also considers the dynamism of what Japan embarks on from the perspectives of deterrence.
    
    Author: Hiroshi Nakatani (Japan Air-Self Defense Force Command and Staff College, Japan)
  - Japan’s Defence Industrial Strategy and Fighter Aircraft Production: Striving for Tier-One Status
    
    In the contemporary period, and as seen in its 2022 ‘National Security Documents’, Japan has
    not abandoned its ambitions or traditional model to preserve an indigenous defence
    production capacity, even if accepting the need for significant modifications of its approach.
    This paper utilises Japan’s case to address the related questions of how ‘tier-two’ states
    attempt to navigate—effectively or otherwise—approaches for developing an indigenous
    defence production base, including: exploitation of the interface of domestic civilian and
    military industrial sectors; selection of key technologies and sectors for prioritisation; and
    minimising over-dependence on, and linking with, foreign partners for the importation and
    development of weaponry. Although the paper considers Japan’s defence production
    ambitions across a full range of weapons platforms and the extent of its model in meeting
    national strategic and industrial objectives, it places particular focus on examining Japanese
    interest in fighter plane production from the post-war to the contemporary era and the new
    Global Combat Air Programme for a sixth-generation fighter—involving Japan, the UK and
    Italy, and potentially other partners—as a way to break into the ‘tier-one’ of arms producers.
    
    Author: Christopher W. Hughes (University of Warwick, England)
- 4
  05 Panel / Contours of Contemporary Nuclear Dynamics: Challenges and strategies Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Global Nuclear Order Working Group
  
  Convener: Luba Zatsepina (Liverpool John Moores University)
  
  Chair: Luba Zatsepina (Liverpool John Moores University)
  - NATO Nuclear Hardware Sharing Initiatives: Explaining Success and Failure
    
    Why are some NATO nuclear hardware sharing initiatives successful while others fail? The issue of U.S. nuclear weapons in NATO countries has generated renewed discussion following several modernization decisions and increased NATO-Russian tensions. Proponents of foreign nuclear deployments argue that the visible nature of the deployments reassures NATO allies. Skeptics contend that public opposition creates domestic political problems for host governments. This generates intra-alliance tension that outweighs any strategic reassurance benefits. I argue both positions are flawed. An initiative is likely to succeed when key members view it as advancing their strategic position but importantly this is not always the case. U.S. nuclear deployment initiatives fail to reassure when they portend to weaken a state’s deterrent. Leaders anticipate public opposition and so are able to manage domestic political concerns. I assess my claims with an examination of four major initiatives utilizing declassified documents and public opinion data dating to the 1950s. The results have implications for current NATO nuclear debates as well as the influence of public opinion on national security decision-making.
    
    Author: Paul Avey (Virginia Tech)
  - South Asia and the Third Nuclear Age: Retrospect and Prospect
    
    Existing accounts of the Third Nuclear Age are mostly characterized by a disengagement with regional dynamics. South Asia presents a unique template to examine the regional dynamics of the Third Nuclear Age with the intertwining of issues of deterrence, nuclear proliferation, and strategic stability. Historically, it spawned the Second Nuclear Age with the successive Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests in 1998 and contested prevailing assumptions. The region encompasses key features of the evolving Third Nuclear Age like expanding nuclear arsenals and strategic modernization, but also includes salient factors like sub-conventional conflict, doctrinal ambivalence, great power competition and existence of three overlapping nuclear dyads (India-Pakistan, India-China, USA-China). Critical political, strategic, and technological developments in each of these dyads is surveyed and situated with the broader global dynamics (e.g., power transition, proliferation of emerging strategic technologies, decline of arms control) to examine emerging regional specificities. This exercise provides salient analytical propositions that contrasts with conventional frameworks and contributes to the emerging strand of literature on the Third Nuclear Age, by broadening and widening its empirical and conceptual foundations.
    
    Author: Shounak Set (KCL)
  - Technoscientific Rationality and Nuclear Weapons
    
    This paper explores the epistemological and ontological assumptions of the "hard" or “high” sciences in modern weapons development. To do so, it details the pursuit of acquiring "magic bullet" weapons and an associated "superweapon" peace in US doctrine and innovation, arguably culminating in the invention of the atomic bomb. This paper reveals the development of a "technoscientific rationality" to favour and legitimise such weapons, which correspondingly attempts to dismiss ethical, moral, or normative arguments against such weapons. Furthermore, “technoscientific rationality” may also impact who are considered "experts" to speak on nuclear issues and/or governance. For its methodology, this paper utilises an interpretivist qualitative analysis of US government policy documents, transcripts and public speeches, and formalised doctrine. Overall, this paper contributes a much-needed investigation into the sociology of science and war, and its under-represented relevance to nuclear weapons.
    
    Author: Natasha Karner (RMIT University)
- 5
  05 Panel / Counter-Terrorism in Civic Spaces Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Convener: CST Working group
  
  Chair: Lee Jarvis
  - Tunisian youth workers, western influences, postcolonial narratives. Local actors in the making of global security.
    
    A common argument in security studies is that global security narratives originate in western countries and western-led institutions, according to a colonial logic which describes non-western countries as helpless against the influence of the West. This paper aims at shifting this perspective, highlighting the role of the ‘margins’ in the construction of security narratives and practices. Studying the work of a youth centre and a cultural centre involved in a US-funded CVE programme in a Tunisian suburb, this paper argues that non-traditional security actors (such as youth workers) play a pivotal role in challenging, shaping and ultimately co-producing local security policies and measures. Building upon hooks’ definition of the margin as a “central location for the production of a counter hegemonic discourse” (1989: 20), I argue that investigating the subjugated knowledges of local actors in the field allows us to go beyond global security narratives and to see alternative approaches to security.
    
    Author: Fabrizio Cuccu (Dublin City University)
  - Alternative conceptions of Social Cohesion and Belonging: Muslim Charity in Practice
    
    European states are becoming increasingly plural without the necessary intellectual and conceptual tools to deal with increased societal diversity. While populations are diversifying, European states appear to be pushing for societal uniformity, evident in the UK’s emphasis on "Fundamental British Values". The UK, like other European states, fear that increased plurality in society will lead to a breakdown of social cohesion which in turn, may increase the conditions for the emergence of "extremism" and "radicalisation". Thus, social cohesion, via pushes for uniformity in society, is now part of the conceptualisation of effective ways to counter “extremism”, “radicalisation” and “terrorism”. However, is the demand for homogeneity in society the only, or even the most effective, way to construct social cohesion and a sense of belonging? This paper will suggest that there are alternative conceptualisations of social cohesion and societal belonging that do not necessarily demand uniformity or assimilation to the dominant group. Using the example of Muslim charitable practices, this paper aims to showcase how care and empathy for larger society both domestic and international, can be fostered through a shared sense of humanity. By offering aid and support to those in need, regardless of faith, racialisations, ethnicities and more, Muslim charitable practices can showcase alternative processes of societal belonging which accommodates plurality yet finds social cohesion in heterogeneity.
    
    Key Words: Social Cohesion; Belonging; Charity; Counter-Terror; Religion
    
    Author: Samantha May (University of Aberdeen)
  - Prevent and Critical Race Feminism: The implications of Prevent for Muslim women in post-16 education
    
    This paper provides an analysis of the intersectionality of religion, gender identity and the effects of counterterrorism policy, namely ‘Prevent’. I focus upon Muslim women’s experiences concerning the UK’s counterterrorism strategy Prevent, with a theoretical framework of Critical Race Feminism. This research demonstrates the UK government’s incorporation of Muslim women into CVE policies and how this aids the Prevent strategy’s wider acceptance and legitimacy, whilst also categorising Muslim women as a tool in deradicalization. I directly address the gap between feminist research and the qualitative, lived experiences of Prevent for Muslim women in post-16 education. This study is one of the first to offer insights into Muslim women’s feelings surrounding how Prevent operates within the post-16 education sector. To aid this exploration, Critical Race Feminism is used as a theoretical framework to advance the discussion of intersectionality within this paper. Within the data collected, certain themes are evident such as: the self-censoring of students, the responsibilization of Muslim women, and gendered Islamophobia. The findings of this paper demonstrate that there is a gendered impact of the Prevent strategy within the UK’s post-16 education sector and this occurs through different avenues. Reflections will also be made concerning my researcher positionality and maintaining criticality within the university sphere, particularly when researching the Prevent Duty. Accordingly, this paper should be added to the context of debate about the future of Prevent (if any) particularly within the education sector.
    
    Author: Lilly Barker (Nottingham Trent University)
  - ‘Vigilante (Counter-)terrorism’: From ‘Citizen-Informants’ to ‘Citizen-Warriors’ in Nigeria
    
    The cliché goes that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter but, in this article, I explicate a related but more complex aphorism that one person’s terrorist could be another’s counterterrorist and that rather than a given, terrorist and counterterrorist labels are assigned through various institutional and discursive practices which are spatially and temporally situated. First, through my own conceptualization, I suggest the concept of ‘vigilante (counter-)terrorism’ to conceptualize a long-standing but overlooked aspect of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. Second, using some data from the ongoing counterterrorism projects in Nigeria and in particular, various vigilante groups across Northwest, Northcentral and Northeast Nigeria, I argue that rather than ‘see it, say it, sorted’, where citizens are enlisted as citizen-informants, the citizen that the ‘citizen-warrior’ category which the ‘vigilante (counter-)terrorism’ produces is a violent subject. The sanction engenders a more violent subjectivity, i.e., ‘see it, strike it, sorted’ which enlists the ‘citizen-individual’ as a ‘sovereign’ in as long as the expression of this sovereignty serves the state’s purpose. The erratic nature of such arrangements makes it particularly problematic especially where the lines between the ‘citizen terrorist’ and the ‘citizen vigilante’ are irreparably blurred and their relationships entangled, both spatially and temporally.
    
    Author: Akinyemi Oyawale (University of Warwick)
- 6
  05 Panel / Explaining and Preventing Civil War Recurrence Room 103, Library
  
  Sponsor: University of Birmingham, School of Government Conflict and Peace Processes Research Group
  
  Convener: Stefan Wolff (University of Birmingham)
  
  Chair: Stefan Wolff (University of Birmingham)
  
  Discussant: Gearoid Millar (University of Aberdeen)
  - Learning from failure: how to prevent civil war recurrence in protracted civil wars
    
    Learning from failure: how to prevent civil war recurrence in protracted civil wars
    
    Authors: Giuditta Fontana (University of Birmingham) , Argyro Kartsonaki , Stefan Wolff (University of Birmingham) , Natascha Neudorfer
  - Women’s reincorporation in Colombia
    
    Women’s reincorporation in Colombia
    
    Author: Angela D. Nichols (Florida Atlantic University)
  - The roles of mid-level commanders in conflict and peace processes
    
    The roles of mid-level commanders in conflict and peace processes
    
    Author: Anastasia Shesterinina (University of York)
- 7
  05 Panel / Foreign policy analysis: Cases and Concepts Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: Marianna Charountaki (University of Lincoln)
  
  Chair: Marianna Charountaki (University of Lincoln)
  - Foreign Policy Toward Non-State Justice
    
    This paper critically examines the emergence of non-state justice as a distinct foreign policy issue. The rule of law has long been a major donor priority. Only in the last 20 years, however, has non-state justice become a notable concern in its own right. And even then, engagement has been half-hearted and inconsistent. This paper highlights how rule of law donors and practitioners have grappled with the inherent limitations of a myopic focus on state institutions that ignores how most people experience justice and legal order more broadly. At the same time, state institutions have remained highly cognizant of the flaws of non-state justice, including serious concerns about human rights, gender equality, and due process. Thus, acute risk aversion coexists alongside a broad acknowledgement that non-state justice is very important. This uneasy relationship has generated an enduring tension wherein donors see the abstract value of engaging non-state justice even as they fear criticism for doing so. As a result, both policy and programming tend to be designed and executed in a decidedly suboptimal manner.
    
    Author: Geoffrey Swenson (City, University of London)
  - Conceptualising Blindspots in Foreign Policy
    
    The concept of blind spots has gained more systematic attention in political science and public administration as a potentially important cause of creeping or sudden disasters that could have been prevented with earlier recognition and action. In foreign and security policy the term or close variants have been occasionally used, but a lack of precise definition in relation to other concepts or tailored research designs to empirically study their main causes leaves a clear gap in the literature. So far, blind spots are mainly invoked as an analogy in passing or for explaining single cases without the aspiration to build theory applicable to other domains. The proposed paper aims to conceptualise and theorise the main causes of blind spots at a time when many organisations in charge of security have access to ever more data and sophisticated analytical methods, but have found themselves overwhelmed, struggle with prioritisation, and often face criticism for under-reaction to threats. Critical blind spots in foreign affairs are conceptualised as severe, enduring and largely unacknowledged limitations in the sensory or cognitive capacities of an international actor or groups of actors that render potentially grave problems invisible or misunderstood, and, therefore, unaddressed.
    
    Author: Christoph Meyer (King's College London)
  - Success and failure in the international promotion of freedom of religion or belief: Lessons learned from the case of Asia Bibi
    
    In the context of high-profile attacks on religious minorities, many Western governments have started to integrate the protection of religious freedom in their foreign policies. But how effective have these policies been in the protection of the security and rights of religious minorities? Research on the effectiveness of these policies has been scarce. We, therefore, use the international campaign to free Asia Bibi – a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death by a Pakistani court in 2010 and finally acquitted in 2018 – as a case study to explore this question. Based on qualitative interviews with government officials and representatives of international governmental and non-governmental organisations, and an extensive document and media analysis, and informed by the literature on international human rights promotion, this article identifies the lessons learnt from this process. To inform future campaigns, we specifically ask which strategies employed by different foreign policy actors to promote the rights of religious minorities in third countries are successful and which are counterproductive, demonstrating that ‘quiet diplomacy’ often is the more promising strategy than political protest.
    
    Authors: Tusharika Deka (University of Nottingham)* , Anne Jenichen (Aston University)
  - Can a Leopard Change its Spots? Costly Signaling, Attribution, and Implicit Theories in International Politics
    
    Scholarship on signaling has long assumed that states rely on costly signals to infer states’ motives. However, attribution theory in psychology casts doubt on the efficacy of costly signals. Integrating scholarship on signaling with attribution theory, I examine the tacit assumption about attribution that underpins the costly signaling hypothesis and offer the first experimental test of this assumption. Drawing on findings from social and cultural psychology, I argue that the extent to which recipients will adhere to this assumption and attribute a state’s signals to its motives the way costly signaling predicts depends on recipients’ `implicit theories’ of social agents. The findings from a survey experiment with over 1800 participants from the US and UK lend partial support to the costly signaling hypothesis: recipients attribute a state’s sunk-cost signals of resolve more to its motives when the state’s strategic environment is secure than when it faces a threat, even when recipients’ own state poses the threat in question. This suggests that known attributional biases in interpersonal and intergroup interactions may not necessarily extend to interstate interactions, undermining costly signaling. However, the findings also show that recipients’ attribution of sunk-cost signals of resolve varies depending on their implicit theories, with significant implications for the risk of spirals in international conflicts.
    
    Author: Paola Solimena (Columbia University)
  - Reputation and Geopolitical Dynamics in Transnational Repression: Insights from the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar
    
    The recent assassination of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar raises questions on transnational repression and the forces influencing such an action. Transnational repression takes a peculiar dimension for India-Canada relations, considering their long-standing partnership, migration flow, and peaceful bilateral ties. Transnational repression in academic literature is particularly understood through lenses of authoritarianism, dissent, and migration, marking a dearth of scholarship from the standpoint of international relations and reputation, especially in non-authoritarian contexts. We ask the critical question: why do nations engage in transnational repression despite the seismic diplomatic repercussions and global fallout it causes? Through this essay, we explore the international and reputational dimensions of transnational repression and the underlying forces that drive this behaviour. As authoritarianism and dissident control explain little about transnational repression, we argue that allegations and the politics of transnational repression are firmly grounded in considerations of reputation costs and international bargaining. India's escalating geopolitical influence and Canada's historical adherence to peaceful and rule-based governance render this case particularly compelling, underscoring the significant costs of such actions and allegations.
    
    Authors: Nikhil Goyal (University of Toronto) , Aidan Kerr (University of Toronto)
- 8
  05 Panel / Gender, race and capitalism Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: IPEG Working group
  
  Chair: Lena Rethel
  - Race and Gender in European Polycrisis
    
    How is the European Polycrisis gendered and racialised? This is a simple question that opens up important lines of analysis, and is also essential to the development of a complete understanding of current dynamics of European integration, politics, and economics. This paper sets out some initial, and non-exhaustive, avenues for answering this question, highlighting three ways that race and gender are shaping the contemporary EU. Firstly, by looking at how the EU’s own self-conception is shaped through a particular historical narrative, one that elides the EU’s position as a postcolonial entity. Secondly, by exploring how the very crises that now define EU policy making are inherently gendered crises, stemming from the challenges of social reproduction that are obfuscated by policy making. And finally, thirdly, by showing how a racist natalist ideology is underpinning right-wing movements – while also shaping equality policies within the EU and across the member states. This paper therefore argues for the interconnected nature of the various crises, and for an understanding that sees race and gender as forming those very connections.
    
    Author: Muireann O'Dwyer (University of St Andrews)
  - Governing crises of social reproduction through interventions into the intimate: the case of Iran
    
    Feminist IPE project of engendering economic/financial crisis has powerfully established that crises are also crises for social reproduction. This work, however, has rarely viewed economic crisis through the lens of intimacy. Nonetheless, As discussed by feminist IPE work on intimacy (i.e. Peterson, 2014), certain gendered, sexualised and racialised regulations of intimate/familial/marital/reproductive have historically helped to secure appropriate social reproduction necessary for the survival of the states, economies and households. Given such critical historical linkages, this paper highlights the necessity of asking the question of intimacy in (time of) crisis: In other words, what type of biopolitical interventions into the intimate is warranted by the contemporary neoliberal crises of social reproduction at global and national levels?
    This paper addresses this question by examining the impacts of sanction-induced crises on Iran through an intimacy optic. Drawing on situated and embodied methodologies (primarily in-depth interviews with Iranian women collected during my fieldwork) and combining them with a feminist international political economy reading of the state’s policy and discursive shifts in domains of marriage, reproduction, and (gendered) family relations over the last decade, it details various ways in which sanction-induced crises has turned the intimate both as everyday sites of crises as well as an increased site of state’s control and governance. Doing this, it argues that the state’s increased penetration into the intimate has been part of pushing for a new organisation of social reproduction – to which I refer as (re)domestication of social reproduction. This argument also highlights different manifestations and governance of crises of social reproduction in the none-industrialised West.
    
    Author: Asma Abdi (University of Warwick)
  - The Gendered Political Economy of Higher Education Transformation: The case of Indonesia
    
    As part of efforts to move towards a more knowledge intensive and competitive economy, Indonesian development strategy has sought to promote research-led scientific innovation. Akin to many Asian economies, these moves have seen high levels of investment into higher education, with the aim of creating a higher education sector of world class standing – with a particular emphasis on the need to build capacity in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). At the same time, the Indonesian government has made significant strides in prioritising gender equality with the aim of fostering a more equitable and inclusive society. This is evident in various policies and initiatives including the Government’s medium term development plan (Rencana Pembangunan Jangkah Menengah Nasional 2020-2024) that includes specific priorities on empowering women in education and employment. In this context, STEM policy-making has evolved in Indonesia in ways that reflect a broader global policy consensus around the need to promote gender equality in STEM. Building on recent IPE work that has sought to uncover the gender politics of national economic competitiveness (see Elias 2020) alongside work exploring the political economy of higher education transformations in Asia (Jarvis and Mok 2019), this paper draws upon the case of Indonesian policies to promote women’s empowerment in STEM in order to investigate the gendered tensions and points of resistance that emerge out of policy agendas that position women’s empowerment as a necessary component of economic development success.
    
    Authors: Juanita Elias (University of Warwick) , Lena Rethel (University of Warwick) , Ella Prihatini (President University, Indonesia)
  - Social reproduction along resource frontiers: understanding transforming access to land and gendered work in emerging Asia
    
    Social Reproduction Approaches in the study of political economy have crucially shaped our understanding of the co-constitutive relationships between everyday gender inequality, and macroeconomic logics of accumulation. Yet, theorisations of the gendered dynamics of social reproduction along Global South resource frontiers that are increasingly under the sway of transnational corporate investments and speculation, remain limited in this canon. This paper brings into dialogue feminist political economy and feminist critical agrarian studies to explore the gendered politics of agrarian transition in the context of large-scale land acquisitions in two emerging Asian economies- Cambodia and India. I specifically investigate the gendered interconnections between rising commercial interests in land and agrarian commodities, and concomitant impacts on the gendered work of food production and provisioning. Drawing primarily on evidence from Cambodia and India—generated through fieldwork across multiple locations in both countries— this article illuminates how ongoing agrarian transitions accompanying land and agrarian commercialization are urgent sites for exploring ongoing reconfiguration of gendered social relations in the Global South.
    
    Author: Saba Joshi (University of York)
- 9
  
  05 Roundtable / IPE and the current world (dis)order Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  This roundtable aims to provide a forum within which to discuss how critical international political economy can inform our understanding of the current world (dis)order. Capitalist crises continue to proliferate. From the Climate Crisis, through the Covid crisis, and on to the Polycrisis. This is Disaster Capitalism. It sees the decaying global order being replaced with multipolar militarization: "forever wars", the Russian neocolonial invasion of Ukraine, the horrific mass killings of civilians amidst the reinvigorated Israel-Palestine conflict, military uprisings across Africa, and heightened geo-political tensions in the Asia-Pacific. Advances in technology take the form of automated alienation. The ongoing drive for expansion creates yet more degradation of our planet and the climate disaster worsens by the year. It is in this context of extreme levels of global disorder that we seek to draw upon critical traditions in international political economy in order to understand, explain, and help transform, disaster capitalism.
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Chair: Owen Worth (University of Limerick)
  
  Participants: Yuliya Yurchenko (University of Greenwich) , Peter Burnham (University of Birmingham) , David Bailey (University of Birmingham) , Owen Worth (University of Limerick)
- 10
  05 Panel / Internal Affairs of Asia: An elusive balance of regional and domestic instruments Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: ISMMEA Working group
  
  Chair: Rory McCarthy (Durham University)
  - Non-sovereign entities and the display of diplomatic agency: A case of the Taiwan independence movement
    
    The realm of diplomacy, and the studying of it, has always been restricted to sovereign states. However, the role played by non-state or non-sovereign entities in international relations has begun to see more attention. In particular, with the rise of many transnational activist groups that lobby for causes like independence or democracy, it would seem like a study of how they actually interact with sovereign states, and display diplomatic agency, would be warranted.
    
    To explore this area further, this paper proposes the question of “How do non-sovereign entities such as pro-democracy transnational activist movements display diplomatic agency?” To answer this question, this paper proposes using metis diplomacy as a framework to understand how these non-sovereign entities have been able to display diplomatic agency, how they seek to influence governments, both domestic and foreign to push for their cause. Metis diplomacy has been used to analyse the ‘state-becoming’ of Kosovo, exploring the role played by everyday situated discourses, diplomatic practices and entanglements in the enactment of sovereign statehood for Kosovo.
    
    This paper will use Taiwan’s independence movement as a case study, applying the theory of metis diplomacy in understanding how transnational activists groups advocated for democratisation. It will explore the role played by transnational activists, those based overseas in advocating for democracy in Taiwan. It will highlight the role that everyday discourses, everyday diplomatic practices and everyday entanglements have played in the success or failure of those transnational activists in achieving their goals of democratisation and independence.
    
    Author: Zeng Ee Liew (University of Surrey)
  - “New modes of resistance: the power of art to desecuritise the war on drugs in the Philippines”
    
    In the Philippines, new frameworks are required to make sense of the unique situation and human rights crisis taking place under the government’s instrumental “war on drugs” – framed to be a national necessity. Security building (and dismantling) is a complex, multi-layered, multi-actor and multi-modal communicative process. A rich variety of non-state actors, including non-governmental organisations, religious affiliated groups, amateur artists, student activists and individuals are actively trying to desecuritise and reverse the state security policies to prevent the extra-judicial killings that have become national policy. In an environment of suppressed civic space and a restricted ability to speak out freely, the role of the visual moves to the forefront of community resistance. This paper explores the activities taking place by those trying to protect human rights. Moving beyond the traditional modes of protest, this research has comprised an “image bank” that includes street art, graffiti, performative bodily displays such as “die ins”, photo art collections, symbols and community art workshops that seek to examine how the visual can “speak back to power” and denounce the war on drugs. In addition to this, the research draws on interviews with non-state actors involved in these activities, to gain insights into their experiences. The research aims to add to the body of literature on art as advocacy, grassroots resistance, the power of images, non-state actor agency, human rights promotion, contested spaces in illiberal democracies, and desecuritisation in practice.
    
    Key Words: desecuritising, non-state actors, images, art advocacy, Philippines
    
    Author: Lauren Stansfield (Coventry Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations)
  - An Expansion of International Studies: When Manu’s Dharma Meets Morgenthau’s Realism
    
    In recent times, there has been an increased engagement with non-Western perspectives in international studies. One of the reasons is that colonisers of the past, mostly the European powers, have hidden intentionally or unintentionally or forgotten to acknowledge that knowledge produced in international studies was from a particular vantage point but presented as universal. Therefore, scholars from erstwhile colonies have started to speak. They are highlighting the epistemological limitations of international studies when seen from a limited vantage point. This paper emphasises the fact that this new exercise is not about displacing/discarding everything that existed before. It is also not about adding non-Western perspectives to international studies at the periphery by keeping the Western perspective as the core and norm. In this work, we are highlighting the fact that when newer perspectives are added to already existing ones, both Western and non-Western perspectives are evolving and changing. To cite this development, we explore what is Manu’s Dharma and what happens when Manu’s Dharma (based on hierarchy) meets Morgenthau’s Realism (based on anarchy).
    This work by unpacking ontological and epistemological connections follows an eclectic approach where the partnership between past, present and future events are seen. It is qualitative and adopts an inductive method. In doing so, we have punctured mega narratives of Western Masculine Realism and deconstructed it with a Hindu Masculine version of Manu’s Dharma. The plurality of context and text is acknowledged. Here, neither Dharma nor Realism is monolithic. Therefore, this work is a limited effort, focusing on particular perspectives within the larger paradigm.
    
    Author: Rashmi Gopi (Miranda House, University of Delhi)
  - A Subalternising Geopolitics Approach to Understanding Buddhist Diplomacy in the Indian Himalayan Region
    
    This paper on Buddhist Diplomacy contributes to the argument that context and culture are central to understanding geopolitics and strategy. The past decade has witnessed a rapid increase in various states using Buddhism as a diplomatic tool. In this paper, we begin by explaining the rise of "Buddhist Diplomacy" and highlight the rationales that are conventionally attributed to be drivers of this surge in its use by countries such as India and China. Against this background, we then focus specifically on the Indian Himalayan region that forms the border between India and China, and is seen as a marginalised periphery. In contrast to work that focuses exclusively on the statist perspectives (Indian or Chinese) and great power competition to understand Buddhist diplomacy as initiatives originating from specific leaders and governments, or as form of soft power projection, we are interested in understanding the impact of such Buddhist diplomatic endeavours on the physical, symbolic, and communal geographies of the Indian Himalayan region. In so doing, we adopt an approach of 'subalternising geopolitics' (Kaul, 2023) and rather than looking at Buddhist diplomatic initiatives in a 'top-down' way from the statist perspectives of India and China, we read these initiatives from a 'bottom up' way, to understand how such Buddhist diplomatic initiatives involve and impact the local dynamics of the Indian Himalayan region in institutional, infrastructural, and individual ways. Here, we examine the ways in which Buddhist diplomacy has led to changes in this region in terms of popular culture, festivals, pilgrimage, tourist circuits, and people-to-people exchanges. In the final section of the paper, we discuss the future implications of these practices of regional remaking. To wit, while much of the Indian Himalayan region as a stronghold of Buddhist religion and culture is indispensable for India’s narrative of Buddhist Diplomacy, our examples also indicate that this relies upon creating an inherently fragile framing in terms of an overarching 'Buddhism' -- in a particular and palatable Hinduised form -- that glosses over the complex sectarian divides of various Buddhist sects (for instance, Mahayana Buddhism) and their competing interests in the regional societal and political contexts.
    
    Authors: Nitasha Kaul (University of Westminster) , Stanzin Lhaskyabs (Jawaharlal Nehru University)*
- 11
  05 Panel / Managing information, narratives and identities in Ukraine and Russia Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group
  
  Convener: Stephen Hall (University of Bath)
  
  Chair: Frank Maracchione (University of Sheffield)
  - Ukraine's national identity and foreign policy, 2004-2014.
    
    The Russian invasion of Ukraine has once again thrust the country into the international spotlight and raised questions about its pro-European orientation. Yet, conversations about Ukrainian national identity began long before 2022. How can we understand the historical roots of Ukrainian identity and their relationship to foreign policy? This paper investigates meta-narratives of identity among Ukrainian masses and foreign policy preferences between 2004 and 2014. Using post-colonial literary analysis and a variety of popular documents, I argue that mass narratives of identity in Ukraine are characterized by tension in different dimensions. These dimensions are elite vs people, svidomi vs not, “reality” vs “culture wars”, and Ukraine vs its Others. The interplay of these narratives, in turn, shaped Ukraine’s foreign policy in ways still felt today. This research challenges predominant views of Ukrainian identity as neatly divided between a pro-European Ukrainian-speaking West and a pro-Russian Russophone Southeast, as well as the centrality of “balancing” to Ukraine’s foreign policy. Thus, I contribute a more nuanced understanding of Ukrainian national identity that re-centers Ukrainian perspectives among conversations about European and Russian interests.
    
    Author: Artur Nadiiev (University of Nottingham)
  - Narratives of Russian national and state identities and the war in Ukraine
    
    The ‘narrative turn’ in International Relations theory tends to focus on state identities and sometimes misleadingly equates them with national identities. In this paper, I examine dominant Russian state and national identity narratives that have been used by Putin’s regime to legitimise the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, arguing that although they are in some ways intertwined and mutually supporting, it is important still to distinguish between them. On the state identity side, the invasion itself serves to demonstrate performatively Russia’s great power-ness as well as to secure it through advancing Russia’s perceived security and economic interests in its purported sphere of influence. The historical narrative of Kievan Rus’ as the ancestor of the Russian state is also a legitimising narrative while, in addition, Russia is portrayed as the inheritor of the Soviet Union’s role as defeater of Nazism in the Great Patriotic War with a special duty to weed out any apparent resurgence of Nazism especially in Ukraine. On the other hand, national identity narratives around ‘traditional values’ linked to Orthodoxy position the war within Russia’s wider struggle with the West, and Putin’s understanding of Russian-nesss is used to delegitimise the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation thus denying Ukrainians any right to statehood and claiming Ukrainian territory for the Russian state. I argue that both state and national identity narratives have long-standing roots preceding Putin’s presidencies, although the national identity narratives have been more obviously constructed during that period and also suffer from inherent inconsistencies. While these inconsistencies don’t necessarily weaken their effectiveness, they make them more vulnerable to challenges; but I argue that even the state identity narratives can be challenged in ways that do not undermine Russia’s existence (contrary to the regime’s propaganda) – signifying the possibility of change in the future.
    
    Author: James Headley (University of Otago)
  - The cold wind of change: audience reception of Russian soft power, strategic narratives and linkages in Ukraine, 2011 vs 2021
    
    Since acquiring independence in the wake of the Soviet collapse, the former Soviet republics have pursued different approaches in their relations with Russia. Growing divergence or maintained proximity in political and economic affairs are often reflected in the degree of openness on the level of culture and information flows; the extent to which Moscow-oriented products, outlets and ownership in education, media, cultural and other related sectors are accepted or resisted by local political actors. Where channels advancing Russian narratives are able to operate freely and uncontested, the narratives they disseminate will tend to be more sympathetically received by audiences than in territories where policies have been enacted to reduce the accessibility of the information space.
    This paper will highlight differences in openness to information flows from Moscow between Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Estonia, which are reflected in the findings of attitudinal surveys conducted among target audiences in those countries. It will be argued that variation in receptivity, including the extent of resilience or susceptibility to target narratives, are to be understood as a result of different policies, practices and ideational perspectives characteristic of each case country.
    
    Author: Victoria Hudson (King's College London)
- 12
  05 Panel / Race, religion, justice and the economy in Southern Africa Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: Africa and International Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: AISG Working group
  
  Chair: Lesley Masters (Nottingham Trent University)
  - Cultural and creative constructions of transitional justice in post-genocide Rwanda
    
    Since the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, international and Rwandan scholars have sought to understand the genocide and its aftermath. Numerous studies unpack and evaluate transitional justice mechanisms that tried to address the genocide, such as International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and gacaca (Clark 2010, Longman 2017, Palmer 2015, Eltringham 2019). This paper shifts attention from the mechanisms to widely and transnationally circulating artistic representations of newly established peace. While international studies scholars have increasingly turned towards arts and cultural production, many of these studies have focused on participatory arts and memory practices in Rwanda and outside (Apol 2019, Rush and Simić 2013, Cohen 2020). My paper argues that analysis of widely circulating creative works, such as novels and films, can contribute to conceptualisation of transitional justice goals. In doing so, this paper explores what types of data and which voices remain in the margins of international studies. My analysis of Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana and Parkin’s Baking Cakes in Kigali provides examples of how arts construct meaning of justice and reconciliation. This paper also recognises the difference between creative narratives about and from the African continent shaped by legacies of colonialism.
    
    Author: Anna Katila (City, University of London)
  - Inhabiting Paradoxes: Pentecostalism and Political Femininities in Zimbabwe
    
    With the rise of evangelical Christianity in Africa, new feminine ideals are emerging which seem to be re-shaping gender roles in various disciplines (van de Kamp 2012, Gilbert 2016, Frahm-Arp 2010). In extending this growing body of scholarship, this paper will explore how newly religiously mediated femininities are re-shaping gender roles in politics particularly during periods of transition. It will do so by investigating how young Zimbabwean women’s religious beliefs, values, and imaginaries are shaping their performances of femininity in the political sphere in response to, and amidst the growing pressures of neoliberalism and globalisation. And consider how they are reconciling their religious and secular commitments and practices of self. The paper will broach women not as passive but active agents in appropriating religious messages and imaginaries to construct their own realities mainly in: re-thinking their place in society; in giving them greater mobility; and in realising their political aspirations. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Harare, Zimbabwe, consisting of in-depth interviews and participant observation from the period of 2018 to 2023.
    
    Author: Kuziwakwashe Zigomo (University of Kent)
  - A Destination, Not a Journey: Entrepreneurship in the Informal Economy in Urban Zambia
    
    Governmental and non-governmental actors in many African countries have been introducing the idea of the informal economy as a space for entrepreneurship. Are people with informal livelihoods accepting of this neoliberal economic subjectivity? What does entrepreneurship mean to them? Is this framework shifting responsibility from the government to provide the conditions for decent work and extending social protection to the informal sector to individuals with informal and often precarious income-generating activities? This paper seeks to answer these questions and explain why the Zambian government have been attempting to introduce the entrepreneurship framework into the informal economy context looking at the historical and contemporary economic and political developments in the country. It is based on extensive of qualitative data collected in Lusaka and Kitwe in 2023-2024.
    
    Author: Kristina Pikovskaia (University of Edinburgh)
  - "South Africa's Post-1994 Foreign Policy: Unravelling Roles Through the Lens of Role Theory"
    
    This study examines South Africa's foreign economic policy in the post-1994 era through the theoretical framework of role theory. Following the end of the Apartheid regime, South Africa underwent an important transformation in its global identity and engagement. The study employs role theory to analyse how South Africa defined and enacted its role in the international economic landscape during this period. Emphasising economic diplomacy as a key instrument, the country transitioned from isolation to active participation in global economic forums. South Africa sought to project itself as a responsible and influential actor, engaging in trade and investment diplomacy to enhance its economic standing. Regionally, under the Thabo Mbeki presidency, South Africa assumed a key leadership role in the African Renaissance project and leveraged its membership in the BRICS group to shape the global economic agenda but also represent Africa’s interests in the G20 and various G7 meetings, where its leaders have been regularly invited. Nonetheless, challenges, including internal inequalities and criticisms of the distribution of economic benefits, highlight the complexities in aligning global economic roles with domestic realities.
    
    This study contributes to the understanding of South Africa's post-apartheid foreign economic policy and underscores the utility of role theory in explaining the dynamics of state behavior in the international economic arena. Moreover, its set ups a key debate about how middle powers such as South Africa can exercise influence in the global economy, given the limits to their economic and diplomatic reach in a world where competition over trade and investment have shaped how states behave.
    
    Author: Musa Mdunge (University of Dundee)
- 13
  
  05 Roundtable / Reframing British Politics: Lessons from International Relations Exec 1, ICC
  
  In this roundtable speakers will reflect on some of the ongoing silences and marginalisations in the study of British Politics around questions of race, colonialism, migration, gender, sexuality, and disability as well as to consider what lessons (if any) can be drawn from International Relations in centering these questions. We consider the particular contributions that feminist, queer, post- and decolonial IR could make in building a more inclusive and critical study of the UK in a global context.
  
  Sponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working Group
  
  Chair: Nicola Smith (University of Birmingham)
  
  Participants: Charlotte Galpin (University of Birmingham) , Patrick Vernon (King's College London) , Sadiya Akram (Manchester Metropolitan University) , Ash Stokoe (University of Birmingham) , Parveen Akhtar (Aston University)
- 14
  05 Panel / Security Partnerships in Comparative Perspective Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: European Journal of International Security
  
  Conveners: Vladimir Rauta (University of Reading) , Alex Neads (University of Durham)
  
  Chair: Patrick Finnegan (University of Lincoln)
  - Military Assistance, RMA and the Third Offset: how has technology shaped counterinsurgency on the ground
    
    The United States has used military assistance to cement allied relationships and to aid in fighting insurgencies around the world. At the same time, the US has sought to further its technological superiority through the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and 'Third Offset'. As the US military becomes more technologically advanced, we ask how this has shaped military assistance. Looking at historical cases in the Philippines and El Salvador and the present case of Uganda, this paper looks at whether technological advances disrupt military assistance missions. Particular attention will be paid to the US Army Special Forces, Green Berets.
    
    Author: David J. Galbreath (University of Bath)
  - A New Great Game? Understanding Co-operation and Competition in Security Assistance: Towards a Typology of Military Aid
    
    The provision of military training and equipment to partners and proxies is a perennial feature of international politics. Security assistance represents a key vehicle through which states seek to project influence internationally, and has been variously linked to the intensification of (civil) wars, military coups, and the perpetuation of authoritarian regimes. Simultaneously, security assistance has also been presented as a pillar in global efforts to counter terrorism, strengthen democratic governance and shore up human rights via processes such as military professionalisation and security sector reform. In no small measure, the key to understanding these diverse outcomes lies in a fuller appreciation of the impact of international competition on the processes and practices of military aid. In recently scholarship, principal-agent theory has been used to conceptualise a global marketplace for military assistance, in which patterns of competition and cooperation shape the aims and preferences of suppliers and recipients alike. Accurately modelling these dynamics, however, requires a detailed appreciation of the different forms and functions that security assistance can take, and the ways in which these diverse manifestations of political will and military expertise interact with each other on the ground. This paper presents a typology of security assistance, charting the varied aims, functions and forms of security assistance to better understand patterns of competition and co-operation – and the associated implications for governance, security, and the projection of geopolitical influence.
    
    Author: Alex Neads (University of Durham)
  - The intimacy of remoteness: Distance and the affective atmospheres of Security Assistance
    
    The choice of providing local partners with training, equipment and political support appears as a readily available and perhaps low-cost foreign policy option in competitive international relations. While the literature has explored why providers choose security assistance over other options, and also began outlining some of the effects that can be felt both in local conflicts and in regional orders, there are still unresolved issues as to how remoteness operates in this field of practice. This paper explores distance through the intimacy of affective atmospheres. It argues that, in many ways, security assistance is an intensely intimate experience, where the relationship between providers and recipients is central to the functioning of the practice, and where those relationships are essentially bundles of affective experiences. The paper asks: how is security assistance felt, experienced and lived? How are relationships shaped by the affective atmospheres of the material-discursive geography in which they are encountered? How do technologies delivered and the training provided produce certain affective atmospheres? The paper discusses the intimacy of remoteness on three levels. First, it tackles the myth that security assistance ensures a remote control of global security. Second, it explores how affective atmospheres of crisis and disaster, in particular through the material-discursive dynamics of crisis and emergency, bring about affective dispositions in provider-recipient relations by the individuals tasked with implementing security assistance programs. Third, the paper discusses the ways in which such a recalibration of the concept of distance through a discussion of affective atmospheres can help disentangling some of the effects of security assistance.
    
    Author: Simone Tholens (European University Institute/John Cabot University)
- 15
  05 Panel / Sexual violence in military institutions Exec 9, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Harriet Gray (University of York)
  
  Chair: Georgina Holmes (The Open University)
  - What happens when good soldiers do rape? Making sense of sexual violence in the British military courts.
    
    Following increased judicial and parliamentary scrutiny and several high-profile scandals, the British military has recently introduced a zero-tolerance policy towards ‘unacceptable sexual behaviour’ as part of its broader strategy of ‘tackling sexual offending’. These policy initiatives are framed around an understanding of sexual violence as something that can be addressed and eradicated from the institution. Despite the pervasiveness of sexual offending within the military, this framing positions these violences not as a systematic issue, but rather as a product of a few ‘bad apples’ that can be identified and rooted out in ways that preserves an imagination of the armed forces as both good and unique. Drawing on observations from the court martial trial and the sentencing hearing of a soldier who raped and sexually assaulted his colleague, in this paper I explore how a guilty verdict can trouble and unsettle these ideas of military exceptionalism. Specifically, I ask how disruptive narratives about the more insidious aspects of military culture (such as excessive alcohol consumption, ‘lad culture’, and rumour mills) are navigated within the courtroom and how the figure of the ‘good soldier’ is rehabilitated in relation to these.
    
    Author: Hannah Richards (Cardiff University)
  - Understanding Female Veteran’s Experiences of Sexual Violence in the UK Armed Forces
    
    Sexual offending in the UK armed forces has been characterised as an ‘epidemic,’ with female personnel particularly at risk. Servicewomen are more than ten times as likely as servicemen to experience sexual harassment during service, and twice as likely to be sexually assaulted. Despite this, formal reporting of sexual offending remains low, with international research identifying unique features of the military institution, such as the hyper-masculine environment, hierarchical structures and close-knit military community, creating a context which is potentially permissive of sexual violence perpetration and presenting numerous obstacles to reporting.
    Though the MOD have recently introduced a raft of reforms aimed at tackling sexual offending in defence, there has been a paucity of independent research examining servicewomen’s experiences of sexual victimisation in the UK context. This study aimed to fill this gap in knowledge, conducting 8 in-depth, qualitative interviews with female veterans who all experienced at least one form of sexual victimisation, during their service in the UK military.
    Findings exemplified a concerning scale and widespread acceptance of sexual violence during military service, alongside numerous and varied barriers to reporting, a perceived culture of silence and lack of support for victim-survivors. Drawing on these findings, the presentation will highlight challenges surrounding military sexual violence and present key recommendations for improvements.
    
    Authors: Lauren Godier-McBard (Anglia Ruskin University) , Charlotte Herriott (Anglia Ruskin University)
  - Peacekeeping Problems
    
    Peacekeeper sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) is prevalent throughout peacekeeping operations (PKOs). Since the introduction of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda in 2000, the United Nations (UN) has continued to implement preventative initiatives and resolutions to curb the problem – all of which have not gone far enough, as is evident through the continued high rate of accusations.
    This paper looks at why the SEA continues, looking to explore masculinities and racial hierarchies as potential explanations for how certain abusive behaviours are accepted, or at least, not challenged within PKOs. The project places these ‘conditions’ within the feminist continuum of violence, whereby sexual violence against women is understood to exist within the everyday lives of women in varying levels of severity (e.g., existing in sexist language in the workplace and on the other end of the spectrum, in physical violence). Using a feminist postcolonial lens, the paper builds on the continuum by analysing an under-researched phenomenon at the intersection of gender and race to understand how the UN can better protect women and girls from sexual violence.
    
    Author: Emily Gee (University of Leeds)
  - The Memorialisation of Military Gender-Based Violence: When is a counter-memorial not a counter-memorial?
    
    Until recently, it was very rare for stories of sexual violence to be told in the memorials that populate public spaces around the globe. Over the past two decades, however, memorials dedicated to victims/survivors of sexual violence across both war and peace have begun to appear in multiple countries across the globe. This proliferation is in many ways a positive step towards what Viet Thanh Nguyen might call a more “just” memory culture and, following James E. Young, many of the memorials could be described as “counter-memorials” in that they seek to disrupt dominant narratives and provide a voice for those who have been silenced. However, sexual violence memorialisation can also reproduce, for example, nationalism or militarism.
    This paper examines the politics of the memorialising the 2020 death of Vanessa Guillén, a US Army soldier who was sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, and murdered by a fellow serviceman. Guillén’s death has been memorialised in ways that are very unusual for victims of military gender-based violence. Focusing on her inclusion in the Women’s Military Memorial at Arlington Cemetery, I trace how her story has been scripted in a way that seeks to neutralise critique of the military setting in which her death occurred.
    
    Author: Harriet Gray (University of York)
- 16
  
  05 Roundtable / Strengthening the Evidentiary Foundations of Conflict Research Exec 10, ICC
  
  Collecting conflict data of sufficient quantity and quality is difficult, especially when data collection takes place during an ongoing conflict (while the study of historical conflicts brings its own challenges), and it is difficult in many different ways with many different implications for research practice and knowledge production. Improving the collection of the evidence upon which knowledge about conflict is built will benefit from a dialogue between researchers who use various methodologies and approaches so as to identify key problems, share best practices, and develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of common challenges. The focus of this Roundtable is the collection and generation of data and evidence in conflict research, broadly conceived, rather than on its analysis because the former is too often neglected in favour of methodological sophistication. The Roundtable will showcase cutting-edge and innovative work in order to stimulate a wider conversation about how to do difficult data collection well and how to support the processes by which high quality evidence is generated.
  
  Sponsor: Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism
  
  Chair: Ces Moore (University of Birmingham)
  
  Participants: Chi Zhang (St Andrews) , Nicholas Barker (University of Birmingham) , David Stroup (Manchester) , Toni Rouhana (York)
- 17
  05 Panel / Taking stock of Feminist Foreign Policy - embedded or expendable? Sonata, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Conveners: Jennifer Thomson (University of Bath) , Annika Bergman Rosamond (The University of Edinburgh)
  
  Chair: Jennifer Thomson (University of Bath)
  - Scotland’s Feminist Approach to International Relations
    
    The Scottish Government’s (SG) Programme for Government 2021-2022 promised a new “global affairs framework' for its international engagement, basing that promise on ‘a feminist approach to foreign policy’. This commitment is reiterated in the SG position paper ‘Taking a Feminist Approach to International Relations’ published in November 2023. In this paper we ask what it means for Scotland – a sub-state, without a traditional foreign policy remit– to develop a feminist approach to foreign policy? To date, the Scottish Government’s aim has been to be a “good global citizen” through its commitment to international climate justice, welcoming of refugees and aspiration to develop a wellbeing economy. However, will its reluctance to do more to end its role in fossil fuel extraction, arms manufacturing and nuclear weapons undermine its feminist aspirations? Drawing upon our previous work we propose that a feminist approach to Scottish Foreign Policy should be based on authenticity, ambition, and accountability.
    
    Authors: Caron Gentry* , Annika Bergman Rosamond (Lund University) , Claire Duncanson (University of Edinburgh)*
  - Gendering Foreign Policy Making: Feminist Foreign Policy Networks in Mexico and Germany
    
    This research project aims to investigate, broadly speaking, what has driven the official adoption of a feminist foreign policy in Germany and in Mexico. Starting from a gendering process of the Foreign Policy Analysis discipline and from developments in the Feminist IR academic debate, it wants to mainly use a Feminist Institutionalism (FI) framework as a bridge between the two disciplines to give more space to the agency of critical and less-traditional actors, who, rephrasing the work of Achilleos-Sars, do not reflect the mainstream idea that the mainstream idea that the political landscape in the Foreign Affairs sphere is defined by competing masculinities and by the agency of only male political and military leaders.
    The concept of ‘feminist foreign policy networks’ is inspired by the works of feminist institutionalists on formal and informal institutions, on feminist triangles, strategic partnerships, triangles of empowerment and velvet triangles, and it is used to investigate ‘the rise, embeddedness, and continuity of, as well as resistance, to pro-gender norms in foreign policy and similar contexts’ (as put by True and Aggestam, 2020). In particular, the analysis wants to be threefold. First, it wants to investigate what are the gendered formal and informal norms, rules and practices produced and reproduced in Germany and Mexican FP institutions. Secondly, it wants to analyze the creation of the feminist foreign policy networks and identify who were the critical (feminist and non-feminist) actors involved in the work of the networks. Lastly, the strategies used by these latter to engender the FP domain will be analyzed, in combination with the resistance these actors faced in the process. A critical and intersectional perspective will be used for the last part of the research to analyze who were the more prominent critical actors and voices in the FFP network in both national contexts.
    
    Author: Isabel Hernandez Pepe (Scuola Normale Superiore)
  - On co-optation, or: Making feminist foreign policy palatable
    
    ‘Everyone should understand feminist foreign policy!’ A ruling relation governing the practice of feminist foreign policy (FFP) in the German Foreign Office is that feminism and, specifically, FFP must be made accessible and palatable because they are not naturally so. This chapter interrogates this by asking for whom is feminist foreign policy inaccessible and why? What is at stake? And which strategies are used to make FFP more palatable and accessible? This chapter finds that FFP is seen as inaccessible to the wider German public due to their conservative political stance; diplomats because FFP potentially challenges key diplomatic relations; men because FFP is widely understood as a policy for women; and the so-called Global South because ‘it’ is seen as less progressive. At the same time, all these groups are positioned as important actors in the realm of FFP, either as recipients (Global South), implementers (diplomats), or decision-makers in the Foreign Office (male staff). Strategies for making FFP more accessible and palatable include reducing ‘the abstract’; using already established concepts such as diversity while avoiding contested terms like intersectionality; and privileging operationalising FFP over conceptualisation. As a result, more radical understandings of feminism and FFP are co-opted. Hence, FFP is not as transformative as it is made out to be.
    
    Author: Karoline Färber (King’s College London)
  - Troubling Feminist Policies: Assessing the (in)securities of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy
    
    Abstract: Over the last 30 years, attention to issues of gender equality have risen. Terms and tools such as ‘gender equality’ and ‘gender mainstreaming’ have been increasingly employed by both the international community – in the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security adopted in 2000 – and in national governments. For example, in 2017 – under the leadership of Justin Trudeau, who notably introduced a gender parity cabinet ‘because it’s 2015’ – Canada implemented its Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP), identifying empowering women and girls as a means to eradicate poverty and increase global stability. Building on existing critiques of development programmes that are based upon neoliberal logic of economic growth as a means to reduce inequality, this project problematizes the economic and developmental focus of FIAP, questioning how effective can the FIAP be in empowering women and girls and, secondly, how its success can be defined and measured. A critical feminist perspective of security studies is employed to analyse the FIAP through a ‘security-development nexus’, which critiques how underdevelopment is targeted to avoid increased risk of conflict and insecurity (Peoples & Vaughn-Williams, 2021). Through this lens, Canada’s FIAP is revealed as a policy that works to further entrench Western power over developing nations, contradicting its feminist aims. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this paper reveals connections between gender equality policies and economic and security goals, and critically fills the dearth of feminist analyses of development policies from a security perspective.
    
    Author: Juliana Crema (York University)
- 18
  05 Panel / Technology, Climate and Insecurity in the Transformations of International Order Exec 5, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Environment Working Group
  
  Convener: Alex Hoseason (Aston University)
  
  Chair: Philip Conway (Durham University)
  - Protecting extra-terrestrial biodiversity: Can space law and politics learn from protecting terrestrial biodiversity?
    
    When we eventually find extra-terrestrial life in the solar system it will most likely not be a single form of life but a bio-diverse ecosystem. There is a possibility that these ecosystems will be fragile. So how do we protect them from damage? COSPAR has issued its planetary protection guidelines, which covers mission planning and execution of missions to celestial bodies that either have life or have had life in the past. However, COSPAR is a committee within a private body, the International Science Council, and its regulatory reach is limited. While most scientist interested in finding extra-terrestrial life would follow the COSPAR planetary protection guidelines, not all activities in space are carried out by space scientists. For example, SpaceX is planning to extend the capabilities of its Starship platform to eventually be able to land on Mars, with several planned failures/crashes before a landing is successful. Is SpaceX going to follow COSPAR’s planetary protection guidelines in those planned failures? Who is going to make them?
    
    In this paper we are going to use the experiences of trying to protect biodiversity on Earth, especially in areas beyond national jurisdiction, such as the High Seas or the sea-bed as an analogy for protection of extra-terrestrial bio-diversity. Much like outer space, these areas are seen as an international commons, or a common heritage of humanity. This means that international law governs those areas, and there have been concerted efforts over the last three decades to protect biodiversity through international law. Various international actors, activists, scientists, and states have had to confront issues such as lack of norms, as well as lack of monitoring and enforcement once those norms were created. The three decades saw the formation of various coalitions of interested stakeholders that pushed for biodiversity protection. These are useful experiences from which space law and governance can use to stave off the worst of humanity’s instincts in exploiting nature and ecosystems as a resource.
    
    Authors: Marjan Ajevski (Open University Law School) , Robert Palmer (Open University Law School)*
  - ‘Man lives in this world only by the grace of vegetation’: Herbicidal Warfare and the Two Trajectories of Ecocide in International Relations
    
    Despite rising interest in the criminalisation of ecocide on the part of states in the Global South, international organisations and global civil society, as well as prominent claims of ecocide by the Ukrainian government, the concept has received little sustained attention in International Relations. Drawing on debates in international law and genocide studies, this paper theorises the role the international plays, as a generative structural context, in producing ecocidal formations. Where contemporary accounts of ecocide have often explored its dynamics in particular cases, the international relations of ecocide opens the possibility of exploring the complex relationship between ecocide’s distinct historical expressions. To substantiate these claims, the latter half of the paper then turns to the origins of ecocide in the Vietnam War, arguing that international conditions were central in the emergence of two key trajectories of ecocide. By examining the strategy of herbicidal warfare employed by the US as well as the emergence of the concept of ecocide, first used by scientists in protest against herbicides’ use and proliferation, I show how transformations in international politics simultaneously drove a globalisation in awareness of ecological harm as well as attempts by successive US administrations to limit ecocide’s moral and legal force.
    
    Author: Alex Hoseason (Aston University)
  - The false promise of technological escape: climate engineering and the problem of exception in a ‘climate emergency’
    
    The increasingly visible consequences of climate change are leading scientists and policymakers to consider the extreme measure of trying to cool global temperatures by spraying reflective particles into the stratosphere to partially block out incoming solar radiation, a proposed technology called Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI). There are significant risks and many unknowns in this fragmented area of scientific research, but one of the underexamined problems of SAI is that using the proposed technology to rapidly cool the planet is that the political appeal for its development and use may run well ahead of scientific research on its safety and efficacy. This is, in part, because political commitments to constraining warming to 1.5c are increasingly out of reach without some kind of substantial technological intervention in the absence of rapid emissions reductions . As calls for the declaration of a ’climate emergency’ increase, the turn to an ‘emergency’ response may become politically appealing sooner rather than later even if there remain outstanding uncertainties about its risks and benefits.
    
    Author: Danielle Young (University of Leeds)
  - Climate Justice, Counter-Mapping, and OpenSource empowerment in Middle Eastern Desert Communities
    
    This paper examines evidence from community-designed mapping of place-making practices amongst Bedouin, Druze, Palestinian, Syrian, and Chechen groups who co-habit the levantine desert oasis of Al Azraq.
    
    Applying OpenStreetMap community practices activated in African settings, research focuses on water management, socio-economic taxonomies, and tangible/intangible heritage in these marginalised multi-ethnic groups, whose language, traditions and cultural practice/skills are eroded by agro-industry, climate change and water scarcity.
    
    This wetland has dried to desert within living memory. How do people invisage their place-based lived experiences of climate and cultural change on this scale, and at this speed? What geospatial indicators can they devise to express climate memory in the Arabian Peninsula, and how can displacement, livelihoods and wider determinants of well-being be visualised in the universal spatial language of the wiki-map?
    
    An industrialised humanitarian sector consistently fetishises innovation, favouring systematised data colonialism and surveillance capitalism over the emancipatory power of simple, free, community-centred tooling (Allan, 2020). I unpick ‘climate justice’ in the context of Big Tech innovation, where ‘Solutions in search of Problems’ obscure humanity. I scrutinise how top-down techno-colonial greenwashing can occult hyper-local ethnic identity, having wider security implications for an already culturally unstable region.
    
    Author: Rupert Allan
- 19
  05 Panel / The Micro-dynamics of peace and conflict Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: Roger Mac Ginty (Durham University)
  
  Chair: Roger Mac Ginty (Durham University)
  - ‘Borders and Barriers: Conflict boundaries and civilian agency’
    
    Civilians are often constrained by the informal or formalised boundaries established by conflict actors. These geospatial delineations defined by specific ethnic groups or the supposed territorial control of armed actors shape how communities can interact and how civilians move through space. Yet civilians may also contribute to how borders and boundaries are formed, and how they mutate, as civilians navigate fragmented and dangerous territories. The necessities of coexistence with conflict actors lead civilians to develop context-specific approaches to avoid, challenge, or transform these violent landscapes. How do individuals and communities react and interact to the enclavisations of their space during armed conflict and violence as a strategy of self-protection? This paper presents the initial findings from an exploratory analysis of six communities in Colombia, Northern Ireland, and Lebanon, based on in-depth interviews with individuals, including civilians, community leaders, and former combatants in urban neighbourhoods and rural areas. The position and identities of different individuals interact with these borders and boundaries to generate different ‘activations’. We identify across these three different conflicts important distinctions and commonalities in how borders are traversed, boundaries established, and barriers erected to better understand agency and relationships between civilians and conflict actors in violence-affected spaces.
    
    Authors: Clara Voyvodic Casabo (University of Bristol) , Thia Sagherian-Dickey (Durham University)
  - ‘From the Civil War, they’re very affected’: The psychological impact of recurring conflict in post-accord Lebanon
    
    Understanding the psychological effects of conflict on people requires considering the complexity of social and structural factors (Muldoon et al., 2016). One of these determining factors is the subjective appraisal of the incident and of one’s perceived ability to cope with the consequential stress and impending threat (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Leach, 2020). From a social psychological perspective, the appraisal is also situated in and structured by group membership (Haslam et al., 2005). Yet, how is this dealt with when the formally determined post-accord period is fraught with recurring violence? How do people adapt to recurring traumatic events and get on with life? This paper interrogates the psychological impact of living in post-Taef Accord Lebanon, focusing on data from 22 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with adults (age 21-73) in two regions: an interface area along the former Greenline dividing Beirut during the civil war and a rural district in southern Lebanon. The paper examines participants’ narratives of their lived experiences and appraisals of violent incidents before and after the Taef Accord. It also considers the role that social identity and group membership play in responding to stress.
    
    Author: Thia Sagherian-Dickey (Durham University)
  - Understanding Legacy in Post-Accord Societies
    
    In the wake of armed conflict and civil war, unambiguous ‘peace’ rarely follows. Societies remain post-accord and peaceless: habitually intergroup antagonism persists and intergroup reconciliation is restricted, whilst post-accord political and criminal violence, poverty and exclusion perdure. Academic scholarship has debated the degree to which such customary characteristics of post-accord societies represent the legacy of, and are, therefore, directly connected to the historical weight exerted by, past episodes of political violence. Commonly, research has identified institutional weakness/democratic deficit, the availability of arms, male unemployment, the presence of powerful spoiling actors, entrenched collective beliefs and embedded norms shaping intergroup relations as core legacies of past violence, and as factors that impede peacebuilding and reconciliation. However, the conceptual parameters of the term legacy are rarely defined or discussed. Drawing on empirical data from the “Getting on with it” project (Colombia, Northern Ireland and Lebanon), this paper will unpack and problematise the notion of legacy, examining the links between legacy, nostalgia, echo, continuity, and rupture, with the aim of contributing to further clarification of the concept/term legacy and broader discussions around the idea of agency in post-accord societies. The paper argues that the spectrum of legacy/nostalgia/echo/continuity/rupture represents part of the knowledge system within post-accord societies that plays a crucial role in disjunctive conflict persistence or termination as part of the broader conflict-peace ecosystem.
    
    Author: Roddy Brett (University of Bristol)
  - Simultaneously inhabited life-worlds: A phenomenological approach to understanding conflict-affected societies
    
    This paper seeks to show the value of a phenomenological lens in understanding conflict-affected societies. In particular, it uses a phenomenological lens to unpack how individuals and communities simultaneously inhabit a number of lifeworlds as part of navigating through various the conveniences, awkwardness, and possible dangers in conflict-affected contexts. A lifeworlds approach, and its emphasis on the micro dynamics of everyday life, sheds light on the apparent contradictions experienced and lived in conflict-affected contexts. Individuals can, for example, be simultaneously extremist and non-extremist or inhabit multiple temporalities in ways that illustrate the multiple forms of agency deployed in social navigation. The paper operationalises the lifeworlds concept by drawing on van Manen’s four-part framework of ‘fundamental lifeworld themes’ or ‘existentials’: lived space (spatiality), lived body (corporeality, lived time (temporality), and lived human relations (relationality or communality’). In its concluding discussion, the paper considers the implications of simultaneity or the ability of individuals or communities to simultaneously construct and occupy apparently contradictory socio-political spaces. In some respects simultaneity, such as dissembling in situations of inter-group encounter, perpetuates division. Yet in another way, it represents everyday diplomacy or a non-escalatory conflict management that allows society to function, even in a dysfunctional way.
    
    Author: Roger Mac Ginty (Durham University)
  - Mostarians contesting the tale of a divided city: identifying peace at the local level
    
    Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina is famous in the international media and scholarship as a divided city. This is due in great part to the national political divisions which have constructed two of everything, from school curricula to cultural institutions and utilities companies. However many residents of Mostar strongly contest this characterization, simultaneously lamenting their reputation as a grad slučaj (derogatory ‘case city’). Indeed, considering postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina’s ethnically segregated population, the presence of these two communities living side by side is a rare pluralism remaining in the country. This contribution (based on original Everyday Peace Indicators data) will consider where and how residents’ perspectives about their city differ from international and local elite framing. Mostarians’ own community-level indicators of peace and ‘life together’ – and photo stories illustrating these everyday signs – are more dynamic and nuanced than the simplistic tale of division and non-interaction perpetuated at the macro level. For example, adults in Mostar (both men and women) focus on infrastructure-related issues (trash, sewage, parking) whereas young people are concerned with subjects that inhabit their and children’s daily matters (upbringing, school, socializing). While ‘this’ and ‘that’ side of the city is often present in peoples’ minds, it is just that – a construction – opposed by many ordinary Mostarians even if their perceptions never makes the news or change their national party agendas.
    
    Authors: Vanja Celebicic (Everyday Peace Indicators)* , Julianne Funk (Everyday Peace Indicators)
- 20
  05 Panel / The Politics of Emotions in International Relations Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Conveners: Anne-Marie Houde (University of Oxford) , Nicolai Gellwitzki (University of Warwick)
  
  Chair: Anne-Marie Houde (University of Oxford)
  - Ontological Security and the Politics of Emotion
    
    Ontological security research has emphasized the importance of emotions for ontological security, suggesting both that it matters in general whether or not actors feel ontologically secure and more specifically highlighting the role of particular emotions such as anxiety, shame and pride. This paper, by contrast, proposes an approach where emotions are even more central to ontological security. Specifically, we suggest that a new understanding of ontological security can be developed from the vantage point of the politics of emotion, that is that actors fight not only over material resources, power and so on, but that there is also a distributive politics concerned with who gets to feel what, when, and how, and whose feelings matter. We thus propose that actors are likely to be ontologically insecure when they do not get to feely express the emotions, they believe themselves to be entitled to or when they are subjected to unwanted emotional obligations and the need to show emotional deference to other’s feelings. These arguments are illustrated through a variety of examples from contemporary international politics, ranging from memory-related disputes, the victimization of civilians in war, and the recent burnings of the Quran.
    
    Authors: Karl Gustafsson (Stockholm University) , Todd Hall (University of Oxford)
  - The affective politics of US counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan
    
    Socio-cultural knowledge of distant ‘others’ was understood to be essential to the military and political success of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Referred to as ‘winning hearts and minds’, knowledge of local populations was sought through the US Army’s Human Terrain System and the military’s female engagement strategy. The paper first locates the Human Terrain System within a wider history of pacification, imperialism and colonial encounter. Second, it explores the extent to which affective relations are integral to forms of military knowledge-production. Focusing attention on the continuities of historical and contemporary acquisition of intimate, social and cultural knowledge of those with whom we are at war reveals a genealogy of affective war-making practices. The paper seeks to conceptualise affective modes of encounter within ‘hearts and minds’ counterinsurgency and argues that they are essential in shaping subjectivities at home and abroad to the military’s purpose. To do so, the paper draws on extensive interview data to explore dimensions of the affective politics of the US Army’s Human Terrain System.
    
    Author: Naomi Head (University of Glasgow)
  - The Politics of Feeling in Brexit Britain: Stories from the Mass Observation Project
    
    During the Brexit debates, questions about the nation’s political future were continually framed in terms of feelings. The referendum was seen as a conflict between reason and resentment, fear and hope, heads and hearts. The eventual Leave vote was widely interpreted (both by supporters and detractors) as the triumph of passion over rationality. Its aftermath was marked by concern about the feelings generated on both sides, and their consequences for British political culture. The capacity of this question to tear through personal relations and to provoke emotional encounters between strangers became as much a part of the debate on Brexit as the political and economic issues it raised. These stories about feelings had political consequences. They shaped the way people experienced their own feelings and those of others. In this paper, we listen to the stories of people writing about their experiences of Brexit for Mass Observation. We look at how they used public narratives about the role of feelings in political life to make sense of the referendum and its aftermath. But we also show how they resisted and re-made these stories as they interpreted their own feelings, and the feelings they encountered (and imagined) in other people.
    
    Authors: Jonathan Moss (University of Sussex) , Emily Robinson (University of Sussex)*
  - Of “Scaremongers”, “Vaccine Wars”, and “EU Idiots”: the Politics of Emotions in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic
    
    During the initial months of 2021, the United Kingdom faced the challenge of managing the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting an urgent push to vaccinate the population and restore normalcy. This effort, however, unfolded not only against the pressing timeline but also amid a tense 'vaccine war' with the European Union, centring on determining the most effective vaccine, the swiftest rollout, and priority distribution of vaccine doses. This conflict, often associated with Brexit, generated complex pressures on both the domestic and international fronts within Britain. To comprehend how the UK effectively managed these intricacies, we examine two critical aspects: (de)politicisation and its entanglement with the politics of emotions. Our argument highlights the significance of analysing both the domestic and international politicisation processes, shedding light on the interplay between the levels of emotional dynamics and the contributing role of emotions in (de)politicisation across these varied contexts.
    
    Authors: Nicolai Gellwitzki (University of Warwick) , Anne-Marie Houde (University of Oxford)
  - Evoking Interest: The possibilities of an intimate global ethics
    
    The discourses of International Ethics continues to grapple with the problem of distance. In this chapter I return to the question of how to evoke an interest and attention in the plight of others over distance. I invoke, from the outset, a relational framework and take time to unpack what a relational international ethic looks like paying heed to the ongoing conversation of the pluriverse. I map out the details of a relational global ethic to develop two ideas, emotional resonance and intimacy. I wonder at the role of emotional resonance in sparking interest, over time, space and distance. Yet I also acknowledge that emotional resonance, unsupported, cannot be solely responsible for the generation of an interest in the plight of others. To build on this idea I introduce the possibility of intimacy. In this chapter I explore both the positive side of intimacy as well as its darker sides to understand how it might partner with an account of emotional resonance that matters to global ethics. I suggest that the timing of a discussion of intimacy is timely in light of the conversations of ‘the everyday’ and ‘lived experience’ that have emerged within the discipline of International Relations in general, but more specifically, in the conversations of emotions and IR as well. This chapter is part of a wider project that examines the role of stories, the possibility of storytelling, to bridge the local and the global in the experience of global migration.
    
    Author: Amanda Beattie (Aston University)
- 21
  05 Panel / The coloniality of movement: Mobilities, migration and empire Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Conveners: Alice Engelhard (LSE) , Tarsis Brito (London School of Economics)
  
  Chair: Shikha Dilawri (LSE)
  
  Discussant: Quỳnh N. Phạm (University of San Francisco)
  - Local borders in the global south: Colonial legacies in bordering and mobility regimes of South Asia
    
    This paper intervenes in the debates on knowledge production in IR by focusing on borders and mobility. By empirically focusing on South Asia, the paper aims to disrupt conventional narratives in IR by underscoring how colonial legacies are central to comprehensively study bordering regimes and practices in South Asia. Through this case, it challenges dominant discourses within IR by demonstrating how they marginalise experiences and perspectives of regions beyond the global north. The paper argues that existing scholarship in IR, even within critical strands of the field, continues to centre the border politics in the global north, and that centring the global south and colonial legacies in bordering practices is essential to challenge the Eurocentrism in IR and to develop theoretical frameworks that better integrate mobility and bordering dynamics in different regions of the world. By analysing colonial processes of linear bordering during partition of the region, and their legacies in how migration control regimes developed in the region, the paper aims to outline colonial legacies that continue to inform contemporary bordering and mobility regimes in South Asia.
    
    Author: Samah Rafiq (King's College London)
  - Decolonising the Chagos Islands: ‘Belongers’ and ‘floating populations’ on Diego Garcia
    
    This paper explores the overlaps and tensions between colonial and international mobilities orders in calls for decolonising the Chagos Islands from the 1960s on. In 1968 the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands were forcibly displaced by the British to set up a US military base on Diego Garcia. As descendents of enslaved people and itinerant labourers, the islanders were represented by British Foreign Office officials as an itinerant ‘floating population’ with no claim to ‘belonging’ on the islands. The displacement of the islanders is being contested in the courts through an international framework that hinges on questions of national belonging and indigeneity.
    The paper works with Glissant’s thinking on postcolonial errancy, nomadism and rootedness to think through the question of the possibility of making political claims on the basis of errancy, under an international legal framework. It asks whether and how the realities of postcolonial politics can be parsed in relation to international understandings of nation-state based belonging.
    
    Author: Alice Engelhard (LSE)
  - International Relations in movement: coloniality, motion, and the production of ‘the international’
    
    The ontology of ‘the international’ has been a central object of debate in International Relations (IR). In attempting to grasp and define the substance of IR, scholars have often resorted to different and conflicting ideas and conceptions of the nature of the ‘international’ as a socio-political domain of reality. In this paper, we argue that the idea of ‘the international’ in IR theorisation has been largely associated with notions of movement, motion, and circulation, either implicitly or overtly. Engaging with different theoretical traditions in the discipline, we show that there seems to be an unspoken consensus that things, bodies, ideas, etc. need to somehow transgress and transcend the boundaries of locality and ‘circulate’ in order to be taken seriously by the discipline as essentially ‘international’ phenomena. Engaging with post/decolonial theory and critical race studies, we explore the theoretical and political limitations and consequences of this almost intuitive association of the idea of the ‘international’ with ‘circulation/movement’ in the literature. Our central argument is that the continuous conflation of ‘international’ and ‘movement’ erases colonial and racial underpinnings and hierarchies concerning ‘who’ and ‘what’ gets to move and circulate in international politics, reinforcing IR’s white and colonial locus of enunciation.
    
    Authors: Tarsis Brito (London School of Economics) , Shruti Balaji (London School of Economics)
  - Imperial Bordering and International Ordering: Mobility Management through Shifting World Orders
    
    The so-called liberal international order is routinely defined through the principle of sovereignty that is ordered through territorial nation-states demarcated by borders. Borders are thus a necessary condition for creating “the international”. Yet, an imperial order preceded the postwar international order. Empires fought wars and drew lines on the ground to simultaneously create new and limit older possibilities of movement across those lines. In this paper, I examine imperial bordering practices by focusing on the mobility-management regimes and infrastructure of the British Empire in the early twentieth century. These practices created and calcified notions of the “external” and “internal”, providing blueprints for the international and the domestic. Imperial bordering served not only to delineate and fortify colonial possessions but also to produce racialized identities and maintain racialized distance from colonized populations. I examine the emergence and growth of the infrastructure of bordering practices—passports, stop lists, visa regulations, immigration checks—across the expanse of the British Empire to show how these laid the foundations on which the “liberal international order” came to stand. In so doing, I also emphasize the role of non-Western countries and former colonial territories in the making of such an international order.
    
    Author: Nandini Dey (University of Michigan)
- 22
  
  05 Roundtable / What does an International Studies with and for young people look like? Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Around the world, children and youth are disproportionately impacted by conflict, violence, disaster, and crises. Yet their persistent exclusion from both policy and academic considerations is notable. Children and youth are rarely seen as competent actors, and even more rarely as having expertise about their own lives and circumstances.
  
  In recent years, there has been increased academic attention to the roles that young people can play in responding to the most pressing global issues; and concomitantly, more attention on policy and practices to ensure that interventions, engagements and supports foreground considerations of risk mitigation and protection as well as enabling environments for their participation. However, while international studies has increasingly recognised the value of careful, reciprocal attention to communities and populations traditionally rendered marginal in the discipline; the exclusion of young people has persisted.
  
  Taking up BISA’s theme of ‘whose international studies?’, this roundtable brings together established and emerging scholars whose work builds an international studies with and for young people. Contributions expose the ageist and often paternalistic power relations that shape our discipline and the institutions and places in which we research. Participants draw on research projects concerned with young people and migration, disasters, peacebuilding, transitional justice, militarisation and governance practices to think differently about the relationships and sites of knowledge we take seriously in international studies.
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Chair: Helen Berents (Griffith University)
  
  Participants: Yulia Nesterova (Glasgow University) , Caitlin Mollica (University of Newcastle) , Bina D'Costa (Australian National University) , Sean Carter (University of Exeter) , Patricia Nabuco Martuscelli (University of Sheffield) , Allyson Edwards (Bath Spa University)
- 10:30
  
  15 minute transition
- 23
  
  05 Conference event / Exhibition Hall Open Hyatt
- 10:30
  
  Refreshment break Hyatt Hotel
  
  Hyatt Hotel
- 24
  05 Panel / A decade of Feminist Foreign Policy – the state of the field Sonata, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Conveners: Jennifer Thomson (University of Bath) , Annika Bergman Rosamond (The University of Edinburgh)
  
  Chair: Annika Bergman Rosamond (The University of Edinburgh)
  
  Discussant: Jennifer Thomson (University of Bath)
  - Feminist Foreign Policy & Postcolonial Knowledge-Production
    
    Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) is growing not only in its adoption by several governments, but also in the body of scholarship that analyses it. This paper explores the current state of postcolonial feminist scholarship on FFP, by expanding the scope of analysis of ‘scholarship’ to civil society briefs, policy papers, newspaper editorials and think tank articles. By looking at scholarship beyond peer-reviewed academic journals, this article raises questions of knowledge-production processes in the Global North versus the South, with a specific focus on the Global South’s production of FFP analysis through alternative publications than academic journals. It asks—How does the political economy of postcolonial feminist FFP scholarship influence the way in which colonial hierarchies are reproduced? On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the first official adoption of FFP by Sweden, this paper seeks to comment on how these differing knowledge-production practices over a decade speak to postcolonial feminist theory, with implications on how the latter can better influence and develop an anticolonial Feminist Foreign Policy.
    
    Author: Neha Tetali (Trinity College Dublin)
  - The silencing of war and militarism in feminist foreign policy
    
    In the past decade feminist foreign policies have emerged across a range of countries as an ethical alternative to orthodox realpolitik. Rather than reproducing masculinist values and gender inequalities FFPs seek to further gender equality and justice globally. However, to date few studies have addressed FFP states’ implication in processes of militarism and armament. In this paper we explore the relevance of FFP in times of war, not least Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We reflect on the inconsistencies between FFP and militarism and war and set out a case for a feminist approach to FFPs that does not omit defence and the military. In so doing we draw upon feminist approaches to just war, highlighting the significance of studying war as embodied experience and addressing issues pertaining to self defence and pacifism. Our analysis rests on feminist narrative approaches enabling a critical analysis of the militarising underpinnings of FFPs.
    
    Authors: Annika Bergman Rosamond (Lund University) , Katharine Wright (Newcastle University)
  - Feminism saves the world!: narratives in feminist foreign policy
    
    Feminist foreign policy (FFP) is rapidly gaining traction as an approach to international relations. Across over a dozen countries, FFP is adopted by states which aim to position women’s rights and gender equality within their foreign policy. Yet what FFP means for the states that adopt it remains confused. There is a lack of clarity around FFP, a fact which is compounded by the fact that different states adopting it focus on very different things within their FFP agendas.
    This paper looks comparatively at all of the states which have so far adopted FFP to greater understand the central foci of FFP. Adopting a narrative analysis, this paper looks at documents produced by FFP states, and draws on interviews conducted with civil society and government representatives, to explore what an FFP approach means. It shows that three key narratives underpin FFP discourse: ontological framings; FFP as a reaction to contemporary challenges; and FFP as ‘smart’. It argues that FFP is presented as a policy agenda which will reinvigorate the values of the international liberal order, and the multilateral organisations on which is stands.
    
    Author: Jennifer Thomson (University of Bath)
  - The Performativity of Feminist Foreign Policy: Meaning, Performance, and Construction
    
    In recent year, Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP) has gained increasing attention. Following Sweden’s lead in 2014, various states have adopted or are preparing to adopt a FFP approach to their foreign policy. Still, FFP is not homogeneously defined but can be broadly understood as a multidimensional political framework that fundamentally emphasizes the needs, experiences and welfare of marginalized groups and individuals. Thereby, it is crucial to differentiate between FFP as a policy framework and as a theoretical concept. As a theoretical approach, FFP critically questions the initial state of foreign policy and its biased structures and, thus, challenges major paradigms within the highly masculinized field of foreign policy as a system- and power-critical approach. Yet, the former, policy approach regards FFP as an analytical toolbox and critical lens through which (foreign) policy decisions should be reflected upon. Hence, states’ policy approaches differ significantly. In this regard, this research seeks to find first theoretical responses to the question of how FFP is performed by states and how meaning, in a broader sense, is consequently constructed in different state FFPs. Drawing on Butler’s performativity theory, FFP will be theorized considering its performance and performative construction. Though Butler focuses on gender’s performativity, this research attempts to translate Butler’s theory to FFP. Following performativity, meaning depends on situatedness and positionality including, for instance, context and cultural framework. Standing in interdependency, (new) meaning is constructed through repetitive performance and the embeddedness in certain contexts. Accordingly, FFP needs to redefine itself through a continuous performance. Here, the research not only questions who is included, how and where redefinition takes place and which dominant conceptions and hegemonic patters are present but tries to further scrutinize what performativity entails for FFP and its construction. In a second step, the theoretical assumptions are exemplarily reviewed by taking different state FFPs into account - conceivable, Sweden’s, Mexico’s, Germany’s, Canada’s or Spain’s FFP.
    
    Author: Lena Wittenfeld (University of Bielefeld)
- 25
  05 Panel / Adjusting to inter-state competition: How middle powers are carving out a defence role for themselves Soprano, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Aleix Nadal (King's College London, Freeman Air and Space Institute)
  
  Chair: Andrew Dorman (Chatham House)
  - Understanding the evolution of the British military space posture since 2014
    
    Up until the 1991 Gulf War, the British Armed Forces, particularly the Royal Air Force and the British Army, had not attributed much importance to outer space as a military domain. Despite the increasing interest that the British Armed Forces have displayed since then, there is not any comprehensive study that examines how the UK’s defence community has conceptualised outer space. This paper aims to answer the following question: How did the relevant British defence organisations’ space postures evolve since 2014? This period was characterised by the return of state-based threats, the intensification of international competition, and the emergence of several initiatives in Britain to harness the military potential of outer space, including the creation of UK Space Command and the development of the Defence Space Portfolio. The focus on the UK, a spacefaring middle power, can contribute to better capture how middle powers have adapted to the space domain, as the literature has been largely biased towards studying the United States. This paper theorises about the factors that have influenced the continuities and changes of the UK’s military space posture, distinguishing among the postures of the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, and the British Army. In so doing, it offers a conceptual contribution to the literature on British defence transformation and military innovation studies.
    
    Author: Aleix Nadal (King's College London, Freeman Air and Space Institute)
  - Five Eyes collaboration in outer space
    
    This paper analyses the power dynamics between the members of the Five Eyes community through examining their respective space policies. While it is widely recognised that the United States controls a larger share of the power within the informal alliance, how these members collaborate regarding the changing character of conflict, namely outer space, is under-researched. Therefore, this paper observes the influence the Five Eyes community has on the outer space domain and concludes that while lesser powers in the alliance could band together to control the power dynamic within the Five Eyes community and outer space, they are less likely to do so until they have developed their respective independent space capabilities.
    
    Author: Marissa Martin (King's College London, Defence Studies Department)
  - The modernisation of the French nuclear air-to-ground missile
    
    In 2014, the then Minister of Defense, Jean-Yves Le Drian claimed that the research and development of the new ASN4G - fourth-generation air-to-surface nuclear missile – had begun and declared: “Bold designs, using for example stealth or hypervelocity technologies, at the forefront of technological developments, will be explored”. Since January 2023, it is official that the ASN4G, scheduled to replace the ASMP-A by 2035, will be a hypersonic missile developed by MBDA. The choice to develop hypervelocity technologies has been justified, and its cost legitimised, using deterrence theory arguing that scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missiles, like the ANS4G, make early warning and interception extremely challenging, if not impossible at this date. However, this realist approach has flaws such as the questionable advantages hypersonic missiles have on nuclear deterrence. Alternative explications highlight the quest for modernisation using normative theory based on prestige and international recognition. Despite some important contributions, this approach dismisses security and domestic factors and relies on research focusing on nuclear weapons acquisition and not specific technological changes as is the case in this project. Indeed, previous research excels in highlighting why states acquire and keep nuclear weapons, but limited research has been conducted to explain why and how governments modernize them. The aim of this research is to build on existing research on nuclear weapons acquisition. Additionally, it fills a gap by analysing the different factors that influence the implementation of hypersonic technologies in the future French nuclear air-to-ground missile focusing on deterrence, norms, and bureaucratic theories. This project features contemporary figures contributing to the field with its novelty and offering new empirics. Finally, it aspires to move the nuclear weapons field beyond the questions of acquisition, providing nuanced explanations for nuclear weapons modernisation.
    
    Author: July Decarpentrie (Swedish Defence University)
  - European Defence-Industrial strategies in comparison: UK, Germany & France
    
    As the war in Ukraine is ongoing, so is the depletion of Western weapons and ammunition stockpiles, with an urgent need to revamp industrial capacities to re-supply and further develop European armies. This raises the question of how effectively European nations can steer their defence industrial economies towards heightened output while preserving the benefits of industry consolidation and competition. Since the end of the Cold War, Europe has seen significant changes in its defence industrial landscapes with a high degree of consolidation and, with this, a loss in national capacities in know-how, research, development, and production. European nations have struggled to manage this consolidation in a way that enhances economies within the defence sector on the one hand but preservers vital national capabilities on the other. Whether capabilities, technologies or entire domains should be procured nationally, within military-political alliances or internationally has occupied the big European military powers – the UK, France, and Germany – multiple times over this timeframe. The proposed paper investigates the various initiatives to innovate defence industrial strategies over this timeframe from a military innovation perspective. It seeks to establish how stakeholders in such a strategy – political, bureaucratic, and industrial – were considered in its making and how this affected defence industrial strategies' effectiveness. This builds on a recent academic debate on the moderators of success in military innovation, contributing a perspective that concentrates on stakeholder management as a core determinant of innovation effectiveness.
    
    Author: Linus Terhorst (Freeman Air and Space Institute)
  - The Lion and the Unicorn: British National Role Constructs in Defence Policy
    
    The scholarship identifies an increasing gap from WWII onwards between role and resources available to achieve those commitments (Jordan, 2020; Daddow, 2010). This paper is concerned with interrogating the first variable in greater detail, or role ambitions of the policymakers. How do governments construct and cultivate their desired national role? Does the transition of this role over time have impacts on defence policy choices? Through examining the development of these role conceptions over a period of time, could we learn something about the way in which we negotiate role transition, which might reveal impacts on the UK’s ability to militarily support strategic foreign policy objectives? By examining the connection between defence acquisition and decision-making theories, this paper aims to reveal insights about defence policy makers’ views on the role of Britain at strategic inflection points. The literature on national role orientations (Holsti, 1970; Gaskarth, 2013; Biddle, 1986; Vucetic, 2021) structures the data analysis of these concepts across three defence reviews: the Strategic Defence Review 1998, the Strategic Defence and Security Review 2010, and the Integrated Review 2021. This debate extends beyond a consideration of military equipment factors and considers wider defence and national policy, asking the question: how have policymakers’ understanding of the national role for Britain impacted the UK’s ability to militarily support strategic foreign policy objectives over time?
    
    Author: Michelle Howard (King's College London, Defence Studies Department)
- 26
  
  05 Roundtable / CPD Early Career Prize Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  CPD Early Career Prize
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Chair: Jenna Marshall (King's College London)
  
  Participants: Alice Engelhard (LSE) , Jamal Nabulsi (University of Queensland) , Heba Youssef (University of Brighton) , Cian O'Driscoll (ANU) , Sara Wong (LSE)
- 27
  05 Panel / Cooperation and colonization: Future geopolitical relations in space Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Astropolitics Working Group
  
  Convener: Bleddyn Bowen (BISA)
  
  Chair: Sarah Dunn (University of Leicester)
  - Nigeria’s space collaborations through a postcolonial lens: How racialised hierarchies are reproduced in the space technology sector
    
    The international system is racialised. Hierarchies persist in terms of access to power, resources and opportunities. This has deep roots in the colonial experience. It is enacted in interpersonal relations and reinforced through political and social institutions. In this paper we argue that Nigeria’s space programme and in particular the agreements reached with international partners (Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, UK, and the China Great Wall Industry Corporation) reflect these racialised hierarchies and assumptions about Nigeria’s capacity to be an equal partner. In both cases, but in different ways, there were limits to the sharing of knowledge, data and training. This kept Nigeria dependent on external expertise and hindered the development of a fully autonomous space programme – a pattern we see reproduced in many postcolonial interactions.
    
    Authors: Kehinde Abolarin (Liverpool John Moores University) , Laura Cashman (canterbury christ church university)
  - Decolonizing Indonesia and the Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) Utilization
    
    Examining the intersection between the decolonization process in Indonesia and the utilization of the geostationary Earth orbit (GEO), this historical study unveils intriguing correlations. Along the wave of decolonization at the dawn of the Cold War, neo-colonial powers exploit GEO, impacting formerly colonized nations. Subsequently, Indonesia strategically deploys GEO to unify its archipelago, driven by Java's dominant populace. Simultaneously, Indonesia has been involved in struggles to decolonize the global governance of GEO resources. These findings underscore an inseparable link between the Space Age and global decolonization, suggesting that understanding one necessitates insight into the other. In particular, this paper sheds light on the intricate interplay of geopolitical forces in shaping satellite orbit-spectrum use and dynamics from Indonesian perspective.
    
    Author: Deden Habibi Ali Alfathimy (University of Leicester)
  - Space Stations and State Lines.
    
    The nation state is the core actor in studies of International Relations and security. Some hoped that globalisation would dent its primacy, but a resurge in populist politics and politicians in the 2000s and 2010s meant that territorially tied national statehood has increased, rather than decreased in importance.
    In outerspace we have no state lines. No state can claim sovereign right to celestial bodies, and the parameters set to designate ‘airspace’, do not apply to outerspace. Moreover, the prevalence of commercial actors in space reduces the role of the nation state in space further.
    Nonetheless, as we see the International Space Station reach the end of its natural life in orbit, we must again address the means by which nations and states seek representation in space. Using primary documentation, this paper will discuss state lines on board the international space station and its use as a tool of USA soft power. China already has Taikonauts onboard its Tiangong space station, and as other states seek to join the low earth orbit party, this paper asks, what will be the impact on geopolitics?
    
    Author: Sarah Lieberman (canterbury christ church university)
  - The Politics of International Cooperation in Deep Space Exploration and Human Settlements: Geopolitical Realities and the Hope for Common Values
    
    With humans having ventured into space for over six decades, we have witnessed several phases of international cooperation in space science and exploration, much of which has been driven by space agencies and the national security objectives of their respective governments. As the space sector is growing rapidly, a more diverse set of stakeholders has emerged, including emerging space nations and the private sector. To achieve highly ambitious goals in deep space, such as sending humans to Mars, international cooperation is seen as an essential element of successful missions. However, the shifts and risks associated with geopolitical tensions on Earth raise important questions about the form future international cooperation will take and the logics informing collaborative endeavours. This project seeks to understand how international cooperation in deep space exploration and human settlements will evolve given a complex landscape of organizations and stakeholders. Drawing on an interdisciplinary body of literature, including International Relations, Space Policy, and STS, and a set of expert interviews, this project traces a genealogy of international cooperation in deep space exploration to make sense of the (geo)political dynamics underpinning contemporary and future collaboration in space.
    
    Author: Jana Fey (International Space University)
- 28
  05 Panel / Describing Difference, Seeking Solidarity: Interpretations of Race and Relationality in Anticolonial Campaigns during Historical Decolonization Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: Margot Tudor (City, University of London)
  
  Chair: Margot Tudor (City, University of London)
  
  Discussant: Su Lin Lewis (University of Bristol)
  - Nations Ascendant: The Bolshevik Revolution and the Making of Global Anti-Colonialism
    
    This paper, based on my first monograph, examines the role of revolutionary internationalism in bringing about empires’ formal ends in the twentieth century. It shows how the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia sparked a global campaign for universal self-determination. In the wake of the First World War, the young Soviet state emerged as a fulcrum and signpost for imperial agitators across the world. Encouraged by the triumph of Lenin and his party, anticolonialists tied the eradication of imperialism to the revolutionary end of global socioeconomic hierarchies. From across the colonial world, anticolonial activists, thinkers, and campaigners came together during the interwar period to demand the end of formal imperialism across the world. I argue that Lenin’s political thought and the Communist International’s patronage provided a language for the universal case for self-determination and global decolonization. I show how this language of revolutionary internationalism travelled to the colonies, how it was interpreted by anti-colonial activists and how it mingled and related with a range of national, regional and workers’ political projects. Eventually this led to the formation of a global imagined community of the colonized committed to global decolonization as well as to international revolution.
    
    Author: Zaib Aziz (University of South Florida)
  - Severing colonial relationality: Islamicate theories and strategies of autonomy
    
    This paper explores the ideas and practices of the Muslim Brotherhood as an anti-colonial social movement in the first half of the twentieth century. I begin with a definition of colonial relationality, drawing on Fanon to explain it as a psychoanalytic imposition and entanglement of colonisation. In the Islamicate, where the majority of communities were colonised by Europe, the role of Islam as an alternative and liberatory vehicle for reclaiming the self in severance from a colonial relationality, assumed even greater purpose and importance. I explore those Islamicate ideas of refusal and detachment, and then apply them to the practices and strategies of the Muslim Brotherhood in British occupied Egypt in the 1930s-40s. I argue, while the Muslim Brotherhood did not succeed in breaking the colonial relationality entirely, its early strategy reflected a concerted effort to apply Islamicate refusal and detachment to preserve autonomy and distinguish themselves from their rivals.
    
    Author: Jasmine Gani (University of St Andrews)
  - The Limits of Racial Solidarity in the West Papuan Campaign for Independence
    
    This paper analyses West Papuan activists’ appeals to racial solidarity in their campaign for independence at the United Nations. During the 1960s, the West Papuan activists sought liberation from Dutch colonisation and Indonesian annexation. Papuan activists combined claims to self-determination with arguments about their distinct ethnic identity and racial difference from their Indonesian colonisers. While Pacific peoples had been excluded from earlier anti-colonial networks due to their geographic isolation, Papuan activists sought to link their struggle to those of marginalised populations across the Global South, particularly in Africa, and win support for their independence at the United Nations. In emphasising their racial difference to seek allies among African delegates, West Papuans sought to tap into campaigns against racial discrimination. However, by drawing attention to their racial identity West Papuans risked inadvertently centring ideas about the ‘primitiveness’ of Black Pacific islanders within debates at the UN over the future of the territory. Through studying the campaign of West Papuan activists, I reveal new imagined networks of solidarity cultivated between Africa and the Pacific, while also drawing attention to the ways in which Global South politics and racial hierarchies worked against the claims of indigenous peoples such as the West Papuans.
    
    Author: Emma Kluge (University of Exeter)
  - “Where we end and they begin”: The Destruction of Herd Animals, Trees, and the Reforging of Indigenous Political Identities in the Era of the Nation State
    
    This paper uses both historical and critical heritage frameworks to interrogate the destruction of herd animals and trees as policies of war, and how these practices have tended to reinforce cultural identification with specific flora and fauna as part of indigenous and anticolonial movements of resistance. The paper explores the visual-material and intangible heritages of indigenous peoples across three continents (Europe, North America and the Middle East) whose identities were reconstellated by the experience of etho-nationalist and colonial violence between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taking as its point of departure interwar RAF protocols which targeted herd animals in Iraq & Afghanistan, the paper moves both backwards and forwards in time, drawing parallels to 19C Buffalo culls sponsored by the US Army, and the destruction of flocks of sheep and the Tree of Gernika during the 1937 fascist assault on the ’spiritual capitol' of the Basques —immortalised in Picasso’s 1937 Guernica. In these processes, the targeting of flora and fauna alongside human beings served to underscore their profound interconnection with indigenous lifeways; thus as otherwise ‘modern’ ethnic, national and anti-colonial identities coalesced in the mid-twentieth century, trees and animals remained bound up within them.
    
    Author: Erin O'Halloran (University of Cambridge)
- 29
  05 Panel / Domestic politics, political leaders, and foreign policies Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: Marianna Charountaki (University of Lincoln)
  
  Chair: Marianna Charountaki (University of Lincoln)
  - To Securitize or Not to Securitize: Internal Choices in Tony Blair’s and Gerhard Schröder’s Speech Acts on Iraq
    
    When the George W. Bush administration extended its successful domestic securitization of Iraq with an attempt to garner international support for the invasion, US allies had to make a momentous decision: to securitize or not to securitize. Two of the US’ most important European partners—the UK and Germany—made very different choices. While the UK also securitized Iraq to enable its active participation in the war, Germany refrained from doing so. I argue that these state-level outcomes resulted from Tony Blair’s and Gerhard Schröder’s individual securitization choices, which in turn were based on their threat perceptions and action preferences in terms of conflictual or cooperative means. Using both leadership trait and operational code analysis, I demonstrate that the two leaders’ personality traits and beliefs affected their perceptions of the ‘Iraqi threat’ in different ways and thus led to diverging securitization choices, which can be observed empirically in the shape of speech acts. Understanding these choices is important for foreign policy analysts because if an issue or actor is elevated to the realm of security, this move changes the set of foreign policy options governments can choose from. For instance, military interventions by democracies only become viable after successful securitization.
    
    Author: Alexander Schotthöfer (The University of Edinburgh)
  - The rise and fall of UK international development policy under the Conservative Party (2010-2020): Evidence from parliamentary debates
    
    This paper focuses on why international development was downgraded by the Conservative Party as a policy area under Boris Johnson’s premiership. This outcome is indicated by two significant policy shifts in 2020: merging the Department for International Development (DfID) with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and announcing that the UK would intentionally miss the statutory target of spending 0.7% of GNI on international development. The paper presents an original analysis of parliamentary debates in the House of Commons 2010-2020, tracing how Conservative MPs arguments about the purpose of UK aid policy and the right mechanisms for delivering it evolved over time under three Prime Ministers. The paper identifies two key trends over the period. The first is a growing promotion of a ‘win-win’ aid policy that needed to be seen to benefit the UK directly as well as delivering on development targets. The second is increased focus on bringing other departments into both aid policy and aid spending. Taken together the paper argues that ultimately these two trends, evidenced by which Conservative MPs discussed aid policy in the chamber and how, undermined the case for an independent DfID and a ring-fenced spending target, creating conditions ripe for reform when an aid-sceptic Prime Minister took office.
    
    Author: Danielle Beswick (University of Birmingham)
  - Strategic Narratives and Assisting Foreign Conflict: The Case of Japan's Commitment to the Korean War
    
    How do states develop strategic narratives to legitimize their level of involvement in international conflicts? Supporting military missions in overseas conflicts is often perceived as costly due to the potential of being drawn into conflict. By employing a theoretical framework that examines the role of strategic narratives in justifying military support for conflicts abroad, this study examines the formulation of strategic narratives and their impact on Japan's commitment to the Korean War (1950-1953). Japan's official strategic narrative presented the country as a 'democratic' and 'peaceful' actor within the liberal narrative, justifying its commitment to support the US/UN-led fight against communism while balancing public concerns and resisting extensive military commitment as demanded by the US. This study highlights the Japanese government's agency in shaping their narratives, which did not entirely mimic American Cold War narratives on the Korean War, despite the US's communicative power. The opposition's pacifist counter-narrative, which offered alternative policy options, provided an important context for Japanese policymakers in exercising the agency. This research employs qualitative analysis of official and non-official sources to reconstruct multiple narratives. Analysing how states adapt narratives to align with domestic and international constraints regarding assistance in conflicts contributes to existing studies on narratives in IR.
    
    Author: Chaeyoung Yong (University of St Andrews)
  - Party contestation of Foreign Policy in the New Global (dis)Order: National Responses to the Ukraine War and the resilience of Liberal International Order
    
    The ‘Liberal International Order’ faces challenges not only from authoritarian powers but from within multi-party democracies. Even in states deeply embedded in Western political, economic and security architectures, radical and populist parties resist liberal internationalism. In non-Western multi-party democracies as well as liminal states on the margins of the West, there is ongoing debate about how to relate to the modernising and secularising influences of liberalism, which challenge traditional values and hierarchies. How resilient is the Western-led international order in the face of these internal challenges? This paper draws out insights from a workshop and journal special issue recently co-convened by the author, which brought together national level analyses of party contestation of policy responses to the war in Ukraine, in a range of multi-party democracies. The Russia-Ukraine war is a seismic event presenting every country with comparable dilemmas about how to align in relation to a US and European led campaign to punish Russia and support Ukraine. It is a powerful lens to examine the features of a two-directional relationship: the impact of polarised party politics on foreign policy, and the impact of the contested global order on the dynamics of domestic party contestation.
    
    Author: Toby Greene (London School of Economics; Bar Ilan University)
- 30
  05 Panel / Far-Right and Misogynist Extremism Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Convener: CST Working group
  
  Chair: Anna Meier (University of Nottingham)
  - Preventing Right Wing Online Extremism: what place in the current European counter-terrorism infrastructure?
    
    The globalisation of Preventing and/or Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) policies is the most significant development in modern counterterrorism. There is a broad consensus among governments, unthinkable 20 years prior, on the necessity of developing new approaches to security, preventive rather than punitive. At both European and national levels, authorities are increasingly engaging with P/CVE strategies to counter growing extremist messaging and violence. A growing concern has been the rise in extreme right wing online activities, namely propaganda and recruitment, furthermore with several high profile right wing attacks in Europe having been perpetrated by individual "radicalised online". My paper aims at exploring the role of the European Union preventing online extremism, and how online preventive actions fits in a pre-existing P/CVE regime long promoted by the EU.
    
    My paper will start with a theoretical assessment of how projects targeting online extremist content, concretely right wing extremism, can or cannot fit within the current EU P/CVE policy infrastructure. To do so, this paper will firstly collect policy and qualitative interview data in order to strip down EU action on online Preventive counter-terrorism policy priorities and instruments. Secondly, I will move from the policy general level to the concrete implementation goals by then collecting the same type of data on the conceptualisations of P/CVE underpinning several EU funded projects targeting violent and non-violent right wing extremism online.
    
    Once the underlying concepts in these projects is establish, my paper will be able to establish how initiatives targeting online right wing extremism fit in with the larger European counter-terrorism (CT) architecture: to which of the four pillars, Pursue, Prosecute, Protect and Prevent, does online Prevention belong? How do these initiatives tie in with other EU bodies, such as the EU Internet Forum, or the Civil Society Empowerment Programme (CSEP)? The IF and the CSEP are both EU funded networks seeking to mobilise expertise and civil society groups to target online violent extremist content and recruitment? Additionally, my research will look at the cooperation, or lack thereof, between said projects targeting the extreme right in Europe and the implementation of the Terrorist Content Online (TCO) Regulation, which came into force over a year ago and has the explicit purpose of targeting online violent extremism and terrorism.
    
    Author: Inés Bolaños Somoano (European University Institute)
  - Narrative Construction in Egyptian Identity Politics and the Role of Western Extreme Right-Wing Ideologies
    
    In today's rapidly globalizing world, the flow of ideas and ideologies has become an undeniable force, transcending borders and shaping our collective consciousness. It may have seemed counterintuitive in the past for the formation of political identities in a North African country to be influenced by western right-wing extremist ideologies; particularly those rooted in ethnic superiority and white power. However, amidst increasing right-wing extremist activity and violence, there has been a significant increase in research in the field of counter-extremism regarding the deterritorialization and globalization of the movement (Miller-Idriss 2020 and Ebner 2023). As research extends beyond the West into countries like Brazil (with the rise of Jair Bolsonaro) and the Hindu nationalist Hindutva movement, my scholarly intervention seeks to contribute to it by examining how these ideas propagate beyond Western countries (Pinheiro-Machado and Vargas-Maia 2023). In my project, I intend to answer the question: How are western right-wing extremist ideologies and narratives adapted into the Egyptian political context? I am thus studying how ideas and information travel across time and space, influence, and get adapted into different cultural and political contexts, specifically the Egyptian one.
    
    Author: Farah Rasmi (The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva)
  - ‘We are not following what is trendy’: The ‘incel issue’ through the eyes of the Swedish security sector
    
    While incidents of incel violence have thus far predominantly occurred in North America, the ‘incel issue’ has, in the past few years, emerged as a serious topic of debate beyond this context. In Sweden, related public debates largely centre around discussions of young men’s’ loneliness, ‘being left behind’ by girls outperforming them, as well as the digital environment (Bendfeldt, under review). However, in light of the explicitly violent rhetoric and ideology foundational to incel worldviews, discussions of physical violence are never far when thinking about misogynistic online communities of incels. But how is this issue perceived and responded to by those who are in charge of ‘security’? This article examines the understandings of incels and incel violence within the Swedish security sector. It explores how, and to what extent, incel violence and the wider issue of misogyny feature within security considerations; contributing to both understandings of incel violence per se, but also the mechanisms, and politics, of declaring something a matter of security. In particular, this article examines how misogyny and related violence are perceived and responded to, and their political and material implications on people’s everyday lives.
    
    Author: Luise Bendfeldt (Uppsala University)
- 31
  05 Panel / Gendered militaries and knowledges of war Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Conveners: Hannah West (Newcastle University) , Naomi Head (University of Glasgow)
  
  Chair: Synne L. Dyvik (University of Sussex)
  - The Effects of Gendered and Ethnicised Conscription on Political and Civic Life: The Case of Israeli Circassian and Druze Citizens
    
    Previous research has established the intricate relationship between both voluntary and mandatory military service and civic and political participation (Wilson and Ruger 2020; Teigen 2006; Nesbit and Reingold 2011; Elison 1992; Leal 1999; Koch et al. 2021; Koch 2022; Fize and Louis-Sidois 2020) as well as political attitudes (Grossman et al. 2015; Schreiber 1979; Pollock 1975; Jennings and Markus 1977). Despite the existing evidence regarding the effects of military service on political behavior and generally recognized political significance of the military as an institution, there is a lack of research exploring the consequences of its traditionally gendered nature. Using exploratory approach, this paper addresses the gap in literature by investigating the impact of excluding ethnic minority women from conscription on various aspects of their political and civic life. This paper is a case study of Israel, focusing on its gendered and ethnicized conscription system that mandates military service for Jewish, Druze, and Circassian communities. While conscription applies on Jewish, Druze and Circassian men, and Jewish women, Druze and Circassian women are exempt from mandatory military service, along with Israeli citizens from other ethnic groups. This exemption creates two additional divides within widely fragmented Israeli society: within Druze and Circassian community; and within Israeli female citizens. The paper extends our theoretical understanding of how political institutions enforce inequal citizenship, and the relationship between military and gender. Additionally, it illuminates political behaviors of commonly overlooked identities. The paper draws on original qualitative data from interviews with Israeli Circassian, Druze, and Jewish population, collected in the summer of 2023 in Israel.
    
    Author: Marketa Odlova (Trinity College Dublin)
  - Visibly welcomed, invisibly undermined: British Female Engagement Teams in Afghanistan 2010-2014
    
    Female Engagement Teams (FETs) remain a tactical asset on UN and NATO Human Security operations today, becoming an international model for practising gender perspectives on the ground and satisfying the Women, Peace and Security agenda set out in UNSCR 1325. And yet, the British Army have constructed an enduring story of FETs in Afghanistan as a failed concept, at best ‘a good idea that didn’t really work out’. This is not based on their performance because attempts to measure their effect were limited, compounded by insufficient operational record keeping and a failure to retain a repository of these records, resulting in an over-reliance on limited sources. There has never been a strategic pause to review their long history and ask the question of why as well as how. Fundamentally, the employment of FETs by the British Army failed to acknowledge the implications of implementing an operational practice, underpinned by understandings of gender, without looking internally to critique the gendered character of the institution trying to deliver it. This research outlines how FETs were established and employed, arguing that they were simultaneously visibly welcomed and invisibly undermined. FETs provide a case study in Human Security operations, the lessons of which have direct application to Human Security Advisers training and operating today.
    
    Author: Hannah West (Newcastle University)
  - Gendered knowledges and counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan
    
    In this paper I argue that gendered programmes such as Team Lioness, the Human Terrain System, Female Engagement Teams, and Cultural Support Teams deployed by the US military during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are part of a longer history of gendered knowledges located in colonial encounter, pacification, war, and counterinsurgency. Drawing on the work of anthropologists, historians, postcolonial and feminist scholars, I demonstrate that a historical genealogy can be traced through colonial encounters that centre gendered ways of knowing and understanding the other that privilege Western epistemology and associated hierarchies of knowledge and value. Drawing on “the figure of the ‘third-world woman’; the problematic history of the ‘feminist-as-imperialist' [and] the colonialist deployment of ‘feminist criteria’ to bolster the appeal of the ‘civilising mission’” (Gandhi 2019: 83), an analysis of the military’s gendered counterinsurgency programmes reveals that it fits within – and does not stand outside or transcend – this history and logic of coloniality.
    
    Author: Naomi Head (University of Glasgow)
  - “Women’s work” in the Ukrainian armed forces
    
    Russia’s mass invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 prompted tens of thousands of Ukrainian women to join the armed forces, continuing a process that began with the start of the war in the Donbas region in 2014. In addition to making significant contributions to the war effort over the past decade, women in uniform have been used by successive governments in Kyiv as symbols of the country’s commitment to Western, liberal values, especially gender equality, as Ukraine has sought closer ties with NATO and the European Union. At the same time, civilian women have played an important role in developing and implementing reform measures designed to address deep-seated corruption in the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence. This paper explores the image and reality of “women’s work” in the armed forces of Ukraine in the midst of war.
    
    Author: Jennifer Mathers (Aberystwyth University)
- 32
  
  05 Roundtable / Latin American IR in the UK Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  IR scholarship in the UK has traditionally paid scant attention to Latin America, but an emerging literature from scholars located in UK academic centres has shown the richness that this region presents for IR theoretical and methodological elaboration. This roundtable focuses on recent contributions that UK-based IR scholars with a Latin American focus have made to the development of several subfields within IR. The participants will discuss their contributions to international political economy, security studies, foreign policy analysis, and international organisations, and how future research can build on Latin American insights, to advance this and other subfields. Participants will also reflect on periods of history that have remained unexplored, data that remains untapped, and new methodologies, theories, and agendas that helped bring Latin America to the forefront of IR.
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Chair: Leslie Wehner (University of Bath)
  
  Participants: Marco Vieira (University of Birmingham) , Tom Long (University of Warwick) , Carsten-Andreas Schulz (University of Cambridge) , Consuelo Thiers (University of Edinburgh) , Marina Duque (University College London)
- 33
  
  05 Roundtable / Learning and Teaching Drop In Café - open to all Exec 10, ICC
  
  Learning and Teaching Café
  
  Sponsor: Learning and Teaching Working Group
  
  Chair: Ilan Baron (Durham University)
  
  Participants: Natalie Jester (University of Gloucestershire) , Akinyemi Oyawale (University of Warwick) , Louise Pears (University of Leeds) , Madeleine Le Bourdon (University of Leeds) , Shambhawi Tripathi (University of St. Andrews)
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  05 Panel / Local peace and hybridity in peacebuilding interventions Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: PKPBG Working group
  
  Chair: Nancy Annan (Coventry University)
  - Moving Beyond Binary Identities in Transitional Justice: Recognizing the Complexity of Agency in Agonistic Spaces
    
    Transitional justice (TJ) has historically struggled with understanding actors in their full complexity. This trend is evident in its difficulty in dealing with ‘imperfect victims’ - victims who may also have perpetrated crimes or whose experiences contradict the idea of victims as innocent (Weber 2021). Part of the underlying problem centres around the insistence within dominant TJ approaches on binary oppositions (Turner 2017): agent vs. subject, victim vs. perpetrator, peace vs. justice, etc. These binary oppositions make it difficult for groups that experience marginalisation and oppression, including along gender-based lines, to also achieve recognition of their agency. This paper offers a new way forward for conceptualising agency in a TJ context and making space for the exercise of this agency. Our argument is twofold: first, that focussing on relational autonomy rather than a liberal conception of agency helps produce a more holistic picture of the constraints and opportunities affecting agents’ actions in broad social networks; and second, that creating agonistic spaces, which centre around contestation and multiplicity, in turn fosters opportunities for an increased exercise and recognition of relational autonomy. Using original interview data and archival analysis from Northern Ireland and Turkey, we demonstrate how these agonistic spaces can facilitate relational autonomy across the spectrum of formal and informal TJ arenas. In their embrace of multiplicity and rejection of a single objective truth, these agonistic spaces are better equipped to recognise the ways in which actors can be both victims and perpetrators, marginalised and empowered. This approach offers a new way forward for TJ scholars and practitioners looking to recognise the full range of identities actors can hold simultaneously.
    
    Authors: Güneş Daşlı (Freie Universität Berlin) , Emma Murphy (University College Dublin)
  - Artificial NGOs: How a Hierarchical Civil Society prevents Inclusive Peacebuilding
    
    In recent years, researchers and policymakers have increasingly spoken of the need to include civil society and local communities in peacebuilding efforts. Their contextual insights are invaluable to resolving problems, whilst their involvement can enhance the legitimacy of peacebuilding strategies. Yet, an often-overlooked reality is that 'civil society' is an inherently hierarchical space dominated by a select group of NGOs that are only loosely connected to the needs and interests of 'ordinary people'. By focusing on the Cypriot conflict, I demonstrate how these 'artificial NGOs' masquerade as civil society representatives despite reflecting the interests of external actors, notably the international donors who fund them. Their dominance prevents grassroots-based organisations from influencing peacebuilding discussion and decision-making. I thereby argue that if we are to initiate a more inclusive peacebuilding process, we need to develop strategies to ensure that all sectors of civil society, especially those truly representing indigenous interests, can have a meaningful impact on key decisions. This may include developing a more diverse funding mechanism that also benefits voluntary organisations and doesn’t solely favour the same set of NGOs. Without such interventions, peacebuilding missions will continue to be structured around a small set of actors and interests, with diverse and dissenting opinions kept to the margins.
    
    Author: Mark Barrow (University of Cambridge)
  - Perceived horizontal inequalities in the context of host-refugee relations in Lebanon: The role of humanitarian aid targeting
    
    This paper aims to contribute to a better understand of the role of horizontal inequalities in host-refugee relations in the context of the targeting and distribution of humanitarian aid. It draws on 10 months research in Lebanon in 2017-18 with Syrian and Lebanese interlocutors. The United Nations (UN) in Lebanon, according to the main strategy document, the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan, aims to alleviate resource pressure by supporting municipal service delivery. This suggests that the UN believes resource pressure can lead to conflict between communities. However, this paper demonstrates that this view is too simplistic. Instead, it is not merely the question of "who gets what" that influences host-refugee relations, but also the targeting process as such and questions about who participates in decision-making. This is linked to power relations in the targeting process. The findings demonstrate a discrepancy between what the UN defines as deservingness criteria and the view on deservingness in the local community. Understanding the role of perceived horizontal inequalities in host-refugee contexts requires an adaptation of the concept to incorporate process alongside the hitherto emphasis on distribution.
    
    Author: Kristina Tschunkert (The University of Manchester)
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  05 Roundtable / Occultism in International Studies: A Research Agenda Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  International Relations (IR) as a field has for a long time been preoccupied with understanding the possibilities and pitfalls of modernity. Here, it has been approached in terms of the knowledge system that modernity both naturalised and denaturalised, the subjectivities it simultaneously created and silenced, and the politics it made both possible and impossible (Blaney and Tickner 2017, Paolini 1999, Ruggie 1993, Shilliam 2013, Walker 1993). However, despite its preoccupation with modernity’s contradictions, the role that the occult has played in constructing and reproducing these knowledge systems, subjectivities and politics has been largely left unquestioned. This Roundtable aims to open up space for an an interrogation of the occult in IR, ultimately interrogating what the occult is a critique of both historically and in the present.
  
  Occultism, meaning ‘hidden’ in Latin, is associated with ideas of the supernatural and magical beliefs and practices. Further, it is often thought of as the antithesis of rational modernity, associated with either pre-modern superstitious beliefs or tied to racialised and orientalised ideas of Eastern mysticism. However, ideas of the occult have been central to Western modernity since the onset of the Scientific Revolution, where it constituted the dialectics through which notions of science and knowledge were erected (Hanegraaff 1998). It further rose to political prominence in the late 19th century through its association with radical political agendas like socialism, feminism, and anti-colonial agitation (Owen 2004, Gandhi 2006). In a contemporary age of Instagram witches, the uptake of occultism in far-right political ideologies, and spiritual healing as an integral part of the global wellness industry, it is clear that occultism warrants our attention as IR scholars.
  
  This Roundtable aims to explore the politics of the occult and what it is a critique of in terms of knowledge systems, subjectivities, and the politics of modernity. It starts from the premise that the occult is constructed as the ‘other’ of modernity as either belonging to a ‘past’ (within the space of Europe) or belonging to spaces outside of ‘Europe’ that have not yet ‘caught up’ with modernity. As such, in general, the occult is seen as ‘before’ and something that disappears as modernity is established. Yet, we argue that there is a dialectic relationship between the occult and scientific modernity that reproduces them both rather than a linear relationship when one follows the other. The aim of the Roundtable then is to investigate what possibilities and limitations this dialectic relationship creates and interrogate what it means for the knowledge systems, subjectivities, and politics under scrutiny in understanding the international.
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Chair: Ida Birkvad (LSE)
  
  Participants: Zeynep Gülsah Capan (University of Erfurt) , Philip Conway (Durham University) , Ida Birkvad (LSE) , Suzanne Klein Schaarsberg (Tilburg University)
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  05 Panel / Pandemic Governance and the State – Local approaches at a time of emergency Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Global Health Working Group
  
  Convener: GHWG Working group
  
  Chair: Christopher Long (Queen's University Belfast)
  - Global health governance, COVID-19 and the limits of state-centrism in times of political violence
    
    The academic and policy debates of global health governance normatively assert states as the protectors and providers of health, with the ‘monopoly on legitimate violence’ over its recognised territories. However, when states are ‘unable or unwilling’ to address external threats within their borders, what happens to their populations during global health crises? This paper outlines and critically examines the limits of state-centrism in global health governance during contemporary conflicts. Through a comparative case analysis of the COVID-19 response in Syria and Yemen, this paper analyses the impact of policies and actions deriving from states and actors involved in each of these conflicts – from the targeted violence against health and humanitarian workers, to the criminalisation of aid in opposition-controlled territories. The challenges of health security in conflict-affected contexts have been attributed to state failure, mistrust between communities and actors, as well as communities being ‘hard to reach’. However, these narrow and ahistorical claims overlook the socio-political and colonial dynamics of state-society relations in conflict-affected contexts, particularly where states are recognised as a source of insecurity than a source of protection. By remaining beholden to states as a central actor in global health governance, it undermines the health and well-being for populations living under state violence and conflict.
    
    Author: Aida Hassan (Queen Mary University of London)
  - The Present Present: The Epidemic Situation as an Emergency-Epistemic Object
    
    One of the key ways expert as well as lay publics engaged with the health emergency surrounding COVID-19 was through representations of the epidemic situation; that is, quantitative descriptions and assessments of the occurrence and dynamics of the infectious disease at a given present. Situated in Critical Security Studies, this paper examines the epidemic situation as an epistemic object through which a health emergency is enacted as a scientific and public fact and as an object of governance. Following Opitz’ (2016) work on pandemic simulations, I argue that the epidemic situation can be regarded as a mode of societal self-observation with specific understandings of the factual, social, spatial, and temporal configuration of the situation. Drawing on expert interviews with officials at the German Federal Public Health Institute, data journalists, as well as private sector epidemic intelligence efforts I delineate these dimensions of meaning with regard to representations of the epidemic situation in Germany. Adapting Luhmann’s (1967) notion of “present pasts” and “present futures”, I argue that the epidemic situation enacts a present present, that is a contingent actualization of the present that opens it up as a space of intervention.
    
    Author: Franziska Zirker (University of Marburg)
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  05 Panel / Policing, Prisons, and Counterinsurgency in the Global South Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Conveners: Francisco Mazzola (King's College London) , Michael Farquhar (King's College London)
  
  Chair: Francisco Mazzola (King's College London)
  
  Discussant: Francisco Mazzola (King's College London)
  - Policing as the Generation of Disorder and Abolition in Practice
    
    Drawing on my recent book Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul, in this presentation I will a) discuss how policing is not limited to providing and maintaining order but also entails the generation of disorder and b) illustrate already existing abolitionist practices on the ground. Situating Turkish policing within a global context, in the first half of the presentation I will elaborate on the complex and mutually constitutive relationship between the maintenance of the social order and, in defense of that social order, the creation of the conditions for perpetual conflict, disorder, and criminal activity by the state security apparatus. I suggest that in the places where racialized and dissident populations live, provocations of counterviolence and conflict by state security agents as well as their containment of both cannot be considered disruptions of social order. Instead, they can only be conceptualized as forms of governance and policing designed to manage actual or potential rebellious populations. The second half of the presentation will focus on the long enduring abolitionist practices among Turkey’s racialised working-classes. I will show how the distrust in the state and its security apparatus has paved the way for alternative justice strategies some of which can be considered as abolitionist practices.
    
    Author: Deniz Yonucu (Newcastle University)
  - Finding Meaning in the Mihna: Incarceration, State Violence and Islamist Agency in Twentieth-Century Egypt
    
    While much has been said about Islamists as agents of violence, there is a need for nuanced attention to Islamists’ own experiences on the receiving end of state violence. Moving beyond an established concern with whether state repression incentivises radicalisation or deradicalisation, this paper instead asks: How have Islamists found meaning in encounters with state violence, particularly in the context of the prison? How has this shaped them as moral and political actors? I focus on a series of crackdowns on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood from the 1940s to the 1970s, known to its supporters as the mihna, or tribulation. Drawing on activists’ memoirs, I analyse the practices of self-care, mutual aid and ethical cultivation that they developed in prisons to foster forms of agency grounded in particular configurations of reason, affect and will in the face of the degrading effects of violence. In contrast with accounts that situate Islamist subject-formation as quite continuous with past religious traditions and quite isolated from other dimensions of social life, I consider how such practices and their meaning evolved in interaction with one salient feature of Islamists’ broader social and political experiences – that is, encounters with the violence of the modern state.
    
    Author: Michael Farquhar (King's College London)
  - Who speaks on global counterinsurgency? Making expertise and authority in India’s long wars
    
    In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, Indian strategic thinkers began to argue that India had lessons for the world based on the so-called “Indian experience” in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns. That the Indian state is experienced in such battles is on some level undeniable. The Indian state has been continuously engaged with fighting insurgencies since gaining independence in 1947. Yet, the nature- and potential value of the (supposedly) exceptional “experience” gained therein has been quite a bit less than obvious to many – both within and beyond India. In other words, experience has not always translated into a credible claim to global expertise or authority on counterinsurgency. Quite the contrary. Through an analysis of archival sources on Indian counterinsurgency thinking, this paper traces the longer history of efforts to develop a body of specifically Indian counterinsurgency knowledge and to position it to others, elsewhere. While taking seriously that counterinsurgency is a global project that has never and can never be contained within national borders, I argue that the case of India shows a desire to enter into this global politics on different terms than simply being the recipient of others’ expertise and the presumed location at the global margins.
    
    Author: Rhys Machold (University of Glasgow)
  - Policing “Crises”: Postcolonial Penality and the Criminalization of Dissent in Pakistan
    
    International perspectives on policing and criminalisation, both contemporary and historical, still lack in representation from the global South, particularly postcolonial environments wherein colonial logics, laws, and institutions thrive. This paper considers the convergences between colonial “lawfare”, (post)colonial counterinsurgency techniques, and routine, domestic policing to explore how such convergence facilitates the criminalization and punishment of dissent and political activism within contemporary undemocratic or authoritarian settings. Using colonial-era legislations found in the case of Pakistan (e.g., the ‘law of sedition’ or 124-A in the Penal Code and Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code), I explore how such frameworks are deployed as part of a postcolonial state’s overarching counterinsurgency warfare and state violence against citizens, particularly dissidents and critics.
    I draw upon Brown’s “postcolonial penality” (2017) and Baxi’s “postcolonial legality” to show how such colonial institutions are used to legitimise and weaponize the state’s militarised lawfare against its own people and to frame socio-political activism and mundane resistance as conspiracies amounting to national security threats. Such securitized narrative-framing, coupled with the deployment of colonial-era techniques of control (including law enforcement agencies), ensures an ongoing conflation of “police power” and “war power”, hindering efforts towards democratic transition, reform and change. Exploring this conflation allows us to see how contemporary convergences between colonial and postcolonial legality, as well as policing and warfare, enable the ongoing criminalization and state “terrorization” of legitimate dissent. Analysing this provides a critical contribution to emerging critical perspectives on policing, security, and criminal justice – phenomena that remain entrenched in globally traveling ideas of colonialism and counterinsurgency, affecting law and society worldwide.
    
    Author: Zoha Waseem (University of Warwick)
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  05 Panel / Political Economies of Europe and Europeanisation Room 103, Library
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: IPEG Working group
  
  Chair: Pedro Perfeito da Silva (University of Exeter)
  - Oligarchic Practice in European Integration
    
    Amid the profound challenges and transformations of European integration, this research note delves into the intricate dynamics of oligarchic practices, which have gained notoriety amidst global economic upheavals. In 2022, as worldwide unemployment reached an unprecedented 205 million, the number of billionaires surged to a staggering 2,755, amassing a jaw-dropping combined wealth of $13.1 trillion. This wealth concentration is not only reshaping the economic landscape but also posing significant implications for the European integration process. Referring to the oligarchic implications of the Common Agricultural Policy, this paper aims to provide a preliminary theoretical exploration of the impact of oligarchic practices on European integration, shedding light on the complex interplay between wealth concentration and the European Union's foundational principles.
    
    Author: Salvador Santino Regilme (Leiden University, The Netherlands)
  - Covid-19 and Divided States of Europe – Sino European Relationship after the Covid-19 Pandemic and the EU’s attempt to re-evaluate the Sino-European relation
    
    According to Nye and Keohane’s complex interdependence theory, the social and economic interconnectedness of the world transcends the intergovernmental relationship. However, in the outburst of COVID-19, this complex interdependence and interconnectedness itself brought a negative impact through the exchange of people, goods and manufacturing process, and caused a social chaos. The investment in Europe accelerated after the financial crisis in 2008 via Chinese firms, State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), and joint ventures with European firms. PRC invested heavily on infrastructure projects such as ports, airports, the energy sector, telecommunications and real estate as well as the high value added area and high tech companies such as robotics, chemical and semi-conductors, expending PRC’s “The New Silk Road” project. It makes European economy more connected to PRC than to competing economies. I am interested to know if the similar phenomenon will happen given the pandemic of Covid-19, or states would move away from PRC to rectify the negative product of complex interdependence. I am also interested in investigating how the economic and political relations among PRC, European states and the EU would evolve given the damage the pandemic of Covid-19 brought.
    
    Author: Keiko Ferradj Ota (University of Dundee)
  - Rethinking Comparative Political Economy: Crisis and Dynamics of Change in Southern Europe
    
    The global financial crisis in 2008 and more recently the Covid-19 pandemic renewed the interest in the capitalist divergence and the evolution of growth model in the Eurozone. The Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) approach and more recently post-Keynesian research, especially the Growth Model perspective (GM), have made important contributions to the Comparative Political Economy literature. However, the focus on either the ‘supply-side’ or ‘demand-side’ aspects of modern models of capitalism has offered a limited framework to explain capitalist diversity in the global economy. This paper aims to answer to what extent have the southern European economies evolved to a sustainable export-oriented growth model after the global financial crisis and Covid-19. The objective of this paper is twofold. First, it outlines a new approach that brings VoC and GM into a productive dialogue. The paper connects VoC with macroeconomic policies and demand and makes the case for a more comprehensive understanding of growth models and ‘change’ in capitalist economies. By analysing both the ‘supply-side’ and ‘demand-side’ aspects of growth models, this paper offers a novel theoretical and empirically advanced framework in Comparative Political Economy (CPE). Second, it provides -based on qualitative research methods and particularly fieldwork and interviews- new evidence from the growth models in Southern Europe, particularly from Greece, Portugal, and Spain. It introduces the concept of the ‘intermediate’ economies to explain the position of these countries in the global economy after the two major crises; the global financial crisis and Covid-19 shock.
    
    Author: Konstantinos Myrodias (King's College London)
  - The Lagging South? Convergence, Europeanisation, and the fiscal politics of EMU accession in Spain and Italy
    
    The Eurozone crisis saw the proliferation of narratives positing sovereign debt as its main cause. Despite their controversial character, these narratives still open the question of how the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) affected the domestic fiscal politics of its member states in the first place, given how central deficit reductions were to the ‘nominal convergence’ efforts of the 1990s. In line with this, this thesis analyses the Europeanisation, that is, the extent and direction of change in response to European integration, of the Spanish and Italian fiscal regimes in the context of EMU accession. It traces the evolution of fiscal policymaking as a response to the Monetary Union’s requirements, analysing the interrelation and evolution of fiscal outcomes, policies, and environments, in two countries that despite belonging to the same capitalist type, started the decade with starkly different budgetary positions. Provisional findings include the qualitative and quantitative differences in the fiscal adjustment enacted; the mixed result of both countries complying with the deficit criterion, whilst not following the specific recommendations posited by European authorities; and the strengthening of the Ministry of Finance vis-à-vis other actors as a ‘core executive’. This thesis therefore contributes to debates about how the E(M)U influences capitalist restructuring processes in its member states, problematising the character and validity of ‘convergence’ as a political process in Europe.
    
    Author: Guillermo Alonso Simon (University of Warwick)
  - Why is Brexit seen as a failure by many, despite a 'hard' exit form the EU: a critical political economy reading
    
    This paper aims to contribute to Brexit studies by engaging with the apparent contradiction that despite a ‘hard’ British exit from the European Union (EU) structures, many feel that Brexit is not working and it is a missed opportunity. To do that, the paper advances a particular reading of the underlying grievances that led to the Leave vote and then moves on to provide an account of how these grievances came about. More specifically, the paper focuses on the economic motives behind the Leave vote and advances an account of the political and economic developments in the last four decades that ultimately led to the majority of the British people casting a vote in favour of leaving the EU. To do that, the paper uses wealth as an analytical tool and examines how changes in the way wealth is produced and distributed over this time-period have ultimately enabled the creation of a deeply unequal society, which has led to larger and larger swathes of the population feeling that the system is not working for them. Ultimately, this is why the ‘Take back Control’ slogan of the Leave campaign proved so popular with its suggestion that there was a way of restoring sovereignty. This analysis highlights key issues that need to be resolved by our political-economic system if the trend of citizens feeling excluded from it is to be reversed. Crucially, these issues aren’t the ones that are currently widely discussed in the mainstream discourses, which suggests that the negative effects of the current situation are likely to persist in the foreseeable future.
    
    Author: Valentina Kostadinova (University of Buckingham)
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  05 Panel / Questioning structures, practices, and discourses in International Relations: Readings from Mexico and the Global South Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Arturo Santa Cruz (Universidad de Guadalajara)
  - IR in Mexico
    
    Mexican International Relations (IR) is peculiar not only in that it stands apart from the contributions of both culturally similar countries, such as those in Latin America, and structurally similar positioned states, such as Canada, as well as from those originating in the United States, but also for its paucity. Since very little IR theory is done in Mexico, it is not surprising that Mexican IR appears to be “an American social science.” However, beyond the syllabi in the discipline’s university departments throughout Mexico, the practice of what little IR research there is in the country is anchored in approaches that are not mainstream in the United States. Thus, counterintuitively, Mexican IR is very similar to IR in other countries—and U.S. IR, not Mexico’s, is an outlier.
    
    Author: Arturo Santa Cruz (Universidad de Guadalajara)
  - Intimate International Relations: Exploring “Queer” Tourism in Mexico City
    
    Reflections on culture and the city within the field of International Relations (IR) has been dominated by perspectives interested on cultural projection, city branding and economic spillover due to international tourism. In this sense, this paper diverges from these interpretations and opts for a critical view drawing from queer theory in IR to reflect on the imagined construction of the “global urban space” trough the lenses of queer subjects and queer culture. Here, categories such as "identity," "intimacy," and "memory" play a significant role in rethinking the social and global function of tourism in a contemporary scenario, particularly in global and connected cities. The analysis centers on the Jotitour project in Mexico City, a non-hegemonic tourist experience based on recognizing individuals and stories from LGBT+ community. This enables new frameworks of imagination for the city and its international connections, revealing a history hidden behind commercial shop windows, churches, protected cultural venues, and government buildings. But it also invites to look for the international within spaces of intimacy.
    
    Author: Eduardo Luciano Tadeo Hernández (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Unidad Xochimilco)
  - Beyond the traditional meaning of development: insights of ecofeminism from the Global South
    
    This proposal challenges the traditional meaning of development that was defined during
    the post-World War II period. Despite the sustainability paradigm, economic growth
    continues to be the most important variable in decision-making processes, leaving aside
    social and environmental costs. The predominant system is capitalist, patriarchal and
    anthropocentric. Ecofeminism emerges in International Relations as a theoretical approach
    that contributes to questioning hegemonic visions from the Global South. The hegemonic
    vision consists of the utilitarian perception of nature and its commodification. Women have
    been more affected by the gender roles assigned to them throughout history. Additionally,
    women are expected to be particularly impacted by the effects of the environmental crisis.
    Hence it must be integrated into the study of the human-nature relationship, the predominant economic model variable, the market economy, conforming the triad society-
    nature-market. Ecofeminism should be understood as a synthesis of feminist claims and environmentalist criticism of capitalism that proposes deconstructing power relations
    between men and women and utilitarian practices and the commodification of nature. Its
    fundamental objective is to propose and recognize diverse development visions that help to
    achieve gender equality and social and environmental dimensions of justice.
    
    Author: Ruth Zavala (Centro de Relaciones Internacionales, UNAM)
  - International Relations in Mesoamerica
    
    There has been ongoing debate about the existence of International Relations (IR) in the ancient world ever since the creation of the discipline back in 1919 due to both a conceptual as well as a theoretical constraint. However, in recent years, we have seen amounting calls in academia to revise IR’s main paradigms, namely, Eurocentrism, ahistoricism, anarchophilia, state- centrism and presentism (Buzan and Little, 2012). This paper revises these issues by analyzing a geotemporal frame far from the Westphalian myth, that of Mesoamerica, and demonstrate that our modern international system is formed by a deeper structure (Denemark and Gills, 2009) that was created hundreds, if not, thousands of years ago in different regions considered now peripheral, giving back agency to ancient polities but also, to regions outside Europe. The case study is that of how Mesoamerica, long before the arrival of the Spaniards, was a fully-fledged international system integrated mainly by the exchange of obsidian, a volcanic glass recurrent in the territory. The methodology approach is a combination of both documental but also geographical tools such as GIS, using the latest archaeological findings and interpretations to fit into IR’s theory. This opens a window to challenge mainstream viewpoints of North-South hierarchies and promote knowledge creation in the Global South.
    
    Author: Salimah Monica Cossens (Centro de Relaciones Internacionales, UNAM)
  - Data science, International Relations, and the Global South. Towards a new paradigm in a de-globalizing world
    
    The changing social reality demands social scientists to innovate and incorporate research methods and techniques capable of responding to emerging phenomena and proposing new categories to denote and characterize their complexity. In the field of International Relations, following events such as the 2008 crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, the term "de-globalization" has become popular, suggesting that the world has entered a new stage of regression in terms of global integration and interdependence. In this context, this work reflects about the importance of the quantitative methodological approach in the study of de-globalization, as well as the advantages of using statistical methods and techniques that allow generating premises and reaching logically derived conclusions in descriptive, correlational and explanatory research, in this case, related to the role that Latin American countries are playing in the new international context, since specialists have pointed out that the countries of the Global South will be the winners of these de-globalizing trends. On this note, this paper asks, what role are countries like Mexico playing in the new international scenario? How are these countries related the de-globalization trend? and What are the implications of this trend for the future of the Global South? For these and other questions, data science has something to say.
    
    Author: Osmar Cervantes González (Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, UNAM)
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  05 Panel / Rituals in International Relations Exec 6, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group
  
  Conveners: Maria Mälksoo (University of Copenhagen) , Chiara Ruffa
  
  Chair: Maria Mälksoo (University of Copenhagen)
  - Why Handshake Matters? Questioning the Visible and the Invisible in Diplomatic Encounters
    
    Existing theoretical discourses posit that handshake is either a performance gesture or just an act of impersonation. But this mistakes exceptions for a rule. True, some handshakes, especially iconic handshakes, are highly choreographed (i.e., Arafat-Rabin, Castro-Obama, Gorbachev-Reagan). However, most diplomatic handshakes occur in a one-on-one setting, with little if any public to witness the interaction. This paper argues that the aesthetic aspects of handshake are neither the only nor always salient motivations in an actor's handshake gesture. Rather, handshake is a basic anthropological feature, which foregrounds significant characteristics of diplomatic encounters: It is an evaluative modality (assessing others); it conveys a self-referential meaning (that is, actor present themselves); it facilitates coordination between actors with different interests (negotiation of content’s interactions); and it expresses respect and etiquette. By emphasizing these characteristics, it is possible to better understand the competing circumstances, obligations and motivations that affect the negotiation of comfortable distance in diplomatic encounters.
    
    Author: Thierry Balzacq (Sciences Po)
  - The Logic of Ritual Action: Enchanting International Relations
    
    International politics abounds with rituals, ranging from diplomatic handshakes and public apologies, carefully orchestrated state visits with their accompanying flag-raising and troop inspection ceremonies to military parades and international summits. But the rationale for ritual action has not been systematically expounded in international theory. This article argues that ritual action is an underappreciated, yet politically consequential genre of action in international relations. Building on Catherine Bell and Erving Goffman, I conceptualize ritual action in relation to the existing rational and constructivist theories of social action as applied in International Relations (IR). This paper probes the rationality, functionality and performativity of ritualized conduct vis-à-vis the logics of consequences, appropriateness, practice/practicality, and habit in international relations. By its promise to create enchantment effects, ritual action seeks to navigate uncertainty and mediate ambiguity in international relations. It defies the rational/non-rational divide in IR, bringing together the strategic and symbolic, intuitive, and reflective. Bridging the individual bodies and social context, ceremonial and everyday, ritual conduct alerts us to the co-presence and mixed political effects of enacting potentially contradictory social logics of action simultaneously. Deterrence and intra-alliance politics of assurance provide an example of ritual action in international security politics.
    
    Author: Maria Mälksoo (University of Copenhagen)
  - Anatomy of a ritual. The Tripartite Meetings (TPMs) in the United Nations mission in Lebanon
    
    How do peacekeepers persuade two national militaries at war with each other to negotiate? The Tripartite Meetings are a unique invention of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) not seen elsewhere in peacekeeping. They are managed by UNIFIL and take place on the Blue Line, the line of withdrawal that separates Lebanon and Israel, two states that remain technically at war. Established by UNIFIL at the end of the Israel-Hizballah War of 2006, the Tripartite Meetings have occurred between representatives from the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) on a regular basis ever since. The meetings discuss security incidents on the Blue Line with the aim of preventing escalation and extended military confrontations. Despite increased security challenges, the meetings have continued with no walk-outs or suspensions, and they have been recognized by successive UN Secretary Generals as comprising a critical contribution to local peace. We argue that the Tripartite meetings constitute a ritual that is important to all parties both to stabilize and to capture potential breaches to stability. Taking an interpretive approach in this article we analyse the micro-processes involved in the Tripartite Meetings to explain the how a ritual functions. We want to understand how a ritual is constituted, the effect it has on participants engaged in conflict, how it facilitates or hinders the negotiation of difficult topics; how it works as a reassurance mechanism when dealing with complex security challenges; and if it serves as a precursor to a broader political peace.
    
    Authors: Vanessa Newby (Leiden University) , Chiara Ruffa
  - Martial rituals: the temporal politics of military life
    
    From training to deployment, soldiers are subjected to rigidly timetabled forms of communal living that seek to bind them into functional and cohesive collective subjects apt for fighting. Military drills, for instance, exercise synchronisation, pushing individual soldiers to act as one with their teammates and to develop quasi-symbiotic relationships with their weapons. Drills, alongside sanitary, dietary, and sleeping imposed routines are some of the contemporary military rituals that seem to be central to military life, and yet stay partially marginalised in extant accounts of war. Indeed, while scholars of of militarism, militarisation, and martial politics have started to grapple with these phenomena, their ritualistic, and especially temporal dimensions remain understudied – the burgeoning literature on time and temporality in IR notwithstanding. This paper addresses this neglect by offering some initial thoughts on the temporal politics of martial ritualistic actions. It mobilises the example of basic training in the UK army to show that underlying drills and other martial rituals are institutionally led effort to mould soldiers’ sense of time. The paper argues for the importance of taking rituals and routines seriously in the study of war and other security practices, and sketches the contours of a time-centered sociological framework to do so.
    
    Author: Mirko Palestrino (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Ritualised Coordination in the PLA Rocket Force: Nuclear Deterrence, Control and Sacrifice
    
    China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) faces the challenge of communicating its resolve to both foreign adversaries and domestic elites and publics. In response, the PLARF uses repeated portrayals of ritualised coordination. While self-narrating its own deterrence practices, PLARF photographers and videographers focus on groups of soldiers, drilled to perfection in undertaking coordinated and highly technical activities. Men in uniform are repeatedly shown to have mastery of their machinery, reinforcing deterrence themes of resolve, control and cohesion. Additionally, these sources include portrayals of ceremonies where soldiers pledge fealty to the Communist Party, often promising to die in its name. In all of these cases, the coordination of movement is taken to its zenith, elevating them beyond a strictly instrumentalist military training-logic to a choreographed performance. By doing so, the PLARF attempts to communicate that they will always obey their Party leaders, that they are fully in control of their weapons, and that they will sacrifice themselves to achieve their mission. In ritualising deterrence, the PLARF draws on the power of ritual to make the otherwise highly abstract (and perhaps incredible) ideas of controlling the Bomb, or retaliating despite grievous casualties, feel “real” in an emotional-political sense.
    
    Author: Cameron Paul Hunter (University of Copenhagen)
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  05 Panel / Securitisation of Migration and Asylum in Europe: Perceptions, Representation and Management Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Convener: IPMRD Working group
  
  Chair: Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University)
  - The Visuals of Death: Researching the Greek Migratory Landscape
    
    Greece is a significant part of the Eastern Mediterranean migratory route and has been at the forefront of the refugee crisis for years. Yet one aspect that is not fully explored in migratory research within the International Relations (IR) framework is the liminality of life and death: that transitional moment that takes place before, during and right after a person on the move crosses a border. Researching those liminal spaces of life, and more particularly death can prove a challenging task for any researcher.
    
    This paper looks at the way research takes place at the ‘deathscape’ of the island of Lesbos in Greece. Not only does it discuss the way documentary photography can contribute to the wider field of IR, but also what IR’s approaches to the border could learn from the visual research of death. The way this is achieved is by walking the reader through the refugee cemetery of Lesbos; a rough piece of land where people on the move perished in the Aegean Sea end up.
    
    Author: Marianna Karakoulaki (University of Birmingham)
  - Securitising Migration: A Visual Analysis of Migrant Representation in Portuguese Media
    
    This research critically examines the portrayal of migrants in key Portuguese media outlets—Observador, Correio da Manhã, Jornal de Notícias, and Público—during the period following the approval of the EU Migration Pact in September 2020. Employing the securitisation of migration theory and framing analysis, this study specifically focuses on the visual narratives constructed through photos and cartoons. Against the backdrop of global challenges and heightened migratory patterns, the securitisation lens offers a nuanced perspective on how these media outlets frame migration issues. The study aims to identify recurrent visual frames and thematic patterns to understand the role of securitisation discourse in shaping public perceptions. The selected timeframe gains particular importance, given the possible policy shifts catalysed by the EU Migration Pact, warranting an in-depth analysis of the subsequent year for potential media impacts. By scrutinising the visual representation of migrants in the most widely read online platforms in Portugal, this research sheds light on the socio-cultural dynamics and potential biases within media portrayals. The overarching objective is to comprehensively understand how securitisation discourse, embedded in visual framing, influences public opinion and policy discourse on migration. Finally, this study underscores the power of securitisation theory in shaping the narratives surrounding migration, emphasizing the need to critically assess media representations for a more informed and inclusive societal discourse.
    
    Authors: Marcos Rubén Bordalo Ferreira (Universidade de Coimbra - FEUC/CES)* , Luiza de Almeida Bezerra
  - State-private company hybrid regimes in migration control
    
    This paper will examine the proliferation of the private visa application company as a novel form of state-private hybrid mechanism of bordering and migration control. It will assess the operations and evolution of the first such company VFS Global in the 22 years since its inception, and the challenges to studying the implications of this privatisation in migration control. New companies have since joined this growing and novel industry – TLS Contact, ArkeBLS, etc. These hybrid visa regimes work on the three-way model involving the migrant, the visa application company and the state consulate/embassy. The clients for these companies are the states who contract out visa application functions to them, but the migrants pay the additional service charge as a result of his hybrid form of visa application processing. The empirical focus of this paper will be the operations of this hybrid regime in migration control between India and the UK. The research is based on analysis of contracts, interviews and some archival documents. This paper is part of a research project that asks how these hybrid regimes affect the migrants’ access to international space and what these regimes mean for citizenship, sovereignty and security.
    
    Author: Samah Rafiq (King's College London)
  - The (racial) spectre of the ‘migrant boat’ in the Western imagination: a comparison of Australian and British ‘stop the boats’ discourse and policy
    
    In response to the ongoing crossings of the English Channel by migrants and refugees in small boats and dinghies, the UK government introduced its ‘Stop the Boats’ initiative in March 2023. This call to ‘stop the boats’ has henceforth been adopted as a new refrain in British government and media discourses on the so-called ‘Channel migrant crisis’. Notably, the UK government has drawn inspiration from Australian legislation and narratives relating to the policing of small boat arrivals in the preceding decade which also centred around the slogan ‘stop the boats’.
    This paper conducts a comparative examination of the UK and Australian discourses and policing measures in the context of their respective ‘stop the boats’ campaigns. This discussion will allow for an in-depth analysis of the racialised production of the ‘migrant boat’ as a perceived threat warranting stringent and violent policing. In doing so, the paper responds to a gap in the literature on the abstract and purportedly ‘menacing’ figure of the migrant boat in current debates around border and migration security.
    
    Authors: Silvester Schlebrügge (University of Warwick) , Tarsis Brito (London School of Economics)
  - The New Border Regime in the EU: Technologies, Securitisation of Migration and Ethics
    
    There is an apparent increase in employing new techniques for migration management. We have been witnessing a continuous movement of populations because of social, political, economic instability, conflicts and climatic changes. Increased migration flows towards the EU countries over the last decade, have triggered a new migration management agenda defined by technological innovations, like for example usage of biometrics, big data predictions regarding population movements, and artificial intelligence lie detectors.
    Within this context, the growing employment of biometrics and the increasing role of data in managing populations raise ethical, legal and efficacy considerations, which become more salient once combined the with the economic dimension of biometry and datafication, namely the rising profits in this market and the neoliberal logic underpinning border management.
    States and police authorities transfer security duties to private companies, without a public dialogue taking place. States rely on private corporations for the identification, deterrence and management of migrants and refugees.
    In the effort to map the constantly altering border regime defined by technological innovations, the paper seeks firstly, to explore the ramifications to human rights and secondly, to investigate how the technologisation of borders reconfigures the actors’ positions, decisions and actions and how it changes their relations.
    
    Author: Foteini Kalantzi (University of Oxford)
- 42
  05 Panel / The Big Picture as an approach to the study of International Relations: Thinking with and beyond Barry Buzan Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  Sponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working Group
  
  Convener: Rita Floyd (University of Birmingham)
  
  Chair: Laust Schouenborg (Roskilde University)
  - The role and structure of theory in big picture theorizing
    
    An analysis like that by Buzan aspires to deliver the ‘big picture’ covering all of human history (and a bit more, i.e., into the future) and across all relevant sectors: economic, military, environmental, political and societal. However, while the ‘target’ which BPT is meant to cover is large, this does not in itself tell us concepts it consists of and how they are organized and thus what kind of inner mechanisms make it tick. This chapter is meant to be relevant to the larger field of grand, structured history, not only Buzan’s version of it. However, it is built around an analysis of Buzan’s works in order to address principled questions of how such analysis can or cannot be made.
    The analysis operates at two levels: the nature of BPT and the content of it. The first is about the way BPT works in the texts to organize the story, the second is about the specific concepts. First, what is the conception of theory in Buzan’s work and why does this matter? Would the big picture operate differently, if its theory part was of a different kind? Several other discussions of Buzan’s analyses (including in this volume) are critical of BPT; I have questions to the ‘theory’ part. Even if it is ‘big picture’, it is not only a ‘picture’: it is big picture analysis, which is enabled by a theory. The theory here is clearly not of the dominant mainstream American type where causal laws enable testable hypotheses. Nor is it theory in the political theory sense. Is it ‘a picture mentally formed’ a la Waltz? No, because it does not have the simplicity and inner, circular structure. Is it more a network of concepts, hierarchically organized that allows a mapping of issues and thus corresponding to the mind mapping© technique used by Buzan? If so, what is the strengths and weaknesses of this kind of theory, and consequently BPT?
    Second, regarding the content of the theory in BPT, most of the key concepts come from Waltzian neo-realism and the English School, mixed up with standard terminology from macro history. The article summarises how Buzan’s work has evolved through its encounters with Waltzian neo- realism (notably in Logic of Anarchy) and the English School, but the main point is not evolutionary: the task is to understand what key concepts and building blocks from other approaches are doing what work in BPT in the current, mature version.
    
    Author: Ole Waever (University of Copenhagem)
  - ‘Doing’ the big picture: regions and powers in global international society
    
    This chapter addresses the challenge of how to ‘do’ big picture research and theorizing about a contemporary international society characterized by “deep pluralism”, as Buzan argues. In so doing, it engages with the remarkable strand of Buzan’s work that has trained the spotlight on regions in international relations (most explicitly in Buzan and Waever 2003; Buzan and Gonzalez- Palaez 2009; Acharya and Buzan 2010 and 2019; Buzan and Zhang 2014; Buzan and Schouenborg 2018; Buzan and Goh 2020 – but in some way or other in the majority of his work).
    The chapter first identifies and describes two central problems that arise for scholars wishing to take seriously Buzan’s injunction to perform historically-grounded, area studies-conversant, socially-focused IR research. First, how to theorize the ways in which contingent regional international societies interact with an evolving imagined international society? Second, how to access analytically the dualistic contemporary international society, which is neither sliding into a seamless globality nor clearly fragmenting into regions? It then explores two entry-points into pursuing meaningful ‘big picture’ research on regions within this context. The first entry-point is to build out the ‘social’ foundations of regions, introduced but not developed by Buzan. The second entry point is Buzan’s existing collaborative work of how regions relate to other regions and thereby shape global order (highlighted in the conclusion of Buzan and Acharya 2019). This section suggests a framework for connecting the quality and density of relationality among core world regions to evolutions in global order.
    
    Author: Evelyn Goh (ANU)
  - ‘Big Picture Ethics? The challenge of normative theory’
    
    This chapter engages with big picture normative theorizing about and within international society. The English school has always seen the normative aspect of international society as important to its distinctive position within theories of international relations, and international society, as the school’s ‘signature concept’ is no exception. The pluralist-solidarist debate has played the most important role in attempts to capture the big picture of international society’s normative characterization. In some instances, especially amongst pluralists, that has been linked to an underpinning empirical assessment of the extent to which a single ‘civilisation’, to borrow Martin Wight’s term, exists that provides underpinning commonalities to international society’s members that give substantive meaning to the ‘common good’ granting an international society its specific normative character. Others, mainly solidarists, have been more willing to argue for the need for international society’s members to create such commonalities based on universal truths, indebted to philosophical reflection. Buzan’s English school theorizing brackets out normative theorizing, with his position typically being that it requires a different skill-set from the social structural and explanatory focus he emphasises. This chapter looks at the costs of this pragmatic argument for functional specialisation in English school theorizing of international society, and aims to offer a counterpoint to Buzan’s normative agnosticism by arguing that the normative big picture of
    international society, and of English school analysis of international society, is inescapable. Engaging Buzan’s arguments for historical contingency, his deployment of world history, and his account of social structure, the chapter draws out the inherent normativity of historical and social structural choices, and how the narrative Buzan creates of international society’s mixture of stasis, change and transition further reveals the normative strengths and limitations of English school theory.
    
    Author: John Williams (University of Durham)
  - Big picture theorizing on the evolution of international society and institutional change
    
    “International society,” understood not simply as an arena for where state actors interact but rather as an historical subject in its own right, has, despite its recent rediscovery, a long pedigree, back to Heeren and Ranke, the last of the German Statistikers. It was one that comprised actors and institutions of numerous types; it paid some attention to historical development and invited historical comparison. It was buried by the enthusiasm for national histories in the 19th century, subsumed into ‘international history’ in the early 20th, and made a sudden and rather dramatic return in the context of the British Committee, where two step changes of great significance occurred. One was to include in international society large scale political formations that were not states as both context and subjects of historical change, presaged in Wight’s 1977 International Systems and presented as an historical sequence in Adam Watson’s The Evolution of International Society. The second was to focus on institutions as the markers of change and as the effective structures of international society, presaged by Holsti in Taming the Sovereigns and argued by default in Buzan’s From International to World Society in 2004. This chapter reviews the argument and tracks its development in recent literature.
    
    Author: Cornelia Narvari
  - Mapping the Globe: The Ambivalence of Regional Security Complex Theory
    
    Regional Security Complexes are a concept that illustrates Buzan’s big picture theorizing par excellence. It rests on a simple idea (the predominance of regional, rather than global security interactions), it allows a global view (the mapping of regional security complexes across the globe), it combines such a bird’s eye view with minute detail (the interactions between different security actors), and it allows some middle-range hypotheses (for instance, about the likely behavior of buffer states). Especially in its Regions and Powers version, it also exhibits Buzan’s typical approach of combining traditional theoretical arguments (the systemic relevance of regions) with more critical and constructivist work (securitization theory). In the context of the post-Cold War world, characterised by a renewed wave of regionalism, and with many security theorists eagerly awaiting a successor to Security: A New Framework for Analysis, RSCT became quite popular, and allowed analysts to make sense of cases such as Turkey in a broader security context. Yet the parsimony of the argument came at a price. On the one hand, the impossibility to actually chart security interactions meant that Buzan and Wæver had to give up on one of the core pillars of securitisation analysis, lending weight to those critics who had accused them of privileging states as security actors. On the other hand, the quasi-structuralist inclinations of RSCT (and bird’s eye views in general) underestimated the agency of buffer states such as Turkey. This contribution traces the development of RSCT and explores its ambivalence in analytical and normative terms. It links RSCT to the other pillars of Buzan’s work and argues that RSCT is indicative of Buzan’s contribution to the wider discipline, yet also of some of the limits of his oeuvre.
    
    Authors: R. Emre Midilli (University of Tuebingen)* , Thomas Diez (University of Tuebingen)
- 43
  05 Panel / The politics of actually existing climate leadership Exec 9, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Environment Working Group
  
  Convener: Stanley Wilshire (University of Manchester)
  
  Chair: Matthew Paterson (University of Manchester)
  
  Discussant: Matthew Paterson (University of Manchester)
  - Real talk or empty words? On the limits of Denmark’s global climate leadership ambitions
    
    Denmark’s climate policies centre around developing its position as a global climate leader. The 2020 Climate Law explicitly prioritises Denmark’s role as a first-mover country ahead of cost-effectiveness, protecting the welfare state, and avoiding carbon leakage: “Climate challenges are a global problem. Therefore, Denmark should be a first-moving country in the international climate effort, which can inspire and influence the rest of the world”. Concretely, this leadership has come through co-founding the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA), seeking to influence other countries.
    
    However, I offer a more critical assessment of Denmark’s global climate leadership ambitions. Revieing extant scholarship and analysing key texts (pieces of legislation, government reports, government policy documents, and press statements), I argue that Danish global climate leadership ambitions lack transformative dimensions that could provide meaningful global leadership. I evaluate key components of Danish climate policy and their global effects, including continued commitment to fossil fuel production, lack of supply-side policies, historic contribution to emissions, prioritising of climate consulting over technology transfer, omission of vast shipping emissions, and offshoring of production emissions. These question Denmark’s leadership role. I conclude by setting out what genuinely transformative global climate leadership could look like for Denmark and similar countries.
    
    Author: Lukas Slothuus (University of Sussex)
  - Indonesian Nickel Sovereignty and Global Raced Finance: The Meanings of Element 28 in an Age of Transition
    
    In the rush to electrify vehicle markets in the context of climate breakdown, so-called critical minerals are being invested with new meanings, political significance, and economic value. Element 28 (nickel) was once dirty, cheap, and common, but now it’s clean, green, and ‘hotter than gold’, according to the investment press. Nickel therefore finds itself at the centre of struggles over value and meaning which relate closely to struggles over the notably stubborn racial hierarchies of the global capitalist system. Nickel, I argue here, might be the perfect national commodity, serving Indonesia’s long-time quest to break with the law of worldwide value by capturing downstream value-added processing and production. The entanglements of extractive US and Chinese finance in Indonesian commodity production, however, complicate the pursuit of nickel sovereignty. At the same time, the notable contradictions of mineral sovereignty and green transition are evident in the socioecological effects on nickel extraction and processing frontiers, where various forms of expropriation, contamination, pollution, and exploitation invest nickel with distinct meanings for those communities affected. This article works through the changing meanings of Element 28 in relation to the hierarchies of raced finance, political projects of value, and the socioecological contradictions manifest along contemporary nickel frontiers.
    
    Author: Lisa Tilley (SOAS)
  - Situating labour in the green transition: the case of Danish slaughterhouse workers
    
    This paper examines the actual state of climate action and climate leadership in Denmark by studying how the green transition is negotiated, contested, and implemented in the pig meat sector. This industry represents a case of historical, cultural, and political-economic contestation over the implementation of radical green transformations within a sector that compromises the potential for climate action. The guiding question for the paper is whether and how organised labour positions itself as an advocate for climate action when its means of existence depends upon working in an emissions-intensive and unsustainable sector. In the Nordic context, the history of the cross-class alliance between organised labour and employers’ associations within the agricultural sector has shaped the way trade unions manoeuvre in conflicts. But there are indications that the climate crisis may represent a new wedge in the labour-capital relation, pushing trade unions to take on new strategies and to form new alliances. This paper thus looks at what radical climate leadership looks like within a sector trying to maintain a license to produce and examines whether its labour base is willing to challenge the current course of action.
    
    Author: Marie Andersen (Roskilde University)
  - Climate leadership for whom? Towards a critical political economy of British climate governance
    
    Between 1990 and 2021 the UK had the fastest rate of emissions reductions in the G7. Scholars have identified the UK’s 2008 Climate Change Act, and the relative weakness of British fossil fuel interests, as fundamental to this relative success. Drawing on critical political economy and political theory, in this paper I ask instead how the links between the British political economy, climate change politics and the development of its climate governance institutions have shaped the nature and adequacy of its response to climate change. By reinterpreting the political effort to establish the Climate Change Act between 2005-2008, and the first phase of its operation between 2008-2019, I argue that the Climate Change Act should be understood as part of the neoliberal project to insulate capitalism from democracy. The Act worked to depoliticise an emissions pathway that prioritised protecting the returns of various fossil fuel interests over addressing climate breakdown. However, since 2019 the interaction between the pressures of the UK’s 2050 net zero target, the rightward drift of the Conservative party, and the rise of the UK climate movement have plunged this system of climate governance into crisis.
    
    Author: Stanley Wilshire (University of Manchester)
  - ‘Uncovering new frontiers’: A political geography and geology of expanding mineral exploration in so-called Australia
    
    Drawing on fieldwork at two mining investment conferences and with a mineral exploration programme in so-called Australia, this paper examines the drive to ‘open up’ the 80 percent of the continent that is currently ‘unexplored’ for mineral resources. This paper firstly shows that the areas targeted for exploration hold a high proportion of Indigenous-titled lands. Building on Altman and Markham’s (2015) observation that these lands have become available for Indigenous reclamation in part because of their historic low market value, due e.g. to their lack of mineral deposits (or water), this paper argues that mineral deposits have not previously been discovered in these areas largely because they are sedimentary basins, where the crystalline rocks more likely to contain mineral ores are hidden beneath the surface. It further shows how geological surveys and industry are developing drilling technologies and geological knowledge to enable the discovery of buried mineral deposits in precisely those (often Indigenous-titled) regions/sedimentary basins formerly considered of low commercial value. These new geographies of mineral exploration represent a shift in the commercial value of Indigenous-titled lands, with implications for Indigenous consultation and self-determination over extractive projects, as well as debates around a just energy transition (as expanded mineral exploration is being justified by the need for critical minerals for renewable technologies). This paper thus makes a contribution to the growing literature on colonial capitalist land relations and the ‘green’ transition.
    
    Author: Iona Summerson (SOAS, University of London)
- 44
  05 Panel / Whose security? The UK’s security strategies and narratives Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: European Security Working Group
  
  Conveners: Thomas Martin (Open University) , Larry Attree (Rethinking Security) , Elisabeth Schweiger (University of Stirling)
  
  Chair: Elisabeth Schweiger (University of Stirling)
  
  Discussant: Larry Attree (Rethinking Security)
  - Ecofeminism, Eco-collapse, and the UK’s security strategy
    
    How should UK policymakers conceptualise and operationalise ‘security’? There is some evidence in recent iterations of the UK Government’s security strategy that UK policymakers are broadening and widening their understanding of security. There is even evidence of some of the insights of feminist security scholarship infiltrating policymakers’ thinking. But what kind of feminism makes it into UK Government policy? And to what effect? This paper takes as its starting point the fact that we are in a particular historical moment of intensifying ecological crises, and that the need for governments to radically transform their approach to security in line with the insights of ecofeminists could not be more urgent. It explores the extent to which the UK Government has grasped the nature of this requirement, in policy and practice, and the implications of its approach for the realization of security for people and planet.
    
    Author: Claire Duncanson (University of Edinburgh)
  - Pluriversal Sovereignty in the UK: Intergovernmental Silence and the Integrated Defence Review
    
    The UK is often seen in both academic and policy circles as a traditional unitary sovereign state (uni-sovereign). This uni-sovereign notion is reaffirmed throughout the Integrated Review 2021 and the 2023 Integrated Review Refresh. However, whilst security and defence remain reserved policies of the UK government, devolved nations hold significant policy competencies related to traditional and non-traditional security. For instance, devolved responses to the 2020 COVID pandemic and Scotland acting as a private sponsor for Ukrainian refugees evidence the key role that devolved executives play in UK security. Moreover, while Northern Ireland is consistently securitised, the integrated review does not even recognise the Stormont Government as a security actor in Northern Ireland. Addressing this gap, this article will compare the policy prescriptions of the Integrated Review 2021 and the 2023 Integrated Review Refresh to the policies of devolved nations to highlight how devolved nations function as security actors. Using the concept of post-colonial pluri-versal sovereignty, I aim to reintegrate devolved nations as key security partners to argue that intergovernmental relations are crucial in strengthening security and defence and building resilience at home and overseas. In doing so, I will challenge traditional colonial and supremacist notions of uni-sovereignty, unchallenged within UK Government.
    
    Author: Alexander Bendix (University of Edinburgh)
  - War by Biodegradable Means? Challenging the Militarisation of Ecological Crises in UK National Security Policy
    
    In this paper I will interrogate the emergence of green militarism in UK national security policy (2021 and onwards) and its implications for alternative security narratives and practices rooted in eco-social justice over state-centric national, military, market and energy security frames. I develop the concept of green militarism to capture the launch of strategic environmental sustainability agendas by the British military sector (including the MOD, armed forces, military industry and think tanks) and the narrative and practical pushes toward positioning the sector as a driver of climate action and a frontrunner in the green transition. To capture green militarism from ‘above’ and ‘below’ I will triangulate critical policy analysis, in-depth interviews (with actors belonging to and organising against the UK military sector) and autoethnography from my own participation in organising against militarism and extractivism and for eco-social justice in the UK and globally. I aim to 1) push back against the emerging myths around "environmentally sustainable war" and military action as compatible with ecological care, and 2) foreground the need for supporting non-military understandings of, responses to and solutions for social and ecological crises as the only viable security frameworks in an age of global war and ecological collapse.
    
    Author: Nico Edwards (University of Sussex)
  - National security and Public Opinion: Challenges and Opportunities
    
    The UK confronts a shifting security landscape, evident through the 2021 Integrated Review and its 2023 update. These highlight a desire for fresh security perspectives amid unparalleled global challenges. Yet rather than engage with the views of British publics, elite, expert policy networks have been privileged in their development. Where public opinion is used, it is through opinion polling. Yet opinion polling on national security is problematic. Such polling tends to frame ‘national security’ in quite traditional ways – focusing on the security of the state, and the use of military force, and arguably reproduces existing policy narratives on national security, as opposed to opening space to contest them. How then can we integrate public opinion into national security debates in a way that is robust and representative?
    
    This paper endeavours to rethink how public opinion can be mobilised within national security policymaking. First, by reflecting on the current limits of public engagement, and assessing whose voices are not heard in this policy space, and second, through developing methodological approaches that 1) foreground mixed-methods approaches and qualitative methods into and alongside opinion polling development; 2) formulating open-ended questions that avoid preconceived policy biases; and 3) actively seeking the participation, and over-sampling of, marginalised communities whose security experiences and expressions may diverge from the broader UK population.
    
    Author: Thomas Martin (Open University)
- 45
  
  05 Roundtable / “War on Terror” 2.0.? Critique, contestation and human rights Exec 5, ICC
  
  This roundtable discusses the prospects for critique, contestation and human rights in a potential new era of counterterrorism. Although some have declared the “War on Terror” to be over, its legacy is still felt at Guantanamo Bay, the indefinite detention camps in NE Syria, and in programmes such as the UK’s Prevent Strategy. In addition, the Israel-Gaza conflict and other events might even be heralding a “War on Terror 2.0.” What are the prospects for critiquing and contesting state violence and counterterrorism in the current context? Have states learned lessons from the abuses of the post 9/11 era? Can state violence be constrained and what does 20 years of research on the role of human rights in the ‘War on Terror’ tell us in response to this question? Participants will reflect on how "terrorism" has been (and is being) constructed; the rhetoric that is used to justify – and to contest – state violence; the normalisation of surveillance; the delegitimisation of dialogue; and the extent to which human rights norms and international legal commitments and institutions can constrain state violence or hold political actors to account. The roundtable thus brings expertise on Critical Terrorism Studies into conversation with research on human rights.
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Chair: Frank Foley (King's College London)
  
  Participants: Andrea Birdsall (University of Edinburgh) , Harmonie Toros (University of Kent) , Frank Foley (King's College London) , Amna Kaleem (University of Sheffield) , Lee Jarvis
- 46
  
  05 / International Law and Politics Working Group business meeting Drawing Room, Hyatt
- 12:15
  
  Lunch - SPONSORED BY REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY (RIPE) Symphony Hall
  
  Symphony Hall
- 47
  
  05 Conference event / Lunchtime history talk from the War Studies Working Group - Birmingham: The War Years. Speakers: Brian Wright and Matt Felkin Justham, Symphony Hall
- 48
  
  05 / Film screening of 'Youse are so brave' by Dr Hannah West with Q&A Jane How, Symphony Hall
- 49
  
  05 Roundtable / Adapting to a post-Brexit international relations: Identity, Status and Role in UK Foreign Policy Sonata, Hyatt
  
  Brexit—the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union—is at the same time historic, controversial and of enduring significance. That description applies to both the UK’s domestic politics and (the focus here) its external relations. This roundtable introduces the forthcoming special issue of the journal International Politics ‘Adapting to Brexit: Identity, Status and Role in UK Foreign Policy’. It suggests that Brexit has had a dual character–being a source of both anxiety and opportunity for the UK—and, in consequence, can be usefully analysed through the concept of role adaptation. A focus on national ‘roles’ is a well-established way to think about what drives foreign policy. But role only makes sense when linked to the parallel concepts of status and identity. Insofar as Brexit has challenged (or, for some, has boosted), the status and identity of the UK, then so role adaptation becomes necessary. The roundtable explores all three concepts—role, identity and status—placing them at the service of an analysis of Brexit’s effects on British foreign policy through different cases introduced by each of the roundtable participants encompassing diplomacy, security and other international policies.
  
  Sponsor: European Security Working Group
  
  Chair: Mark Webber (University of Birmingham)
  
  Participants: Amelia Hadfield (University of Surrey) , Richard Whitman (University of Kent) , Megan Dee (University of Stirling) , Ben Kienzle , Charlotte Burns (University of Sheffield)
- 50
  05 Panel / Beyond the Giddensian subject in Ontological Security Studies: Rethinking the psychic life of world politics Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: Bruno Sowden-Carvalho (University of Birmingham)
  
  Chair: Ali Bilgic (Loughborough University)
  - Between Klein and Lacan: Towards a psychoanalytical reading of OSS
    
    This paper theoretically explores the convergences and divergences in Klein and Lacan’s concepts of anxiety, phantasy/fantasy, and desire and their added value to the field of Ontological Security Studies (OSS). Despite an emerging scholarship inspired by their psychoanalytical work, Lacan and Klein are usually approached in isolation. While Lacanians posit that fantasy represents a fleeting, yet perpetual quest for an unattainable sense of ontological security, Kleinian interpretations locate ontological (in)security within the interplay of paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, informed by unconscious phantasies. Interestingly, despite their theoretical divergences, Klein and Lacan align on a decentred understanding of the subject, whereby anxiety split their existence. In this piece we synthesise their contribution to OSS, critically engaging with the literature, and interrogating whether it is possible to propose a psychoanalytical framework for OSS, whereby subjectivity is understood as a decentred construct.
    
    Authors: Bruno Sowden-Carvalho (University of Birmingham) , Anne-Marie Houde (University of Oxford)
  - Understanding Far-Right Leaders’ Appeal: ‘Symbiotic Enjoyment’ and the Affective Articulation of National Collective Fantasies
    
    This paper argues that, in the context of the current global dislocation of the post-WWII liberal project, the inter-subjective constitution of political support to far-right leaders can be understood as the outcome of a temporary symbiosis between emotionally unsettled societal actors and political leaders, which have both embraced fantasy narratives about the nation as shared objects of desire, leading to the normalisation of far-right policies, discourses and set of practices. At times of unsettling ontological insecurities, narratives about the nation may coalesce to form a unified and exclusionary autobiographical account of nationhood through the psychic mechanism I conceptualise as ‘symbiotic enjoyment’. The notion relates to processes whereby social groups’ emotional needs become intertwined with national symbols, while the image of the leader and the nation-state are also blended. Both the leader and the followers attribute their feelings of ontological insecurity to common obstacles, the ‘enemies of the nation’, and share in their enjoyment. I focus on the examples of Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil, and Narendra Modi, in India, to empirically substantiate the claim that the psychic mechanism of symbiotic enjoyment, deriving from amalgamated fantasies of national belonging, provides a compelling logic to understand the appeal of far-right political projects.
    
    Author: Marco Vieira (University of Birmingham)
  - Blue Pills, Red Pills, Black Pills, White Pills: Online Fantasies of Subjectivity and Ontological Security
    
    The subject, and subjectivity, come ready-made in international studies and ontological security theory. However, this paper suggests that when concepts of fantasy and desire permeate our understandings of ontological security, then we cannot assume the primacy of a pre-discursive subject. Giddensian-inspired OSS has looked to the practices subjects undertake in order to move towards positions of ontological security, and assumes that the subject has a prior desire for ontological security. This paper interrogates subject-centred approaches to ontological security by challenging the presupposition of the subject. Therefore, the question is not ‘what drives subjects to seek ontological security and what practises follow from this?’, but rather ‘what does subjectivity do for ontological security?’ Utilising a framework informed by Lacanian International Relations, this paper argues that the subject and subjectivities are fantastical constructions that offer promises of ontological security, without pre-existence of the subject itself. Therefore, this paper offers an analysis of the production of specific subjectivities and their relation to ontological security speaking practices. This paper focusses on the roles that ‘pills’, perceived revelatory moments that showcase the truth about society, have in producing specific far-right subjectivities. Understanding subjectivity as a fantasy facilitates a starting point for ontological security beyond the subject, that nonetheless appreciates the psychological provisions of the concept of subjectivity.
    
    Author: Charlie Price (University of Warwick)
  - Audio-visual fantasy narratives and the pursuit for a whole subject: TRT World and the production of ‘Türkiye’ through the Syrian conflict.
    
    Lacanian approaches to ontological security have introduced questions of subjectivity and the affective dimensions that drive a subject’s endless ontological security pursuit. However, this emerging scholarship still narrowly focuses on the state and its elites, overlooking the more diffuse psychic forces that produce subjectivity. To address this gap, this paper argues that subject production occurs across multiple political sites, including the media. Broadening the focus from the state to alternative political sites enables the expansion of methodological tools that help to identify subject production and the pursuit for ontological security, incorporating the visual alongside oral and written discourses. By conducting a semiotic analysis of videos published from February 2016 to date, the paper articulates TRT World as a political site producing ‘Türkiye’ through its visual reporting of Türkiye’s geopolitics in Syria. TRT World’s reporting crafts multiple fantasy narratives to communicate ‘Türkiye’s wholeness. However, such narratives undergo significant evolution and ultimately fail as the dynamic Syrian conflict cannot be utilised as a resource to produce a whole ‘Türkiye’.
    
    Author: Jordan Pilcher (Loughborough University)
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  05 Panel / China at the Crossroads: Approaches to regional and domestic bargaining powers Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: ISMMEA Working group
  
  Chair: Mengqi Sun (Durham University)
  - Relations between China and Britain and the Search for A Post-War Settlement, 1942-1949
    
    This is a systematic study of the China-Britain relationship during the 1942–1949 period with a particular focus on the two countries’ discussions over both the 1943 Sino-British treaty and the discarded Sino-British commercial treaty, the future of Hong Kong, and the political status of Tibet. These were dominated by two underlying themes: eliminating the British imperialist position in China and establishing an equal and reciprocal bilateral relationship. The negotiations started promisingly in 1942–1943, but, by 1949, had failed to reach a satisfactory settlement. Behind the failure lay a complex set of domestic considerations and external factors, including the powerful influence of the United States. Even after seven decades, the failure still has a contemporary impact. Recent Sino-British disputes over the Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement and incessant Indo-Chinese conflicts and skirmishes over their unsettled borders all attest to the enduring legacy of the years 1942–1949 as setting the scene for subsequent Sino-British and Sino-Indian relations. From this perspective, the history has never left us.
    
    Author: Zhaodong Wang (Renmin University of China)
  - Collective action because of polarisation? The case of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy 35+ Movement
    
    Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp has been fragmented and polarised since the 2010s (Ma, 2018, pp.245-247). The difference among factions has been set aside temporarily because of the “do not split” culture that emerged in the anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (anti-ELAB) Movement in 2019.
    
    Under the culture and expectation of the supporters, representatives of the pro-democracy factions participated in a series of meetings in early to mid-2020 to deliberate the 35+ Movement, which aimed to take control of the city’s legislature and leverage the power to veto the government’s budget to press both Beijing and Hong Kong authorities to meet the demands of the anti-ELAB Movement, including greater democratisation.
    
    Over 610,000 Hongkongers cast their ballots in the unofficial primary organised by the movement in 2020, and the Hong Kong authorities prosecuted organisers and candidates of the election for breaching the National Security Law half a year later. The complete crackdown on the pro-democracy movement by Beijing did not make activists from different factions seek solidarity among each other. Their negative affection remains, although they still appear to pay lip service to support each other.
    
    Using process tracing, this paper reconstructs the episodes of deliberations through interviews, autoethnography and news reports of the court proceedings. Such reconstruction aims to discover why the primary election, as a collective action of the 35+ Movement, can still be agreed upon by most participants from different, highly polarised factions. Moreover, it discovers the persistence of affective polarisation in the movement even after the crackdown by Beijing.
    
    Author: Michael Mo (University of Leeds)
  - Illicit economy as Bargaining Power: Dynamic Multi-Agent Two-Level Game in China’s Crackdown on Online Scams in Myanmar
    
    In Southeast Asia's expanding digital economy, online scams have emerged as significant socio-political disruptors, especially in Myanmar. This study investigates their role as unconventional tools of bargaining in political negotiations between China and Myanmar. Utilising game theory, the analysis delves into the dynamic multi-agent two-level bargaining interactions across state-to-state, regional-to-central government, and ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) to both levels of government Drawing on a blend of open access data and robust interview data collected from the China-Myanmar borderland between 2022-2023, the research applies a process-based framework. This framework reveals a pivotal shift in bargaining power from state-centric to a complex web involving non-state actors. It identifies four evolutionary stages, detailing how involvement in online scams is strategically manipulated by diverse actors to strengthen their political leverage. This transition highlights the exploitation of online scams in recalibrating power dynamics and negotiating positions, reflecting a broader redefinition of bargaining power in the face of emerging digital threats. The research offers insights into the intersection of digital crime and international relations, accentuating the evolving nature of power in Southeast Asian political negotiations, and embedding domestic political tensions into international interactions.
    
    Authors: Xu Peng (SOAS) , Wan Peng (LSE)
  - China's Green Soft Power Under the BRI: The Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan Case
    
    The Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are a particularly strategic region for China since they constitute a bridge between Asia and Europe. They are particularly important due to their potential in the context of expanding transport and energy corridors (like the New Eurasia Land Bridge, China-Central Asia-West Asia Corridor). Currently, under the BRI umbrella, in addition to these sectors, a new corridor related to environmental diplomacy is being implemented. This research concerns China's green soft power under the BRI umbrella towards two Central Asian countries that are considered soft power receivers - Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. This research was carried out as part of the Environmental Diplomacy as a Soft Power Instrument: China and the Belt and Road Initiative project financed by the Polish National Science Centre (grant number 2020/39/D/HS5/02769). New case studies were distinguished as part of the project - Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan. To analyse this research problem in the context of all receivers, four basic hypotheses were formulated in the project: (i) Environmental diplomacy has become a more potent and consequential instrument of soft power since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro; (ii) China is expanding its soft power toolkit to an unprecedented extent within the BRI. This has given rise to competition between old and new soft powers, (iii) There is discrepancy between China's multilateral and bilateral diplomacy performed under the BRI umbrella; (iv) The perception of China's soft power strategies that employ environmental foreign policies and environmental diplomacy by the stakeholders under the investigation is shaped by the perceived attractiveness of the ease of doing business with China, as well as complex domestic contextual factors. It is in the context of these project hypotheses that I will try to answer the research questions concerning Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan: (i) In what context and conditions does China address environmental risks and opportunities related to the transport and energy infrastructure under the BRI in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan? (ii) How does Chinese environmental diplomacy work as a soft power source in those states? (iii) What mediators (NGOs, think tanks, media, state institutions) are used under the BRI umbrella in the context of green soft power? (iv) What kind of projects and initiatives are implemented there? (v) What is the reception of China and its environmental diplomacy? The following research methods were used to investigate these issues: Desk research – thorough literature of existing Chinese soft power papers and policies generally concerning Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; Content analysis of primary and secondary sources about environmental opportunities and risks linked to energy and transport infrastructure in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan; Field work - IDIs with experts on this matter, soft power mediators and soft power receivers, opinion shapers in those states.
    
    Author: Katarzyna Skiert-Andrzejuk (Collegium Civitas)
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  05 Panel / Communities, Conflict Preparedness and Agency in Unarmed Civilian Protection: Projects from Cameroon, Nigeria, Palestine, and South Sudan Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: Nancy Annan (Coventry University)
  
  Chair: David Curran (Coventry University)
  
  Discussant: Roger Mac Ginty (Durham University)
  - Safety and dignity: Enhancing unarmed civilian protection amongst Palestinians.
    
    In the South Hebron Hills (SHH) of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) there are 32 small Palestinian farmer and Bedouin communities living and working on land from which the Israeli state and settlers seek to expel them. To support the local civil resistance, numerous actors (Palestinian, Israeli and international) have sought to protect the civilian population from the escalating acts of violence by the Israeli state and settlers in which their crops, livestock, dwellings and lives have been targeted.
    This paper seeks to analyse the interventions, motives, and challenges faced by civilian actors to support the local communities in their attempts to create safer spaces within which they can continue to maintain their livelihoods, hold on to their land and way of life. The paper will explore the extent to which ‘divisions of labour’ emerged between the different actors and the symbiotic relationship between the local and the “outsiders”. It examines how the indigenous knowledge, local structures and wisdom of the local communities been utilised in the civilian protection. Finally, the presentation examines how the war on Gaza impacted on this research.
    
    Authors: Mahmoud Soliman (Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University)* , Andrew Rigby* , Marwan Darweish (Center for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University)
  - Unarmed civilian self-protection in Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict
    
    This paper investigates community-led initiatives of unarmed civilian protection (UCP) in the ‘Anglophone conflict’ in Cameroon, now in its sixth year. While much work on UCP has focused on the role of external actors, this research highlights grassroots efforts of civilian self-protection that involve vulnerable civilians’ own agency. The Anglophone conflict in Cameroon is a civil war between state security forces and armed separatist groups fighting for an independent republic of Ambazonia in the Northwest and Southwest regions, the former British Southern Cameroons. The armed separatist groups are based in the rural areas where the military undertakes a counterinsurgency campaign. Rural residents in the conflict zones are hugely affected, with over 200 villages razed, more than 6000 deaths and over one million people displaced since the conflict began. Subjected to violence from both warring parties, though predominantly from the military, civilians have been pro-active and resourceful in devising ways to protect each other, inclusive of coded language, non-verbal communication, direct negotiation, and early warning networks. The role of women’s groups is especially significant. The paper explores such examples and contributes to knowledge about informal and innovative grassroots measures of civilian self-protection.
    
    Authors: Gordon Crawford (Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University) , Nancy Annan (Coventry University)
  - Investigating cultures of self-protection and civilian agency in conflict preparedness in South Sudan
    
    This research engages a semiotic approach to investigate symbols and signs in grassroots early warning messaging, and how these are diffused, amplified and received. The cultures of self-protection here comprise religious, cultural and tribal practices. Many of these are used for early warning and conflict preparedness. Personal connections, culturally bound mechanisms like signs and symbols, and word of mouth play a significant role in sharing knowledge of impending attacks or troop movements. All these communication mechanisms share comparatively high levels of implicit trust, barriers to formal interpretation, require culturally-specific understanding, and remain confined to local levels. They are embedded in complex semiotics and cultural boundaries that are challenging to capture with formal and text-based processes, one reason why local early warning practices have not integrated well into top-down approaches for conflict reduction.
    This project investigates cultures of self-protection in South Sudan, used for Early Warning and conflict preparedness. Early Warning is a fundamental aspect of Civilian Protection in response to threats from conflated types of violence: political, criminal and cattle raiding. South Sudan has suffered enormously from violence and conflict, especially since 2013 when the post-independence civil war started. The overarching research question is how are community signs, symbols and culturally specific communications used for gathering, sharing, and responding to information about impending violence? This project investigates cultures of self-protection of civilians through anthropological explorations of their practices and beliefs with a semiotic approach.
    
    Author: Chas Morrison (Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University)
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  05 Roundtable / Disability and Illness in International Studies: Practising a Feminist Ethic of Care Soprano, Hyatt
  
  The early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in some ways foregrounded issues of illness and disability in international relations and in the academy, raising questions around what we owe to the disabled and clinically vulnerable; equity and coloniality in the distribution of risk and care(giving); how to balance conflicting access needs; the use of the carceral state to enforce public health measures; and the propensity of racial capitalism to disable and kill in the pursuit of profit – including in the neoliberal university. However, the urgency with which these questions gained prominence has been matched by an equally insistent push to get ‘back to normal’. Acts of solidarity with disabled and chronically ill people gave way to the eugenic logic that ‘the vulnerable will fall by the wayside’; accommodations for which disabled people had fought for many years once again became ‘unreasonable’ once lockdowns ended and abled people no longer needed them; and questions of disability and illness are once again marginalised when considering how we research and teach and international studies. This roundtable will explore how disability and illness shape the discipline of International Relations: in the classroom, in our research, in our disciplinary spaces and our wider engagements with global politics. Centring the experiences of disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent scholars, we will ask how we can practice a feminist ethic of care that has disability justice at its heart.
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Hannah Wright (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Participants: Debbie Lisle (Queens University Belfast) , Q Manivannan (University of St Andrews) , Laura McLeod (University of Manchester) , Natalie Jester (University of Gloucestershire)
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  05 Panel / Emerging powers and economies Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: IPEG Working group
  
  Chair: Martin Hearson (Institute of Development Studies)
  - How financialisation undermines democratic cohesion: The case of South Africa
    
    There is an emergent literature on the adverse impact that financialisation has on democratic processes. This paper focuses on the consequences of financialisation for taxation and public finances. We bring together literature on the political economy of tax and state financialisation, arguing that financialisation exacerbates trends in modern capitalism which undermine democratic cohesion by delegitimizing taxation and the social contract. South Africa serves as our illustrative case study. The country is one of the most severely financialised societies amongst its emerging economies peers. In line with broader neoliberal trends, company tax has declined severely as source of tax revenue for the state which increasingly has to rely on personal income tax for revenue generation. But because of financialisation, the labour market has transformed fundamentally over the past 20 years in the country. Most of the jobs are created by the tertiary sector, finance, and government employment, while many manufacturing jobs have been lost. This results in income polarization which means that the bulk of the personal income tax take is raised through taxing finance professionals and government employees. Therefore, there is a growing resentment amongst these groups towards taxation and redistribution, which undermines the social contract and ultimately, democratic cohesion.
    
    Authors: Ewa Karwowski (King's College London)* , Matt Barlow (University of Glasgow)
  - Approaching financialisation with an IPE and CPE lens: the contested politics of financialisation in emerging economies.
    
    Financialisation literature in EMEs has grown drastically since the 2008 crisis and it commonly follows a Western-style trajectory. This assumption of financial convergence has limited the opportunities for the exploration of the distinct varieties of financialisation in EMEs. This neglects to acknowledge that financialisation is contingent on the country's political economy and, therefore, it is not the same across countries. Whose financialisation is it possible to investigate by de-centring Anglo-American approaches? I argue, emerging economies have a different entry point to the world of financialisation that often escapes dominant views of finance. Moving beyond what I call the Systemic Convergence Paradigm of financialisation is necessary to recalibrate the literature. Consequently, this paper proposes a disciplinary move adopting an IPE and CPE lens to consider conceptualisations of politics in finance in EMEs. To explore distinctive forms of financialisation requires to reconcile the local institutional context, macrofinance policy outcomes and policy dynamics of wealth distribution with the political implications of financial models. Mobilising IPE and CPE allows us to incorporate underlying issues of power and inequality in finance and to centre stage EMEs in financialisation research. It seeks new interpretations of the ways in which debates in EMEs can be more critical and cover a broader range of implications about the origins of financialisation that have been underplayed previously.
    
    Author: Jorge Andres Quintero Sanchez (University of Warwick)
  - Great power competition and economic statecraft of emerging powers: Exploring the case of Turkey
    
    The literature on geoeconomics and economic statecraft has mostly explored great powers. However, emerging or regional powers also employ economic tools to increase their regional and global influence —or reduce their exposure to ‘weaponised interdependence’. This paper explores Turkey’s economic statecraft in an age of great power competition and heightened geoeconomic discord. We argue that the Turkish government has utilised economic statecraft to achieve ‘strategic autonomy’ from the West. We investigate Turkey’s economic statecraft in the domains of energy, production/trade, and finance. First, the Turkish government has strived to diversify Turkey’s energy suppliers and make the country a hub for natural gas. Second, it has invested in the indigenous defence industry to reduce its external dependence and boost exports. Third, it has employed tools of defensive financial statecraft to shield itself from global financial fluctuations. Turkey’s economic statecraft, however, is sub-optimal due to the domestic political conundrum. The short-termist political survival motive significantly constrains the Turkish government’s foreign economic agenda. We demonstrate that global geopolitical/geoeconomic imperatives and domestic political conditions together explain the main components and success of the economic statecraft in emerging powers.
    
    Authors: Mustafa Kutlay (City University of London)* , Seçkin Köstem (Bilkent University)
  - The Social Legitimacy of Post-growth and Degrowth: Youth Organsiations in Developing Asia.
    
    One recurring criticism raised against critical international studies scholarship is that it falls short of offering practical and actionable frameworks for change and clear future pathways. This is arguably evident regarding scholarly work dedicated to critiquing neoliberal forms of knowledge flowing from outside the academy, particularly those originating from neoliberal international organsiations and thinktanks working in the field of international development. The argument of this paper is twofold. First, while the above criticism carries some weight, the current critique against neoliberal forms of knowledge is a counter-hegemonic action indispensable for preventing the hegemony of these forms and challenging their legitimacy. Second, combined with the everyday manifestations of multiple global crises, this critique has paved the way for increasing the social legitimacy of alternative visions for development. This is increasingly visible concerning radical ideas such as post-growth and degrowth. This paper presents a survey and an analysis of the penetration of post-growth and de-growth discourses into youth organizations in the global South with a particular focus on developing countries in Asia.
    
    Keywords: critical knowledge, social legitimacy, neoliberalism, post-growth, de-growth, youth organisations, developing countries.
    
    Author: Ali Saqer (ADA University)
  - Escaping the Oil Curse: The Road to Economic Diversification in the GCC
    
    For decades since the oil boom in the 1970s, GCC states have repeatedly attempted to diversify their economies to avoid the impacts of hydrocarbon dependence. Met with repeated failures caused by severe oil fluctuations, lack of political commitment, and the centrality of the welfare state to the social contract and the distribution of wealth in the rentier economic models, economic diversification has witnessed very limited success. However, with rapid population growth, increased fiscal pressures, and the looming global shift to alternative energy sources, GCC states are now left with no alternative to economic diversification to maintain political stability and economic prosperity in the future. The different approaches and strategies to economic diversity in the GCC are discussed as well as the obstacles and challenges that face diversification plans. Finally, recommendations are made that highlight the need for radical reforms in managing the public and private sector, taxation as well as addressing political inclusion.
    
    Author: Maryam Alkuwari
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  05 Panel / Everyday Security: The Production of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Discourse and Praxis within Ordinary Spaces Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Convener: Jack Holland (University of Leeds)
  
  Chair: Jack Holland (University of Leeds)
  - Everyday (in)security and discourses on ‘non-violent’ terrorism
    
    What role do non-violent (or, at least, non-physically violent) practices and actors play in discourses of ‘terrorism’ and ‘counterterrorism’? What is the interplay and relation between these and other aspects of terrorism and/or insecurity?
    Drawing on interview and ethnographic data generated in the West Bank, Palestine, this paper deploys a vernacular security framework to make visible a range of practices and agents that are overlooked or side-lined in traditional, state-centric frames of ‘terrorism’.
    Specifically, by examining ‘non-violent’ actions (ranging from practices of visual or spatial appropriation, use of psychological practices, to the destruction of non-human material property) within ‘non-elite’ or ‘everyday’ public discourses – itself a notable silence in research on Palestine - on ‘terrorism’, this paper explores how locating security within the ‘every day’ or ‘personal’ offers a significantly different vantage point on the concept itself. I begin to unpack some of the methodological and conceptual implications of this within the paper.
    
    Author: Carl Gibson (University of Nottingham)
  - The object of Everyday Security Studies: Who are our publics?
    
    The burgeoning field of Everyday Security Studies is one of the most important developments in International Relations. Its requirement to go beyond state-centrism demands enquiry prioritises the experiences of silenced publics but further, this paper argues, recentres the central purpose and object of study to be the agentic capacity of these publics to co-produce security. Yet, as we welcome this emergent literature, there remains a failure to sufficiently engage with the subsequent conceptual messiness which emerges. We are yet to successfully unpack what we mean by ‘publics’, whose ‘ordinary’ experiences is it we want to capture? And what are the implications of those we deem to fit within these categories? The issues raised by these questions become heightened and potentially dangerous within the study of terrorism and counter-terrorism, where the language prioritised by broader studies on the everyday – ‘public’ ‘ordinary’ ‘citizens’ and ‘banal’ amongst others - are grounded in the very state discourses this scholarship seeks to unpack. This paper deals with these challenges and proposes a means to obtaining conceptual clarity, championing the field of Everyday Security Studies as a welcome and necessary development in the study of International Relations.
    
    Author: Natalie Higham-James (University of York)
  - Everyday Security from the lens of Papuans in Indonesia
    
    There is no consensus regarding the "everyday" meaning of Security. This paper stems from the framework of Everyday Security through three dimensions: space, practice and influence. I apply it to understand what happens in the daily lives of the Papuans, who territorially inhabit four provinces in Indonesia-who are already framed in counterterrorism policies. Conceptually, I adopt the framework of examining the concept of security as appearing in ordinary spaces, routine practices, and affective/lived experiences. My paper will present daily narratives of the Papuan people currently sourced from local newspapers, study results, and policy leaflets that show how they understand their daily activities are not mundane but have meaning. This method is strengthened by feminist opinions, which have demonstrated the importance of understanding everyday life as a place of politics. The paper argues we need to better understand the meaning of everyday Security based on the narratives of ordinary people to be free from security hegemony, whose concepts are formulated by policy-making elites, which impact the emergence of a sense of insecurity. Understanding everyday security narratives can contribute to dialogical aspects helpful in reducing or eliminating the stigma of separatism and terrorism among the Papuan people in Indonesia.
    
    Author: Irine Hiraswari Gayatri (Badan Riset Dan Inovasi Nasional (BRIN), Indonesia)
  - The Globalisation of Terrorism and Security in the Everyday: New Media and International Muslim Constructions of British Security Debates on Twitter
    
    This paper uses cutting edge information analytics to manipulate large scale twitter data sets this paper offers both important methodological and empirical insights in the means by which terrorism and counter terrorism exist and are contested in the everyday on social media. Employing a comparative perspective, this paper contrasts two important security debates from 2017 that would shape British security debates for years to come. The Grenfell tower fire rocked British politics and question decades of social policy and the safety and security of working-class social housing tenants. The Manchester arena bombing by a British jihadist would bring the question of security, Islam and integration to the fore in British politics. Both debates would situate British Muslims as central to both debates – whether as social housing tenants in multicultural London or as potential jihadists from a “suspect” community (Cherney and Murphy 2016). However, whether in the frustrated public enquiry into the failings of Grenfell or in the media and political coverage of the bombing, Muslims agency to shape the debates remained limited through either official channels of governance, or through the mainstream media. This paper examines the use of social media by Muslims to (re)construct terrorism and security in the everyday space of social media.
    
    Author: Joseph Downing (Aston University)
  - The securitisation of the French space(s) and body(ies): the vernacular application of anti-terror laws. The relationality between counterterrorism legislation and the restrained rights to protest.
    
    Post 2015-Paris attacks, France securitised, non-desecuritised and normalised the threat of terrorism leading to the securitisation of the everyday (Guéguin, 2022). The vernacular securitisation and the French counterterrorism experience have been significantly understudied in the context of wider debates and remains overlooked by the CTS literature. In particular, the French securitisation processes use anti-terror laws implemented outside counterterrorism scope to securitise body(ies) and space(s). France is a significant case study showcasing how political practices and discourses depict the State as the referent object to protect from ‘troubles to public order’, leading to securitising body(ies) of terrorists and the French space post-Paris attacks; and in 2023 the body(ies) of French citizens and rights to protest within the public space. It questions the relationalities between anti-terror laws and their applications beyond: how anti-terror measures implemented beyond the scope of their application, and the vernacular application of those measures control and monitor body(ies) and space(s) to further protect ‘national security’? Space(s), body(ies) are securitised and question the (un)protection of fundamental democratic principles. The paper draws on similarities between British and French anti-terror laws to prevent people from protesting against government policies though ‘securitisation forces’: police and Sentinelle as a means to an end.
    
    Author: Marine Gueguin (University of Leeds)
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  05 Panel / Knowledge production before and after the Troubles Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Hannah West (Newcastle University)
  
  Chair: Patrick Finnegan (University of Lincoln)
  - Institutional Glow Up? The Northern Ireland Office’s role, ethos and attitudes in making peace with the IRA during the Troubles.
    
    The Northern Ireland Office [NIO] was a product of the Troubles. Established in the early 1970s, it played a wide range of roles during the conflict. From being regarded as ultra-unionist and side-lined out of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, to Mo Mowlam crediting Sir Quentin Thomas (NIO Political Director 1991-8) as being the architect of the Good Friday Agreement on the British side. This paper will aim to answer why was this? Was there a shift in attitudes within the NIO during the 1980s and 1990s? If so, why was there a shift? Was this shift deliberate? What impact did this shift have on the Northern Ireland peace process? These questions are important as the Good Friday Agreement is used internationally as a case study for a successful peace process, therefore it is integral that we have understanding of all the actors’ roles, for the right lessons to be taught globally.
    
    Author: Eleanor Williams (Oxford University)
  - Is Brexit the end?: Relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland 2017-2019.
    
    The Purpose of this paper is to examine North-South Irish political relations between 2017 and 2019. Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland have closely integrated economies, transport systems and politics. The two governments cooperate on a wide range of policy areas both formally and informally. This paper seeks to understand the effects of Brexit on political attitudes towards cooperation across the Irish border. It further seeks to investigate whether other obstacles exist and to what extent they influenced relations between Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland politicians from ruling parties (Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Parties) primarily. I will explore whether Brexit acted as a turning point. Drawing upon newly conducted interviews with politicians and other sources, this paper highlights the importance of politicians and political parties in cross-border institutions. This paper reflects upon the peace process and the spill-over effects of outside interferences on it, such as Brexit, and by extension the European Union’s influence. It particularly highlights how the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was by far the largest obstacle to the functioning of cross-border institutions in recent years. This paper looks beyond the largely researched effects of Brexit on the region through considering the role politicians and political attitudes North and South of the Irish border have had on cross-border institutions and political relations.
    
    Author: Jessica Geoffroy (Cardiff University)
  - The 50th anniversary of the Ulster Defence Regiment Greenfinches: Perspectives on memorialisation and criticality
    
    2023 has seen global attention drawn to Northern Ireland on the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and more modest recognition, largely contained to the Northern Irish veteran community, of the 50th anniversary of women joining the Ulster Defence Regiment as ‘Greenfinches’. This moment of memorialisation has enabled a revisiting of servicewomen’s forgotten stories but what is their critical potential in shaping a feminist retelling of the conflict and how does the critical researcher negotiate this? This conversational-style article explores what it means to pursue a collaborative project using the archives of the Ulster Defence Regiment to produce a digital exhibit marking this moment. Co-authored with the archives’ Heritage Officer, this paper asks what it means to be critical in the context of the sectarian legacies of the Northern Ireland conflict through exploring the boundary between marking and memorialising this anniversary. We explore the different perspectives of collaborators on this project, how our critical judgement was affected by our perceived association with a particular ‘side’ - our own veteran/local/Brit status – and what this means for our participants. As Critical Military Studies debates its relationship with and proximity to the military, this paper exposes the very real everyday challenges of interacting with the veteran community in critical research and what it means for feminist retellings of conflict.
    
    Authors: Hannah West (Newcastle University) , Hannah Richards , Laura Patrick (Royal Irish Regiment)*
  - Metagovernance: understanding the changing role of Anglo-Irish networks in the path leading to the Northern Ireland Peace Process
    
    Existing governance scholarship argues that good governance can no longer take the form of sovereign rule, but must be performed through various forms of metagovernance. This term refers to the government of governance occurring when several social forces - or policy networks - wish to rebalance modes of governance. Among various consequences, a change of the role that public and private actors play in the socio-spatial relations governing the polities, politics and policies of the State has been registered. This article investigates this transformative role through the case study of the specific way in which new metagoverning networked interactions have been interpreted and institutionalised by the United Kingdom (UK) and the Republic of Ireland governments in the path leading to the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. Drawing on never-before-seen archival documents and semi-structured élite interviews, this study highlights how the interactivity of the newly implemented governance arrangements, negotiated through metagovernance, was one of the constituent aspects of the ability of the new system to produce political stability and good governance in Northern Ireland post-conflict setting, and between the UK and the Island of Ireland. Findings reflect on the ‘re-centralisation’ of power entailed by the Brexit process as having complex implications for socio-spatial relations between the Island of Ireland and the UK. In the absence of metagovernace, devolved governments have been marginalised, and existing coordinated dynamics between cross-border policy networks are under pressure and threaten the future of the Northern Ireland peace process.
    
    Author: Giada Lagana (Cardiff University)
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  05 Panel / Macro-micro dynamics in peacekeeping research Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Conveners: Fanny Badache (Geneva Graduate Institute) , Chiara Ruffa , Camille Bayet (Université Paris II)
  
  Chair: Georgina Holmes (The Open University)
  - Overcoming the crisis of multilateralism: procedural legitimization of UN peacekeeping
    
    The “crisis of multilateralism” and the political divisions between member states have a major impact on UN peacekeeping operations. In this international context, missions are less and less consensual in the Security Council, host countries and populations are questioning their consent, and budget negotiations are more difficult than ever. This presentation aims to understand the institutional, political and legal mechanisms implemented by the United Nations Secretariat to deal with this political crisis. The concept of procedural legitimization sheds light on these institutional practices: inclusive decision-making, ritualization of peacekeeping operations, recourse to expertise, peacekeeping reform (A4P, Future of Peacekeeping, New Agenda for Peace), etc. Finally, the UN bureaucracy resorts to institutional “bricolages” to overcome political crises. This work is based on a five-month fieldwork in New York City at the UN headquarters.
    
    Author: Camille Bayet (Université Paris II)
  - Interpreting Peacekeeping: Exploring meso-level governance in multilateral spaces.
    
    The peacekeeping literature is often divided into two broad categories of scholarship: quantitative versus qualitative. Quantitative approaches have tended to measure the success and failure of peace operations; whereas qualitative scholarship has focused on the impact of peace operations at national and subnational levels. In this article we identify and introduce a flourishing, yet barely visible research agenda in the study of peacekeeping: interpreting peacekeeping, which has remained obscured by its very lack of definition. This scholarship examines peace operations at the meso level, i.e. at the level of peace operations in-country and mediates between micro (national and sub-national) and macro (international) levels. This approach has been mostly qualitative, interpretive, and teleological in nature, in that it examines the purpose, intention and design of activities within peacekeeping missions and organisations and is less interested in identifying causal mechanisms. In this article we define the interpreting peacekeeping approach, review the research located within this genre, and specify its contribution to the peacekeeping and IR literatures. Furthermore, we explicate how meso level research has the potential to produce broad theories applicable beyond peacekeeping itself by helping us better understand how key facets of global governance such as legitimacy, accountability, authority and credibility function in a militarised space. We contend that the siloed nature of academic disciplines, and the increased quantification of the peacekeeping literature has helped to obscure this body of scholarship despite its valuable contribution to improving our knowledge of how global governance, international organizations and militarised multilateralism functions.
    
    Authors: Chiara Ruffa , Vanessa Newby (Leiden University)
  - Global Power Shifts and their Effects on Peacekeeping Missions On the Ground
    
    There is wide recognition that the shape and purpose of UN peace operations are a reflection of global politics. With a world order that is shifting from unipolarity to increasing multipolarity, major and emerging powers are redefining their roles on the international stage. Meanwhile, climate change and pandemics are affecting the world economy. In this context, we might legitimately expect that the role of peace operations in international relations will significantly alter. While there is increasing attention to what the exact consequences of these shifts and changes might be, there is less research into how these supposedly changed normative structures are actually translated by peacekeepers on the ground. This paper seeks to answer that question by analyzing whether or not the discourse of peace operations has shifted in previous major changes to peace operations, in particular the turn from the peace operations of the 2000s to the stabilization operations of the 2010s. How did peacekeepers talk about their mission in public communications? Did this change, and if so how? This paper will conduct a discourse analysis of the public communications of three peacekeeping missions between 2006-2016, as well as the Secretary-General reports for these missions as stored in the Peacekeeping Operations Corpus (PKOC). This analysis can tell us something about how peacekeepers’ self-understanding is affected by paradigm shifts in peace operations, offering insight into how further shifts in global politics might have their reflection in the future work of peace operations.
    
    Author: Tom Buitelaar (Leiden University)
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  05 Panel / Martial Realism and the Problem of War Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Conveners: Jamie Johnson (University of Leicester) , Jeffrey Whyte (Lancaster University)
  
  Chair: Victoria Basham (Cardiff University)
  
  Discussant: Victoria Basham (Cardiff University)
  - Martial Realism: The Problem of War Itself
    
    The concept of ‘capitalist realism’ offers a particular diagnosis of the cultural condition of late capitalism: in which it is easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism. Contemporary understandings of war are defined by a similar failure to envisage or countenance alternatives to war. Through the concept of ‘martial realism’, this paper seeks to describe a reinforcing set of historical and cultural investments through which war is insulated from critique.
    
    While many International Relations scholars write about war, existing critiques tend to be confined to a logic of recrimination in which certain practices are deemed exceptional or excessive. Such critiques tend to problematise the target, the weapon, the practice. What tends to remain unaccounted for within such critiques is the problem of war itself. Outside of academia, it is seemingly unremarkable for a President to accept a Nobel Peace Prize whilst offering a robust defence of the Just War tradition. More recently, outbreaks of war are met with a consensus that ‘now is not the time for pacifism’; whilst those advocating for peace are increasingly seen as either unserious or politically suspect
    
    Author: Jamie Johnson (University of Leicester)
  - Martial Realism and the Construction of Hybrid War
    
    This article considers the emergence of ‘hybrid warfare’ as a concept in international relations in the 21st century. First, I consider how the claim that hybrid warfare has ‘erased the boundary between war and peace,’ is constructed through a dramaturgy of revelation and scandal in which ostensibly secret strategic knowledge is brought to light. Second, I argue that the presumed novelty of hybrid war obscures longstanding observations of war's ontological slippage, producing an imagined status quo in which Western nations observe a strict delimitation between war and peace. Third, I argue that, in 'hybrid' space between war and peace, war is assumed to take ontological primacy over peace. Finally, I argue that the concept of hybrid war allows for the suspension of war's contradictory ontologies in uneven geographical imaginations of civilisational and ethical difference. I conclude that, more than an empirical or epistemological problem, the ontology of war remains a fundamentally political question.
    
    Author: Jeffrey Whyte (Lancaster University)
  - The conceptualisation and limits of 'critical' in Critical Military Studies
    
    How has 'critical' been conceptualised and deployed in critical military studies and what are its limits? What implicit understanding of or investments in war, and what possibilities for alternative, are bound within these conceptualisations? Initial founding statements concerning the scope and tenets of CMS (taking Basham, Belkin and Gifkins, 2015 as an initial baseline) were consciously pluralist and caveated that CMS was neither "static or precise". They did, however, clearly reject critique "as a means through which to offer recommendations for military policy", and they endorsed Cynthia Enloe's 'sceptical curiosity' which had its origins in IR's feminist antimilitarism. The other founding principle of CMS was its methodological pluralism and interdisciplinarity where "nothing is taken for granted as natural or inevitable". This ran alongside a willingness to engage with "the politics of positionality" including via " complex and messy" research encounters with "those who articulate and are themselves articulations of military power, including researchers themselves". This was suggested as a route to research that would bring about "social and political change". In this paper I trace how criticality has come to be interpreted and practiced within critical military studies research since 2015 and the extents to which work within CMS questions or is invested in war as an inevitability, and makes space for or consciously imagines alternative geopolitical realities.
    
    Author: Joanna Tidy (University of Sheffield)
- 59
  
  05 Roundtable / Policing minoritised groups in the global ‘South’ and ‘North’: New perspectives on vulnerabilities revolving around migration, religion, and race Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  The policing of minoritised communities has recently attracted increased attention in academic and policy circles as well as amongst advocates for refugees rights, civic rights, antiracism and freedom of religion and belief. In the UK, there is now substantial scholarship on the policing of minorities and the racialised securitised experiences of racial, ethnic and religious minorities, including notably Muslims. However, there is little comparative research on the policing of groups that are minoritised based on religion, race, ethnicity or refugee status in the global ‘North’ and ‘South’. Encouraging comparative, decolonial, and intersectional approaches, this roundtable examines the following questions:
  
  What does the existing scholarship tell us about how religiously, racially, and ethnically minoritised groups experience policing in diverse contexts? What are emerging issues and under-researched aspects?
  How do experiences with policing authorities change following migration? How does citizenship status (or lack thereof) exacerbate existing vulnerabilities of marginalised groups across cultural and political contexts?
  How can evidence on these questions be co-produced with members of minoritised groups in fair, equitable, collaborative and participatory ways that challenge conventional methods of knowledge production?
  
  The roundtable brings together researchers and practitioners who have worked on these questions in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America.
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Chair: Toni Haastrup (University of Manchester)
  
  Participants: Zoha Waseem (University of Warwick) , Zin Derfoufi (St Mary's University) , Jennifer Philippa Eggert (Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities) , Maryam Kanwer (Independent researcher/practitioner)
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  05 Panel / Popular Culture and World Politics – reflection and mirroring an ever-changing world Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Convener: Nick Robinson (University of Leeds)
  
  Chair: Julian Schmid (Central European University)
  - Children’s Literature and/as Political Critique
    
    The forcible exclusion of individuals as asylum seekers, terrorists, enemy combatants, and so forth is a prominent feature of contemporary world politics. This prominence, and its typical storying from the vantagepoint of the protected ‘self’ renders such practices and their harms unremarkable, and, often, unremarked. In this article, we argue that children’s literature offers a powerful, yet neglected resource for critiquing the taken-for-granted nature of such practices, focusing on the banishment of characters within The Enchanted Wood, the Lion Who Wanted to Love, and Where the Wild Things Are. These texts, we argue, first, offer a powerful structural critique of exclusionary politics by highlighting its (i) arbitrariness, (ii) underpinning violence, and (iii) constitutive importance as a bordering practice differentiating internal security from external danger. Second, by storying such practices through the aesthetic subject of the excluded, such texts also help readers to reverse the gaze and consider the implications of exclusion on its targets.
    
    Authors: Nick Robinson (University of Leeds) , Lee Jarvis
  - Styling Security: Representing Global Politics in the Fashion Sphere
    
    Although fashion images have been historically undertheorized in the field of international relations, they offer insights into how topics such as global security are simplified and universalized. They must resonate with the social imaginary but operate outside the traditional frameworks of state power and political economy. Visual fashion media therefore presents opportunities to critically engage with notions of national identity, global conflict, and security. A multimodal critical discourse analysis informed by Kress & Van Leeuwen’s (2020) grammar of visual design was undertaken using a series of case studies from fashion publications to explore how these discourses are culturally produced in popular consumer contexts and anchored to gendered, fashioned bodies. This paper argues that global security undergoes an aesthetic “softening” as it is absorbed into fashion contexts. This occurs via stylistic choices involving the casting, creative direction and captioning of the editorials. The displacement of violent conflict in favour of a professionalized, neoliberal vision of global security continues the condensation, commodification and convenient symbolic repackaging of political issues are for circulation in the marketplace.
    
    Author: Louisa Rogers (Northumbria University)
  - ‘Obey’: Navigating the Incepted Inheritance of 1980s Pop-Culture in the Era of Trumpism
    
    There is a global fever that has yet to break, one which combines perceived and real elements of (geo)political marginalisation of those who conceive themselves as the natural holders of power, but who have been denied their inheritance due to shadowy forces who are actually ‘pulling the strings’. From Hungary to UK to the USA, there is a growing chorus of voices who are convinced that we are ruled by extra-terrestrial reptilian overlords whose technological prowess and social engineering lies at the root of their/our subjugation. In this structuration, transnational corporations, mainstream media organisations, and political parties (left, right, and centre) are all implicated, being tools in a planetary subjugation of Homo sapiens in service of the recondite designs of the Hidden Masters. In this paper, we explore two artefacts of 1980s popular culture – namely NBC’s television series V (1984-1985) and John Carpenter’s They Live (1988) – that we contend incepted, via visual cues, geopolitical codes, and somatic markers, a latent worldview that has found purchase in the current era via those audiences who engaged with such fare. Moreover, we argue that subsequent generations (Millennial, Z, etc,) – either through inherited knowledges, social media leakages, real-world experiences, or other means of engagement – have found meaning-making in such conspiratorial thinking given its capacity to explain their own troubled position in a time of peak liberalism and, in turn, allows such thinking to influence their political culture.
    
    Authors: Robert Saunders (State University of New York) , Joel Vessels (Nassau Community College - SUNY)
  - Finding Arnie: An American and an Austrian Investigate the Popular Geopolitics of the Arnold Schwarzenegger Museum
    
    This paper serves as a bi-national interrogation of the representational practice of celebrity across two continents via the persona, performativity, politics, and corporeal presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Our paper explores the Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor, and politician’s eponymous museum in Thal, Austria as a spatial-textual-visual-affective space that invokes his ‘worldwide’ fame, ‘bears his name’, and is ‘supported by the man himself’. In this intervention, we address the museological construction of ‘Arnie’ from two different positionalities: an American abroad, recovering, reflecting on, and re-negotiating his 80s-era man-crush on a political figure who embodies an array of positions he stands against; and a Viennese, born two generations after WWII, whose Habsburg-heritage combines and complicates the notion of (Central) European/Austrian situatedness vis-à-vis his Heimat’s unintended ‘superhero’, which has been strongly contested via his actions as an ‘Ami’ from his signing of death warrants for Californian convicts to his affiliation with the neo-con presidency of George W. Bush and his 'War on Terror'. Via an interactive, interrogative engagement, we aim to unpack what it means to be ‘Arnie’ through history and time in the current geopolitical milieu.
    
    Authors: Robert Saunders (State University of New York) , Julian Schmid (Central European University)
  - Everyday inter/transnational history wars: memory and Othering in South Korean and Japanese popular culture
    
    International Relations (IR) has paid increasing attention to the role of memory in world politics in recent years, with disputes concerning difficult shared history being shown to play an outsized role in many bilateral relationships, especially among post-Soviet states and in Northeast Asia. Most scholarship on such international mnemonic conflicts, however, has tended to privilege official/state discourses and practices in its analysis. At the same time, scholarship on historical memory that focuses on non-state cultural practices often neglects the performative ‘foreign policy’ processes (in David Campbell’s definition) of relational national identity (re)construction occurring. Thus, combining insights from scholarship on memory politics with poststructuralist IR understandings of everyday ‘foreign policy’ practices, this paper examines how inter/transnational history wars are litigated in popular culture materials produced, consumed and recirculated by citizens, and their effects. These popular culture discourses, I argue, play an important role in shaping and making possible – and, indeed, are also shaped by – the official/state discursive practices of bilateral history wars in their boundary-making constructions of national Selves and Others. To illustrate this phenomenon, I analyse popular culture materials from both South Korea and Japan that contain relational representations of the Other vis-à-vis difficult history between these countries.
    
    Author: Chris Deacon (London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE))
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  05 Panel / Power, Norms and the Legitimacy of the International Order Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: International Law and Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: Suwita Hani Randhawa (University of the West of England)
  
  Chair: Suwita Hani Randhawa (University of the West of England)
  - Rooting for Culture: The Agency of the Global South in International Organisations
    
    How can reformist states from the Global South, conventionally characterised as “weak,” succeed in institutionalising their preferences at the international level? Specifically, how can they succeed in embedding their championed policy norms within the policy frameworks of international organisations (IOs), in the context of challenging institutional environments and against the resistance of more powerful states supportive of the status quo? By focusing on the issue-area of culture and its preservation, which is not only a socially and economically salient issue for many states of the Global South, but is also subject to North-South tensions in terms of contrasting interests and worldviews, this research seeks to contribute to the emerging wave of scholarship on the agency of states from the Global South in shaping international policy. In doing so, it hopes to contribute to the literature by identifying the conditions and type(s) of influence exercised by these states in light of the important structural constraints which they face in the pursuit of their goals in international fora, and more generally to transcend the Western-centric approach which has historically characterised the IR discipline. This research is based on a qualitative case study analysis using process tracing: The two main cases are the World Bank’s commitment to the new policy area of cultural heritage, and the WIPO’s involvement in the protection of traditional cultural expressions and knowledge through an intellectual property lens.
    
    Author: Caroline Elak (LSE)
  - The Law of Outer Space: In Whose Interest?
    
    Entrenched power structures within international law-making create a second class of weaker states, empowering first class states to set the law in the tabula rasa of outer space. Exercise of the freedom of use in outer space is subject to the condition that the uses undertaken ‘shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries’ (Article I OST). Development of this freedom is being shaped by the dominant, space farers in their own image. Central to this drive is a concerted effort to export state-centric ideologies founded upon a growth-centric privatisation of Outer Space. However, Richard A Falk, a founder of the ecocide movement, argues that a predominantly Westphalian model of governance is ‘hopelessly outdated’, and that its predication on Western ‘economistic secularism … has failed - indeed, … exacerbating “problems of poverty, inequality, [and] conflict”’. As it stands, developing space nations are unable to contest the will of the major space powers. As noted by Ryngaert, ‘jurisdiction is grounded on the capacity to coerce’. In this regard, the structures of the international law machinery inherently enable powerful States to impose their legislative will on weaker States. As space exploration rapidly develops, we are presented with a rare opportunity to recast our human values and relationships in this politically-pristine environment. This paper first, re-thinks the structures within international law making, seeking moves towards models which facilitate genuine dialogue between states as equals. Secondly, it invites us to not repeat in outer space, the terrestrial modus operandi which has inflicted grave injustices upon the peoples and the environments of the world; to realise instead a vision of outer space that upholds freedom of use for the genuine ‘benefit and in the interests of all countries’.
    
    Author: Fiona Naysmith (Open University (FBL))
  - Evaluating China’s norm entrepreneurship in cyberspace
    
    The last decade has seen China increasingly playing a proactive role in various regional and
    international organizations, developing, and perpetuating its own set of norms for
    international behaviour as opposed to the Western norms. Cyberspace is one such domain
    where China has started actively engaging at various international platforms with its focus on cybersovereignty, promoting the norms of sovereignty and state-centric, multilateral
    governance of the internet as opposed to the established multistakeholder governance of the internet. This activeness on part of China has come at a time when its economic presence in cyberspace has highly risen to an extent that cyberspace is increasingly seen as an arena of cold war between US and China. This paper aims to unpack the norms established by China under the conception of cybersovereignty, i.e., state sovereignty, multilateral cooperation amongst others. By using the theoretical conception of norm life cycle theory as developed by Finnemore and Sikkink and the conception of normfare, the paper examines the role of China as a norm entrepreneur and looks at how China has engaged on international and regional platforms and through its initiatives such as Digital Silk Road (DSR) to bring about increased acceptance and internationalisation of these norms as well as strategic reinterpretation of existing norms in cyberspace. The paper examines various reasons for the acceptance of Chinese norms in the international community such as dissatisfaction with US hegemony in the existing multistakeholder internet governance, diversification in the interests of the US and the EU, and affordable access to cyberspace facilitated by Chinese companies in various countries in Asia and Africa as part of DSR, which also facilitate the transfer of Chinese norms of internet governance. The paper concludes by examining the implications of China’s rise as a norm entrepreneur in cyberspace for the possibilities of cooperation in international internet governance and whether there are possibilities of convergence in norms at international level or whether the spectre of a fragmented internet is coming to reality.
    Keywords: cybersovereignty, norm entrepreneur, norm life cycle theory, cyber norms, Digital
    Silk Road
    
    Author: Neelesh Maheshwari (South Asian University, New Delhi)
  - Authoritarian rising powers as norm entrepreneurs and the future of liberal international order
    
    The existing literature has acknowledged that rising authoritarian powers, such as China, have acted as norm entrepreneurs, shaping liberal norms and advocating for alternative ones that align with their normative preferences and identity. However, what remains relatively underexplored is how they promote their preferred norms in different issue areas, particularly in a comparison between those issue areas encompassing well-established liberal norms and those emerging areas in which liberal norms are less institutionalised. There is also a need for a better understanding of how these norm entrepreneurship and contestation behaviours are perceived and accepted by diverse domestic and international audiences.
    
    To contribute to these questions, this chapter analyses two cases of China’s norm entrepreneurship: developmentalism in human protection (an institutionalised issue area with well-established norms and practices) and cyber sovereignty in AI and global cyberspace (an emerging issue area with less-developed norms and practices). Through this analysis, this paper delineates China’s varied strategies of norm entrepreneurship across the two issue areas and examines the extent to which target audiences embrace the norms and principles promoted by China. This chapter further offers implications for the complex impacts of the rise of authoritarian powers on the liberal international order.
    
    Author: Qiaochu Zhang (University of Manchester)
- 62
  05 Panel / Security and political experiments in the West African Sahel Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Africa and International Studies Working Group
  
  Conveners: Eloïse Bertrand (University of Nottingham) , Samiratou Dipama (University Thomas Sankara, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso)
  
  Chair: Eloïse Bertrand (University of Nottingham)
  - The Necropolitics of Drone Bases and Use in the African Context
    
    Drone use and its consequences are critical issues in world politics, particularly in Africa's Sahel region. The increasing use of drones, or 'dronisation', by violent non-state actors has catalysed a wave of drone-driven warfare, often catching state actors unprepared. This article analyses the current approaches to drone use among some African countries while highlighting the emerging threat from the dronisation efforts of non-state actors. The paper, underpinned by Securitisation Theory, contends that the escalating threats from dronisation necessitate a proactive approach to drone technologies, advocating for strategies beyond extant methods like hosting drone bases for Western nations or acquiring ready-made drones. It emphasises the need to securitise drone technology development and usage, urging a strategic shift towards indigenous innovation. This article enriches the literature on drones, dronisation, and counterinsurgency by offering a nuanced analysis of drone use in Africa within the rapidly evolving drone security landscape.
    
    Author: Ezenwa Olumba (Royal Holloway, University of London)
  - Emerging Governance in the Context of Disputed Statehood. The case of Kidal.
    
    Since 2013, the locality of Kidal, Northern Mali, and its regional surroundings have enjoyed relative peace and have been the locus of an emerging governance system gradually developed by former separatist movements entertaining active relationships with local elites. This article explores the conditions of possibility and the making of this governance system in the context of disputed statehood. Theoretically, it will draw on the forms of emerging governance in a limited statehood setting relying on a meso-level analysis of elite legitimation processes. Between 2013 and 2023, the elites from Kidal consolidated their power through various legitimation strategies taking advantage of the UN-enforced peace process, and using local governance mechanisms, participation in state institutions, or political connections with international actors. Meanwhile, events such as the defeat of the Malian army trying a comeback to Kidal in 2014, more or less formal local peace accords, and strategic regional alliances provided the local elites with more leverage to bargain political settlements with the central authorities. In this article, we intend to provide a systematic analysis of the mechanisms through which Kidal has developed into a de facto state able to address various political and security challenges over ten years. Our empirical contribution will rely on qualitative data gathered through privileged connections with members of the local elites as well as documents and discourses produced by these elites in the last ten years.
    
    Authors: Yvan Guichaoua (University of Kent) , Mohamed Ag Alhousseini (University of Maastricht)
  - Arming civilians in Burkina Faso: State, patriotism and the war on terror
    
    Since the turn of the 2010s, Burkina Faso has been grappling with increasing insecurity. Initially associated with the growth of criminality, the country has been particularly challenged, especially since the year 2018, by the massive and sustained presence of jihadist groups on its territory. These circumstances have led to various armed mobilizations in response. Above all, the state, initially discreetly and later more assertively, has supported various armed mobilizations in the context of a "war on terror". In September 2022, in Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traoré took power by force to overthrow Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who had himself achieved his position thanks to a coup d'état. Indeed, since the country's independence in 1960, the central role played by men-at-arms in Burkinabe politics has been linked to the recurrent practice of coups d'état by the military. This "alternation of power by putsch" confirms the role of armed violence, or the threat of it, as a major political resource in the country. Above all, the presence of the military in power interacts with various violent forms of government, particularly those that have developed recently. As soon as he came to power in a coup d'état, Captain Traoré decreed general mobilization and launched a massive recruitment drive among the population, in order to build up paramilitary forces to fight the jihadist groups that now control large swathes of the country. According to the authorities, 90,000 people have already signed up to become "Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland" (VDP), a corps instituted by a law passed in 2020 by former president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. These are Burkinabè citizens trained, equipped, and financed by the army, to assist it in its operations. How did recruiting and arming the population become one of the central public policies of the ruling junta? This presentation traces the trajectory of the Burkinabè state and the establishment of a form of governance that relies on violence. Despite the transformations brought about by the ongoing conflict and the apparent disorder, it is indeed the state that remains the central player in the management of self-defence groups.
    
    Author: Tanguy Quidelleur (Institut des sciences sociales du politique (CNRS - ENS Paris Saclay - Université Paris Nanterre)
  - Back to the ‘bad old days’ of the OAU? West African anti-coup norms in historical perspective.
    
    The recent wave of West African military coups threatens to undermine AU and ECOWAS prohibitions on unconstitutional changes of government. A growing number of senior political figures use urgent security imperatives in the Sahel to argue for their dilution. For a large body of scholarship and advocacy this would represent a return to the ‘bad old days’ of the OAU (1963-2002). This was a time, allegedly, when African states unanimously recognised (violent) coups as legitimate means of taking power. This paper’s first aim is to show why this historical account is mistaken. Even at the height of the Cold War a number of (especially) West African states did in fact work hard to maintain an anti-coup norms, despite their increasing incompatibility with a thickening (international) legal consensus that effective control was the most important test for recognising governments. This paper’s second aim is to identify lessons for the present. This history helpfully highlights how, then as now, anti-coup norms can be supported by states for a variety of reasons, including anti-democratic ones. It also highlights possible ongoing tensions between (West) African legal instruments prohibiting coups and international law more generally, now most notably UN Charter rules governing the use of force.
    
    Author: Peter Brett (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Coups are back in fashion: the failure of democratic consolidation in Burkina Faso
    
    On 30 September 2022, Burkina Faso experienced its second coup in one year, bringing to power a young captain named Ibrahim Traoré promising to address the insecurity crisis affecting the country. Four years earlier, two generals had been condemned in an unprecedented trial for their attempted coup during the 2015 democratic transition, raising hopes that military coups were – finally – a thing of the past in the country. It was not meant to be. On the contrary, whereas the 2015 coup attempted by the Presidential Guard had triggered an unprecedented popular resistance and a counter-offensive from the rest of the army, the 2022 coups saw most of the population remain indifferent – while some have welcomed them enthusiastically, putting in doubt the hopes of democratic consolidation brought about by the toppling of Blaise Compaoré in October 2014. How can we explain the renewed popularity of military coups in Burkina Faso? Based upon a review of media coverage and analysis of recent events, observations made during our extensive research in Burkina Faso over the past decade, and Afrobarometer data on Burkinabè citizens’ perceptions on governance and security issues, we explore three potential explanatory factors: the failure of the elected civilian government to effectively respond to the security crisis; popular disillusions with the post-Compaoré governance, and a ‘contagion effect’ from neighbouring countries, particularly Mali.
    
    Authors: Samiratou Dipama (University Thomas Sankara, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso)* , Eloïse Bertrand (University of Nottingham)
- 63
  05 Panel / The Global South, Latin America, and international affairs Room 103, Library
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: Sharad Joshi (Middlebury Institute of International Studies)
  
  Chair: Sharad Joshi (Middlebury Institute of International Studies)
  - Ecuador's foreign policy and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea
    
    The paper discerns the factors that explain Ecuador's decision to settle its maritime disputes with China outside the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Data was collected through documentary analysis and structured interviews and analysed using the case study. The research is in foreign policy analysis, the small states approach and neo-institutionalism. The paper argues that three factors explain Ecuador's decision to settle its maritime disputes outside the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea: 1. a high degree of divergence between its objectives and those of China, 2. a low salience for China to change the status quo, and 3. a high internal cohesion of China's preferences. The findings call into question the neo-institutionalist approach that small states enter international organisations to organise themselves, gain relative power and put their issues on the agenda. The research suggests that using a typology of small-state action in asymmetric relations is necessary to understand the factors that shape foreign policy.
    
    Author: Daniela Barreiro-Martinez (FLACSO Ecuador)
  - Debating Across the Divide at the United Nations: A Text Analysis of North-South Ideological Disagreement
    
    A major objective in the study of international relations and foreign policy is to identify the diverse positions of states on the issues that animate world politics, and investigate the most important lines of disagreement. The United Nations provides a forum in which states can communicate these positions. The United Nations General Debate Corpus (UNGDC) collates the speeches of all UN member states made prior to the annual session of the General Assembly. Text-as-data techniques can be used to explore the UNGDC, using the text of the speeches made by the official representatives of states to generate indicators of foreign policy concerns, priorities and positions. In this paper, a new set of tests of the hypothesis that disagreements between states of the Global North and the Global South are in evidence at the UN General Debate will be provided. The paper will, furthermore, demonstrate that that whilst a clash of ‘liberal’ vs. ‘developmentalist’ priorities for multilateralism exist are in evidence at the UN, the Global South is itself diverse and contains groups of states that express distinct foreign policy concerns. This advances the systematic, comparative study of foreign policy positions by taking us closer to the substance of political disagreement in world politics.
    
    Author: Nicholas Lees (Department of Politics, University of Liverpool)
  - Autonomy in Global IR: Conceptual Development (or Applications) in Latin America and Beyond
    
    This paper explores the concept of autonomy in Latin American International Relations and its relevance beyond the region. Originating during the Cold War, autonomy studies emerged as a response to the challenges faced by 'third-world' nations in establishing independent economic models amid the pressures of a bipolar world. While extensive debate ensued, its impact remained confined to the region. Recent developments in the Global IR framework highlight the broader importance of autonomy in understanding subaltern agency. While the primary focus remains on the historical evolution and application of autonomy within Latin America, these efforts provide the theoretical framework to analyse its applicability in diverse contexts. By building upon these discussions, this paper seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of its theoretical underpinnings and practical applications. The paper proposes to construct a conceptual map of autonomy, offering an understanding of its multifaceted implications. Moreover, the exploration delves into the intricate relationship between autonomy and subaltern agency. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, this paper is divided into two main sections: the construction of the conceptual map of autonomy and the examination of its relationship with agency. Through this approach, the paper seeks to contribute to a more profound grasp of autonomy's role in shaping international relations beyond its initial Latin American context.
    
    Author: Thais Doria (University of Warwick)
  - Latin American Small States (LASS) in international politics: between autonomy and dependency
    
    This paper discusses the constraints and goals of the autonomy of Latin American small states' foreign policy in the twenty-first century. We employ the concepts of dependency and autonomy to look at small states’ behavior in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) since 2010. Using their level of trade with China and the United States (US) as an independent variable, we aim to explain the voting behavior of the LASS on issues of foreign policy interests either of the United States or China. The paper suggests that economic dependency, in terms of the level of trade with a strong power, like China or the US, explains their behavior in the UNGA. This also shows the level of autonomy of LASS's foreign policy. To support this argument, the research combines a statistical analysis with a process tracing approach.
    
    Author: Raul Salgado Espinoza (FLACSO ECUADOR)
  - US – Brazil Defence Cooperation Agreements: Hemispheric Security and Political Leadership.
    
    From the early history of Brazil, the concept of grandeza, understood as the achievement of political capabilities to become a great power in world politics, has been a distinctive feature of its foreign policy. Brazil’s ‘rise’ in the first decade of the 2000’s presented challenges to the United States, the dominant actor in the international relations of the Americas. The Lula administration governed a country that had witnessed the consolidation of democracy following the end of military dictatorship in 1985. During Lula’s first tenure in office, the Brazilian economy experienced historic growth and prosperity, increasing Brasilia’s ability to influence politics in Latin America. Grandeza appeared an achievable outcome, but Brazil’s aspirations created new tensions with the United States. Following a Neoclassical Realist Approach to foreign policy decision making, the present paper analyses the US reaction to the regional power expectations that Brazil demonstrated during the Lula years, illustrating how certain intervening variables in the US and Brazil played a distinctive role in allowing Brazil’s consolidation as a leader. The paper examines military and security cooperation agreements between the two countries. It discusses the implications for regional security, bilateral relations between the US and Brazil, and power distribution in the Hemisphere.
    
    US foreign policy, neoclassical realism, Brazil, hemispheric influence, Grandeza, military cooperation.
    
    Author: Juan Velez (University of Kent)
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  05 Panel / The Making and Unmaking of Global Orders Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: IIRG Working group
  
  Chair: Hannes Hansen-Magnusson
  - What is it like to be entangled? – The Experience of Inseparability in Global Politics
    
    Although talk of ‘entanglement’ now features prominently in our attempts to delineate the inseparability of certain phenomena or describe part-whole relations, it is still unclear what exactly warrants its special status as not just any connection. Following the recent uptick in scholarship concerned with phenomenological questions, this paper therefore asks what it is like to be entangled? In doing so, it presents an investigation of the ways inseparability is experienced and shows itself in global politics. Framing entanglement as a non-linear phenomenon representing the memories, emotions, and beliefs of its relata in a way that cannot be understood outside of this particular relationship, it is thus argued that in an entangled state subjects store information about each other that is inaccessible until the entanglement is broken. Constituting a lack of complete information about both the ‘self’ and ‘other’, entanglements therefore show themselves through an inability to fully see the complexion of a relationship, its persisting influence, and one’s place in it. In doing so, entanglements affect our horizon of valued possibilities and anticipations against which our perceptions of self and the world around us unfold. Breaking an entanglement through the disruption of this horizon therefore allows agents to access what has previously escaped their conscious attention, thereby opening the door for the unseen to become recognised and change to materialise. This process will be illustrated through an analysis of Germany's hesitant and at times contradictory reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Kyiv’s response to it.
    
    Author: Joost Hendrik Pietschmann (University of St Andrews)
  - Intergalactic war? Conspiracy theories, spirituality and the re-interpretation of global order
    
    This paper researches how ideas about world order are shaped through discourses conflating conspiracy theories and spirituality, also known as 'conspirituality'. Through digital ethnography, it teases out how conspiritualism challenges the modern institutions of religion and science underlying both the international order and knowledge in IR. Conspiritualism puts forward a conceptualization of world order based on occultism, spiritual warfare and intergalactic power relations. The paper highlights how in response to this conceptualization, conspiritualism actively re-orders the international by reinterpreting political subjectivity (what it means to be human) and politics as a post-political space. The paper argues taking such interpretations of world politics seriously allows us to gain insight into how people construct alternative knowledges of international order and politics 'outside' these modern institutions albeit not without raising some ethical questions that are relevant for this kind of interpretive research.
    
    Author: Suzanne Klein Schaarsberg (Tilburg University)
  - The World Westphalian and the Processes of Conceptual Antiquing
    
    Keywords: Westphalia, nation-state, conceptualization, sovereignty, myth, conceptual antiquing, discourse analysis
    
    The sovereign nation-state system is oft-adjectivized Westphalian with 1648 as its given birth year. Though various academics have attempted to demythologize these origins, this notion that we exist in a world Westphalian persists as a disciplinary default.
    emphasized text
    
    This paper makes little attempt to determine the final legitimacy of this history, but rather endeavors to investigate the processes by which this peculiar historical connection between the events of 1648 and the concepts of sovereignty and the nation-state developed and shifted over time. In doing so, we expose the malleability in the legacy of this baroque treaty, but more critically, examine the subtly shifting nature of our own understandings of sovereignty itself.
    
    This article attempts to explore this process of conceptual antiquing utilizing Critical Discourse Analysis via the case of evolving notions of Westphalian sovereignty from the late 19th century to the present. In broad strokes, the Westphalian adjective only inhabits our descriptive concepts of sovereignty as geopolitical events prompt a scholastic renewed defense of state sovereignty and a critical assessment of the nation-state overall. I intend to likewise demonstrate the utility of conceptual antiquing as a distinct critical and analytic lens for deciphering the how, but more importantly the why for investing ideas with these historical connections.
    
    Author: John Parker (University of Edinburgh)
  - Home as a Claim to Global Subjectivity Through and Against Sovereignty
    
    Analyses of international relations often deploy ‘home’ in both description and analysis but rarely interrogate what home means or does within these contexts. The ontological and epistemological marriage of much of IR to the state form cements the map of the international as drawn by state borders, forgetting the existence of other maps. However, attempts to remember or retrieve these forgotten mappings through the idea of home have become internationally pertinent; the Tuvaluans use it to contest the loss of their island to rising sea levels, and to transform ideas of sovereign spatiality by moving their nation ‘online’; the Chagossians use it to contest both British and Mauritian sovereignty over their islands, positioning themselves as subjects in the legal (and moral) battle over the islands that does not consider them to have a sovereign claim; and the Hawai’ians who mobilise an idea of home against both the US colonisation of the islands, and against the very ontology of the spatialised state as such. Each of the three cases will be examined to show that island mobilisations of 'home' through and against the sovereign state are a key site for disrupting hegemonic imaginaries of the global, and for introducing new ones.
    
    Author: Rhiannon Emm (King's College London)
  - Populi Sacri, or ‘Not Your International’: A Theopolitical Interpretation of the Sovereign Power of International System
    
    The potential Sino-Taiwan War overshadows the discussion on Sino-U.S. relations, but the discussion has failed to grasp similar exclusive inclusions of specific communities in the international order, such as Kashmir or Kurdistan, inter alia. To address this gap, I propose the interpretative framework of a political theology of the international order (Bain, 2020), combining Schmitt’s concepts of sovereignty and katechon (Schmitt, 2005; Schmitt, 2011) with the state of exception and homo sacer (Agamben, 2005; Agamben, 1998), and propose populi sacri, i.e., states that can be invalidated without violating international norms. I examine its production populi sacri during the stages of the Cold War, the 1990s, and the 21st century. I argue that populi sacri revealed the sovereignty of the international system, which exercises sovereign power by deciding on their being in the state of exception. I interpret how populi sacri has been a constitutive element of the post-World War II international order through the role of the katechon, i.e. that which withholds the apocalypse. Populi sacri can help to re-evaluate the rises and falls of world orders, by shifting the focus from the powerful to the ignored in the evolution of international order.
    
    Author: Chia-Yu Liang (University of Sussex)
- 65
  
  05 Roundtable / The Ukraine War and the Re-making of Europe's Security Order Exec 9, ICC
  
  The Russian invasion of Ukraine is widely viewed as an era-changing event, likely to shape Europe for years, perhaps decades, to come. Yet, how exactly has the war re-shaped Europe and what remains contingent on the still highly uncertain outcome of the Ukraine war? This round-table will use the concept of a European regional security order to address these questions, exploring what different elements of the European security order looked like before 24th February 2022, developments since then and future scenarios. Contributions to the round-table will address: NATO's evolution, Russia's place in Europe's security order, the EU's response to the Ukraine war, EU-NATO relations and transatlantic relations in the context of the Ukraine war. The round-table will draw on contributions to a forthcoming special issue of the journal Defence Studies.
  
  Sponsor: European Security Working Group
  
  Chair: Andrew Cottey (University College Cork)
  
  Participants: Lorenzo Cladi (University of Plymouth) , Andrew Cottey (University College Cork) , Martin Smith (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst) , Christoph Meyer (King's College London) , Alexander Kolding Borum (European University Institute)
- 66
  
  05 Roundtable / The nexus of artificial intelligence and critical security studies: Current issues and future research trajectories Exec 10, ICC
  
  The realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is known for its dynamic and rapidly evolving nature. International Relations (IR) scholars are actively investigating the diverse impacts of AI on national security, emphasizing crucial factors such as strategic advantage, strategic stability, nuclear deterrence, and the acceleration of technological progress. This roundtable brings together a diverse expertise on critical security implications of AI and explores its various social, economic, ethical, and gender-related aspects. The main aim is to foster a theoretically informed discussion of current trends and future research trajectories and to offer a comprehensive exploration of power dynamics, identity, and insecurities associated with AI.
  
  Sponsor: International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group
  
  Chair: Luba Zatsepina (Liverpool John Moores University)
  
  Participants: Luba Zatsepina (Liverpool John Moores University) , Mike Bourne (Queen's University Belfast) , Hamoon Khelghat-Doost (University of Lincoln) , Toni Erskine (Australian National University) , Karli Gibson (Queen's University Belfast) , Cameron Paul Hunter (University of Copenhagen)
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  05 Panel / The political economy of the Sino-British Joint Declaration - 40 years on Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: British International History Working Group
  
  Convener: Peter Burnham (University of Birmingham)
  
  Chair: Shaun Breslin (University of Warwick)
  
  Discussant: David Bailey (University of Birmingham)
  - The politics of the Joint Declaration in Sino-British relations, 2014-2023
    
    This paper examines how the Joint Declaration has been instrumentalised since 2014 by the British and Chinese governments in relation to Hong Kong and to wider issues in the bilateral relationship. It shows how both governments (and broader policy elites) have taken positions on the JD which are motivated and shaped as much or more by their present political concerns, interests and identity as by questions of history or international law in relation to Hong Kong. This dynamic comes to the fore in disagreement over the status of the JD, statements about the nature of the other side, and the lack of common ground on how to interpret recent developments in Hong Kong or on the way forward. The paper is based on analysis of British and Chinese statements about the JD from 2014 to 2023, contextualised by discussion of developments in Hong Kong and the wider bilateral relationship against a backdrop of geopolitical change. Conceptually, the paper connects with a ‘historical statecraft’ scholarship that examines the ways that history is instrumentalised as a resource for policy makers.
    
    Author: Tim Summers (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
  - The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration (SBJD) - 40 years on: an analysis of the Chinese negotiation strategy
    
    Most existing studies of the SBJD have analysed the negotiations from the viewpoint of the UK government. This paper presents results of research on the negotiation strategy from the Chinese side in the discussions which led to the Declaration. It will analyse the Chinese negotiation strategy through a detailed study of the memoirs of prominent diplomats who participated in and signed the Declaration. During the negotiations, the Chinese side prioritized the sovereignty issue rather than the confidence issue over Hong Kong which has led a number of authors to claim that British politicians/diplomats needed to educate the Chinese in the fundamentals of capitalism’. This paper suggests that this view is not wholly accurate and that the Chinese negotiators were perfectly aware of the importance of maintaining confidence in Hong Kong both in terms of international finance and the benefits thatone country two systems’ could bring to China.
    
    Authors: Rong Wei (University of Birmingham) , Tim Summers (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
  - Ring No Bells? The European Community and the Sino-UK Joint Declaration in 1984
    
    Over the last few years, the European Union has showed its strong interest in Hong Kong by condemning China’s breach of the Sino-UK Joint Declaration, passing resolutions on Hong Kong’s Freedom, and updating annual report of Hong Kong’s development. This interest, however, is in sharp contrast to its performance before and after the Sino-UK Joint Declaration. First, there was little involvement of the European Community (EC) in the negotiations over the handover of Hong Kong. The issue was kept bilateral between China and the UK rather than being ‘communitarized’, despite the construction of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Second, there was little coordination between the UK and Portugal at the EC level, even though the two member states had similar problems to handle. Third, although the EC was concerned about the economic and immigratory impact of the handover, it did not raise many objections. Overall, the EU/EC’s interest in Hong Kong only increased after the handover. This paper will place in historical context the Joint Declaration from the viewpoint of the EC/EU.
    
    Author: Biao Zhang (China University of Political Science and Law)
  - The primacy of domestic politics in Thatcher’s negotiations over the Sino-British Joint Declaration 1984
    
    This paper presents a `primacy of domestic politics’ interpretation of the Thatcher government’s handling of the negotiations over the Sino-British Joint Declaration. It draws on recently released archival material to suggest that the Thatcher government was driven primarily by concerns over the stability of sterling in its negotiations with the Chinese government over the return of Hong Kong. Whilst most of the existing literature prioritises sovereignty as the main issue dominating the UK side, this paper will argue that from 1983 onwards the UK negotiators were primarily focused on reaching an agreement to safeguard Hong Kong as a key financial centre thereby avoiding an international crisis which would have had serious consequences for the stability of sterling and for Thatcher’s programme of domestic economic reform in particular financial liberalisation and deregulation. The paper draws out the theoretical implications of relating the domestic pressures on sterling in the early 1980s to the foreign policy objective of securing the Sino-British Joint Declaration.
    
    Authors: Peter Kerr (University of Birmingham)* , Peter Burnham (University of Birmingham)
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  05 Panel / The uses and abuses of history, memory and identity in Russian foreign and security policies Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group
  
  Convener: Natasha Kuhrt (King's College London)
  
  Chair: Kevork Oskanian (University of Exeter)
  - Defenders of History? Securitizing History and Militarizing Russia's Youth.
    
    One of the features of Russia's "Special Military Operation" in Ukraine launched in February 2022 is the extensive use of the vocabulary of the Great Patriotic War to legitimate Moscow's actions. This paper focusses on a very specific aspect of that phenomenon: Moscow's securitisation of a particular set of memories constructed around the Great Patriotic War and its militarisation of Russian children and young people to be the defenders of their nation's history. Focussing closely on the activities of state-sponsored youth groups (the Youth Army and the Victory Volunteers), the paper considers how securitisation and militarisation are used by the Russian state to shore up popular support for the war in Ukraine in the short term and lay the foundations for a longer-term project of militarising Russian society.
    
    Authors: Allyson Edwards (Bath Spa University) , Jennifer Mathers (Aberystwyth University)
  - Religion, history and war: Orthodoxies, Identities and the competition for young hearts and minds
    
    Parties to all protracted conflicts use all means and social capital at their disposal to propagate narratives of war, its origins and likely resolution that fit their own foreign policy priorities. Under-researched in this wider context is how states engage with dominant religious organisations for this purpose, as well as the specific roles played by religious organisations to propagate or resist wartime (dis)information and historical revisionism. Using Russia’s war on Ukraine as a case study, this paper examines the competing ways in which the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine have represented both the conflict and the historical and cultural legacies feeding into it, with a particular focus on engagement with children and young people. It gives a more nuanced picture than accounts that present Orthodoxy as directly subservient to state imperatives, examining the contrasting institutional and philosophical underpinnings of the churches’ competing claims to represent the ‘true’ Orthodoxy to a new generation and critically interrogating how the Churches’ involvement in matters of historic, political and cultural contestation impacts upon broader parallel processes of identity fragmentation and consolidation.
    
    Authors: Vladyslav Havrylov (Georgetown University)* , Precious Chatterje-Doody (Open University)
  - Ukraine’s stolen children: deidentification as the goal of Russian deportations.
    
    Russia has taken over 20,000 children from the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The main goal of the kidnappings is to impose new identities on these children. This paper details the methods through which the Russian state tries to impose new identities, both metaphorically and bureaucratically, on kidnapped Ukrainian children. In so doing, Russian authorities aim to justify their own propaganda concerning Ukraine: Ukraine does not exist and Ukrainians are just brainwashed Russians. It is notable that these kidnappings did not happen until 2022 (eg in 2014), suggesting they are at least partly a reaction to Russian insecurity at realising the lack of evidence for Russian ‘ownership’ over Ukrainian identity. Using discourse analysis of Russian coverage of the deportations, the paper will first justify this argument and track the ‘logic’ Russian official sources and government media apply to justify the deportations. Second, it will use this coverage combined with data from the Ukrainian Centre for Resistance to categorise the methods of deidentification utilised by Russia during the longer deportation and reeducation process: 1) bureaucratic deidentification (changing names and birthdays so children cannot be found); mnemonic deidentification (inculcating an alternative history); erasure of Ukrainian identity as an existing concept; encouraging association with Russia and rejection of Ukraine. The paper concludes by arranging these categories within a procedure of deidentification and explores any new practices that may emerge.
    
    Author: Jade McGlynn (King's College London)
  - Memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Russia’s Foreign Policy: Testing the Limits of the Possible
    
    The legacies of the Cuban Missile Crisis are manifold. From lessons for scholars of Foreign Policy Analysis to recent discoveries of previously unknown facts by historians of US-Soviet relations, the crisis has proved time and again a major juncture in international politics. Yet, the memories of this crisis, as they have been articulated by political and societal actors in Putin’s Russia have often been at odds with these now familiar accounts. Our paper will investigate the ways in which the history of the crisis was interpreted in Russian high school history textbooks and state history exam in the run-up to Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2022. Analysing two sets of officially approved textbooks (all textbooks approved by Russia’s Ministry of Education for the academic years 2014-15 and 2021-22) and official practice exams between 2008-2022, we will identify the ways in which Russia’s state-endorsed historical narratives interpreted the origins of the crisis, delineated Moscow’s options, assessed its decisions and evaluated its outcomes. We will then discuss the implications of these narratives for Russia’s contemporary foreign policy by tracing how the memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis relate to ideas about the limits of the possible in Moscow’s international behaviour
    
    Author: Valentina Feklyunina (Newcastle University)
  - Lost in Eurasia? Russia’s Civilizational Pivot from Europe to China
    
    Russia’s weakened economic and political relationship with Europe places it in an increasingly subordinate position in relation to its key partner in Asia. Eurasian and Asian identity discourses have historically failed to gain traction. While Putin could previously declare the Eurasian Union to be a ‘bridge between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific region’, and one of the ‘poles of the modern world’, it is now a bridge to nowhere. If, prior to the (re)invasion of Ukraine, Russia was on the margins of the Asia-Pacific, it now finds itself on a double-periphery.
    This paper traces the development of Russia’s civilizational pivot away from Europe. Russia finds itself increasingly in a subordinate position vis-à-vis China, another ‘civilizational state’, yet Putin suggests that for Russia the Mongol invasion was better for Russia than Western influence. By examining the use of such tropes, this paper explores the urgent reframing of Russian identity and foreign policy amongst political and intellectual elites who seek to maintain an appeal to so-called ‘traditional’ values, and positioning Russia as an alternative to Europe, while attempting to intensify and extend relations with China.
    
    Author: Natasha Kuhrt (King's College London)
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  05 Panel / Uncovering Hierarchies of International Relations: Some Perspectives from India Exec 6, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: Shailza Singh (Bharati College, University of Delhi)
  
  Chair: Nachiketa Singh (SGTB Khalsa College, University of Delhi)
  - International Politics of Conservation and Post-colonial Predicament: A study of National Parks in India
    
    The proposed paper aims to highlight the linkages between conservation as a tool of dominance and land grab retrenching the power and dominance of the world governments over indigenous people with special emphasis of its impact on the indigenous populations in South Asia, specifically in India. Exploitation of natural resources for economic development has not only increased the contestations on ‘space’, it also led to the massive degradation of natural environment. The idea to preserve nature has given way to the model of conservation which are free from indigenous people’s interference and thereby creating zones free from human beings. The Western approach of conservation which was based on two axioms of ‘Hands off nature’ and ‘Gigantism’ was applied to formulate conservation model in South Asia. These practices created dominant model of ‘Fortress approach’ of conservation in both global North and South based on exclusionary practice of evicting indigenous people from the space that are declared to be protected as they are of critical importance to wildlife and nature. This paper, through a study of National Parks in India, would attempt to highlight the linkages between the international politics of conservation regimes constructed by dominant first world governments, state interests in the post-colonial world and their impact on peoples, ecologies and sustainability.
    Keywords: Conservation, Marginalization, Land Grab, Resource -Conflict
    
    Author: Sonali Yadav (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
  - Silent Histories in the Study of International Relations: Exploring the possibility of alternative historiography in International Studies in South Asia
    
    This paper makes an attempt to challenge the Westphalian understanding of the historical space that dominates the study of the discipline in many of the universities in the non-western world. Such an approach to looking at history silences the diverse historical experiences that led to formation of modern states in these parts of the west leading to a ‘borrowed’ understanding of the discipline. In present day South-Asia the Westphalian history is of secondary relevance as compared to the history/histories of imperial consolidations, adaptations, amalgamations and the transcultural understandings they created before entering the colonial experience and later the sanitised territorially bounded understanding of the nation-state of their western counterparts. Adopting a historiographical approach, the paper argues that the key to understanding power, interests, conflicts and external relations lies in this diverse historical experience and study of IR must be situated within this context rather than peace of Westphalia as part of syllabi. The paper will explore the possibility of understanding of international relations in South Asia through the lens of an alternative historiography investing in it, more meaningful and relatable content to the discipline. Further, the paper would attempt to contribute to research on alternative historiographies as an approach to understanding IR as a pluriversal reality and International Studies as a discipline that gauges complex issues and concerns in ways more sensitive to diverse experiences.
    Keywords: Silent Histories, Alternative Historiography, South Asia, Pluriverse
    
    Author: Shailza Singh (University of Delhi)
  - Can the Global South Speak? Theory and Epistemic Struggles in IR
    
    At one level, the idea of the Global South is confected as the world is more economically fragmented now. The impact of Covid and the knock-on effects of the Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine conflicts portend large-scale economic stress and environmental disaster for many in the Global South. Today the voice of the Global South-indicates both widespread despair at the marginalisation of people’s interests and hope that leaderships of Global South countries can effectively highlight it. The people’s movements and collective pressures of domestic governance in BRICS countries have reflected the global south perspective countering the hegemonic forces. This is a start, but a rounded critical-feminist-ecological-race-conscious voice of the Global South needs collective epistemic strength. The present paper attempts to revisit the metaphoric binaries of global south/ global north, globalisation/de-globalisation and multilateralism/regionalism that represent the epistemic struggles of IR in the Global South. It is an attempt to probe these sites of theorisation/counter-theorisation to decipher the commonalities and differences that emerge in epistemic traditions of the Global South.
    Keywords: Global North-South Binary, Marginalisation, Epistemic Struggles in IR
    
    Author: Rityusha Mani Tiwary (University of Delhi)
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  05 Panel / ‘Regions’ and Spatial Relations to International Thought Exec 5, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: Maria Tanyag (Australian National University)
  
  Chair: Sarah Dunstan (University of Glasgow)
  - The International Political Thought of Asia Pacific Women’s Regional Networks
    
    This paper presents preliminary findings of a systematic study of the international political thought of Asia Pacific women’s regional networks and what lessons their ideas provide for addressing the interrelated global crises we experience today. Three regional networks, which are among the longest running and with expansive connections in the Asia Pacific, are selected for this pilot project. Feminist historical and interpretivist approaches were used in examining all publicly available publications from pamphlets and newsletters to official reports by these networks from the 1980s to the present. Secondary sources such as United Nations archival records and reports will be used for corroborating and contextualising findings.
    
    Author: Maria Tanyag (Australian National University)
  - Moral geographies of pan-Asian sisterhood in elite Indian women’s thought c.1910s-1930s
    
    Set in the wider intellectual context of Indian literary figure Rabindranath Tagore’s and Japanese intellectuals’ ideas of pan-Asianism emerging in the 1920s, in this paper, I ask how elite Indian women mobilized and articulated normative and political imaginaries of Asia as a moral grounding for their anti-imperial politics in the 1910s-30s. The paper specifically asks what forms of anticolonialism and anti-imperialism characterized ‘south-south’ solidarity among Asian women using the case of the short-lived but highly successful All-Asian women’s Conference (that took place in Lahore in 1930). Using archival reports from this conference, in this paper, I develop and expand on the term ‘moral geographies of Asia’ using ideas propounded by elite Indian women thinkers as a part of a larger collective of women from across West, South, and South-East Asia, which combined a ‘self-Orientalist’ morality and prevailing pan-Asianist and anti-imperial geographical and cultural imaginaries of world politics. Through this, we can discern larger patterns of the complex, ambivalent, and politically strategic ways in which ‘Asian solidarities’ among women were historically constructed.
    
    Author: Shruti Balaji (London School of Economics)
  - Remembering Revolution: Gendered Work & Care
    
    Stories of Vietnamese women militants and activists challenge dominant gendered tropes during the wars against France and the United States. These tropes include, for example, those of helpless victims, Orientalized figures, and those bound to domestic roles only. Against such dominant scripts, there are well-known exemplars of Vietnamese women leaders who fought against imperial domination. Yet the prominent circulation of some stories risks obscuring myriad others, as well as eclipsing important albeit untold aspects of the very political lives they purport to capture. This paper explores the gendered politics of work, care, and loss with regard to everyday women revolutionaries rather than well-recognized figures and narratives within established historiography. I examine the complex layers of this gendered politics by reading closely the memoirs and accounts of Vietnamese women who participated in the long years of resistance against imperial war and torture.
    
    Author: Quỳnh N. Phạm (University of San Francisco)
  - Feminism, Anti-Colonialism, and the Politics of Development at Afro-Asian Women’s Conferences
    
    Amidst a flurry of interest in both Third World internationalism and the history of development, the role of Asian and African women is strangely absent. This paper engages with this history through two Afro-Asian women’s conferences: the 1958 Asian-African Conference on Women in Colombo, and the Afro-Asian Women’s Conference in Cairo in 1961. The first conference included only countries that had achieved independence and aimed to be non-political, focusing on development priorities including education, health, and social welfare. While it encompassed largely women from Asia, who sought to reach out to their ‘African sisters’, the second included far more African women campaigning for an end to colonialism throughout the continent. Composed largely of women affiliated with the international left, it prioritised a bold vision of anti-colonial solidarity, including a rejection of Western aid, while celebrating the achievements of the communist world. Through a comparative examination of the two, this paper shows that Asian women’s ideas of development changed depending on who was included, shaped by both ideological politics and the geographies of decolonisation.
    
    Author: Su Lin Lewis (Bristol)
- 14:45
  
  15 minute transition
- 14:45
  
  Refreshment break Hyatt Hotel
  
  Hyatt Hotel
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  05 Panel / Bordering, Frontiers and Migrant Lives Soprano, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: CPD Working group
  
  Chair: Jasmine Gani (University of St Andrews)
  - Political Diasporism: Examining the Praxis of Radical Imaginaries on Jewish Community Farms
    
    In the US and UK, there is a growing movement of Jewish people practicing self-determination by cultivating Judaism without Zionism. Many of these Jewish people claim the condition of being ‘in diaspora’, mobilizing this concept as a political identity. As theorized by scholars of the black radical tradition, this conceptualization of diaspora, unlike traditional models that stipulate a people relating to a homeland (Safran 1991), describes a community outside the norms of nation-states and borders (Hall 1995, 207), a space of counterculture (Gilroy 1993) whose inhabitants experience a multiplicity of consciousness (Du Bois 1903). Thinking with these scholars, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (2007) coined the term ‘diasporism’, defining it as a political commitment to solidarity and a belief in a Jewish history and future independent of a national homeland.
    
    Through an examination of Jewish community farms outside of Palestine, this paper enters an ongoing debate in international studies regarding the conceptualization of ‘diaspora’. Scholars such as Nadia Abu El-Haj (2012), have criticized the conceptual soundness of a Jewish diaspora connected through genealogy (Boyarin 1993) purporting to be anti-racist or non-national. Others, such as Carolyn Aviv and David Schneer (2005), take issue with using diaspora to describe modern Jewish communities, arguing the word does not aptly describe the dissimilarity of Jewish experience.
    
    Drawing on archival research and interviews with members of Linke Fligl Farm, a “queer Jewish chicken farm and cultural organizing project” in New York, NY, this paper explores the embrace of diaspora as a third space and its deployment as a political ideology amongst Jewish community farm members (Our Story, 2022). This paper asks why members are drawn to diaspora as a political identity and what possibilities they believe it engenders. Amid the potentials and implications of deploying diaspora as a political ideology, this paper attends particularly to the tensions inherent in an ideology that claims diaspora while building communities rooted in land. It asks, if, and in what ways, community members reconcile claims of diasporism with projects for rootedness in a world structured by ongoing coloniality (Grosfuegel 2002).
    
    Author: Chana Rose Rabinovitz (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Bordering the Bathroom, Bordering the Nation: A Study of Anti-Trans and Anti-Immigration Rhetoric in UK Print Media
    
    Responding to culture war debates in the UK and their policy implications, this article unpacks representations of ‘the illegal migrant’ and ‘the transwoman’ as cultural figures in mainstream media discourses from January – August 2023. It does so in the acknowledgement of the particularly intense rolling back of the rights of both trans and migrant communities during this period, as the UK Government has both responded to and created an atmosphere of public fear and hostility. Responding to the intimate relationship between media representations, public discourse and government policy, the paper studies themes of sexuality, gender and racism in The Guardian, The Daily Mail, and The Times newspapers. In particular, it investigates the extent to which depictions of trans women and migrants invading perceived ‘safe spaces’ (i.e. ‘the changing room/toilet’ or ‘the British homeland’) operate through similar logics, what this says about the character of British political discourse, and dominant understandings of the nation itself. On a practical level, it also considers the functions that this discourse plays both domestically and internationally, how this relates to the international policing of (im)migration, and how these representations can be/have been effectively challenged.
    
    Authors: Gina Gwenffrewi (University of Edinburgh)* , Patrick Vernon (King's College London)
  - The Deportation Cycle – The Production and Disposal of Migrant Labour in Contemporary Capitalism
    
    Projects such as the Title 42 expulsions in the US, the “Rwanda deal” of the UK, and the promised “deportation offensive” of the nominally centre-left German governing coalition are just the most recent advancements of an ever-expanding global deportation regime. The former Australian minister of home affairs, Peter Dutton, defined deportation as “taking out the trash.” Deportation studies, inspired by Agambenian security studies, tend to treat deportation as a normalized exception that permanently suspends civil liberties. Taking the logic behind Peter Dutton’s trash-allegory seriously, this paper offers an alternative explanation of deportation that centres the production of racialized expendability as a feature that is always already implicit in nationalized capitalism. The super-exploitation of racialized migrant populations manages fluctuating periods of growth and contraction. Deportation is a spatial realization of a cyclical process where migrant labour is used up; produced as superfluous to capital accumulation and the nation-state; and excreted. Rather than a ‘reserve army of labour,’ many people who are made deportable will never (again) be incorporated into these modes of production and citizenship. Instead, they are rendered as an outcast proletariat whose spatial removal becomes a service-commodity of a burgeoning deportation industry, and a source of legitimacy for the neoliberal security state. However, the people subject to the deportation regime show that this position of ‘existential surplusness’ (Hong 2011) is also a place of critique. From this position, detained and deported people challenge the deportation regime. In drawing attention to the conditionality of national inclusion, they create possibilities for transversal, internationalist struggle.
    
    Authors: Timor Landherr (Queen Mary, University of London)* , Lucy Kneebone (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Crossing many boundaries and endless agony Navigating the complex racial spatiality of EU border regime and fate of “deserving” Afghan migrants in the Balkan Corridor
    
    The Western Balkan Corridor unfortunately has become a symbol of racial violence and barbaric atrocities against the people on the move. This gruesome subjugation of migrants and their unending plights are intertwined with the institutional racism of the EU border regime, which altogether underpinned the othering of some migrants based on their race and religion. Despite being officially recognized as deserving migrants, Afghans can hardly meet the implied criterion for qualifying and therefore, they overwhelmingly constituted the category of irregular migrants. The externalization and contracting of the EU border regime came into traction for stemming the “undeserving” migrants amenable to the securitization of Europe and for the plausible absolving of the EU for the gross human rights violations of people on the move in the Balkan route. Nevertheless, the Afghan migrants also endure double jeopardy for their susceptibility to racial prejudice and for the systemic right-wing attacks targeting them for their Muslim identity while transiting to Europe. This paper argues how the binary of Europeans and non-Europeans and perceived threats from Muslim asylum seekers to Christian Europe determines as well as legitimizes the racial borders beyond the EU territories and thus, reconstructing the European colonies in the peripheries.
    
    Author: Shazia Shaikh (University of Mumbai)
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  05 Panel / Controversies, Failed Scandals, and Contestation in the fields of Security and Counterterrorism Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Conveners: Frank Foley (King's College London) , Laura Fernández de Mosteyrín (Spanish National Distance University, UNED)
  
  Chair: Lee Jarvis
  - The social organization of contestation and consent: debates on the Spanish Political Parties’ Act (2002)
    
    This paper deals with how the meaning of violence and its limits changes over time and is socially set. I use public and political debates on Spanish Political Parties Regulation Act– which led to the banning of Batasuna (Basque radical nationalist party) in 2002 – to explore how the dynamics of contestation and legitimation crystallized in one core piece of legislation of the Spanish counterterrorism framework. Analyzing discourses and actions of a variety of actors – political parties, civil society organizations and public intellectuals – I show how the meaning of ‘unacceptable’ violence, was built at the intersection between State’s interest and social actor’s mobilization. At the basis of the process, lays a public and organized conversation that helped to normalize the banning of political parties and the practice of violence rejection as a proof of adhesion to Spanish democracy.
    Keywords: counterterrorism, violence, acceptability, legitimation, controversies
    
    Author: Laura Fernández de Mosteyrín (Spanish National Distance University, UNED)
  - The suppression of security controversies: ‘reverse shaming’ and the perpetration of torture
    
    This paper analyses how states may suppress debate and controversy in the field of security, with a particular focus on torture and counterterrorism. I outline how governments and opposing stakeholders engage in a struggle for legitimacy and credibility concerning security and human rights. The case of the Spain-ETA conflict is examined to show how state actors may use what I call ‘reverse shaming’ to shun and discredit international organisations or civil society actors in an attempt to stymie public debate on torture. Drawing on the literatures on ‘rhetorical coercion’ and ‘shaming’, I argue that Spanish officials sought to delegitimise the entire enterprise of human rights fact-finding and the documentation of abuse. In effect, a world was constructed in which it was almost impossible to make a legitimate report or allegation of human rights abuse against Spain. These rhetorical moves enabled Spanish security agencies to torture and mistreat suspected Basque militants for decades. Through this analysis, the paper seeks to demonstrate that struggles over legitimacy, credibility and expertise have important consequences for public debate, human rights and security practice.
    Keywords: human rights, counterterrorism, torture, shaming, controversies
    
    Author: Frank Foley (King's College London)
  - Scandalisation, Individual Detriment, and the Politics of Sight: Failing to Scandalise a Counterterrorism Program
    
    This paper explores how scandalisation works, through a case of its failure. In 2021, academics collaborated with the NGO Medact to expose a new counterterrorism program which covertly obtains medical records and can detain those deemed a risk to the public in psychiatric hospitals. Publication, media appearances and collaboration with large campaign organisations all failed to scandalise the program.
    
    The paper utilises Timothy Pachirat’s work on the Politics of Sight to analyse how the compartmentalisation of violence within professional silos obscures the harms which result from collaboration between psychologists and the security services; alongside the constitutive role played by the legal architecture in the field of scandalisation. Compartmentalisation within the Hubs precludes the recognition of their violence by practitioners and obscures the role played by security agencies in medical detention decisions. Even those detained do not know of the involvement of Counterterrorism Police in their case. Furthermore, without individual cases of detriment, campaign organisations cannot demonstrate ‘proportionality’ under International Human Rights law and are deterred from challenging these programs. As such, our failure to scandalise has revealed the constitutive roles played by law, and compartmentalisation, in the perpetuation of state violence.
    
    Author: Charlotte Heath-Kelly (University of Warwick)
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  05 Panel / Decolonialising peacebuilding and everyday peace Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: Roger Mac Ginty (Durham University)
  
  Chair: David Curran (Coventry University)
  - Resisting and countering militarized policing though community-led intersectional politics of care
    
    Care and the practices of providing care have been proposed as solutions to multiple societal crises in recent years, with scholarship on care flourishing and care-based economies and community-actions receiving attention. This is especially the case in the 21st century as the climate crisis intensifies, global displacement of people increases, and the COVID-19 pandemic has ongoing impacts. Feminist studies have informed current thinking about care-based societal practices, especially in relation to militarized policing. However, critical feminist insights have also shown that care can be politically instrumentalised and perpetuate inequalities. One way to counteract such challenges and to ensure practices of care can flourish is through community-led collective action that centres mutual aid and solidarity rather than charity. In this paper, we argue a logic and politics of care analysed from an intersectional perspective engages histories of grassroots community action and leads to considerations of how and when care becomes visible, valued, and necessary within broader social movements. We aim to excavate and examine what factors impact logics, politics, and practices of care in the context of community-based alternatives to militarized policing through an analysis of the six areas of understanding of an intersectional analysis put forward by Hill Collins and Bilge (2020): social inequality, power, relationality, social context, complexity, and social justice.
    
    Authors: Priya Dixit (Virginia Tech)* , Raquel Silva (University of Coimbra)
  - Photography and everyday peacebuilding. Examining the impact of photographing everyday peace in Colombia
    
    Arts-based peacebuilding has gained attention, but evidence and research of its impact is fragmented and, in particular, the relationship between photography and peace is underexplored. This paper examines photovoice as a tool for supporting everyday
    and community peace in conflict-affected communities. It identifies four ways that everyday peace indicator photovoice projects in Colombia bolstered community peace: by engendering healing, building territorial identity, enabling intergenerational dialogue, and catalysing action. These impacts emerged as photovoice built on enabling factors, extending existing community peacebuilding capacities, concerns and interventions.
    Reflecting on the constraints and tensions around working with photography in security-sensitive environments, we propose that participatory photography makes up a vital component of the peace photography genre. We argue that the careful, strategic harnessing of photovoice, and the visualisation of everyday peace, creates opportunities for raising the voices of conflict-affected communities, building shared imaginaries and nurturing dialogue, healing and action.
    
    Authors: Manuela Muñoz (Everyday Peace Indicators)* , Edwin Cubillos (Everyday Peace Indicators)* , Tiffany Fairey (King's College London)
  - Redefining Local Peacebuilding: The Case of Sulhu Approach in Northern Nigeria
    
    In the local peacebuilding literature, the question of who, what, and where the local in peacebuilding remains inadequately addressed. Through an empirical case of the Sulhu approach in Northern Nigeria, this article analyses local peacebuilding in Nigeria’s terrorist rehabilitation and reintegration efforts. The article presents a two-fold argument; first, the Islamic precept of Sulhu and its tenets of reconciliation and forgiveness are fundamental capstones that constitute peacebuilding efforts through DDRR measures; the importance attached to Sulhu is rooted in the contextual supremacy of religion and religious peacebuilding in Northern Nigeria. Secondly, the article also highlights that the current practice of Sulhu discounts local community nuances due to the hierarchal gap between religious elites and actors who implement the practice on the ground, facilitating elite control by religious and traditional rulers and opening the approach to issues of local ownership and lack of inclusivity- dominant arguments in critical peacebuilding scholarship. The article further contends that while attempting to be emancipatory, Sulhu becomes susceptible to being bureaucratic in practice and disrupts the localism embedded in local peacebuilding. The article cautions against an uncritical admiration of local peace as the Sulhu approach to local peacebuilding matures.
    
    Author: Joshua Akintayo
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  05 Panel / EU-China relation in a changing global context (an Italian perspective) Exec 9, ICC
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Matteo Dian (University of Bologna)
  
  Discussant: Matteo Dian (University of Bologna)
  - Renegotiating the norm of non-interference: China’s approach to insecurity in the neighbourhood
    
    The People’s Republic of China has become a potent global economic and political force. However, its stance on security in relation to foreign conflicts prompts inquiries into its distinct global security perspective. Recent decades have witnessed numerous upheavals in China’s neighbouring regions, like the 2020 Kyrgyzstan revolution and the 2022 Kazakh protests. China’s reactions to instability in Central Asia offer insights into its approach to resolving foreign crises, the level of external involvement it deems appropriate in national emergencies, and its envisioned role in such scenarios. Testing hypotheses drawn from the literature on autocratic promotion and China’s norm of non-interference, this study employs multi-modal and multi-language qualitative discourse analysis of Chinese government press releases, media coverage, and secondary sources to examine the country’s security responses. The results contribute to the broader debate on how great powers confront instability in their neighbourhood and aims to understand how China’s growing influence reshapes global security governance and impacts the international order.
    
    Authors: Eva Seiwert (Friedrich-Alexander Erlangen-Nuremberg Universität)* , Giulia Sciorati (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  - Contemporary Italian Narratives on Russia and China: Analysing Continuity and Change
    
    This paper aims at unpacking and explaining patterns of continuity and change in the Italian narrative vis-à-vis Russia and China, during the years 2020-2024. In such timeframe, three governments (Conte II, Draghi, Meloni) have succeeded each other – navigating a turbulent international environment, wherein Russia and China have occupied central stage. The COVID pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the XX Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the Taiwanese presidential campaign, as well as rising tensions in the South China Sea are some of the pivotal events that forced Western elites, including Italy’s, to devote their attention to Moscow and Beijing. By means of thematic analysis, we will investigate a corpus of elite-level sources (e.g., programmatic documents, official statements), as well as the public intellectual debate, to identify patterns of continuity and change in the Italian views on Russia and China. How and why change happened will be explained, if need be. Our analysis will result in a nuanced understanding of the most recent Italian foreign policy attitudes towards Russia and China, in a comparative perspective. This will also provide the ground for an empirical and theoretical exploration of foreign policy ruptures, as well as Rome’s game in the context of great power competition.
    
    Authors: Nicolò Fasola (Università di Bologna) , Sara Berloto (Università degli Studi di Milano)
  - Confucius Institutes and Chinese soft power: the case of Italy
    
    Since its inception in 2004, the Confucius Institute (CI) program has faced widespread global criticism, leading to closures across Europe. Yet, Italy stands out with a divergent approach: a drive to bolster local CIs while neighbouring European nations sever their ties. The research delves into Italy's reception of China’s soft power efforts through the lens of Confucius Institutes. It scrutinizes over 50 Italian newspaper articles since 2010 and conducts in-depth interviews with the 12 directors of Italian CIs, offering insights into their roles, daily operations, and challenges. The findings reveal a notable shift in Italy's portrayal of CIs, particularly post-2019 following the Hong Kong protests. Despite mounting public scepticism fueled by Italy's participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, this sentiment falls short of the vehement contestation witnessed in countries like Germany. Intriguingly, Italian legal frameworks and the directors’ positive interactions with Chinese counterparts have prevented institutional debates regarding the initiative's legitimacy, shaping the country's distinct perspective on the issue.
    
    Author: Veronica Strina (Università per Stranieri di Perugia)
  - Beyond the ‘China Threat’ Narrative: EU-China Relations through a Critical Security Lens
    
    Whilst economic ties remain the main pillar of EU-China relations; with the increasing bilateral diplomatic tensions the discourse of European institutions and some EU member states on China has started to increasingly encompass a security dimension. This prominently appears in the 2019 Strategic Outlook, and it is further confirmed with the 2022 Strategic Compass for Security and Defence. A large part of the literature has described the shift in the relationship through the ‘China Threat’ narrative or a ‘New Cold War’ lens, conceptualising China as an ‘outsider’ and ‘contesting’ of the international order, and merely as a security threat to the US and its like-minded partners, including the EU. This research is based on extensive fieldwork, including elite interviews with EU officials and policymakers, as well as textual and archival analysis. Drawing on securitization theory in critical security studies, this paper challenges the literature depicting China as a monolithic ‘threat’; instead, it investigates the shift in EU-China relations from a Constructivist perspective and reflects on the role of norms and identity in non-state actors – and their member states - securitising moves towards China. This research demonstrates that, in the paradigm-shift in the EU-China relationship, and the consequent securitisation moves towards China, constructions and identities in relations among partners play a significant role. The study encompasses a more complex security discourse, which is needed to disentangle the intricacy of EU-China relations and to go beyond the dichotomy of China being either a ‘partner’ or a ‘threat’. The findings have wider implications for the ongoing debate on the role of ‘rising’ China in the international order.
    
    Author: Alice Politi (King's College London)
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  05 Panel / Everyday Peace and Lingering Violence Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: Rebekka Friedman (KCL)
  
  Chair: Roddy Brett (Bristol)
  
  Discussant: Roger Mac Ginty (Durham University)
  - Women’s Everyday Peacebuilding and Reconciliation in the Shadow of a Divisive Past: Inter-communal Care Networks in Northern Sri Lanka
    
    This paper examines Tamil and Muslim women’s everyday reconciliation through inter-communal care networks in Northern Sri Lanka in a context of significant post-war population displacement and resettlement. I argue that women in Northern Sri Lanka gained social standing, companionship, and security from their care and reconciliation work and that women’s networks led to fragmented but meaningful communal reconciliation over time. I maintain that everyday peacebuilding literature tends to take a more instrumental understanding of agency, which focuses on conflict minimization and coexistence, over transformative and empathy-based practices, which encourage relationship-building and reconciliation. I engage with feminist work on care, relationality, and vulnerability and examine less visible agency and the smaller informal ways in which women contribute to everyday peacebuilding and reconciliation. The paper also examines care continuums and the gendered aspects of everyday reconciliation. Focusing on the lesser-known Muslim-Tamil minority conflict that occurred in the context of a three-decade war between the military and the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam, this research brings attention to the layered nature of local peacebuilding and reconciliation. The paper contributes to critical and feminist understandings of everyday peacebuilding through its analysis of less visible informal reconciliation.
    
    Author: Rebekka Friedman (KCL)
  - Everyday peace in Montes de María (Colombia): a Struggle between Scarcity and Violence
    
    If in the 1990s and early 21st century, the Montes de María region was one of the main theatres of operation in the Colombian war, since 2008, it was recognized not only as the first Colombian post-conflict scenario but also as a successful one. The combination of a strong civil society with roots in peasant movements, the appropriation of a language of rights by war victims, and the implementation of bottom-up approaches led to the region becoming a post-war ‘laboratory’ and a centre of transitional justice institutions. However, despite a discourse of peace and reconciliation, the lack of resolution of the root-causes of the war and the strengthening of post-demobilization paramilitary groups have generated a context of anxiety, an increase in direct violence, and paramilitary territorial control. Based on three years of fieldwork, the paper re-centres our attention on the dynamic process through which victims build peace. The paper warns that a post-victim-centred scenario, in which a top-down approach to peacebuilding is gaining strength, once again makes victims’ historical agendas and demands invisible. This research highlights how shifting domestic and international contexts can shape the possibilities and challenges facing local actors in crafting everyday peace.
    
    Author: Diana Florez (KCL)
  - Everyday Violence amidst Lingering Peace: Undermining Global Security
    
    The idea of ‘everyday peace’ has popped up pretty consistently within the local turn literature over the past decade. While not always sufficiently theorized or fleshed out, it has found its place among the more influential ideas in this sub-field. When speaking about ‘the everyday’ however, these writings are almost always talking about the lives of individuals living within what we commonly frame as conflict-affected or post-conflict states; the local sites where violence ‘lingers’. As such, the everyday is one more thing that is somewhere ‘other’ from the academics, theorists, and policymakers who talk about peace and peacebuilding. However, this paper focuses on how violence at an inter-societal or global scale (usually structural but also regularly direct) becomes an everyday occurrence – so normalized as to be taken for granted – and how such dynamics are, over time and almost imperceptibly, undermining our barely lingering post-Cold War peace. Following recent moves, therefore, to reorient peacebuilding analysis to ‘international peace architectures’ (Richmond 2022) and ‘trans-scalar peace systems’ (Millar 2021), this paper articulates the dangers of everyday violence at an inter-societal scale if what we want to achieve is sustained peace.
    
    Author: Gearoid Millar (University of Aberdeen)
  - Memory of post-Second World War violence in Slovenia: Unresolved Memory, Revisionism and Disputed Reconciliation in a Long-standing Everyday Peace
    
    The immediate post-Second World War in Slovenia was marked by mass killings, arrests, disappearances, and show trials organised by the Communist government of Yugoslavia. Arrests and trials continued until 1949. This lingering violence led to decades of silence over the mass killings and trials, yet Yugoslavia was at peace until the 1990s. As Slovenia became independent in 1991 through a relatively peaceful transition, the violent past became publicly addressed and acknowledged. A reconciliation ceremony on the site of a mass grave became a central step forward. However, the ceremony successfully acknowledged the past for only a few years, when a growing demand for investigations grew alongside a movement of revisionism. Today, a historical revisionist narrative shapes political discussions, disputing reconciliation and memory. The perception of the past has changed over time, oscillating between politically manipulated references to post-Second World War violence and a desire for historical accuracy. Based on archival research and interviews, this paper examines the challenges of reconciliation in a historical case where violence dates back over 70 years and everyday peace has been established for decades. While violence was to some extent addressed, memory remains unresolved and disputed and reconciliation is an ongoing challenge.
    
    Author: Zala Pochat Krizaj (KCL)
- 76
  05 Panel / Non-State Actors and Civil Wars Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: WSWG Working group
  
  Chair: Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (Loughborough University)
  - Colombia: a victim centred transitional justice approach, between local perception and wishful thinking
    
    This paper examines the victim centred transitional justice approach of the 2016 peace agreement with the FARC-EP and compares the practitioner’s idea behind some of the transitional justice concepts and the local perception of those declared victims. The paper is based on extensive field research, including interviews with civilian victims, perpetrators, experts, and individuals working with victims and institutions. By amplifying the voices of those directly affected and providing insights from various stakeholders, this study offers a nuanced understanding of the perception of the transitional justice mechanisms in rural Norte de Santander. Oftentimes, there is a big gap in perception in what academia and policy makers or politicians think benefits certain parts of society in theory. Yet, the reality of what they need and want and how it is perceived often differs. Many of those interviewed did not see the benefits for themselves in those mechanisms that were created or criticised parts of it. Additionally, it is important to think about the beneficiaries of those mechanisms. When establishing those mechanisms, it is oftentimes thought about the wording victim in a very traditional sense. Yet, throughout the interviews it became clear that perpetrators are also victims and need transitional justice mechanisms just as much.
    
    Author: Kerry-Luise Prior (King's College London)
  - The ‘Knowledge Rebel’ & Civil Wars Journal: An emerging research agenda
    
    Innovative and disruptive technologies are a necessity for rebel groups to frame their objectives, unlock their capabilities, and change the course of conflict. Despite caveats related with the conflict and level of analysis, this reality, nevertheless, necessitates an upgrade in the relationship between the character of civil conflict and the rebel soldier: smart conflicts need more knowledgeable rebels. Current literature is focused on the causes and consequences of inter/intra state conflicts, the evolution of the next wave of civil conflicts, leadership, memory studies and peace dynamics, rebel governance, rebel communication strategies and ICT. Yet, analysis of the concept of the ‘knowledge rebel’ and a examination of its evolution is missing. This discussion aims to fill the gap by observing how a specialist journal, such as Civil Wars has studied the ‘knowledge rebel’ and what is its modern declination. The paper engages an archival analysis and literature review of the research agenda of the journal since its inception 25 years ago, in 1998. This then forms the basis for a conceptual contribution in the field, and triggers a debate about the nature of the knowledge rebel as a resource to analyse the future character and course of civil wars.
    
    Author: Megghi Pengili (University of Leeds)
  - When Non-State Actors decide to play: what toys tell us about today’s wars
    
    When Non-State Actors decides to play how toys tell us of today’s wars
    
    Military toys have been the subject of studies in the past: from pewter soldiers to British and German toy industrialization, from young boys fostered to play with army toys to prepare them to a soldier’s life to Vietnam War-era anti-war movement concerned with toy gun and from the birth of toy hero icon GI Joe figurine to the links between a culture of violence within children and toys.
    
    Whilst toy manufacturers were largely independent from a state’s political apparatus and aspirations, the rise of licensing has seen many toy manufacturers develop content that reproduce main blockbuster movies and box office successes, from Marvel to Star Wars. A similar model is starting to develop, with toy manufacturers signing Memoranda of Understanding / Licensing agreements with several military actors such as Departments of Defence and Navies to produce toys. We suggest that this relationship aims to galvanise supporting for military causes and ideals as opposed to purely generate sales profits.
    
    This research is framed within the broader context of the Politics of Toys project that was supported by a Leverhulme fellowship in 2018-2019, and which led to a number of publications including on the Politics of Toys in North and South Korea. This new paper particularly addresses this year’s BISA theme around who we do our international studies work for and with, as it questions the public relations model that some countries have adopted to communicate with younger generations who might be affected by a military conflict.
    
    Author: Virginie Grzelczyk (Aston University)
  - Community Leaders as Identity Mediators in Ethnic Defection
    
    Ethnic defection, namely the collective switching of a group from one side to another in an ethnic conflict, for example, of rebels to the government side, must be understood as a social and political rather than purely tactical move. When a group, whether a clan, tribe, family or village, decide to switch side, social identity is crucial in this decision. Recent studies grounded in social psychology have identified that in cases of rebels who defect to the government side, recruiting defectors to pro-government militias is a valuable tool for affecting their social identity and encouraging the continuation of ethnic defection. Within this process, the recruiters and commanders from among the authorities have often assumed the role of identity entrepreneurs, using militia formation to foster group identification among defectors. However, what role do community leaders, such as clan heads, village or tribal elders, or the local clergy, play in this process? This paper, further adopting ideas from social psychology, suggests that these individuals, rather than identity leaders or entrepreneurs, often play the role of identity mediators. These individuals’ power lies in their connection to the authorities and their public, which they use to mitigate and translate the ideas that recruiters wish to convey to potential defectors. The paper uses the case of Turkey and the ethnic defection of Kurds to the government-sponsored Village Guards to illustrate this argument.
    
    Author: Yaniv Voller (University of Kent)
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  05 Panel / Ontologies and practices of global security Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: European Journal of International Security
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Dalia Saris (Queen Mary University London)
  - Beyond Words and Waves: Vibrant Matter as Co-Architect in Shaping International Security Landscape
    
    Undersea cable landing stations, often relegated to the sidelines in extant security studies literature, are pivotal components of global communication infrastructure and crucial in “making things international.” This paper aims to illuminate the active, agentic, and political role of non-human entities, specifically cable landing stations, in communications securitisation, prompting a re-evaluation of often-overlooked non-human actors in International Relations (IR). Contrary to the prevalent trend of prioritising discourse over materiality in security studies, this research, grounded in new materialist perspectives, scrutinises the technologically charged matter of cable landing stations. It challenges the anthropocentrism entrenched within IR and aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the agency embedded in these infrastructures, emphasising the materiality that often takes a backseat to discourse-focussed analyses. Through this exploration, the paper delves into the complexities of human and non-human interactions, offering a more profound comprehension of the multifaceted dynamics influencing global security considerations. Echoing sentiments from various critical security theorists, it advocates for a pronounced shift away from human-centric analytical paradigms and calls for the expansion of security studies' ontological register.
    
    Keywords: International Security, Securitisation Theory, Actor-Network Theory, New Materialism, Non-Human Agency, Ontological Parochialism, Anthropocentrism, Ontology.
    
    Author: Cynthia Mehboob (Australian National University)
  - Ordering Assemblages: an analytical framework for the study of the spatial effects of securitisation
    
    Securitisation Theory (ST) has advocates, and certainly also detractors. Since the 90s, ST has made significant inroads into political science and IR, as well as animated sociological debates. Some may even suggest ST has advanced a whole rethinking of security and opened it to prolific theoretical and empirical inquiry. For all its merits, however, ST has been the object of strong criticism. In its early formulation, contradictions created a persistent obstacle for academic consensus. More importantly, critics have often exposed the normative compulsions within ST, highlighting ontological, epistemological, and teleological biases that put its analytical soundness into question.
    
    In an effort to reignite interest in ST and demonstrate its analytical applicability beyond ‘usual settings’ (i.e., Western liberal democracies), this paper puts forward a framework that I capture in the concept of ‘ordering assemblages’. Drawing from ST, Pierre Bourdieu’s work, Spatial Theory, and de-colonial thinking, ordering assemblages offer a framework with the potential for: 1) breaking away from Western/Euro-centric biases; 2) blurring the disciplinary/theoretical division between security and politics; 3) demonstrating the benefits of relational and processual thinking; and 4) making the case for a redefinition of ST’s teleology through the centring of questions around order and space.
    
    The analytical framework can offer new empirical insights into how securitisation operates, its spatial effects around power, order and identity, and the relationship between the spatial and the temporal in the constitution of (socio-political) orders underpinned by threat.
    
    Author: Javier Bordón (Lancaster University / SEPAD)
  - Not for profit private security? Understanding the hardening of NGO security practices through the relation between the practitioners in private security and NGO security.
    
    The militarization of humanitarianism is often understood through the relation between states and humanitarians. Increasingly and often against their will, humanitarian organisations are integrated into state (predominantly US and UK) and UN solutions. To meet the requirements for funding they must adhere to the security standards implied from above, which often means bunkerization. However, this observation does not account for the hardening of security practices of NGOs that operate more independently or in less high risk environments. This paper asks how NGO security practices have come to resemble those of military and private military and security actors by looking at the relational structures between NGO security professionals and private security actors. I argue that this is the result of the formation of a new field, in the Bourdieusian sense, of security experts who are moving between military, private and NGO security. I use a combination of biographical methods and network analysis to show how these individuals and their practices are interconnected and how exceptional practices have moved into the everyday of the NGO.
    
    Author: Dalia Saris (Queen Mary University London)
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  05 Panel / Public feelings: the politics of affective circulation Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: EPIR Working group
  
  Chair: Naomi Head (University of Glasgow)
  - Passionate development: the politics of emotions in infrastructure investments
    
    Emotions are often ignored or downplayed in the analysis of the rationale and process of Chinese investments as the assumption is that infrastructural investment is pursued on the basis of (bounded) rationality which reflect the ‘interests’ or negotiated interests of the actors who take part in. As such, emotions are explained away by such rational reasoning as economic benefits and geopolitical influences.
    
    However, it is important to understand the role of emotions in infrastructure development as investment projects are awash with emotions. For instance, anger, fear, and a sense of betrayal permeated through the whole process of Piraeus investment. ‘COSCO, GO HOME!’ was the first message sent by Piraeus dockworkers who staged a 6-month strike upon COSCO’s takeover. So do pride and hope on the Chinese side as COSCO presented its Piraeus investment loud and proud, claiming it to be the ‘dragon’s head’. More importantly, emotions cannot be simply discounted as being flimsy or irrational, as they are embedded in political discourses, and affect the perceptions, motivations, and intentions of all involved parties. Recognising the critical role of emotions reshapes how we think about politics, society, and the formation of policy.
    
    Built on the studies of emotions and the logic of affect, this paper investigates the emotional aspect of infrastructure development with reference to the Piraeus case. It asks what emotions have been invoked, and more importantly, the ways in which these emotions have constituted infrastructure development. Simply, what do these emotions do regarding infrastructure development?
    
    Author: Ran Hu (The Open University)
  - Exploring Particular Emotional Dynamics of Environmental Movements
    
    The nexus of emotions and social movements is a significant discussion that interplays between International Relations and Social Movements Studies. Emotions play an important role in catalysing and diffusing activism across places, countries, and cities. This study investigates particularly how emotions play a role as catalysts for collective action in environmental movements. This article defines emotions as powerful triggers for activism in environmental movements. In doing so, this study explores the role of emotions in shaping collective identity and solidarity. The main goal is to analyse how emotional spaces are constructed through a collective understanding of environmental activism. To achieve this, insights from the literature on emotion in IR and Social Movements Studies are synthesized. The interlinked nature of emotions is analysed which includes fear, anxiety, and hope. Besides being interlinked, the contradictory emotions of fear and hope act together to stimulate resistance and construct an effective response. While discussing the contradictory nature of emotions in activism, the concepts of climate anxiety and climate justice are assessed in detail.
    
    Author: Efser Rana Coskun (Social Sciences University of Ankara)
  - Strategic humour and post-truth public diplomacy
    
    Humour has a long history as a form of resistance by citizens against states. From authoritarian to democratic states, publics have used humour to speak hard truths, ridicule ideology, and resist censorship, propaganda, and repression. This paper explores how states, rather than publics, use humour to resist seemingly more powerful states, contest dominant images and narratives, and mobilize publics. I argue that with social media, states are increasingly and – strategically – using humour as an asymmetrical tool of influence and public diplomacy.
    
    I make two principal arguments. First, I formulate the concept of strategic humour – the use of humour by state and proxy actors to promote narratives that advance state interests through wider outreach and/or persuasion. This study focuses on contested events, which involve competing narratives from various actors, uncertainty around responsibility or outcomes, and controversy around an actor’s image or international reputation. Strategic humour frames contested events to the advantage of a particular actor, maximizes the appeal and outreach of the message, and makes use of digital media environments. The paper formulates key characteristics of strategic humour, questioning its actors, purpose, audiences, and effects.
    
    Second, I argue that the rapid increase in the use of humorous content to explain foreign policy issues to publics stimulates the emergence of a post-truth public diplomacy, reliant on outreach and popularity mechanisms, fictitious representations, emotive messaging, and exploitation of uncertainty. I demonstrate how strategic humor pursues outreach first and persuasion second.
    
    To make these arguments, this paper reviews a range of cases of strategic humour produced by multiple states and proxy actors: from Israel and the US, to Russia and Ukraine. Additionally, the study involves data from multiple focus groups on strategic humor reception among target audiences, conducted in relation to Russia’s use of foreign policy pranks to narrate foreign policy issues to publics. The paper offers insight into how strategic humour is used as a public diplomacy tool to advance state interests, deflect criticism, legitimate policy, and challenge the narratives of others. Additionally, I question the persuasive potential and limitations of strategic humour as a tool of foreign policy narration.
    
    Author: Dmitry Chernobrov (University of Sheffield)
  - Remembering the Future, Imagining the Past: Memory-Making during the Manchester Arena Bombing
    
    The explicit role of imagination in politics, particularly memory-making, remains largely underexplored. A key question that remains is whether imagination opens up the political practice(s) of memory-making to new futures and possibilities, or whether it simply re-politicises along existing margins and boundaries. Using the context of Twitter responses during the Manchester Arena bombing, I demonstrate that the ubiquitous use of digital media platforms to communicate in ‘real-time’ during rupturing media events, has allowed a symbiotic relationship to emerge between memory and imagination- a relationship which enables a paradoxical but possible inversion of remembering the future and imagining the past. In the initial moments as the Manchester bombing unfolded, ‘official’ details were slow to come through, and imagining what was not yet made sense of played a key role in narrative development. I demonstrate that memory-making is a negotiation between memory and imagination that has the potential to open up the political process to new futures, but can also re-politicise along existing lines if we are not careful. Either way, I show that imagination adds a new dimension to memory-making which needs to be taken seriously in the future of IR.
    
    Author: Emma Connolly (Open University)
  - Making sense of the climate crisis: insights from existentialism and nuclear war
    
    Global climate change is arguably the biggest crisis we face today, yet it is also a problem of such magnitude and complexity that it is difficult to grasp and process emotionally. One way in which both the public and the academic literature have made sense of the climate crisis is by comparing it to another existential threat: all-out nuclear war. Both scenarios are not only framed as the end of civilization as we know it, but also as entirely human-made disasters that could easily be avoided if common sense prevailed. Given the prominence of the comparison, this paper explores two interrelated questions: How is the comparison analytically helpful (or not) for making sense of the climate crisis? And what does the comparison reveal about how people deal with global climate change emotionally? By drawing on insights from existentialist philosophy, this paper finds that conceptualizing global climate change as akin to nuclear holocaust paradoxically obscures the existential threat emanating from global climate change, because it misrepresents both the nature of the consequences for the planet and the complexity of moral choices required for averting them. While the comparison thus assuages people’s anxieties, it ultimately inhibits state action.
    
    Author: Nina C. Krickel-Choi (Lund University)
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  05 Panel / Revisiting Turkish Politics: domestic, regional and global challenges to Ankara Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: ISMMEA Working group
  
  Chair: Basak Alpan (Middle East Technical University)
  - CIMER in Turkey: A Revolutionary Platform for Political Participation or a Tool for Authoritarianism?
    
    This study explains CIMER (Presidency’s Communication Center) in Turkey, one of the e-government applications in Turkish public administration that transform political communication and political participation from theory to practice. In this context, it examines the debates that CIMER, which is described as an important institution in the context of political participation, has allegedly turned into an institution that contributed to authoritarianism in Turkey in the following years. Methodologically, legal regulations on the historical establishment of CIMER, public statements of CIMER's bureaucrats, and news about CIMER reflected in the media will be used as the primary research data. The result obtained from these data shows the originality of the study and its contribution to the field. Unlike the studies conducted so far, which are limited to the positive contributions of CIMER and public policy analysis, CIMER has been explored as a tool of authoritarianism on the axis of political science.
    
    Author: Caglar Ezikoglu (University of Birmingham)
  - Towards water regionalism? Examining the linkages between water, infrastructures, and regionalism in Turkey
    
    The interface between water, infrastructures, and power has long been contested. The hydro-social scholarship has demonstrated that water, water infrastructures, and society (re-)make each other. Moving beyond imagining infrastructures solely as material entities, critical infrastructure scholarship has also demonstrated that infrastructures and society shape each other. These studies have been extended to examine the relationship between infrastructures and regions, concluding that infrastructures and regions also (re-)make each other. Drawing on the triadic relationship between water, infrastructures, and regions, we aim to examine how regional factors, dynamics, and complexities shape (the politics of) water infrastructures, and how water infrastructures shape (the politics of) regions. We aim to demonstrate this linkage by focusing on the history of regional planning and hydraulic infrastructure development in Turkey, particularly on how the South-eastern Anatolia Project (GAP) and south-eastern Turkey have shaped each other since the 1970s. We focus on both the national and transboundary dimensions of the development and management of the Euphrates and the Tigris and their implications for the south-eastern Turkey and the Euphrates and Tigris Basin. Thus, we seek to promote ‘water regionalism’ as a novel approach to examine the dynamic relationship between regions and water infrastructures at a variety of scales.
    
    Authors: Caner Sayan (Swansea University) , Ayşegül Kibaroğlu (MEF University)* , Arda Bilgen (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  - New Securitization Waves of the Kurdish Question. A Two-Level Game Analysis of Turkish Foreign Policy
    
    Since about the 1990s the “Kurdish political space” has undergone a transformation that moved from the centers of each national state to a transnational realm. This has both implied new intra-Kurdish dynamics and acquired a more geopolitical dimension in the wider Middle East. More recently, the emergence of a Kurdish autonomous region in Syria has represented a watershed for the current security subtleties.
    Within this context, it is no doubt that Turkey represents one of the states that has mostly affected and been affected by the evolutionary phases of this reality. On the one hand, the collapse of the “democratic opening” of the early 2010s has led to a return to a domestic securitization of the Kurdish question. On the other hand, the emergence of different Kurdish actors as potential “game changers” along a regional turmoil has assumed a more significant role in the eyes of Ankara’s geopolitical competition with other powers.
    Existing literature offers valuable insights but often views these dynamics from singular internal or external perspectives. This paper aims to bridge that gap by examining the interplay between Turkish Foreign Policy and the Kurdish issue, identifying consistent elements and changes in their mutual influence.
    Turkey's current approach may seem like a return to its traditional stance on the Kurdish question. However, this study posits that Ankara has adopted a nuanced securitization strategy influenced by both domestic and external factors. Relying on Putnam’s Two-level Game theory and supported by empirical data from diverse interviews, we show that Turkish policymakers balance domestic and international considerations within the region's unique dynamics.
    
    Authors: Riccardo Gasco (University of Bologna) , Samuele Abrami (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan) , Bahar Baser (Durham University)
  - Old neighbours and new friends: changing China's role in Turkish history textbooks
    
    Since the establishment of the Republic of Turkiye, China and Turkiye’s interactions with it have always occupied a, if not a vital one, position in the foundation myth and nationalistic narrative. Thus creating a base for role creation and relation orientation. This study tracks the change in China’s role in Turkish history textbooks from the 1930s to the 2010s, arguing the role of China has changed from a negative, hostile, and inferior role to a more neutral and equal one. This is both a reflection of Turkiye’s domestic changes and a re-orientation of the Sino-Turkish relationship and worldview.
    
    Author: Mengqi Sun (Durham University)
- 80
  
  05 Roundtable / Recentring Harm in Critical Military Studies Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  This roundtable draws together scholars who are keen to examine ways to understand, critique, and confront the harms caused by military institutions, their personnel, and practices. At the centre of our research agendas are concerns about the visibility and invisibility of the different forms of harm generated by military power, and the state’s ability to produce particular forms of knowledge about what does and does not count as ‘harmful’. By reflecting on the concept of social harm - a tool used by some critical criminologists to draw the wider social and political contexts in and through which harms occur into focus – we explore how this alternative mode of inquiry might permit deeper and wider understandings of the everyday production and experience of harmful military activity. Our aim is to consider the implications of a military social harm approach for mechanisms of accountability and the generation of public debate on the costs of retaining and deploying military power.
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Chair: Jamie Johnson (University of Leicester)
  
  Participants: Victoria Basham (Cardiff University) , Sarah Bulmer , Hannah Richards , Owen Thomas (University of Exeter)
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  05 Roundtable / Western approaches to security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific Exec 1, ICC
  
  Problematisation of Western approaches to security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific
  
  The challenges that the emergence of competition between the United States and China will pose on a global level will be significant for the evolution of the international system in the coming decades. This evolution will particularly affect the Western world, whose geo-economic weight will see an important balancing act due to the emergence of new global players. Starting with conceptualisation one the Indo-Pacific as the new geopolitical scenario where much of the competition between the US and China will be concentrated, the West has responded by proposing its aspirations for this region. The numerous strategies and policy documents that are entirely dedicated to the Indo-Pacific, or deal with parts of it, focus heavily on the one-sided relationship between the promoting states and regional partners, united by values or interests. However, the growing Western frustration with many Indo-Pacific actors refusing to adapt to the US-China field choice, sees some Western actors embarking on a new phase of adaptation to this process. The creation of the AUKUS, on the strategic-military side, constitutes a first step towards the definition of new medium- to long-term balances that are truly capable of confronting Chinese expansionism.
  
  Since the launch of the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) in 2022, the framework has been touted by the Biden administration as “writing new rules for the 21st century”, with the aim of making the economies of the participant countries “grow faster and fairer” (cite). IPEF membership currently represents 40% of the world’s GDP. The framework has been described by some analyses as a response to the criticism faced by the Obama era ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy where the policy largely focused on defence matters. The region is home to many Southeast Asian (ASEAN) countries who all have varied historical relations with China and the US, as well as varied levels of domestic economic development and political stability.
  
  At the heart of this new phase lies the ability of Western actors, who recognise themselves in the international rule of law regime, to cooperate together in the region. At the academic level, the study of cooperation, its characteristics as well as its limits, in cooperation between Western actors is still at an early stage. Especially in those areas, economic-infrastructural cooperation, maritime security, and the relationship with multilateral entities such as ASEAN that are constituent features of the Indo-Pacific. The case of the United Kingdom and the European Union, medium-sized actors with strong ambitions of presence and influence in the region, is of particular interest. Indeed, it makes it possible to study the concept of cooperation applied to this region by declining it within the innovative framework of the study of medium-sized powers and their role in the international system. At the same time, the peculiarity of the post-Brexit relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, between a medium power and a supranational organisation, opens the research scenario to new dimensions of understanding an international system increasingly characterised by mini-lateral initiatives, at a time of unprecedented multipolarity.
  
  Proposed panel – questions, expertise, aim
  
  This panel aims to discuss various developments, perceptions and responses in the Indo-Pacific region around the main question: what are the characteristics of UK-EU cooperation in the Indo-Pacific? What are the perceptions of regional, and external actors of this cooperation? What are the tangible results, and the limits of this cooperation? Panel members will each contribute from various country and sub-regional perspectives, followed by a discussion on the implications on the future of the region’s economic and political stability.
  
  Composition and function
  
  Chair - Professor Christophe Jaffrelot, Professor of Politics and Sociology, King’s India Institute, King’s College London; Lead of the Indo-Pacific research group.
  
  Panellist – Dr Zeno Leoni, Lecturer in Defence Studies, Defence Studies Department, King’s College London; Lead of the KCL Middle Powers research group.
  
  Panellist – Mauro Bonavita, Ph.D. candidate in International Relations, Department of War Studies, King’s College London; researcher KCL Indo-Pacific research group.
  
  Panellist – Cristina De Esperanza Picardo, Ph.D. candidate in International Relations, Department of European and International Studies, King’s College London and National University of Singapore; Researcher KCL Indo-Pacific Research group.
  
  Panellist – Anna Tan, Ph.D. candidate in International Relations, Defence Studies Department; Researcher KCL Indo-Pacific research group.
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Chair: Christoph Meyer (King's College London)
  
  Participants: Zeno Leoni (Defence Studies Department - King’s College London) , Mauro Bonavita (King's College London - Department of War Studies) , Anna Tan (Lau China Institute - King’s College London) , Participant to be confirmed
- 82
  
  05 Roundtable / The 'knowers' of international studies: Radical intersectionality and collective imagining from the margins Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Cynthia Enloe reminds us that “no individual or social group finds themselves on the ‘margins’ of any web of relationships…without some other individual or group having accumulated enough power to create the ‘centre’ somewhere else” (2004). International Relations is no different: there are central approaches with significant disciplinary power and marginalised approaches that get disregarded. There are, however, approaches and attention to spaces and people made marginal by dominant IR that have flourished despite (or because) of this disregard. Many of the empirical, theoretical, conceptual, and methodological questions asked in these incredibly rich but often marginalised approaches are not just academic, but existential for those who are made marginal, devalued, dismissed, excluded.
  
  Too often identities and people who are ‘marginal’ are also siloed, to be dealt with and disciplined in isolation. Queer theorist Cathy Cohen encourages us to perpetually interrogate all relations to power and to encourages us to ceaselessly reflect on the boundary-making and hierarchy-generating work our scholarship does precisely because it has political effects. As a discipline, IR for a long time studied a period — and still studies institutions founded in this period — dominated by a narrative of “never again”. One might say there was an implicit hopeful politics at play, particularly in peace research.
  
  Taking aim as disciplinary hierarchies but moving forward with an explicit hopefulness, this panel refuses practices of division and isolation and instead asks what might IR be from the margins? Reframing this engagement as a radical intersectionality, this roundtable brings together scholars working with communities and issues rendered marginalised by disciplinary norms. We invite participants to be unruly and undisciplined in their contributions to a conversation about power and ‘who gets to know’ in the discipline, that directly addresses the BISA theme of ‘whose international studies?’.
  
  The panel brings together scholars working at intersections of gender, youth, decolonial, queer, disability, migrant rights and issues to discuss how we can nurture solidarity in resistance to the competition that disciplinary norms foster, and collectively imagine beyond silos what an inclusive future of IR might look like.
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Helen Berents (Griffith University)
  
  Participants: Niharika Pandit (Queen Mary University of London) , Q Manivannan (University of St Andrews) , Toni Haastrup (University of Manchester) , Participant to be confirmed
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  05 Panel / The Injustices of Law Exec 6, ICC
  
  Sponsor: International Law and Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: Henry Lovat (University of Glasgow)
  
  Chair: Henry Lovat (University of Glasgow)
  - The Myth of Criminal Liability: Migration Deals with Libya
    
    This paper is particularly concerned about the specific agreement between Libya and Italy with the support of the EU, in which Libyan authorities are asked to stop boats on the sea and return migrants to detention centers in Libya for migration control. Several fact-finding missions have reported that there are serious violations and abuses going on in detention centers in Libya. This situation has already reached to the attention of the ICC. The legal opinions sent to the court advocates for the individual criminal responsibility of those who entered into this migration deal with Libyan authorities and eventually caused the harm of thousands of people in detention facilities in Libya. This paper seeks an answer to the question of whether the individual liability link can be established in this situation from the criminal legal theory perspective by considering the relevant international criminal law doctrines. It argues that migration deals breach international norms and violates international human rights. However, forming a criminal liability of the Italian and the EU politicians cannot be justified in international criminal law.
    To demonstrate the violation of international human rights law, the paper will rely on several fact-finding reports of established NGOs. To demonstrate the argument that there cannot be a criminal liability link formed in between the crime committed in Libya and the EU and Italian politicians, the paper will specifically focus on the aiding and abetting mode of liability. It analyses the causality principle for the actus reus and the lack of evidence to support the mens rea of aiding and abetting that the logistic, technique and financial support from the EU and Italy is made for the purpose of the commission of these crimes by Libyan authorities. The paper argues for a restricted approach in international criminal liability while highlighting the urgent need to strengthen the sanction against international human rights violations.
    
    Author: Elif Gökşen (Bilkent University)
  - The limits of environmental governance in areas of disputed sovereignty: the implementation of human and environmental risk measures by European Antarctic actors
    
    The Antarctic Treaty has successfully overcome sovereignty disputes in the region by ensuring governance based on peace, scientific cooperation and environmental protection. But there are limits to its domestic implementation. Since 2004, the Treaty Measures 4 (2004) and 1 (2005) managing human and environmental risks in Antarctica have not become effective because not all Treaty Parties have implemented them. To find out what affects the implementation by Treaty Parties in a region of undefined sovereignty, I compare 12 European Antarctic National Programmes to identify which domestic factors foster or delay the implementation of these measures. By analysing documents, and interviewing national Antarctic policy actors, I use Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to shed some light on the limits of environmental governance in areas of disputed sovereignty.
    
    Author: Daniela Portella Sampaio (Alfred Wegener Institute)
  - Who should legislate? Mapping the international debate on modern slavery
    
    Modern slavery is a policy area that has seen substantive changes and proliferation of legislation in the last decade. For instance, the 2015 UK Modern Slavery Act led to new legislation both domestically and internationally. While there has been increasing scholarly attention to this issue area, two factors have been overlooked. First, most studies analyse modern slavery legislation through a domestic lens, ignoring ideas on regulation of modern slavery at the international level, how they are promoted, by whom, and what alternative ideas may have been side-lined in the process. Second, as a result of this domestic focus, these studies miss an important debate on ‘responsibility’, in other words which level of governance should regulate this phenomenon. To address these gaps, we map actor coalitions and their proposed policies to study the emergence and evolution of modern slavery-related policy proposals to understand how desired responsibility levels may have changed over time. To achieve this, we use four different textual sources combining domestic and international levels (news agency reports, speeches from German and British national parliaments, and United Nations General Assembly speeches) between 1990 and 2020. Our analysis is based on Discourse Network Analysis (DNA), a mixed-methods technique that combines qualitative content analysis with quantitative social network analysis. We find that policies on modern slavery have shifted over time from assigning responsibility at the domestic level increasingly to the international level, and that Global North actors increasingly advocate for increased regulation in the Global South.
    
    Authors: Sofie Roehrig (University of Warwick/TU Dresden) , Ece Ozlem Atikcan (University of Warwick)
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  05 Panel / The political economy of banking and banks Exec 5, ICC
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: IPEG Working group
  
  Chair: Martin Hearson (Institute of Development Studies)
  - Following their lead? The African Development Bank and the Bretton Woods Institutions
    
    African institutions are often maligned as fiscally irresponsible and even corrupt. Washington-based officials, for example, have accused the African Development Bank (AfDB) of lending recklessly. Yet, AfDB officials claim that they coordinate their lending activities with other international financial institutions. This study investigates just how much the AfDB coordinates its lending patterns with the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) and why. Analysing AfDB loan commitments from 1995 to 2015, I find that an African country can expect to receive more funding commitments from the AfDB when it is favourably assessed using joint International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank criteria. When a given country is under an IMF or a World Bank program, it is also associated with larger AfDB commitments. Drawing on historical, interview, and case evidence, I argue that the apparent pattern is driven by AfDB staff preparing loans that support countries with the Bretton Woods’ seal of approval. The evidence supports the view that AfDB lending priorities are in alignment with the premier Washington-led global financial institutions and views to the contrary do not seem to stem from actual data.
    
    Author: Tetsekela Anyiam-Osigwe (Princeton University)
  - One future to bind them all? Modern central banking and the limits of performative governability
    
    In this paper, I analyse the case of ‘modern’ central banking’s dual failures in effectively containing financial fragilities and inflationary pressures as a cautionary tale about the intrinsic limitations and contradictions of ‘governing through quantified futures’. I construct a genealogy of central banks’ much-vaunted ‘performative art’ of governing the economy through the management of expectations in order to reveal a crucial tension between the control of expectations about the future and controlling the future through (present) expectations of it. I argue that social scientific analyses tend to operate with a truncated understanding of performativity that prevents them from developing sufficiently precise and discerning accounts of the mechanics of performative processes to reveal their (intrinsic) limitations and explain how and why they (may) fail. By dissecting the surprisingly complex mechanics of central banks’ performative agency, I thus contribute towards a more precise theorisation of how governing through quantified futures operates.
    
    Author: Timo Walter (University of Lausanne)
  - Whose Financial Services Revolution? The Politics of Open Banking, Fintech and Competition Policy in the UK
    
    The UK domestic retail banking market was for several decades one of the most concentrated in Europe. This situation contradicts conventional economic policy wisdom that holds competition to be a key determinant in national economic success. However, since 2014, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of market participants offering core retail banking services in the UK. The article focuses on recent interest in ‘open banking’ and fintech to explore why there have been so many new entrants and what this demonstrates, if anything, about the relationship between banking and the state. Building on the bank power literature we argue that against the background of disillusionment with incumbent banks a more incisive, pro-competitive statecraft emerged during the design of open banking (2015-18); under these conditions bank power waned. However, regulatory inertia and conflicting institutional strategies took hold during the implementation of open banking (2018-2022), allowing resistance on the part of incumbent banks to slow progress. We conclude by problematising UK competition policy and questioning whether open banking was destined to fail.
    
    Authors: Chris Clarke (University of Warwick) , Huw Macartney (University of Birmingham)
  - Morality, The Federal Reserve and Socio-Political Economic Governance
    
    Central bank independence and their economic governance is a growing field of research as monetary institutions evolve. The current debate on the legitimacy of these independent institutions examine the degrees of their politicisation or depoliticisation, but rather than arguing on degrees of politicisation or depoliticisation of central banks, my research aims to look at how central banks exist within this constructed space, applying Polanyi’s theoretical framework that the political and the economic are artificially separated and necessary for institutional capitalism to be more than “merely a function of the social order” (2001, p. 74) and eventually subordinate society. In the United States of America (hence: United States), the belief that “political freedom requires an unshakeable moral foundation that only religion can supply” (Holloway, n.d.) is still shaping society and dominant in American political thought. Research on civil religion in the United States is ongoing, from Robert Bellah’s civil religion to Andrew Whitehead’s Christian nationalism, the American public shares a religious dimension that has historically developed institutions and legitimated political authority. This promience was revealed in a 2019 study to show that most Americans adopt and reproduce secularised evangelical discourse (SED: political statements with roots in evangelical Christian history) regardless of their own religious beliefs. Many scholars studying the influence of American civil religion look at how the religious dimension is utilised by either political bodies or the public. However, I aim to examine how the ‘moral foundation that only religion can supply’ is used by economic institutions, specifically the Federal Reserve (Holloway, n.d.), as a legitimation tool and a way to inform social relations. I will employ a Foucaultian methodology to create a genealogy with a thematic analysis of Federal Reserve discourse from 1970 to 2023 and a discourse analysis of key texts. My research will contribute to a better understanding on how central banks legitimise their power.
    
    Author: Sandra Park (University of St. Andrews)
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  05 Panel / Theorizing the International in International Organizations and Prototype INGOs: 1915 to 1950 Exec 10, ICC
  
  Sponsor: British International History Working Group
  
  Convener: Molly Cochran (Oxford Brookes University)
  
  Chair: Molly Cochran (Oxford Brookes University)
  - Intellectual Interactions: The International Federation of University Women (IFUW) at the League of Nations, 1920 – 1933
    
    This paper looks at the formation and role of the IFUW at the League during the decade of ‘internationalism’ (1920 – 1933)) and how they advocated for greater involvement of women in the League’s Committees and other form of international cooperation. One of the defining features of the Covenant of the League of Nations was that it stated that ‘all positions under or in connection with the League, including the Secretariat, shall be open equally to men and women’ (Article 7) and this explicit reference to the equality of women in participating in international organizations has not been given due attention. This paper therefore uses the IFUW as a case study to (a) look at internationalism in the League and its Committees, vis-à-vis’ how women participated; (b) the meaning of ‘equality’ in the context of the Covenant; and how the IFUW functioned as a norm-developer for the equality of women in international society during the period 1920 – 1933.
    
    Author: P. Sean Morris (University of Helsinki)
  - ‘Exploring Every Avenue to Find Only Dead Ends’: The UN in Kashmir and the Attempt to Redefine International Conflict Management, 1948–1950
    
    This paper re-assesses the role the UN played in the early years of the Kashmir conflict. It addresses the puzzle of why the UN plan for a plebiscite failed, even though it had the agreement of both the Indian and the Pakistani governments and the support of the great powers. The paper argues that we need to place the Kashmir conflict in the wider historical context of a tectonic shift in the international order in the late 1940s and early 1950s. That era represented a brief period of experimentation, when hopes and ambitions for the UN were still high, issues of state sovereignty and self-determination in flux, and conflicts such as Kashmir seemed resolvable. Yet, in the process, UN officials learned that a growing lack of trust in the organisation’s effectiveness and legitimacy as global arbiter undermined the peace process, eventually bringing efforts at conflict resolution to a standstill. The paper concludes with some thoughts on the broader implications of the UN’s role in Kashmir for an international history of conflict management, international order, and global governance. It also presents some tentative ‘lessons’ we might learn from this early phase of UN conflict management.
    
    Author: Volker Prott (Aston University)
  - Beyond San Francisco: Anticolonial Worldmaking at the World Trade Union Congress, February 1945
    
    As the Second World War drew to a close and the victorious Great Powers mobilised to create a new world order, anticolonial activists used numerous notions and channels of the ‘international’ to influence this new order. This paper examines an under-appreciated avenue of anticolonial and international activity in the formative 1945 moment: the work of African, Asian, Arab, Latin American, and Caribbean delegates to the World Trade Union Congress held in London simultaneous with the Yalta Conference in February 1945. While the British TUC and Soviet delegations hoped to create a new labour international to complement the nascent United Nations Organisation, anticolonial activists sought to promote different notions of international anticolonialism – including pan-Arabism, pan-Americanism, and pan-Africanism – within labour internationalism, anti-fascism, and Anglo-American liberal internationalism.
    
    Author: Mark Reeves (University of Western England)
  - Saving Western Civilization: PEP, UNESCO, and a planned world order, 1931-1950
    
    The founding documents of both the Policy and Economic Planning (PEP) think tank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) are suffused with a sense of civilizational crisis. The people building these new institutions, in 1931 and 1946 respectively, believed that scientific expertise and targeted educational programmes could address this crisis. PEP firmly believed that catastrophes such as the Great Depression and, later, the Second World War, could be mitigated by grounding government policies in scientific knowledge of human nature. The organisation imagined a network of like institutions across the world, all guided by its example. Unesco was conceived differently, as part of the postwar architecture of peace. Unlike PEP, it sought to shape the minds of populations the world over. Through this educational programming, Unesco imagined it would be possible to improve the general standards of civilization in the world’s "dark areas," places populated by the "darker races" and less privileged peoples. In this paper, I explore both the content and the practice of PEP and Unesco’s internationalism, placing emphasis on how both organisations deployed rhetorics of scientific knowledge to mobilise particular understandings of international organization and to advocate for “saving the best of Western traditions”.
    
    Author: Sarah Dunstan (University of Glasgow)
  - Learning to be International: Women and International Summer Schools in the Interwar Era
    
    Creating conditions for peaceful change after WWI was an educational project in which women played significant roles. Women made contributions to the concept of “international-mind” as both an idea and a way of living in the world which sought to grow internationalism through participation in International Summer Schools across the interwar years. Women internationalists fostered cultural understanding and awareness of how the international and its challenges bind humans in a mutual project for collective peace and security. We offer findings from a joint project examining women’s involvement in annual Summer Schools run by a women’s international peace organization (the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom) and an organization of both men and women (the League of Nations Union) in which women predominated as Summer School attendees. Our research provides an overview of the organisational aims, attendees, locations, curricula, and the social and cultural programmes of the schools run by WILPF and the LNU. The Summer Schools of two voluntary international organizations provide a lens to examine convergences and differences in how women internationalists conceived the project of educating and mobilizing an international public.
    
    Authors: Molly Cochran (Oxford Brookes University) , Susannah Wright (Oxford Brookes University)
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  05 Panel / Unorthodox intersections: Migration Conversations from Diverse Perspectives Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Convener: Amanda Beattie (Aston University)
  
  Chair: Amanda Beattie (Aston University)
  
  Discussant: Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University)
  - The Unknown: Investigating border deaths and disappearances on the ‘Balkan Route’
    
    This paper tells two stories: first, it tells the story of an increasing number of deaths and disappearances of displaced people along the ‘Balkan Route’, specifically in Serbia and Bosnia, linking the deaths to increasingly violent and restrictive EU border policies. Since 2015, the number of people from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco and other countries, who have died on this route from preventable deaths - drowning, weather exposure, lack of medical treatment - and deaths caused by violence, has increased. But, their records: of deaths, burials, identities - are almost impossible to find. We argue that migrant deaths are made ‘not to matter’, through institutional negligence, racialisation and silencing. We show how the migrant dead are made to disappear: the once identifiable persons with families, friends and networks are often buried as ‘unknowns’ in local cemeteries, or in unmarked forest graves; whilst the fragmented bureaucracy and lack of record keeping by authorities, ensures they will never be found or identified. We contrast institutional silence we the efforts of activists, volunteers and other individuals who are aiding families in the search for the dead and who act as local archivists of informal knowledge about the dead and disappeared along the Balkan Route.
    
    Second, the paper also tells the story of how we set about researching the rising number of deaths and disappearances by teaming up with a group of investigative journalists at Lighthouse Reports. Reflecting on our collaborative investigation, the paper makes a methodological contribution by showing the complexity of tracing unidentified deaths through local and national authorities and institutions, as well as the difficulties of researching the unknown and the missing. The paper charts the challenges, ethical concerns and the search for missing data and statistics.
    
    Authors: Patricia Rubio Bertran (Aston University) , Thom Davies (University of Nottingham)* , Arshad Isakjee (University of Liverpool)* , Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik (Aston University)
  - The “Migration Fix” at Europe’s borders: Racial Capitalism, Necropolitics, and the European border regime
    
    The existing critical literature on the European border regime has highlighted its reliance on systems of state surveillance and neoliberal governmentality in the containment and channelling of displaced populations. We supplement this with a critical political economy perspective which reveals how systems of bordering and migration management are also underpinned by logics of capital accumulation. We draw on two related critical literatures, on Racial Capitalism and Relative Surplus Populations, to explain the ways in which displaced populations are securitised, marginalised, racialised and othered as part of the dominant logics of European capitalism, constituting what we call a ‘migration fix’. Further, we argue in this paper that necropolitical practices witnessed in the Mediterranean can themselves be understood and critiqued as extreme forms of migration fixes. We develop this argument by focusing on the routine practice of ‘pushbacks’ in the Eastern Mediterranean as well as the increasing violence of state and EU border practices responding to irregular crossings. We conclude by exploring the political dilemmas as well as the possibilities opened by this perspective to connect different critiques of European migration management and inform new practices of solidarity.
    
    Authors: Gemma Bird (University of Liverpool) , Davide Schmid
  - In-groups, out-groups, and human rights: the construction of Russia and Ukraine as human rights actors in British parliamentary discourse
    
    This article works to ascertain the nature and extent of the relationship between human rights discourse, and Britain’s rhetorical relationship with Russia and Ukraine. Furthermore, this research contributes to literature on identity, nationalism, power, discourse, and their impacts on foreign policy and human rights rhetoric in contemporary Britain.
    This paper will utilise as its data source Parliamentary debates from Hansard that occurred between the 2014 Annexation of Crimea and the 2022 Invasion of Ukraine, looking specifically at debated with ‘Russia’ and/or ‘Ukraine’ in the title. This time horizon covers a period of upheaval in British domestic politics, as well as its foreign policy. These debates will be analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis and will apply Van Dijk’s Ideological Square (Van Dijk, 2009, p. 194) as its analytical framework. This framework will be used to categorise Parliamentary discourse based on how it constructs ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’ based on the maximisation and minimisation of certain traits. The paper will also construct a theoretical framework of what constitutes a ‘positive human rights actor’, based on the literature review.
    
    The key finding of this paper is that being a positive human rights actor is not necessarily the path towards being portrayed by Parliament within Britain’s ‘in-group’. It appears to be the other way round: when the rhetorical portrayal of Ukraine is more positive and ‘in-grouped’, its presentation as a human rights actor improves. Similarly, equivocation on Russia’s human rights record increases as the political necessity to portray as a negative actor decreases. This has significant impact for the discussion of British Parliamentary foreign policy rhetoric. It would indicate that international political utility plays such a significant role in foreign policy discourse that it can, at times, supersede ideology or values.
    
    Author: Luke Marlow (Aston University)
  - Refugee Housing in ‘the city’: an examination of the everyday and the national in International Migration.
    
    This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion of ‘the everyday’ in International Relations. It examines the lived experiences of refugee housing in England as a particularly useful way of interrogating the relationship between the local and the national, where arrival and dispersal policies are enacted respectively. In this article we report on the findings of our MI-funded study of refugee housing in Birmingham, UK to ask what are the affective and emotional experiences of housing that deserve academic attention to better understand how to support asylum seekers, settled refugees, and the individuals that support them during this tumultuous time of their lives? Adopting a mixed, interdisciplinary methodology that brings together the lived experience of refugee communities with quantitative data analysis about austerity cuts’ impact on the local provision of housing, the paper argues in favour of a research focus on the local than the national level and provides recommendations for refugee housing “done well”
    
    We adopt a mixed methodology, interdisciplinary in nature, that situates the lived experience of refugee communities, and those that support them, alongside quantitative data analysis that examines austerity cuts and the impacts this has on the local provision of housing. The data reveals the negative impact of national government policy at the site of the everyday. Our study revealed the personal toll that this relationship can have, on people and their communities and goes on to make three particular claims. First, in light of austerity policies ‘the everyday’ in IR must focus more explicitly on cities as they negotiate the national and global demands of austerity as a result of the Global Financial Crisis. Second, we demonstrate that shows how in the city of Birmingham the wellbeing of all involved in refugee housing, is suffering, due to these cuts. We contrast this with evidence that housing, done well, supports a strong arrival journey in England. Finally, we demonstrate that housing is not simply about a house. Rather, there are affective and emotional experiences of housing that deserve academic attention to better understand how to support asylum seekers, settled refugees, and the individuals that support them during this tumultuous time of their lives. In making this claim the paper articulates to claims which advances the study of refugee housing in particular as well as the discourses of the ‘the everyday’ by turning to the relationship of cities and the national government.
    
    Authors: Myriam Fotou (University of Leicester)* , Mary Unsworth (Ashley Community Housing)* , Patrycja Rozbicka (Aston)* , Amanda Beattie (Aston University)
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  05 Roundtable / Whose Queer Political Economy? Conversations Within and Beyond IPE Sonata, Hyatt
  
  Sexuality—broadly defined to include sexual practices, behaviors, desires, and identities—remains a key site of political struggle around the world. While mainstream (and some critical) IPE has tended to overlook the importance of sexuality, there is a rich tradition of feminist and queer scholarship that locates sexual subjectivities, labor, and oppression firmly within the boundaries of the global capitalist economy. Our aim in this roundtable is to contribute to wider efforts to foster connections between scholars working on queer theory within IPE as well as to create connections with scholars outside of the field who are also interested in queer political economy questions. In so doing, we reflect on the potential of queer IPE not only to interrogate the sexual politics of neoliberalism but also to examine how the legacies of slavery and colonialism continue to shape global terrains of sexual struggle and injustice.
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Chair: Ellie Gore (University of Manchester)
  
  Participants: Ursula Mäki (University of Manchester) , Sameera Khalfey (University of Birmingham) , Alexander Stoffel (QMUL) , SM Rodriguez (LSE) , Ellie Gore (University of Manchester) , Nicola Smith (University of Birmingham)
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  05 Panel / Whose Reflexivity? Different Interpretive Approaches for Researchers in Global Politics Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: IIRG Working group
  
  Chair: Stephan Engelkamp (King's College London)
  - Hub-and-Spoke Approach: Identifying Who is Involved in Free Trade Agreement Negotiations from a Devolved Government Perspective
    
    Thinking about the emergence of a negotiated free trade agreement (FTA) elicits images of heads of state shaking hands over a signed document. Yet, when one reads an FTA, it becomes clear that these massive, technical documents are likely the result of the work of a team of negotiators, technocrats, and officials. But who is involved in these processes is yet unknown, both at the central and devolved government levels.
    Based on my fieldwork and interviews with officials from devolved governments, this paper progresses three interrelated ambitions: 1) to elucidate how one subcentral government trade policy team uses a policymaking technique of hub-and-spoke to help inform their policy preferences, 2) to show that there is a multiplicity of often invisible actors involved in the FTA negotiation processes, and 3) to argue that, ethnographic fieldwork adds value to understanding the situated environment of trade policy-making work and the policymakers whose doings and sayings contribute to FTA negotiations and implementation. In this paper, I ask: how do officials from this subcentral government identify their policy preferences and advocate for those preferences in the negotiation processes of a free trade agreement? Who is involved in the negotiation process in this context? And what are the everyday interactions that facilitate this work? As a result, this paper contributes to the growing use of ethnographic scholarship in IR locating the global in the local and vice-versa, and to international trade literature by expanding our understanding of who is included in the making of ‘the international’.
    
    Author: Lindsey Garner-Knapp (University of Edinburgh)
  - Whose International Relations? = Narrating the world into being by being the narrators
    
    The origins of the discipline of International Relations is deeply steeped in bias – bias that the continental European powers had against the new worlds they were ‘discovering’, bias that enables issues of high politics to be paramount in our policy making agendas, bias that ensures national security is the primary concern of all decision and disciplinary concerns; the western bias, the realist bias, the conflict bias, the gender bias – as the world evolves to include more variables the disciplinary core has to come face to face with tenuous demands. Whose international relations then becomes a complicated question.
    A possible solution for this conundrum lies in the narrative approach. As a methodology to unpack how the world around us is brought to life, the narrative approach remains under utilised in the discipline of International Relations, used primarily as a means to conduct foreign policy analysis where the narratives are seen as sites of meaning making. However, the approach delineates the narrators as the meaning makers. That is to say by utilising the narrative approach in its other form, one that gives space to self-insertion and reflexivity we can overcome the issue of subjective biases. When given the chance to self-inspect, reflect, and respond the narrators of the world can lay bare their cognitive inclinations – rendering what was once subconscious bias- to self-aware context. A reflexive interpretivist narrative approach can help us in locating the narrator in the worlds they narrate, thereby acknowledging how they shape the worlds they are researching and how they are shaped by the world as the researcher.
    
    Author: Divisha Srivastava (South Asian University)
  - Can ontological security be interviewed?
    
    Can ontological security - an individual-level concept - be empirically investigated on the state-level? Is it possible to demonstrate that the state is an ontological security-seeker due to experienced anxiety? This paper proposes to supplement methods of ‘capturing’ national identity anxiety by evaluating the researcher’s interpretation of the historical processes and textual/audio-visual data with context-specific knowledge from state officials. This study is the first to use elite interviews to verify and support narrative analysis-based contention that countries are dealing with ontological insecurity. In ontological security studies, determining what type of evidence illustrates state anxieties remains underesearched. Claims about the state’s anxiety are mostly based on historical and narrative analysis. Where the literature could be developed is the way how we establish that states are anxious. By conducting 70 interviews with British and Israeli officials, this investigation generates rich empirical evidence supporting seminal theoretical literature on ontological security's role in states’ behaviour. In particular, it verified and traced how officials’ anxiety about their country’s policies “scales up” to the state level (Mitzen, 2006). The study provides new evidence – coming from the state officials themselves – confirming salience and the transferability of individual-level anxieties to states’ practices.
    
    Author: Tadek Markiewicz (Uppsala University)
  - "Being too Emotional"? Navigating Responsibility and Vulnerability in the Fieldwork
    
    This article examines the role of positionality in data collection on sensitive topics in conflict zones--specifically the complex dynamic between insider/outsider, and the advantages and disadvantages of being both. During the 12 months of fieldwork in Turkey’s Kurdish borderlands, I had a positionality that was constantly shifting between being an outsider and insider. Being some kind of an insider as a Kurdish woman from Karakocan (also as the descendant of a politically known family targeted by the state) provided space for sharing untold experiences and common references and enabled the deciphering of some political messages/codes. At the same time, being somewhat of an outsider (at least culturally), I was able to occasionally dismiss some cultural references, everyday language and societal norms, and thus cross boundaries and access knowledge and spaces other Kurdish women could not. All of this provided unique relationship to the field and its data. Thus, in efforts to understand the place of such research, within the context of a routinized state of intimidation and violence embedded in everyday experiences, I focus on questions concerning the dynamics of the relationship between the researcher and the participants: How does it feel to be a researcher who is not only an outsider but also an insider in the context of violence? Is the insider/outsider dilemma a useful category in terms of which to thoroughly understand diverse experiences and volatile dynamics of conflict and war on the ground? I argue that responsibility should be the anchor while working with marginalized groups. Responsibility helps to transcend the the insider/outsider dilemma and enables to focus more on the experiences of vulnerability by adopting a people-centered, consistent, and compassionate attitude that pays respect to people’s conditions and takes emotions – both those of the participants and those of the researcher – seriously as part of the data collected. This article adds to the scholarship in qualitative research methods, specifically on positionality, ethics and vulnerability in conflict zones.
    
    Authors: Dilan Okcuoglu , Dilan Okcuoglu (Aberysywth University, Interpol)*
  - The Language of War: Historical Analogies in Ukraine’s Resistance to the Russian Aggression
    
    In International Relations (IR) scholarship, there is a body of literature that advances our understanding of how certain events that are deeply anchored in a society’s collective memory can be invoked by policymakers as an analogy to current events in their justification of foreign and security policy. By taking the example of Ukraine’s current resistance to Russia’s aggression, my project investigates how the Ukrainian political leadership in Kyiv makes sense of the war by using specific language expressed through historical analogies. It is argued that the use of historical analogies should not be regarded as ‘decorative’ rhetorical devices, but rather as an embodiment of the political actors’ conceptual system. The exploration of political language of the Ukrainian policy makers helps to comprehend the Ukrainian standpoint in the war.
    
    Author: Lina Klymenko (University of Helsinki)
- 89
  
  05 Roundtable / Whose Security? Critical Reflections on Security Policy In the UK Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  This roundtable critically engages with security policy and practice in the UK. Following the Integrated Review in 2021, and the ‘Refresh’ in 2023, the roundtable will reflect on which ‘security’ issues are being prioritised by the UK, which are being deprioritised, and whose security is – and whose security is not – represented in the current security framework. The roundtable brings together speakers from a range of professional backgrounds, including policymaking, the third sector and academia, with a view to establishing a critical yet policy-engaged dialogue on the limits and possibilities of UK national security policy and practice.
  
  Sponsor: European Security Working Group
  
  Chair: Thomas Martin (Open University)
  
  Participants: Laura Cleary (Oakwood International Security) , Steven Chisnall (University of Southampton) , Richard Reeves (Rethinking Security) , Hillary Briffa (King's College London) , Chas Morrison (Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University) , Harmonie Toros (University of Reading)
- 16:30
  
  15 minute transition
- 90
  
  05 Roundtable / Ambiguity Politics in Conflict and Post-Conflict Settings Exec 5, ICC
  
  Abstract: How does political ambiguity manifest in conflict and post-conflict settings? An emerging literature highlights the utility of political and institutional ambiguity for authorities engaged in or recovering from conflict. This literature challenges traditional views of statehood and development, which tend to emphasize the benefits of formalization and predictability. Instead, we will highlight how in some settings ambiguity and unpredictability—whether intentional or not—yields strategic advantages for actors such as non-state armed groups, governments grappling with the effects of conflict, and newly established post-conflict regimes. Our roundtable participants will present and discuss the theoretical and practical implications of their research on ambiguity and unpredictability and how it might benefit scholars and practitioners of conflict and development. We will bring together a diverse range of multidisciplinary scholars with expertise and substantial field experience in countries such as Lebanon, Uganda, and Afghanistan. Participants will identify key research questions and empirical gaps that need to be addressed in further research, as well as challenges and strategies for conflict researchers conducting fieldwork in ambiguous settings.
  
  Sponsor: Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism
  
  Chair: Romain Malejacq (Radboud University)
  
  Participants: Anastasia Shesterinina (The University of York) , Adam Sandor (University of Bayreuth) , Anna Plunkett (King's College London) , Koen Vlassenroot (Ghent University) , Rebecca Tapscott (University of York; The Graduate Institute (Geneva))
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  05 Panel / British Ontological Insecurities and Anxieties in International Politics Sonata, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Conveners: Anne-Marie Houde (University of Oxford) , Nicolai Gellwitzki (University of Warwick)
  
  Chair: Nicolai Gellwitzki (University of Warwick)
  - Ontological Security, Vicarious Identity, and the Anthropocene: The Case of Sycamore Gap
    
    The felling of the iconic tree on at Sycamore Gap in Northumberland, England in September 2023 was met with national and international outrage. The tree was believed to be over 300 years old and was the subject of countless paintings, photographs, and social media posts earning it the moniker of ‘most photographed tree in Britain’. The reaction to this act of vandalism went beyond expectation with locals describing the loss as akin to a wound on the soul of the community and mourners far and wide expressing similar outpourings of grief. In this paper I explore how the natural world plays into questions of ontological security. I argue that the destruction of the nature represents a violation of our sense of ‘home’. However, I also present the paradox of small-scale vandalism vs the wholesale destruction of the natural world through human-driven climate change and argue that that while climate anxiety is a rising and real concern, individuals ‘bracket out’ this concern by engaging in vicarious identification with specific actors in nature. The Sycamore Gap tree is a perfect distillation of this, as much of the media coverage has anthropomorphized the tree to such a degree that it is no longer part of the ‘natural’ world, but rather a part of the British ‘home’ and national story. Stories of what the tree ‘saw’, ‘felt’, and took part in dominated the news cycle, and it is from this media coverage that I draw the primary data for the case. In presenting this argument I also make the case for a greater integration of the natural world into our discussions on ontological security and consider the ramifications of the Anthropocene on how global challenges are addressed.
    
    Authors: Luke Stephens (University of Edinburgh) , Lauren Rogers
  - Weaponising Domestic Violence: Ontological insecurity and complex state violence
    
    This research argues that the hostile environment in the UK utilizes domestic violence as a deterrent measure, thus weaponizing this endemic form of interpersonal violence against migrant women. I argue that the state’s own processes of accountability and responsibility for domestic violence fatalities, and the active exclusion of migrant women from state-provided services that are key in intervening in cases of domestic violence, are sufficient for domestic violence against migrant women to be constituted as a complex form of state violence. I consider what an ontological security approach can offer to our understanding of the multiplicity of encounters and experiences that migrant women have with a state apparatus that is designed to offer both security and accountability to address the particularly gendered insecurity of domestic violence. I find that the active exclusion of migrant women from these mechanisms embeds both an emotive/ affective and a very real, lived, empirical insecurity in the lives of migrant women. While ontological security studies offer a conceptual pathway to understand security in a way that incorporates the experiential, in order to understand this unique form of insecurity and how it is made and exploited by the state in practice it is necessary to situate these local and micro experiences of insecurity in systemic forms of intersectional discrimination embedded in national security narratives.
    
    Author: Alexandria Innes (City, University of London)
  - Ontological Security, Projective Identification, and the Envy Dilemma in post-Brexit UK-EU relations
    
    Brexit has posed an existential challenge to the UK and the EU, resulting in widespread anxieties in both Britain and the remaining 27 EU Member States as success of one threatens the sense of ontological security of the other. These anxieties have hampered attempts to adapt to the “new normal” as bilateral relations are marked by mutual mistrust and competition. Drawing on the work of Melanie Klein and integrating her concept of envy into Ontological Security Studies, we argue that bilateral UK-EU relations are best understood as characterised by this particular affect. Envy, in this context, comprises the angry feeling that the other possess, withholds, and keeps an object that one desires for oneself accompanied with the impulse to destroy the desired object to spoil it for the other. Looking at the so-called “Vaccine Wars” of 2021 between the UK and the EU, we show how what we call an envy dilemma arose. In this envy dilemma, UK and EU governments were preoccupied with “winning” against the other, or at least making sure that the other side was losing by disrupting supply lines, adopting triumphant and humiliating rhetoric, and projectively identifying bad intentions in the other.
    
    Authors: Nicolai Gellwitzki (University of Warwick) , Anne-Marie Houde (University of Oxford)
  - ‘Nobody does it better’? Nation Branding, Vicarious Identity, and the British Royal Family
    
    For their supporters the British royal family are often heralded as a key asset of British soft power, able to perform functions of advocacy, cultural exchange, trade and British brand enhancement absent of overt political trappings. Beyond this, they are also notable sources of ontological (in)security owing to their position as targets of vicarious identification and vicarious identity promotion for a broad range of communities. Intriguingly, this is also often the case for those of a republican persuasion since, whether citizens like it or not, the royal family represent and brand ‘us’ to outsiders… and, like it or not, even republicans know this. The royal family is therefore ontologically significant, a potential source of status, standing and self-esteem but also of embarrassment, shame and stigmatization. Indeed, in a situation in which branding operates as a cultural context for everyday life and a key mechanism through which individual subjectivities, collective identities and affective relationships are constituted, their role in this respect may even be increasing.
    Having established the above, the paper explores the emergence of a growing sense of (post-Brexit) British status anxiety and desires connected to Global Britain through the commentary attached to royal events. While these events provide an opportunity for national vicarious identification, status enhancement and ontological security, they also ultimately contain within them anxieties and seeds of ontological insecurity that stem from the problematic nature of the royal family and how they are received internationally. Analytically, we contend it is possible to identify increasing and intensifying sensitivities at staged formal royal events, where almost everything is being read in terms of a decline in the country’s status and standing. Why is it, then, that royal events remain fantasised venues for the mediation of post-Brexit ontological (in)security?
    
    Authors: Tom Howe (University of Warwick)* , Christopher Browning (University of Warwick)
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  05 Panel / Climate geopolitics: Conflict, security, and responsibility Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Environment Working Group
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Thomas Bobo (University of Birmingham)
  - Guerra del agua in Bolivia: Environmental discourse, power and the politics of ‘green’
    
    Violence over natural resources and unrest fuelled by ecological crises or climate change suggest a permeable and interactive relationship between environmental conditions and internal conflicts. However, political science and international relations literature often omits the presence of social and symbolic processes in the interactions between humans and nature. Environmental studies acknowledge such a complex and politically contingent relation and the various ecological interpretations that societies generate.
    This paper suggests bridging those approaches and offers a novel perspective on environmental conflicts. I study how competing constructions of environmental issues permeate the power structures of internal political contention. Critical environmental discourse analysis shows how politicising an ecological issue through social justice and rights discourse can affect a conflict’s power balance. Environmental discourse produces truths about the environment. Manifesting these truths allows contention actors to exploit political opportunities, set themselves as legitimate stakeholders, strive for internal mobilisation, and seek external support to alter the conflict’s power dynamics.
    This framework moves towards analyses of environmental knowledge systems and their expressions. It challenges essentialist examinations of socioecological phenomena. The guerra del agua in Cochabamba (Bolivia) illustrates the role discursive mechanisms can play to mobilise action over protecting natural resources.
    
    Author: Thomas Bobo (University of Birmingham)
  - Green Energy Transition at the Crossroads: Rethinking Energy Security in times of Climate Crisis and Emerging Geopolitical Constellations
    
    Tackling climate change is challenging not only because it poses an existential threat, but also because it requires coordinated political action amid an increasingly fractured international environment. However, while it is impossible to mitigate the effects of climate change without fostering an energy transition, the latter has become an increasingly complex process. First, because resources are no longer geographically concentrated, the division between producers and consumers is blurred, energy transportation no longer involves pipelines and tanks but electric grids, generation is decentralized, and the greatest advantage for states is not the physical possession of energy resources but the control of the technologies needed to transform them into actual electricity. Second, because green technologies have increasingly been securitized. As a result of the transformations in both the energy sector and broader international relations, traditional conceptions of energy security no longer support the complexity of the green transition. This paper investigates how these dynamics affect the concept of energy security. It addresses empirical changes that have challenged long-established conceptual and theoretical frameworks. Considering the central role that technology has taken in the energy transition, it proposes a re-conceptualization of energy security by bringing international political economy into the concept.
    
    Author: Bruna Bosi Moreira (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
  - ‘We are all in this together’: Climate Change and The Politics of Collective Responsibility
    
    From austerity to the recent pandemic, the refrain ‘We are all in this together’ has been increasingly deployed by political leaders to frame and govern crises. This paper explores a largely neglected phenomenon: how this rhetoric of collective responsibility has also been embraced by corporate actors, specifically by the oil industry in relation to climate change. These campaigns of ‘collective responsibility’ mark a significant departure from the two main strategies adopted by the oil industry to deflect its personal responsibilities for climate change, namely, agnogenesis (manufacturing of ignorance and doubt) and greenwashing (making appear environmentally sustainable what is not). How is it possible to explain the progressive shift of the oil industry from the agnotological denial of responsibility to the greenwashed acceptance of responsibility, to the collectivization of responsibility? Can collective climate responsibilities be abused? Can the rhetoric of ‘We are all in this together’ be used by corporate actors (such as the oil industry) to deflect their responsibilities and suggest that we are all equally responsible for the climate crisis? Is this a further and largely unacknowledged threat to the fight against climate change?
    
    Author: Luca Mavelli (University of Kent)
  - A River, a Forest, and a Mountain: Three Facets of Environmental Conflict in South Asia
    
    The paper examines how borders have affected environmental politics in South Asia. It looks at three sites of environmental politics that straddle international borders in South Asia. Each is a transboundary resource or protected area: a river (the Brahmaputra), a forest (the Sundarbans), and a mountain (the Kailash region of the Himalayas). The paper argues that each represents a facet of environmental conflict that impinges on how the resource is framed and managed. In the case of the Brahmaputra, we encounter securitisation. Both India and China have relied on securitised water discourses to assert their user rights over the river. Hydronationalism is compounding the already weak institutional arrangements between the two states. In the Sundarbans, that lies astride Bangladesh and India, we come across militarisation. The mangrove forests have been the site of many partitions, and as part of state building, have witnessed brutal state action against inhabitants and their forcible eviction. Poaching and the criminalization of tiger-related human casualties is another dimension of militarised practices in the tiger reserve. Lastly, in the Kailash region, we witness sedentarisation. The mobility of the Tibetan nomads, the sole inhabitants of the core sacred area is seen by the state as an encroachment into protected areas that are part of the Kailash Sacred Landscape Conservation Initiative, of which China, Nepal and India are members. Tibetans fear that the conservation rhetoric justifies the state’s strategy to push for their sedentarisation. The paper argues how although transboundary resource management has largely conformed to statist interests, trans-territoriality is often a negotiated state of existence. The effectiveness of transboundary initiatives would depend on their ability to embrace ecological citizenship that encompass local communities, other species and future generations.
    
    Author: Jayashree Vivekanandan (South Asian University)
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  05 Panel / Data Governance and Digital Health – Visualisation, Inclusion, and Sovereignty in a Digital Health Economy Soprano, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Global Health Working Group
  
  Convener: GHWG Working group
  
  Chair: Christopher Long (Queen's University Belfast)
  
  Discussant: Andreas Papamichail (Queen Mary University of London)
  - The global governance of genome editing: four approaches
    
    In 2020-21, four international organisations – the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Medical Association (WMA) – published reports and/or standards on genome editing (also called gene editing), the process by which specific parts of an organism’s DNA is altered. The WMA, an international organization representing physicians which sits outside the UN, released the “WMA Statement on Human Genome Editing” in October 2020, which includes recommendations for governments. In May 2021, the International Society for Stem Cell Research updated its “Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation”, to include guidance on genome editing. In July 2021, the WHO published “Human Genome Editing: A Framework for Governance”, providing advice and recommendations on governance mechanisms at institutional, national, regional and global levels. In December 2021, UNESCO issued the “Report of the International Bioethics Committee (IBC) on the Principle of Protecting Future Generations”. The report supports the WHO Framework, whilst also calling for the development of international law to prohibit heritable genome editing. This paper will compare and contrast the development, content and purpose of these four documents. It will seek to determine how far they complement or compete with each other in terms of provisions for governance and whether, collectively, they provide a robust framework for the global governance of genome editing.
    
    Author: Adele Langlois (University of Lincoln)
  - Visualising Pandemic Data: Maps, Genetic Technologies and the COVID-19 Outbreak
    
    The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in the unprecedented use of genetic technologies in the mapping of viral genomes and the measurement of positive cases with RT-PCR tests. The data gained from these tests have been visualised in novel ways including on the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 data dashboard (JHDD) and HealthMap. Though recently shut down, these tools mapped the spread of positive COVID-19 cases, deaths and vaccinations across the globe. These tools would provide critical information to the scientific community, public, press, and to international, federal, and local policymakers. They would also go on to shape the response to subsequent outbreaks including the monkeypox outbreak identified by the WHO in May 2022 marking a fundamental turning point in how to approach infectious disease outbreaks (Rasmussen-Torvik, 2022). This paper draws from work analysing the image in security studies and the role that maps play in international politics to investigate the empirical and theoretical significance of the visualisation and mapping of viral genetic data in the COVID-19 pandemic. It tentatively argues that the political power of the JHDD derived from the immediacy and accessibility of its visual content that visualised territory in terms of the spread of viral genetic information.
    
    Author: Christopher Long (Queen's University Belfast)
  - Gatekeeping global health in times of crisis: a discourse network analysis of marginalisation in digital health
    
    Digital health is often presented as a magic bullet to resolve health crises such as pandemics and epidemics. Yet the term “digital health” is still rather recent, although the digitalisation of healthcare has been progressing for more than two decades – albeit predominantly outside the focus of global health agencies and institutions. In this paper, I seek to explain how the most prominent global health institution, the World Health Organization (WHO), has transformed digital health into a norm of global health. Thereby I highlight how certain – mainly Southern and local – voices are marginalised in the debates on digital health, whereas others are pushed to the forefront. The analysis of these marginalised, even invisible voices builds on the results of an extensive Discourse Network Analysis and semi-structured interviews with former and recent WHO experts. I compare the media debate with documents from international organisations (IOs) in order to identify the varying dynamics of marginalisation in both discursive forums. The paper argues that IOs act as gatekeepers that regulate access to the discourse around digital health, in particular in times of crisis; on the other hand, IOs themselves become marginalised in the media discussion. I base my argumentation on the theory of epistemic injustice.
    
    Author: Maria Weickardt Soares
  - Data (Quasi)Sovereignty: Knowledge Production, Disease Surveillance & the State
    
    Disease surveillance has become the constant, indisputable dictum for global health. Data are seductive because they promise to bring order to complexity. COVID-19, for example, has been made visible through data; it is perceived through the numbers that dominate public discourse. Private actors and public initiatives have sprung up to support global efforts at harmonising data. The paper argues that states which cannot solely generate data, and thus produce their own knowledge, are less able to command governmental reason. They are subjected to regimes of knowledge and truth controlled by other actors, who manage the apparatuses of data production and the access to them. The resultant geopolitics of knowledge reproduce a global divide between knowing subjects and the populations who are subordinated to that knowledge/power as its objects. In practice, this division legitimises hierarchy in the international order through the distinction between actors who produce data/knowledge and those who lack the international capacity to do so. By using covid-19 and antimicrobial resistance as case studies, this paper demonstrates that current disease surveillance reproduces the logic of ‘quasi-sovereignty’ used by colonial lawyers to command formal equality and hierarchy between imperial sub-polities.
    
    Authors: Anne-Sophie Jung (University of Leeds)* , Pedro Dutra Salgado (University of Portsmouth)
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  05 Panel / Forced migration, asylum, and citizenship from the UK to the Global South Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Convener: IPMRD Working group
  
  Chair: Jemima Parker (University of Kent)
  - The figure of the migrant and the figure of the worker: rethinking a complex relationship in the context of the 'Channel migrant crisis'
    
    The paper explores the intersection between migration and the changing image of labour in the context of the so-called ‘migrant crisis’ on the English Channel – a perspective which is commonly left out of any debate on the subject. I locate this ‘crisis’ within a wider historical problematic in which the figure of the worker and the figure of the migrant exist as distinct yet essentially connected political and historical categories. The apposition of these figures, as theorised by Marx in terms of the ‘reserve army of labour’, generates a tension which is constitutive of (racial) capitalist relations not only through the fragmentation of the working class but also because the global mobility of labour is essentially connected to the production of difference through the racial subordination of the migrant-figure. Drawing on over a year of ethnography in Dover, England, the paper suggests that the investigation of current political subjectivities concerning these two figures – that of the migrant and that of the worker – elucidates forms of thinking which may complicate and disrupt dominant discourses which frame the ‘Channel migrant crisis’.
    
    Author: Jemima Parker (University of Kent)
  - Politicization of the Identity and Citizenship of the Rohingyas
    
    This paper attempts to analyse the identity debate of the Rohingyas; an ethnolinguistic and Muslim minority in Myanmar who are currently living in Bangladesh as Forcefully Displaced people. The Myanmar political establishments argue that the Rohingyas are outsiders and frame them as Bengali Muslims whereas the academic scholars argue that the Rohingyas have a century-old history in Burma, currently Myanmar. This debate received heated attention worldwide when a million Rohingyas sought refuge in Bangladesh after a brutal military crackdown by the Myanmar military which is depicted as a poster example of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Based on 20 interviews with experts and on the available literature, this paper argues that the identity debate sprung and framed by the Myanmar authorities often directly military or military-backed pseudo-civilian government to maximize their political objectives. The Myanmar government wants to establish the state’s new image based on Buddhist nationalism and by driving out the Rohingyas, they want to seek popular support from the Myanmar people. As a form of exclusion, the Myanmar government has stripped the citizenship of the Rohingyas by the enactment of the 1982 Citizenship Act.
    
    Author: Ayesha Siddika (University of Leeds)
  - Forced Migration of Iraqi Kurds to the UK: Pre Arrival experiences and Post Arrival Slow Violence
    
    Draft abstract -BISA 2024 Annual Conference
    Forced Migration of Iraqi Kurds to the UK: Pre Arrival experiences and Post Arrival Slow Violence
    
    My research will aim to investigate the forced migration of Kurds from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to the UK. I will be looking into the reason why people have left the KRG since the 2014 Daesh war in Iraq and chose to come to the UK as their preferred destination. For my fieldwork, I will conduct in-depth interviews with Kurds asylum seekers’ to investigate their pre-arrival experiences and aspirations. Then, I intend to explore their post arrival difficulties and challenges. Focusing on the UK’s asylum system and the government’s responses to the rise in the Channel crossings, I aim to interview professionals, policy makers and stakeholders to explore, assess and contest their responses to policies and working with or on subjects relevant to asylum seekers and refugees. I am keen to research the colonial legacies that impact upon decision making when Iraqi Kurds choose a country to migrate to. I will be examining the impact of the hostile environment representations through focusing on deterrence policies and slow violence of reception in the UK. Then, through the data I gather, I will explore the consequences of the government’s policies have on the experiences of asylum seekers and stakeholders.
    
    Author: Sameerah Mahmood (University of Leeds)
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  05 Panel / In Whom We Trust? Trustworthiness, Trust and Trusting within Bilateral and Multilateral Diplomacy Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Convener: David Wilcox (University of Birmingham)
  
  Chair: Eszter Simon (Nottingham Trent University)
  - A Site of Trust in a Era of Distrust: The International Space Station in the Context of US-Russian Relations.
    
    Despite increasing distrust between the US and Russia in the last few years, evidenced through the withdrawal from key bilateral agreements, the International Space Station (ISS) continues to be one such agreement that stands the test of this spiralling relationship. In this paper, we seek to understand why the ISS continues to act as a “site of trust” between the two space actors as their terrestrial cooperation links disintegrate. To do so, we draw on interdisciplinary literature on trust. To begin, we review the historical context for understanding the ISS in the contemporary period, discussing its role in US-Russia relations before focusing on the ISS in the period 2011-2023. Methodologically, we draw on a range of discursive materials to argue that the ISS acted, and continues to act, as a "site of trust" between the two states.
    
    Authors: Carol Buxton (University of Birmingham) , David Wilcox (University of Birmingham)
  - Taking Things to The Next Level: The development of Track II to Track I diplomacy through Trustworthiness Transfer
    
    In a complex diplomatic world, unofficial Track II initiatives often operate in the absence of or alongside official Track I processes. Some Track II initiatives seek to influence the official Track I level. But how does a Track II initiative become a Track I process? This article proposes a new potential mechanism involving the transfer of perceptions of trustworthiness – trustworthiness transfer – from Track II participants to Track I officials. This mechanism is developed by testing a series of hypotheses: 1) individual dispositions to trust; 2) interpersonal trust; and 3) the role of entrepreneurial actors. These three hypotheses are tested against a single historical case study of the 1992-1993 Oslo Channel, which began as a Track II initiative before developing into a Track I process. Using available English-language discursive materials supported by elite interviews, the development of perceptions of trustworthiness at the Track II level and their transfer of to the Track I level can tracked through process-tracing. The article argues that trustworthiness transfer takes place through the interplay of three parts: first, a Track I decision-maker’s disposition to trust; second, pre-existing interpersonal trust between the Track II participants and Track I decision-makers; and third, the entrepreneurial activities of Track II participants.
    
    Author: David Wilcox (University of Birmingham)
  - The Consequences of Trust in Diplomatic Negotiations: Disentangling Interstate and Interpersonal Trust through Experimental Vignettes
    
    Does trust matter in diplomatic negotiations? What does trust allow diplomats to do (or not do) in negotiations? The paper explores this question by using an original and unique dataset of surveys with UN diplomats, based in the national permanent missions to the UN, in New York. In particular, we look at two types of trust: a) interstate trust, i.e., trust that is shared intersubjectively between states; b) interpersonal trust, i.e., trust that is shared by individual diplomats. Does one type of trust matter and the other not? Or better, do they interact and how? Does interpersonal trust only play a role within the context of states that possess a trusting identity relationship, or do trusting interpersonal relationships between diplomats transcend state-level distrust in facilitating cooperation? In order to gauge the relative influence of interpersonal and interstate trust, we manipulate these two forms of trust in experimental vignettes. Our design is a 2 (trust in the country: low vs. high) by 2 (trust in the diplomat: low vs. high) between-subject design. We test the effects of interstate and interpersonal trust upon four types of negotiation processes and exchanges (influencing behaviour; logrolling; information sharing; flexibility).
    
    Author: Nicola Chelotti (Loughborough University)
  - ‘Trusting’ within Security Communities of Practice: Practice-informed indices of trustworthiness and trusting in ASEAN
    
    Trust has emerged as a promising literature within International Relations, and there is an ever-growing body of works that discuss trust’s formation between different actors. While this emergent trust has been transformative in a number of cases, less clear is how trust can contribute to the maintenance of stable structures if it is held by individuals. Such criticisms are especially pertinent for security communities, where trust has been recognised as a constituting and stabilising factor, without a persuasive treatment of how this is achieved over time. As something that is increasingly recognised as being individually-held, then, the question remains how can long-term trusting relationships be maintained in a context of alternating individuals that may not have the opportunity (or desire) to invest in interpersonal relationships? This paper argues the practice turn – and specifically communities of practice - holds key insights for explaining how trust proliferates from specific relationships to become embedded within security communities through the idea of ‘trusting’. Drawing upon the practice literatures from inside and outside of IR, I demonstrate that trusting can become a pattern of action. This trusting is performed in response to specific practices that have come to be understood as if they are indices of trustworthiness, which work to constitute a collectively held knowledge that the other can be trusted. In order to highlight this, I aim to show that trusting has interceded in crises that had the potential to undermine peace and cooperation within the ASEAN security community. Actors embodying specific roles within the community were capable of trusting (as well as ‘being’ trustworthy) absent of interpersonal trusting relationships.
    
    Author: Scott Edwards (University of Reading)
  - Trust in the shadow of Nuclear Destruction
    
    The possession of nuclear weapons in adversarial relationships is an expression of deep distrust. Consequently, it should not be expected that trust will emerge in such places. Yet, we wish to advance here the counter-intuitive proposition that trust can emerge in such situations, and that this becomes most likely in moments of extreme nuclear danger. What is more, the question of whether trust emerges in nuclear crises may be a critical factor in whether a crisis is managed peacefully. As we discuss in the paper, it was this mechanism that was so crucial to the interpersonal trust that developed between US President John F. Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, during the most dangerous moment of the Cold War, the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Our findings should serve as an impetus for leaders to proactively exercise SDS in their relationships with adversarial counterparts before a crisis point is reached. Yet, should such a crisis arise, the seeds of trust may still germinate in, seemingly, the most infertile ground. Even under the shadow of a nuclear crisis, through empathetic communication and a keen understanding of shared responsibilities, leaders can help foster trust and mitigate the destructive potential of such crises.
    
    Authors: Marcus Holmes (College of William and Mary)* , Nicholas J. Wheeler (University of Birmingham)
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  05 Conference event / Keynote by Prof Tarak Barkawi: 'War and World Politics: or why I stopped doing IR' SPONSORED BY THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY Jane How/Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  Speaker: Chair: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
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  05 Panel / Narratives, noise and normality in the global nuclear order Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: Global Nuclear Order Working Group
  
  Conveners: Rhys Crilley (University of Glasgow) , Megan Dee (University of Stirling)
  
  Chair: Rhys Crilley (University of Glasgow)
  
  Discussant: Rhys Crilley (University of Glasgow)
  - Justification and critique in the global nuclear order: Nuclear (ir)responsibility as practice
    
    Nuclear responsibility has become a pervasive theme and loaded term within global nuclear politics and diplomacy. While the extant scholarship around nuclear responsibility addresses the status, role conception and branding of ‘responsible nuclear weapon states’, and of nuclear responsibilities as a norm or discourse, little attention has yet been paid to nuclear responsibility as practice. Drawing upon practice theoretical approaches from IR and critical sociology, this paper analyses nuclear responsibility as an evolving, and increasingly contested part of a constellation of practices associated with nuclear deterrence. It highlights how nuclear responsibility has shifted from being a practice for performing stable deterrence, to a practice of justification and critique, performed by nuclear weapon states to sustain the status quo within the global nuclear order. The paper argues that while discursive acts that reiterate nuclear responsibility and irresponsibility as practices of justification and critique continue, the competence, validity and legitimacy of nuclear responsibility as a practice of stable deterrence will increasingly be brought into question and dispute. The paper thus recommends the need for an urgent rethink in how nuclear weapon states are utilizing ‘responsibility’ and ‘irresponsibility’ in practice-terms.
    
    Author: Megan Dee (University of Stirling)
  - A battle of narratives between the norm of deterrence and the norm of non-possession: how do stories of time constitute common sense?
    
    This paper will draw upon the narratives of time articulated by proponents of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and upon the counter narratives of P5 state representatives to show how the norms of deterrence and the non-possession are maintained are created. It will argue that the story of apocalyptic time, articulated by the proponents of the TPNW work to disturb the logic of deterrence by distorting and rejecting its key supposition. It will also show that counter to this, P5 representatives draw upon a different understanding of time through which the norm of deterrence makes sense. Through looking at these different understandings of time in relation to the TPNW and the possession of nuclear weapons, this paper will show that stories of how the world is, stories of time, and the assumptions made to make those stories appear true, function to create a world in which some violence, against some people, is accepted.
    
    Author: Zeenat Sabur (University of Manchester)
  - ‘We were this close to providing peace and security for the galaxy’: Cultural representations of strategic stability and the normalisation of nuclear (super)weapons
    
    In the imaginative worlds of fantasy and science fiction, imaginaries of how societies can be organised are given concrete interpretations that invite us to reflect back on the non-fictional world in which we live. Matters of international security feature frequently. In this paper, I interrogate the prominent presence of the idea of strategic stability – the belief that nuclear weapons stabilise international relations through mutual vulnerability and the threat of retaliation – in cultural artefacts. Recent scholarship has theoretically explored the so-called ‘Superweapon Peace’ discourse in pop culture, yet empirical work remains largely absent. I make a unique empirical contribution to the existing literature by demonstrating that everyday social practices, such as the creation and consumption of pop cultural artefacts, normalise and legitimise the development, possession and use of nuclear weapons. Through a (visual) discourse analysis of a cross-national sample of films, literature and videogames featuring representations of strategic stability, I assert that the cultural reproduction and transformation of the strategic stability imaginary naturalises the apparently common-sensical idea that nuclear ‘superweapons’ are instrumental for the establishment of peace, even in distant or alien worlds, and so glorify the possession of nuclear weapons in our non-fictional world.
    
    Author: Robin Vanderborght (University of Antwerp)
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  05 Panel / Nationalism, resistance, and dissent in political systems Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Mariah Thornton (London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE))
  - Resistance statecraft: The case of Taiwan's open source governance and algorithmic co-governance technologies
    
    What is the relationship between ideational resistance and statecraft? Numerous studies in the field of International Relations have theorised the implications of disinformation for state power, yet the phenomenon of societal resistance towards disinformation remains underexplored. I therefore draw from social theory to posit another modality of statecraft: resistance statecraft. Building on Lukes's and Gaventa's relational approaches to both power and resistance, I operationalise Gramsci's concept of "elaboration" to illustrate how ideational resistance towards disinformation can be achieved through statecraft and technology. This theoretical framework is then applied to the empirical phenomenon of Taiwanese society's resistance to disinformation from China. Taking Taiwan's open-source governance (OSG) and algorithmic co-governance (ACG) technologies as paradigmatic cases of resistance statecraft, I seek to highlight specific four mechanisms through which ideational resistance to disinformation can be elaborated across a society: (1) enframing, (2) co-production, (3) belief, and (4) affect.
    
    Key words: Statecraft, resistance, social theory, technology, open source governance, algrothimic co governance, Taiwan, China.
    
    Author: Mariah Thornton (London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE))
  - The Contentious Relationship between State Authority and Indigenous Self-Determination
    
    Beginning with the premise that Indigenous peoples’ agency in global politics is not rendered impotent by the power of the state – contradicting fundamental assumptions in International Relations theory – this paper explores the contentious relationship between state authority and Indigenous self-determination in the context of the Canadian resource extraction sector. Defining authority as power transmuted by legitimacy, or a generalized perception that behaviour reflects accepted norms and values, I demonstrate that Indigenous peoples may affect state authority by manipulating perceptions about state legitimacy. Through analyses of think tank reports and media in over sixty cases of conflict between First Nations and the mining sector, I offer empirical evidence that Indigenous peoples destabilise perceptions of state legitimacy by thwarting dominant actors’ expectations about the timeline, scope, and costs of resource extraction projects. The gap between expectations and circumstances leads dominant actors to suspect that their preferences and those of the state diverge, and to distrust that the state can deliver their preferences. I argue that these changes in perceptions of legitimacy auger retrenchment of state authority. A corollary suggests that among the most effective overall strategies for Indigenous peoples attempting to affect resource project outcomes is to challenge investors’ perceptions of risk or instability surrounding a project, thereby subverting proponents’ capacity to fund a project. By refuting the state-centric assumptions of mainstream International Relations, my findings reorganize hierarchies of authority to reimagine sources of power in global politics.
    
    Author: Leah Sarson (Dalhousie University)
  - Political elite and social movements: changes and continuities on the Chilean political elite after the uprising of 2019
    
    The uprising in Chile (2019) was the largest protests in the country during this century. The response of the government to it was to create the Constitutional Convention, mandated to propose a new Constitution. Even when the protests were anti-establishment, the response of the government was to design a new temporary political institution, and consequently, more elections. The question here is whether the uprising generated a change in institutional politics beyond the Convention, especially on the circulation of political elite.
    To answer this, I focus on the Chamber of Deputies as a permanent institution, comparing its composition before and after the uprising, and adding the Convention to the comparison. Based on the literature and public information, I generate a database including descriptive, political, and elite-related variables.
    The results show some changes in political variables, especially about affiliation and roles within the party: there is an increase of independent Deputies and Deputies with no formal role in a political party. Additionally, there is an increase of female representatives. However, some traditional characteristics of the political elite remain similar, such as having a university degree, relatives in politics, or membership to certain civil society organisations.
    The results point to some circulation on the Chilean political elite, connected to the anti-establishment feeling of the protests and a general rejection towards parties. But other than that, the characteristics of the political elite remain unaffected by the uprising. These findings open the door to investigations about the recruitment process of political parties after massive mobilisations.
    
    Author: Victoria Leon-Porath (Queen Mary University of London)
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  05 Panel / New approaches to understanding data and methodology in peace and conflict Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: PKPBG Working group
  
  Chair: Nancy Annan (Coventry University)
  - Narratives in social media in Israel following the attacks of Hamas on 7th October
    
    Narratives have a significant role in times of conflict, as they help members of societies in conflict to cope with the consequences of the conflict, such as stress, fear, loss, and uncertainty. It provides justification and explanations to the conflict, its eruption, dynamic, their own society, the rival’s society, and the desired solution (Bar-Tal 2007, 2013). However, due to its functionality, it also fuels the continuation of the conflict, and become a barrier to end it.
    
    As one of the channels for constructing and disseminating those narratives, social media platforms lower the threshold for public to access the public sphere, which allows anyone to create, share and access content online (Chadwick, 2017; Stasi, 2020). As a result, dominant actors and hegemonic narratives can be challenged by alternative actors with fewer resources and visibility (Fuchs, 2010).
    
    Analysis of social media content in Israel, following the attacks by Hamas on 7th of October had an incredible magnitude effect on Israelis’ narrative of conflict. Yet, if there are alternative voices, they are more likely to appear on social media.
    
    Author: Dana Guy (University College Dublin)
  - Transformative Justice from Below: everyday (photo)voices from Colombia. Research in a conflict-affected society using a participatory arts-based method
    
    The transformative justice approach argues for a transitional justice field that tackles structural socioeconomic issues and gendered power relations, while privileging local populations’ needs and resources. This approach has remained largely normative, however, and how exactly to bring about those structural transformations with transitional justice remains unclear. Further, methodological discussions are largely absent in the transformative literature. Using photovoice —a participatory arts-based method— my PhD research is interested in the transformational potential of transitional justice in Colombia. I argue that using participatory and arts-based methods can shed light on the everyday needs for transformation towards peace of local communities in a conflict-affected society.
    
    Author: Germán Otálora-Gallego (Durham University)
  - Images and indicators: mixing participatory methods to build inclusive rigour in peace research.
    
    Participatory methods seek to counter the extractive nature of mainstream research
    methods by putting control into the hands of research subjects. But participation itself
    does not guarantee against extraction. There is a tension between the desire for
    researcher-control and the prerogative of community action in participatory methods.
    How can researchers committed to participation manage this tension? In this paper, we
    draw on the concepts of “collaborative” and “action-oriented” participatory research to
    describe how integrating mixed-methodologies can help different research stakeholders
    attain desirable, fruitful and meaningful levels of ownership and build inclusive rigour in peace research in complex, security sensitive settings . Drawing on our work with participatory indicators and photovoice with conflict affected communities in rural Colombia, we demonstrate how combining different kinds of participatory research methods—in this case, non-visual and visual research—creates opportunities to attend to the sometimes conflicting goals of robust research, policy change and community action. Under the broad umbrella of participatory research, collaborative approaches like participatory indicators and action-oriented approaches like photovoice complement and amplify each other in such settings, embracing complexity and catalyzing multiple ways of ‘knowing-for-action’. The result is participatory research that is attuned to the complexities of conflict-affected settings, inclusively rigorous and potentially transformative.
    
    Authors: Tiffany Fairey (King's College London) , Peter Dixon (Colombia University)* , Pamina Firchow (Brandeis University)*
  - What's the Craic? Humour, Secret Negotiations and the Northern Ireland Peace Processed
    
    In a quiet corner of Pembroke College there is a team of researchers trawling through the archives surrounding the Northern Ireland peace process, a team that I am a part of. When you think about the Northern Ireland peace process, you instantly, and rightly, begin to think of its importance and its seriousness. Indeed, it was a grave situation and a high stakes process. The Northern Ireland conflict was entering its third decade, thousands had been killed, there had been numerous attacks on government figures, tit-for-tat killings were gripping Northern Ireland society. Bringing peace to Northern Ireland was no mean feat. However, in the midst of the painstaking meetings and momentous moments, what we also found was quite joyous. In our office online chat, we would share clippings of humorous anecdotes we had found going through the archives. From sarcastic remarks, to hilarious gestures, these were evident throughout the Northern Ireland secret peace talks. However, was there anything behind this? Why were these humorous remarks being made? Surely this wasn’t the time for jokes? What role did humour have in the Northern Ireland peace process? Does humour have a place in the secret side of peace processes?
    
    Author: Eleanor Williams (Oxford University)
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  05 Panel / Peacebuilding as Violence? Engaging with a complex relationship Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Conveners: Werner Distler (University of Groningen) , Nadine Ansorg (University of Kent)
  
  Chair: Nadine Ansorg (University of Kent)
  - Never-ending Troubles. How international peacebuilding enables violence in Northern Kosovo
    
    In 2023, unrest, violent demonstrations, and terrorist attacks by Serbian paramilitaries against Kosovo police shook the North of Kosovo, a region with a Serbian majority population. International Organizations and diplomatic actors have condemned these acts of violence, which have led to injured NATO personnel, killed police officers and fighters, putting immense pressure on the governments of Kosovo and Serbia to support stabilization. A superficial analysis would confirm the set-up in Northern Kosovo as a conflict zone between the Kosovo-Albanian dominated government in Pristina, and Serbian actors in the region, for example on elections and autonomy, amidst benevolent peacebuilding efforts by the EU, NATO, and the UN. However, after nearly twenty-five years of international presence in Northern Kosovo, based on the robust UN Security Council Resolution 1244, and after a decade of EU-led dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade, this set-up should be critically revised. Approaching the situation with broader theories of violence, peacebuilding in the region has not only failed, but has instead enabled the continuity and even emergence of forms of violence. The presentation will illustrate these with reflections on criminal and organized violence, the acceptance of so-called parallel structures, and the failure of political authority on the ground.
    
    Author: Werner Distler (University of Groningen)
  - Material benefits for ex-combatants do not reduce community support for their re-integration: Evidence from a conjoint survey in Northeast Nigeria
    
    Which policies will citizens support to enable the reintegration ex-combatants into their communities? A central tension in the design of reintegration policies concerns the role of material benefits for former fighters. Research shows that giving ex-combatants this support is necessary to secure successful and peaceful reintegration. Many policy makers and scholars though are concerned that providing material benefits to former fighters risks backlash from potential host communities, which may view material support to former fighters as unfair. In this paper we examine how Nigerian respondents see this trade-off between fairness, on the one hand, and peace and security, on the other, when evaluating policy packages aimed at enabling reintegration of former Boko Haram fighters. Our study uses a conjoint survey and vignette experiment with 2,400 respondents evaluating 55,000 randomized policy packages across 8 attributes in two locations. In contrast to previous research, we find that most respondents are generally in favour of providing economic support to ex-combatants. More generally, economic benefits for former fighters, communities, and victims are more popular than non-material benefits or procedural issues. This suggests that respondents may prioritize peace and security over fairness, with implications for both theory and policy.
    
    Author: Edward Morgan-Jones (University of Kent)
  - Trust no more? Alternatives to trust building in police reform in post-conflict societies
    
    State security institutions such as the police are some of the most important areas of state activity. In fragile environments such as post-conflict or semi-authoritarian states, the reform of the security sector is a major endeavour, and often part of larger peacebuilding or democratisation efforts of the government as well as international donors. Yet, particularly in fragile environments, state security institutions often do not or only marginally engage in these tasks, and are at times not trusted or even feared by the population. Scholarship and police realm alike focus on the possibility of building trust and assume that if it cannot be built it is considered to be a ‘failure’. What it does not do much is discuss or assess potential alternatives for trust. But how far can and should citizen-state relations be improved in situations where the police engage in authoritarian or abusive behaviour? Is increased trust in police even desirable, or does it endanger security and life for individuals and communities? And what are alternatives to trust-building in post-conflict societies? This paper engages with these critical questions on a number of highly contentious cases of police reform, including the DR Congo and Afghanistan.
    
    Author: Nadine Ansorg (University of Kent)
  - Direct violence and United Nations peacekeeping
    
    This paper analyses how the United Nations characterises acts of violence undertaken by its peacekeeping forces. The UN, through policies related to Robust Peacekeeping, as well as practices associated with Stabilisation, and the Protection of Civilians, has codified forms of direct violence undertaken by deployed military personnel in the execution of the mandates they work under. However, to what extent does the organisation reflect on this violence in its public statements, and do we see evidence of reflection in these statements on the role that the UN plays in certain circumstances as a violent actor? Through analysing Reports to the UN Security Council, and public communications this article addresses these questions. By doing so, it will ask the extent to which the UN is fully reflective of its role as a conflict intervener, and what impact this has on how peacekeeping is understood as an activity with the aim to resolve conflict.
    
    Author: David Curran (Coventry University)
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  05 Panel / Political economy of the environment Room 103, Library
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: IPEG Working group
  
  Chair: Melita Lazell (University of Portmsouth)
  - Green Growth as Secret Post-Growth? International Organisations and Fuzzy Policy Paradigms
    
    Conventional wisdom holds that major international organisations (IOs) today actively promote states’ pursuit of ‘green growth’. In fact, many IOs officially embrace green growth in a paradigmatic way. However, I argue that IOs’ positions on economic growth tend to be fuzzier in practice than their public representation suggests. Specifically, this paper adopts a phenomenological approach to understanding what ‘green growth’ means for officials from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank. To this end, I apply a coding technique inspired by grounded theory to over two dozen transcripts of interviews with OECD, UNEP and World Bank staff members, as well as public statements that represent the official line. Contrasting the views of IO staff members with their organisations’ promulgated stances reveals a surprising degree of fluidity of meanings attached to the ‘green growth’ label. While staff members routinely dismiss post-growth ideas on practical grounds, they often implicitly make claims that are broadly in line with such agendas on the spectrum from growth indifference/a-growth (fairly common) to growth critique/degrowth (less common). The analysis thus indicates that individual OECD, UNEP and World Bank staff members lean more towards non-mainstream views of economic growth than is widely assumed.
    
    Author: Matthias Kranke (Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg)
  - How capitalism affirms its hegemony: The imperial mode of living
    
    The concept of the “imperial mode of living” aims to grasp some historical and current contradictions with an emphasis on a major challenge of our times: the deepening ecological crisis and its relationship to globalizing capitalism. The deeply rooted patterns of production and consumption, which dominate above all in the early industrialized capitalist societies, presuppose a disproportionate access to nature and labour power on a global scale. This leads to the destruction of ecosystems, the overstretching of ecological sinks, high unemployment in many countries, and an uneven division of labour which tends to place extra burden on precarious workers, women, and (undocumented) migrants. One of developed capitalism’s characteristics is its need for a less developed or non-capitalist geographical and social “outside” from which it obtains raw materials and intermediate products, to which it shifts social and ecological burdens, and in which it appropriates both paid labour and unpaid care services. It is exclusionary and exclusive and presupposes an imperialist world order. At the same time, that order is normalized in countless and structured acts of production and consumption, which render its violent character invisible to those who benefit from it.
    
    Author: Ulrich Brand (Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria)
  - South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Partnership and the Externalisation of African Sovereignty
    
    There is significant international political (and financial) commitment to promoting just transition in South Africa. The JETP agreement struck at COP 26, subsequently consolidated and expanded at COP 27, between South Africa and a collection of Western countries (USA, UK, France and Germany), reflected the most significant agreement to emerge from those COP negotiations and are already replicated elsewhere. This paper draws on key informant interviews with trade union leaders responsible for representing working class voices in just transition debates, as well as focus groups, interviews, and a survey conducted with members at all levels of the National Union of Mineworkers. We argue that JETP/JETIP have externalised sovereign control over the direction of the energy transition, generating new forms of dependency; challenging certain vested interests in the energy sector while advancing others. According to trade union members, current approaches to just transition generate epistemic injustice for the working-class communities most impacted by the immediate changes in the sector. Concerns over the definition and ownership of the just transition present significant challenges to the realisation of carbon reduction targets as well as the pursuit of justice in one of the most significant socioeconomic upheavals in recent South African history.
    
    Authors: Ruth Bookbinder (University of Leeds) , Alex Beresford (University of Leeds)
  - Race, wealth, and the green transition: Making sense of “woke capitalism”
    
    What is “woke capitalism”? Existing explorations of this topic tend to engage in polemic, broadly falling into one of two camps: either radical populist critiques of “stakeholder capitalism”, or progressive critiques of the corporate appropriation of social justice values. This paper takes a different perspective, by developing a study on the question of the meaning of woke capitalism. This study has two components. The first part entails tracing the development of “woke capitalism” discourse in the US, so to develop an analytical narrative of its emergence. This shows how the discourse of woke capitalism is predominantly used in a libertarian way to criticise the supposed tyranny of activities such as diversity schemes, corporate messaging around Black Lives Matter, and forms of sustainable investment (among other things). The second part develops an analytical framework that channels a famous theory from Albert Hirschman so to understand the implications of this discourse, by looking at how critics of this either: (1) activate “voice” so to pushback against asset-management and so-called sustainable finance so to reassert shareholder primacy; and/or (2) “exit” for those who seek to disinvest from and boycott woke firms, sometimes including the creation of alternative (anti-woke) economies.
    
    Author: Liam Stanley (University of Sheffield)
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  05 Panel / Projecting Power and Science: Anti-Satellite Weapons and Strategic Interests in Space Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: Astropolitics Working Group
  
  Convener: Bleddyn Bowen (University of Leicester)
  
  Chair: Bleddyn Bowen (University of Leicester)
  - Orbits in the aftermath: framing ASATs in the PAROS assemblage.
    
    The development of counterspace capabilities is progressing. Many observers agree that banning the testing of destructive ASAT systems is a practical first step toward space arms control. This paper explores the political commitments by UN member states regarding the development and initiation of lethal activity in the UN agenda the prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS). Using a ‘global-outer space’ security framework, the paper takes a socio-spatial perspective focusing on assemblages of (in)security arising from the complex mix of actors, practices, and logics of security in the context of PAROS. It conducts two reviewing efforts, first, addressing the political framings of lethal-force and the emergence of counterspace capabilities; the second addressing the political and legal principles proposed by member states regarding the de/legitimatisation of force. The paper considers how the lethality of space “weapons” is understood in terms of the means and conduct of force, and how attempts to constrain force (or not) are (re)framed through a security lens. I hope to provide some insight on how we think about the problem of lethality in outer space and the strategic value of force as well as the parallel fragmentation and proliferation of PAROS initiatives 1981-present.
    
    Author: Tegan Harrison (Cardiff University)
  - Russian Military Space Strategy: 1991-2023
    
    This paper assesses the Russian Federation’s military space strategy from 1991-2023 through the five official Military Doctrines of the Russian Federation, other official political and military documents and comments, articles from the General Staff of the Armed Forces’ journal Voennaya Mysl (Military Thought), and Russian space activities to assess how Russian military thinking has evolved, as well as areas where it has kept Soviet thinking and programs intact. The paper organizes development into four periods; the 1990s-2008, 2008-2014, 2014-2022, and 2022-2023. The first section focuses on lessons learned from the Gulf War, the two Chechen Wars, NATO action in Yugoslavia, and the 2008 Georgian War. The second section focuses on reforms and renewal, in reference to the 2008 military reform and the renewal of anti-satellite testing by China and the United States. The third section focuses on modern war, specifically the Russian military’s activities in Ukraine and Syria during this time. Lastly, the fourth section focuses on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and what can so far be assessed about how Russia has, or has not, utilized its military space capabilities in the war. The paper illustrates how Russian thinking on the military use of space has evolved and reacted to external and internal influences.
    
    Author: Sarah Dunn (University of Leicester)
  - Chinese Anti-Satellite Technology and US Nuclear (In)Security
    
    US decision makers have become accustomed to constant access to near-perfect information on the disposition of China’s nuclear arsenal – enabled through space-based sensors. As China’s People’s Liberation Army continue to develop a range of anti-satellite (ASAT) methods, US elites increasingly conjure visions of these technologies leading to future crises escalating beyond control. Routine space-based surveillance is a family of practices that provide self-reassurance in US national security politics. By imperilling the technical means that enable these practices, China not only threatens future physical harm in the form of nuclear-warfighting, but also imposes a chronic insecurity derived from interfering with American elites’ sense of identity as a secure nation. By unpacking socio-technical links in US national security practice, this paper traces how and what China’s ASATs threaten. Tied up in these claims are subtextual articulations of the meaning of China, the US, and their space technologies that limit the possible political responses that might address the insecurity. While the relevant US identities and practices are ontologically contingent, in practice they have become so reified through technical inscriptions that alternative routines for US nuclear security in space are unthinkable. The ramifications of the US-China space relationship are therefore thermonuclear in scope.
    
    Author: Cameron Paul Hunter (University of Copenhagen)
  - Science and National Defence: Vannevar Bush and the New Space Race
    
    As Vannevar Bush understood science is an important part of national defence and an important part of both ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ power. Space is an exemplar of this, fusing hard and soft power in a manner unrivalled by any other domain. The original space race of the 1960s was conceived as a demonstration of US national power as Kennedy made clear. An era of renewed great power competition is seeing a revival of interest in space as an instrument of national power – both space science – NASA and the Artemis Accords – and military space - US Space Force. US soft and hard power once again intertwined. However, as Vannevar Bush understood there is much danger here, particularly for democracy. Therefore, it is important to question the role, and place, of science in the national defence, particularly the mobilization of ‘civilian science.’ How do we reconcile the soft power promise of science for humanity with the hard power reality of science for the national interest? These questions garner extra significance in the context of ‘Big Tech’ and its counterpart ‘New Space’ which profess both a quasi-internationalism and a hyper-neoliberal variant of American exceptionalism. As Bush understood, science, particularly applied science, is shaped by its context and how it is applied shapes that context. Thus in an age of renewed great power competition it is important to understand the role of science in the national defence as more than the production of the gadgets and gizmos that will win the next war, particularly when furtherance of ‘science’ is used to advance new governance mechanism such as the Artemis Accords. This paper will explore these issues through the lens of US space activities, civilian and military.
    
    Author: Thomas Cheney (Northumbria University)
  - Germany and astropolitics. Reflections on German military space policy from a non-German perspective
    
    The new generation of German reconnaissance satellites SAR-ah was launched in 2022. In 2021, the German Army set up a Space Command. In its national space strategy published in 2023, the German government has pledged to "strengthen its capabilities” in the area. What might seem trivial from a French perspective, where space issues have always been of central military importance, is the reflection of a gradual but profound shift in German space policy since the 2000s. Stained by its military beginning with the V2 – the “original sin (Bowen, 2022) – West German space policy has been developed within the strictly civilian framework of European integration and transatlantic cooperation and has sought to promote multilateralism in space. Thus, has civilian power Germany (Maull, 1990) converted to astropolitics? This presentation is based on a realist theoretical background and on the analysis of archives, speeches, debates in the Parliament and newspapers articles. Its purpose is to give an account of Germany’s acknowledgment of power in and through space (Schrogl, 2019) in order to better seize its understanding of its role as a medium space power (Klein, 2019) in the ongoing space race in a multipolar world and its increased risk of conflict.
    
    Author: Lise Dubois (University Jean Moulin Lyon 3)
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  05 Panel / Reading Against/With the (Colonial) Archive Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: CPD Working group
  
  Chair: Jenna Marshall (King's College London)
  - De(re)colonising Greenland: The Danish Empire and postcolonial theory
    
    Within the field of International Relations, and postcolonial theory more broadly, the role of Scandinavian colonialism remains neglected. Greenland, a Danish colony from 1721 to 1953, is no exception. Paradoxically, following the official decolonisation of Greenland in the 1950s, when Greenland became an equal part of Denmark, the Danish government imposed its most intensive imperial policies in Greenland. This paper sets out to question how Danish historical productions of Greenland originating from anthropological Polar explorations in the early twentieth century, where Greenland was constituted as ‘empty’ nature and Greenlandic Inuit as ‘nature people’, came to inscribe colonial rationalities of scientific racism to political debates on the ‘politics of Greenland’, subsequently characterising the de(re)colonisation of Greenland. Furthermore, this project intends to explore how this type of decolonisation, as a violent phenomenon of recolonisation, can contribute to an epistemic broadening of postcolonial theory through a rethinking of decolonisation (Getachew 2019). Through such broadenings, this project sets out to deepen and complexify our understanding of smaller empires within postcolonial theory. This will be done by focusing on two moments in Danish-Greenlandic relations: in the lead-up to 1933 (PCIJ, Denmark vs Norway) and during the 1950s following the UN’s pushes for decolonisation. This will be done through archival research in the colonial archives in Nuuk (Greenland), Copenhagen (Denmark), and the UN (New York/online).
    
    Author: Eva Leth Sørensen (Johns Hopkins University)
  - Humanely Policing the Outlying Regions of the Empire
    
    This paper investigates how 'police bombing' practices in the Middle East in the 1920s and 1930s were justified by Britain through a particular notion of 'humaneness'. Analysing British parliamentary debates and media coverage of police bombing at the time, the paper shows how racialised and gendered assumptions about tribal areas and peoples under imperial control were linked to justifications of bombing practices as ethical and legal. Building on postcolonial and critical IR and International Law literature, the paper shows how this racialised framing of 'humaneness' still lingers in contemporary justifications of asymmetric counterterrorism practices, for example through the invocation of 'human shields'.
    
    Author: Elisabeth Schweiger (University of Stirling)
  - 19th Century British Interests in Post-Colonial Latin America
    
    Britain shaped the political and economic configuration of the colonies in the British Empire, leaving behind legacies that remain relevant today. British interests nonetheless, went beyond the boundaries of its colonies. This research asks the question: How did 19th-century British economic interests contribute to shaping the enduring extractive dynamics and exploitative labour patterns in Latin America? and is based on archival research conducted at the special collections of the Senate House Library and the British Library. The opportunity to access natural riches previously controlled by (primarily) the Spanish empire was a strong incentive to develop economic links with Latin American countries. This paper explores these economic links, values, and dynamics that contributed to establishing economic priorities at the early stages of national development. The economic interests included a continuation of extractive dynamics and exploitative labour patterns that paved the way for the current political and economic configuration of Latin America. This work relates to the conference theme of histories that are marginal to the discipline identity in the areas of Postcolonialism and IPE. The indirect approaches in which imperial powers contributed to shaping contemporary political and economic configurations are histories that need to be taken into account to better understand the region.
    
    Author: Perla Polanco Leal (The University of Manchester)
  - The Birth of Modern Border Security? Imperial Infrastructures in the Libyan-Egyptian Borderland, 1925-39.
    
    This paper offers a new framework for examining security and authority across neighbouring imperial spaces by using ‘imperial infrastructure’ as an analytical lens. Recent scholarship on borderland studies, the New Imperial History, and critical international law have all dedicated increasing attention to tracing the colonial legacies shaping contemporary international borders across the globe. Yet their inter-imperial predecessors continue to be overlooked because there is not an adequate framework for examining borders and borderlands between competing European empires. Focusing on physical imperial infrastructures, however, allows us to look horizontally across cartographic boundary lines and makes visible the innovations intended to mitigate the highly permeable nature of the space between empires. In this respect, the infrastructures erected at the British Egypt-Italian Libya border were wholly unprecedented. Over the course of the interwar years, the British and Italians developed a wide range of imperial infrastructures – sophisticated governance and surveillance bureaucracies, telecommunications networks, energy technologies, transportation accesses, and the world’s first modern border fence and encampments for housing (forcibly) displaced people – across the frontier zone. Ultimately, this paper argues that these innovations signal a pivotal transition in frontier governance whereby law, infrastructure, and violence converged as key pillars of a burgeoning border security regime – elements of which exist to this day – designed to regulate human mobility, enhance imperial security, and stretch the authority of each empire to its territorial limits.
    
    Author: Jessi Gilchrist (King's College London)
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  05 Panel / Revisiting thinkers and concepts of the international Exec 9, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group
  
  Convener: CRIPT Working group
  
  Chair: Borislav Tsokov (University of St Andrews)
  - Recalibrating Hedley Bull as a Theorist of Informality: The Privileging of Concertation as a Fundamental Institution
    
    This paper recalibrates Hedley Bull as a theorist of informality with special reference to informal institutions. Bull gives little weight to formal International Organizations. The United Nations is deemed a ‘pseudo institution’. And core IOs, notably the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are marginalized in his examination of the ‘world political system.’
    Yet, although it is commonplace in the International Relations literature to emphasize Bull’s privileging of fundamental institutions (including balance of power, international law, diplomacy, war, and great power management) as ‘a set of habits and practices,’ little in the way of analysis has been made of the implications of this framing in terms of the contest between formal IOs and informal institutions – a contest that has attracted increased scholarly attention.
    What is striking albeit little acknowledged is the essential informality embedded in Bull’s cluster of fundamental institutions. This paper aims to fill this analytical gap, focusing attention specially on what is termed in the paper: concertation. Bull’s focus on the sustained use of modes of informal institutions with the putative use as directorates in world politics: not only in the format of older (and stigmatized) concerts of power but ‘fluid’ representation vis-à-vis the existence of self-selected clubs.
    
    Author: Andrew Cooper (University of Waterloo)
  - Why is there no Coral Bell in the English School?
    
    Martin Wight’s seminal article ‘Why is there no International Theory?’ (1960) can be seen as one of the founding texts of what has become known as the English School approach to International Relations theory (IR). Eric Blanchard’s more recent, and less well known, ‘Why is there no gender in the English School?’ (2010) continued this tradition of asking difficult questions about the prevailing assumptions within the wider field of IR. This article takes this questioning narrative further by asking why the only female member of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, widely regarded as the key forum that gave birth to much of what has become the English School, has been left out of the history of the English School. It argues that the key texts that have framed this history of the English School have overlooked the importance of the thinking of Coral Bell in shaping the ideas of the British Committee and the leading early figures in the English School. Bell was both a student and colleague of Martin Wight, as well as a contemporary colleague of Hedley Bull, Adam Watson, and Michael Howard. Coral Bell’s work on alliances, Great Power politics, and diplomacy, which has largely been overlooked by British and European IR, has held an influential position in both American and Australian foreign policy circles for decades. This paper argues that there is a gap in the history of the English School that is gender specific which has led the English School to overlook key thinking on some of its core tenets, such as Great Power politics. By re-centering the role and thinking of Coral Bell within the English School we can open new avenues of interdisciplinary research between the fields of IR and foreign policy.
    
    Author: Gregory Stiles (University of Sheffield)
  - Hugo Grotius and the law of friendship
    
    It has been argued that Hugo Grotius offers ‘the first authoritative statement of the principle of humanitarian intervention—the principle that the exclusiveness of domestic jurisdiction stops where outrage upon humanity begins’. What has not been explored, though, is the place of friendship in Grotius’s theory of humanitarian intervention. Friendship was once a preeminent political concept and is foundational to Aristotle’s polis, and is a recurrent theme in Cicero, Aquinas, and even Bodin. In the Rights of War and Peace Grotius states that ‘[a] third Reason for War is the Protection of our Friends [amicorum], whom tho’ not under any formal Promise, yet upon the Score of Friendship we are under an Obligation of assisting, provided we bring not ourselves into any great Trouble, and Inconveniences by it’. Therefore, this paper will explore the connection between Grotian humanitarian intervention and friendship whilst also probing its relation to his distinction between perfect and imperfect duties.
    
    Author: Charlie Bradley (University of Nottingham)
  - No such thing as luck? Finding fortune in International Relations
    
    The notion of luck is occasionally invoked to evaluate and make sense of chancy and uncontrolled events in international politics. However, the concept of luck has thus far received relatively little focus in IR scholarship. Even when luck and its cognate concepts are acknowledged, they tend to be discussed in isolation and treated as ephemeral and marginal rather than as focally important to how we understand, explain, and morally evaluate international politics. The elision of luck means that IR’s interrogations of peace, war, and justice often obscure, bracket, or neglect rather than foreground an important element of political theory, discourse, and practice. My research seeks to address this gap by centring on the concept of luck and by exploring how a more sustained engagement with the concept and its cognates might shape how IR conducts its business. In this paper, I probe 1) where and how luck has been engaged in IR literature, 2) where it has been bracketed or denied, and 3) what consequences these have for IR and its interrogation of international politics. Through this work, I draw attention to a family of concepts that is too valuable to remain so curiously latent throughout much of our discipline.
    
    Author: Tuukka Kaikkonen (Australian National University)
  - Whose Silence has International Resonance: Investigating the International Dimension(s) of Political Silences.
    
    Historically, being silent or acting silently has been understood as an apolitical, if not antipolitical, way of being political; because of this, the ways in which being silent could be understood as relevant to international politics has been underappreciated. However, there has been an uptake of interest in how being silent, or silent protests, can be a political intervention rather than something antithetical to being political. In this context, research on when such moments of silent protest are seen as political have brought to the fore their connotated international dimensions. As such, becoming relevant in this context is the question that guides this paper: why is silence being seen as political, and whose silence are we representing as relevant internationally? By asking what makes such silence’s so political distinct from a speech-centric account of political agency, the paper hopes to illustrate the limits to present framings of silence as political, and thus the difficulty of discerning whose silence, exactly, is seen as relevant internationally when represented as political. The paper’s concern is that dominant structures may frame silence as relevant internationally because working akin to other dominant modes of (discursive) political agency, and thereby narrowing our perception of whose silence is political and has international resonance. Therefore, the paper aims to capture how international studies of silent acts reproduce dominant structures of power that (may) reduce the broader insights we could gain from witnessing silent political acts from an international perspective.
    
    Author: Luke Lavender (Queen May University of London)
- 105
  05 Panel / Russia’s challenges to the liberal world order Exec 10, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group
  
  Convener: Jennifer Mathers (Aberystwyth University)
  
  Chair: Jennifer Mathers (Aberystwyth University)
  - The European Union in the Caucasus: a Bourdieusian Power Audit in Contested Times
    
    Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine has posed a major challenge to the Liberal International Order. It has laid bare the vulnerability of the states surrounding the Russian Federation to the weakening of liberal norms and the growing assertiveness of illiberal powers; the conflict has also confronted ‘Civilian Power Europe’ with the harsh realities of geopolitics in an increasingly un-civil age. The EU’s trusted policy toolbox is in need of reappraisal, and its ongoing quest for strategic autonomy remains, as yet, out of reach. This paper will provide an overview of the EU’s limitations and possibilities considering the recent disruptions within the LIO by applying a Bourdieusian field-theoretic framework: it will assess the extent to which its various forms of capital can still be effective in shaping practices in the South Caucasus, in view of modified terms of exchange brought about in times of liberal crisis. Indeed, the changed global and regional normative environment appears to have devalued the effectiveness of those species of capital long associated with Brussels, while revaluing its military form; in strongly contested and fractured regions, this will likely limit the EU’s autonomous agency in the absence of fundamental institutional change.
    
    Author: Kevork Oskanian (University of Exeter)
  - Russian conservative soft power after the Ukraine War
    
    Before the Ukraine war, some scholars noted that Russian regime not only used propaganda and disinformation, but also had soft power attraction among growing members of populist and far-right/left groups across the Western states. For many analysts, however, the invasion of Ukraine marked the end of this type of influence, with predictions that those populists who openly supported the values projected by the Russian regime, and therein Russian foreign policy, had made a politically fatal mistake. This paper, alternatively, suggests that the war in Ukraine was has not marked the end of Russian conservative soft power in the West, showing that although the war did effect its overall strength, the continued pull of conservative values projected by the Russian regime is still a concern not only for the successful Ukrainian prosecution of the war, but the continued stability of liberal international projects.
    
    Authors: Katarzyna Kaczmarska (University of Edinburgh)* , Vincent Keating (University of Southern Denmark)
  - Russia and the Global South: a critical analysis
    
    The era-defining rupture between Russia and the Western liberal democracies resulting from the war in Ukraine threatens political and economic instability and the creation of new dividing lines across the globe. But Russia-West antagonism is only one of the causes exacerbating existing trends towards nationalism, economic protectionism, the recurrence of security dilemmas and fractures in the international order. For many countries in the Global South (GS), Russia’s war with Ukraine is peripheral to their core concerns. Regional disputes, internal conflicts, food and energy shortfalls, climate change and environmental challenges, resource wars, and failures of domestic governance as governments reject democratic accountability - all combine to cause instability and retard development. Yet, a greater sense of agency among the emerging nations is generating new ideas for collective problem-solving in the pursuit of economic growth and social well-being; they seek the reconstruction of the global political, economic and financial order through a new consensus at the UN and reform of Western-led institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. Regional leaders such as Brazil, Indonesia and Nigeria seek greater representation at the UN, and a better deal on trade and finance. Consequently, they are receptive to Russia’s narratives about a multipolar world order and the democratisation of an international system based on the sovereign equality of states, cultural diversity and traditional moral values. Nevertheless, the avoidance on the part of many GS states of an unequivocal commitment to either the US liberal (or, increasingly, transactional) rules-based order, or Russia’s attempt to exploit post-colonial dissatisfaction with the perceived Western monopoly on political and economic power, requires critical analysis. This paper, part of an ongoing research programme, aims to open up a fresh perspective by harnessing insights of state elites, authoritative commentators and societal opinion to explore how Russia’s foreign policy-making impacts on the countries of the Global South, and in turn investigates how policy thinking and practice in the latter influences Russia’s external political and trade relations.
    Key words: Russia; Global South; Ukraine war; United Nations; post-colonial; sovereign equality; cultural diversity
    
    Author: Derek Averre (University of Birmingham)
  - New Russian thinking on civilisationism and international order
    
    This paper explores new Russian thinking on international order in the context of the war against Ukraine and Russia's political, economic and diplomatic break with the West. It explores different schools of thought in Russia after the war, all of which in different ways build on the concept of civilisationism. Two major trends are identified. The first school, which has been dominant since 2022, can be termed 'Offensive civilisationism'. It offers a radical revisionism in international relations that combines the anti-liberal geopolitics of Carl Schmitt with Soviet-era narratives of anti-hegemony and anti-colonialism. Its ultimate aim is to end 'US hegemony' in international relations. A second school - 'defensive civilisationism' - which is popular among some Russian conservatives, also views Russian civilisation as under threat from the West, but favours a semi-isolationist stance that seeks to divide Russian civilisation from Europe but sees little prospect of challenging the West globally. Official discourse combines elements from both these schools of thought, but has not yet fully articulated a Russian doctrine of civilisational thinking in international relations.
    
    Author: David Lewis (University of Exeter)
- 106
  05 Panel / The Politics of International Criminal Law: Historical and Contemporary Investigations Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Law and Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: Rachel Kerr (King's College London)
  
  Chair: James Gow
  - Ecocide and Forgotten Histories of International Criminal Law
    
    When President Volodymyr Zelensky announced his 10-Point Peace Plan in November 2022, environmental activists welcomed it for having included measures aimed at addressing the environmental costs of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Calling for, in particular, compensation for Russian acts of ecocide, Ukrainian scientists, conservationists, bureaucrats and lawyers have since been documenting Russia’s environmental crimes, which some have described as the most detailed tally of wartime environmental destruction ever undertaken. However, calls for accountability for environmental destruction are not new and contrary to dominant narratives, justice for ecocide has been a recurrent theme within the historical evolution of international criminal law. Seeking to challenge conventional views that portray ecocide, alongside contemporary legal efforts aimed at its recognition as an international crime, as a 21st century response to the climate/ecological emergency, this paper explores ecocide’s marginalized role within the history of international criminal law. In doing so, it demonstrates how a more historically-informed perspective is crucial not only for uncovering the underexplored thinkers, actors and processes that have enabled ecocide to remain, albeit until recently, on the margins of international criminal justice, but also for understanding its current significance within contemporary discussions of law, war and justice.
    
    Author: Suwita Hani Randhawa (University of the West of England)
  - Navigating power dynamics: the ICC’s prosecutorial behaviour in the court’s second decade
    
    In his landmark book “Rough Justice: The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics”, David Bosco argues that the first decade of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is characterized by an interactive process of mutual accommodation between the court’s Prosecutor and the world’s most powerful states. Almost ten years since the publication of David Bosco’s book, this paper aims to map the ICC’s prosecutorial behaviour in recent years to understand if the court has remained constrained by major power privilege or if it became bolder with time. Particular emphasis will be given to the Prosecutor’s decisions to close the preliminary examinations in Colombia and Guinea, to focus the ICC’s investigative efforts in Afghanistan on the crimes allegedly committed by the Taliban and the Islamic State, and to open an investigation into the situation in Ukraine. Does the ICC continue to operate in a largely conciliatory framework, very cautious and deferential to power politics? And if so, how is the ICC contributing to the production and reproduction of hegemonic discourses? Is the court hijacking the agency and voice of the subjects it claims to empower?
    
    Author: Carolina Carvalho (University of Coimbra (School of Economics))
  - Leftist ad hoc tribunals and Cold War campaigns for permanent international justice institutions
    
    In The Justice Cascade Kathryn Sikkink traces the origins of the International Criminal Court to a revival of the Nuremburg/Tokyo legacy during the ‘third wave’ of democracy in Southern Europe. She, like most scholars, downplays the significance of a series of leftist attempts to revive Nuremburg using civil society tribunals. These began with the 1966 International War Crimes Tribunal (or ‘Russell Tribunal’) that prosecuted the war in Vietnam and continued thereafter, notably under the auspices of The Permanent Peoples' Tribunal. Many of the same personnel were simultaneously involved with unofficial international commissions of inquiry into war crimes committed in (inter alia) Southern Africa and Lebanon. For Sikkink these leftist initiatives were too tainted with revolutionary politics to have been an important factor in building the international rule of law. Yet such initiatives were in fact supported by a number of strikingly un-revolutionary jurists who appear to have seen them as a means of building pressure for permanent international justice institutions. This paper will evaluate the significance of these jurists’ campaigns.
    
    Author: Peter Brett (Queen Mary University of London)
  - An Eye for an Eye? IO response to delegitimation
    
    Scholars of international organizations (IOs) have increasingly recognized that IOs employ legitimation strategies as a matter of standard practice in order to build and maintain elite and popular support. At the same time, recent events challenging IOs has sparked research on delegitimation, or efforts to undermine and challenge the perceived appropriateness of these institutions. This paper seeks to understand if, how and under what conditions IOs respond to delegitimation. For this purpose, we develop the concept of re-legitimation, distinguishing it from legitimation that has become part of ordinary practice for IOs. Re-legitimation is conceptualized as practices that IOs develop and use to respond to specific instances of delegitimation in order to reconstitute elite and popular beliefs about its appropriateness. It is differentiated from routine legitimation by IOs on the basis of the content and timing of the statements. We theorize possible conditions that influence if and how IOs employ re-legitimation. The paper empirically examines these conditions using a new dataset of legitimacy statements by international criminal tribunals, namely, the Kosovo Specialist Chambers (KSC) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Both of these institutions have faced significant delegitimation by regional elites and the broader public.
    
    Authors: Theresa Squatrito (London School of Economics)* , Birte Gippert (University of Liverpool)
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  05 Panel / The interconnectedness of norm definitions and norm contestation Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working Group
  
  Convener: Jonathan Pettifer (University of Birmingham)
  
  Chair: Rita Floyd (University of Birmingham)
  
  Discussant: Thomas Diez (University of Tuebingen)
  - Clusters of normative meanings-in-use as sites of contestation
    
    Since its inception, the study of norms in IR has evolved considerably, and so has our understanding of norms and their dynamics (d)evolution. However, despite – or perhaps because of – the conceptual differentiation, some enduring questions remain: How can norms be both inherently contested and changeable but still generate stable patterns of behavior and reliability of expectations? How do actors negotiate the meaning of contested norms? This paper seeks to find answers to these questions by focusing on recent research on norm complexity and norm clusters in particular. Adopting a critical-constructivist understanding of norms as meanings-in-use this paper argues that in addition to regulatory norm clusters, i.e.
    collections of interlinked or related norms that are codified in the form of international treaties or regimes, there are also culturally distinct clusters of normative meanings-in-use. Their form may vary both in time and depending on the group of actors. Of particular interest is the extent to which similarities or differences can be recognized between specific cluster designations of different groups of actors and between these and the regulatory, i.e. ‘shared’, norm clusters cast in official regimes. Turning to the field of nuclear disarmament, this paper explores how and by means of which practices a variety of societal agents is involved in the making and shaping of normative meanings-in-use.
    
    Author: Carmen Wunderlich (University of Freiburg)
  - Defining and contesting: how actors at varying levels of analysis contest distinct norms in different ways
    
    This paper aims to examine how and why norms are contested in international relations (IR) by building on Elvira Rosert’s (2023) typology of norms and Antje Wiener’s (2014, 2018) theory of contestation. Specifically, it will question whether the way in which a norm is defined according to the typology affects the way(s) in which it is contested. It is important to ensure that analysis of norm contestations is considered at all levels, as much of the literature has an over-focus on purely state-level actors. I argue that different norms are essentially contested in different ways in IR, but that this contestation goes beyond the level of states to form a wider movement of contestation internationally against a specific norm. I aim to showcase this through the example of LGBTQ+ acceptance in the European Union. Do actors at different level contest norms in differing ways depending on the type of norm in question and what is the relationship between norm types and contestation more broadly in IR?
    
    Author: Jonathan Pettifer (University of Birmingham)
  - The contestation of fundamental norms: What Poland’s backlash against the EU reveals about norm hierarchies and contestation
    
    It is a taken-for-granted feature of the legal systems of democratic states: constitutional provisions take precedence over other laws. This however becomes less straightforward as we move to an international scale and broaden our perspective to take into account both formal and informal norms. Indeed, in recent years, we witness an ever more acute crisis of liberal norms referred to as “fundamental”, such as the rule of law, and of liberal institutions upholding and enforcing these norms. How are the simultaneous contestation of norms and institutions interrelated? Why, how and with which consequences do actors engage in such contestation and do the motivations and effects differ with the types of norms that are being contested? Finally, does a hierarchy between international norms exist, which mirrors the domestic hierarchy of legal provisions? In this paper, I turn to the Polish resistance against the EU and its “fundamental” norms to investigate these interrelated questions. Based on Twitter data, official statements and interviews, I retrace the first years of the Polish stand-off, which started with the taking office of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in 2015. Thereby, I show how norm hierarchies reflect and create institutionalized inequalities and power asymmetries.
    
    Author: Johanna Speyer (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt)
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  05 Panel / The Nexus of Small States Between Emerging Middle Powers and Competing Global Actors Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: ISMMEA Working group
  
  Chair: Betul Dogan Akkas (Ankara University)
  - Between a Rock and a Hard Place – The Small Gulf States and the Israel-Hamas War
    
    The war between Israel and Hamas in 2023 had a substantive effect on geopolitics and international relations of the Middle East and North Africa region. While most analysis focus either on the future of Israeli-Emirati relations or speculate on the possibility of Saudi-Israeli normalization, the perspective of small Gulf states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman) are often neglected.
    Nevertheless, each of them has a unique role and strategy towards the events taking place in Gaza and Israel. Qatar and Oman are two traditional mediators in regional affairs, whose unofficial relations with Israel had been open secrets even before the war. Besides being the only small Gulf state having diplomatic relations with Israel, Bahrain’s perspective is especially interesting, given the country’s vulnerability to the intensification of Sunni-Shia or Iranian-Arab rivalries. Lastly, Qatar (and Kuwait) have donated huge sums of money to Palestinian organizations and humanitarian efforts, which poses a dilemma in itself for the future. All of these aspects complicate the small Gulf states’ perspectives on the current war and shape their strategy.
    The paper aims to compare the strategies of small Gulf states towards the Israel-Hamas war with two specific research questions – what are the similarities and differences between the approach of the four countries, and which variables can help us explain these tendencies? Utilizing the omni-balancing framework, the study will differentiate between domestic political constraints and international political ones, to better understand the logic behind their actions. Conclusions will be drawn not just in terms of the individual strategy of specific small Gulf states but also in connection with the extent of coordination between them and the future scenarios regarding Gulf-Israeli relations.
    
    Author: Mate Szalai (Ca' Foscari University)
  - Do small states have convening power to shape the domains of competition between great powers? Nepali agency in the context of Sino-Indian competition in South Asia
    
    In the 1990s, the Lumbini Museum was created at the birthplace of the Buddha in Lumbini, Nepal, with the help of Indian donations. In July 2011, the Asia Pacific Exchange and Co-operation Foundation – based in Hong Kong but backed by China – invested USD 3 billion to extend Lumbini’s tourist network. The case of Lumbini illustrates that India and China materialise their competition in Nepal mostly in the cultural sector, departing from other small states in the region such as Sri Lanka, where Sino-Indian competition manifests over port infrastructural development projects.
    
    By adopting a neo-Gramscian approach to conceptualise dyadic competition and small state agency in South Asia, this paper investigates how Nepal exercises its agency as a small state by shaping the domain of competition between India and China. Overcoming mainstream Constructivist literature on norm diffusion, this paper suggests that small state agency does not just rest on the direct responses of small states to great powers but also shapes the spaces of great power competition. The relevance of this study lies in accounting for change and variation in the interests and agency of states while problematising the Western notions of sovereignty and bilateral relations.
    
    Author: Sara Frumento (University of Oxford)
  - Between a rock and hard place? Canada’s role in the Indo-Pacific
    
    This paper examines Canada’s attempts to coordinate an Indo-Pacific policy and long-standing regional security relations, most particularly with the United States and Australia. Canada’s past differentiation of security and economic approaches has become increasingly hard to sustain with China’s aggressive regional policy, use of coercive diplomacy, and allegations of interference in Canadian domestic politics. However, full participation in a US-led regional strategy is limited by alleged governmental involvement by a key US collaborator, India, in the assassination of a Sikh leader within Canada. Canada has increasingly participated in ad hoc regional security initiatives and the 2022 Indo-Pacific strategy reflects growing interest in the region and increased expectations from Canada’s allies that it will participate in regional governance more fully. Canada needs to decide how to balance its competing regional interests in the context of these changing ally expectations and challenges to its sovereignty by both China and India. The paper will therefore consider the developing security architecture in the Indo-Pacific as a series of opportunities for Canada to participate, or not, as part of its evolving regional posture.
    
    Author: Gavin Cameron (University of Calgary)
  - What Makes Small States Successful Mediators? The case of economic statecraft in Qatari mediation in the Horn of Africa
    
    This paper seeks to contribute to the literature on small states in the domain of conflict mediation. We use the case study of Qatari mediation in the Horn of Africa to address three questions: 1) In what ways does the intrinsic neutrality of small states bolster their credibility in mediation? 2) To what extent are the mediation norms that typically apply to large state mediators relevant in mediation led by small states? And 3) what role does economic statecraft play in the outcome of mediation? This paper builds on existing studies (Goetschel, 2011 & 2020; Hellmüller et al., 2020; Pring & Federer, 2020) to argue that small states, like Qatar, devoid of geopolitical ‘baggage’ and lacking the typical ‘size’ to be threatening, offer a unique vantage point in mediation processes, but also that this is insufficient to ensure successful mediation. Instead, the effective use of economic statecraft is also necessary. We find that in Qatari mediation, perceptions of its neutrality and the absence of behaviour that can be interpreted as threatening are central to its acceptance as a mediator but that its success is due to its use of economic statecraft. Furthermore, while norms influence Qatar’s mediating role (see: Mason et al., 2011), its ‘legitimacy’ is not tied to common normative policy positions and the risk of ‘losing face’ is minimised should Qatari mediation not reflect the well-publicised normative policies of larger states. This has clear implications for accepting small states as mediators in future conflicts.
    
    Authors: Ali Al-Otaibi (Nottingham Trent University) , Imad El-Anis (Nottingham Trent University)
  - The domestic contestation of liberal internationalism: The case of Israel
    
    This paper forms part of a wider project to examine the interaction between increasing polarization within multi-party democracies and increasing challenges to Liberal International Order. The project examines this relationship by comparing national level party contestations over the war in Ukraine. This paper examines the case of Israel, a state that despite an extraordinary strategic dependency on the US, and close economic and cultural relationship with the EU, has an identity in relation to the liberal international order that is highly contested both internally and externally. While Israel might have been expected to align unreservedly with US preferences on Ukraine, in fact Israel kept for some time a careful balancing act. This was widely attributed to Israel’s unique strategic sensitivities in coordinating with Russian forces in Syria. However, my analysis reveals party political variations, shaped by differences between liberal versus nationalist and conservative values, and consequently variations in the extent to which Israeli decision makers sought to align with the West, and were willing to risk alienating Putin. The Hamas-Israel war marked a further turning point, underlining Russia’s diplomatic support for Hamas and increasing alignment with Iran, but also the resistance of the Israeli right to accept demands from the US and EU to empower Palestinian moderates. The war further exposed the deep interconnection between Israel’s domestic polarization and divergent interpretations of the national interest with respect to international order.
    
    Author: Toby Greene (London School of Economics; Bar Ilan University)
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  05 Roundtable / Transnational conflict in the Middle East and Africa: a case study for policy and programming Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  Transnational conflict in the Middle East and Africa: a case study for policy and programming
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Chair: Leah de Haan (University of Amsterdam)
  
  Participants: Hayder Al-Shakeri (Chatham House) , Leah de Haan (University of Amsterdam) , Renad Mansour (Chatham House) , Jutta Bakonyi (Durham University)
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  05 / BISA 2024 reception Library of Birmingham
Thursday 6 June
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  06 Conference event / Canal run lead by Mark Webber and Stefan Wolff. Meet outside Hyatt Hotel, either 4k or 8k route
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  06 Panel / 21st Century Right Wing Nationalisms Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: CPD Working group
  
  Chair: Heba Youssef (University of Brighton)
  - Decoloniality and Right-Wing Populism in India
    
    Abstract
    Decoloniality calls for a revival of indigenous knowledge systems and aims to overturn the colonial matrix of power. However, recent research has expressed a concern about hierarchies that exist within indigenous societies and power structures. Situated in this context, my paper will address the question: What does decoloniality do for right-wing populism? I will use decolonial theory and the literature on populism and authoritarianism to explore how the idea of indigenous revival might encourage far-right nationalism by activating ideas of national pride and victimisation. Using the method of discourse analysis, I will analyse the discourses of politicians in India, using the rise of Hindu far-right populism in India as a case study. I will argue that decoloniality risks legitimising far-right violence and exclusionary structures in non-Western states. The paper will contribute to international studies scholarship by throwing light on whether the concept of decoloniality remains relevant amid the rise of right-wing populism and the global power shift away from the West.
    Keywords: populism, global crisis, ideology, power structures, decolonial, Asia
    
    Author: Saloni Kapur (FLAME University)
  - Uncivil: Contesting Free Speech Nationalism
    
    This paper explores what it calls ‘free speech nationalism’ – the imagination and building of the nation-state in debates surrounding free expression. There are as many free speech nationalisms as there are approaches to free speech, from classical liberal and libertarian defenses of free speech, to leftist multicultural and feminist advocacy for regulation. Through an analysis of historic and contemporary free speech politics in Western Europe, North America and the Antipodes, the paper argues that, despite their differences, free speech nationalisms consistently shape the nation-state along lines of race, gender and ability. It shows that, far from a struggle of freedom against regulation, free speech advocacy has been central to controlling speech, not only by excluding enemies of the nation-state (imagined as Black, Brown, Jewish, Indigenous, trans, feminine and/or mad) from free expression, but by imposing terms of speech in which ‘speakers’ are individual or corporate entities and ‘freedom’ is the protection of rights by the state. The paper argues for a more expansive vision of ‘freedom’ and ‘expression’, drawing on Indigenous, Jewish, trans and mad activism which, it shows, exceeds, resists, or builds alternatives to, free speech nationalism.
    
    Author: Darcy Leigh (University of Sussex)
  - Old Itineraries, New Vocabularies: Mapping the Movements of Hindu Nationalism in Europe
    
    Extant literature on the phenomenon of Hindu nationalism has for a long time pointed to how the Hindu majoritarian political project is fundamentally transnational. The current literature has in particular noted the transnational ties between diaspora Hindu welfare organisations and political organisations in the West, and Hindu nationalist political formations in India. These ties take the form of a diffusionist logic, where connections are imagined between a centre: India, and its peripheries: Western diasporic communities.
    
    However, with the phenomena of a distinctly authoritarian Hindu politics coming to the fore in Western party politics and public debate, it’s become clear that Hindu nationalism increasingly constitutes its own force in the West. This is the case even if the networks linking academia, caste associations and more formal Hindutva diaspora politics inside the West itself remains under-researched. This paper builds on existing academic and journalistic work on the transnational networks of Hindutva to start to map its interlinkages within Europe. Here, it is especially focused on the ties between British caste associations, Conservative Party political networks, and its ties to academics in Belgium, specifically the so-called Ghent School at the University of Ghent.
    
    This paper asks: what characterises intra-European networks of Hindu nationalist ideology and organisation? What are the modes through which they communicate and exchange knowledge and skills? What kind of unique sets of political vocabulary and grammars are produced through these networks?
    
    Authors: Ida Birkvad (LSE) , Shikha Dilawri (LSE)
  - Decolonial Imaginaries of the Far Right: Alexander Dugin, Carl Schmitt and the Reactionary Pluriverse
    
    Discourses of decolonisation are mutating. In France, far-right thinkers like Guillaume Faye cast white Europe as indigenous victim of an ‘immigrant colonisation’ orchestrated by ‘globalist’ elites; Hindu supremacist writers have taken up the framework of decoloniality to market their ethnonationalist ideology as a form of radical indigenous critique; and Putin’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov makes promises to stand ‘in solidarity with the African demands to complete the process of decolonisation’. While it is easy to dismiss these examples as cynical appropriations of a decolonial politics they bear little real relation to, I suggest here that they in fact draw on a longer history of far-right anti-imperial thought. This finds its roots in the international thought of Carl Schmitt and is developed in the contemporary writings of the neo-fascist theorist Alexander Dugin. A closer look at Schmitt and Dugin’s ideas about the 'Grossraum', the 'nomos of the earth' and the ‘pluriverse’ allows us to excavate a distinctive concept of imperialism at work among far-right thinkers today - enabling us, in turn, to better dismantle their dubious claims to decoloniality.
    
    Author: Miri Davidson (University of Warwick)
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  06 Panel / Conceptualising AI in Global Society Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group
  
  Convener: ISET
  
  Chair: Ciaran Gillespie (University of Surrey)
  - Forecasting and Worldmaking in Global Policy
    
    It is a matter of scholarly consensus that regional and global socio-technical transitions are constituted by relations of countervailing actors, interests and hubs of expertise. However, relatively few scholars have sought to unpick the opaque practices of knowledge generation and dissemination that define transitions in complex networks of technology, public policy, international organizations and private industry. This paper, seeking to rectify this, zooms in on practices of long-term forecasting in shaping the politics and processes of transition, drawing on approaches from Science and Technology Studies. Foregrounding the case study of 2050-centred forecasting in the shipping industry’s transition to green modes of operation, it explores the relational politics of the associated epistemic practices, and the worldmaking power bound up in the imagination of sustainable futures of maritime transport.
    
    Authors: Alex Gould (King's College London) , Anna Finiguerra (QMUL)
  - The Subject of Intelligence: AI as Existential Risk and the Constitution of the Human
    
    This paper analyses discourses on artificial intelligence (AI) as an Existential Risk, focusing on how they construct subject positions, and their political implications. It investigates how Existential Risk discourses mobilise the category of “intelligence” to present AI as a nonhuman subject that poses a risk to humanity, as well as to construe humanity as deserving of salvation and protection from risk. This paper argues that, by articulating “intelligence” within a framework marked by power relations based on coloniality, gender, race and anthropocentrism, Existential Risk discourses represent the persistence of the modern notion of the human. It proposes that the image of the human operates both in the “humanisation” of AI through the enactment of a connection between intelligence and power, as well as in the delimitation of the meanings of humanity – and which form of humanity is to be protected. Moreover, this paper argues that, as a consequence of this centrality of intelligence, Existential Risk discourses mobilise a teleological framework that presents the development of human intelligence towards (post)humanity as an ultimate moral value, justifying bio/necropolitical logics of governance that reproduce colonial, gendered, racialised and anthropocentric forms of domination.
    
    Author: Caio Simoneti (University of Cambridge)
  - Decolonial AI: A Perspective on the Imperialist States' Colonizing Quest for Labor Applied in the Development of Artificial Intelligence.
    
    The process of exploring other countries in distant continents began in the colonial era, and imperialism still persists today in different forms. The development of technology related to artificial intelligence also undergoes these impacts, where there is a colonial form of selecting bodies and minds that needs to change. The objective of this work is to remove the blindfold on an ultra-normalized process of super-exploitation of labor in artificial intelligence in Brazil by US companies, creating a more sought-after profile, in order to embark on a process of decolonizing AI. The methodology used was to generate data through LinkedIn Jobs, analyzing job postings for positions containing the following words: Data Analytics, Data Science, and Machine Learning. The analysis was performed using the ChatGPT integrated with Google Sheets through an Application Programming Interface (API), by using their own tools to expose such practices, we are undertaking a decolonial shift. It was found that the most sought-after professional profile is someone with experience in ML and NLP, a senior with 5 years of experience, responsible for people management and the development of strategies and solutions, with knowledge in Python and SQL, without specific degree requirements as long as there is relevant experience. Therefore, we can define that the decolonial AI movement should be initiated not only in the lines of code but also in the installed production structure, where imperialist states seek to expand their productive capacity with labor from the global south, thereby increasing their profit margins.
    
    Author: Jian Melo (Federal University of Santa Catarina)
  - AI Futures? Towards a New Futurology for Emerging Technologies
    
    One of the world’s leading AI companies, Palantir, is named for the scrying device in the Lord of the Rings trilogy that enabled the characters to see the future. This paper debates whether a Palantir can be created for or by Artificial Intelligence. It asks two core questions: 1.) can we use AI to 'see' the future, and 2.) can we anticipate possible AI futures, including how the technology might develop and the potential impact of its deployment. In answering these questions the paper examines how intellectual enquiry around these technologies can become more adept and rigorous at predicting and anticipating future outcomes relating to AI technologies, and, in particular, how IR can help drive methodological innovation in foresight, forecasting and futurology. This is particularly important when it comes to AI technologies because of the secrecy around their development (due to requirements of commercial protection or national security) and the opaqueness of development processes. Some of the most crucial and important questions in relation to AI, including whether an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) will emerge, are driven by uncertainty, which fuels fear and anxiety. Futures work has been done in other convergent disciplines – foresight and wargaming has become an influential tool for assessing security issues, for example. But this work has not been done for AI. Scholars have also bemoaned the waning predictive power of IR in general, including in relation to unforeseen events such as the end of the Cold War, 9/11, the Arab Spring, the Ukraine war and the current Gaza Israel conflict. There is thus an opportunity to refresh IR’s role and function in this area, which is arguably one of the disciplines defining features. The goal of the paper is therefore to explore how the discipline of IR can build a new futurology of AI, theoretically and methodologically, including by the application of futures methods such as foresight scenarios, back casting, wargames, simulations, sociotechnical imaginaries, AI-based forecasting tools and iterative psychological experiments.
    
    Authors: Joe Burton (Lancaster University) , Simona Soare
  - AI and the Makeover of Democratic Imagination
    
    This paper reflects on the premises, promises, and perils of AI for democracies. It builds upon my previous work (Kaul, 2022) on how AI is altering the geographies of our knowledge about ourselves and the world, affecting how we make sense of our experience as we interface with digital and real entities, deciding what we can access, and curating what and who we can care for. The link between technologies and politics is important, since people are often “willing to make drastic changes in the way they live to accord with technological innovation at the same time they would resist similar kinds of changes justified on political grounds” (Winner 1980: 135). Technologies as order-making processes involve complex questions of consent, power, and inter-relationality. The increasing resort to AI technologies across the board, including in governance and public policy, continues unabated despite concerns about ethical fairness and explanatory transparency. AI is transforming the democratic imagination and reshaping both economic organisation and political reasoning in diverse societies. This paper, thus, focuses on the political-cognitive intersection of what AI means for the democratic societies, which are globally uneven in terms of institutional strength, media freedoms, resilience of inequalities, and access to legal recourse.
    
    Author: Nitasha Kaul (University of Westminster)
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  06 Panel / Contesting Nuclear and Climate Imperialisms in the Pacific Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Global Nuclear Order Working Group
  
  Conveners: Mililani Ganivet (The British Museum and University of East Anglia) , Anaïs Maurer (Rutgers University) , Charlotte Weatherill (Open University) , Catherine Eschle (University of Strathclyde) , Lis Kayser (University of Copenhagen)
  
  Chair: Becky Alexis-Martin (University of Bradford)
  - Pacific Post/Apocalypse: From Nuclear Colonialism to Carbon Imperialism
    
    This paper analyzes how Pacific people’s transgenerational struggle against nuclear weapons recontextualizes the global fight against climate change by underscoring the environmental racism at the root of both existential threats. Bombarded with the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb a day, every day, for half a century, Pacific islands have already undergone the environmental collapse looming over the rest of the globe. Yet stories of this ocean on fire by Pacific nuclear survivors reveal an alternative vision of the apocalypse: instead of individualism and toxic masculinity, they center mutual assistance, cultural resilience, South-South transnational solidarities, and Indigenous women’s leadership. These multilingual stories should be shared the world over, particularly in other frontlines against petrocapitalism. Unlike antinuclear activists and climate militants in the global North who barely talk to each other, Pacific environmental activists today draw from their experience of the nuclear apocalypse to cultivate resilience and regeneration in times of climate collapse. Oceania was the first continent to see its environment destroyed by thermonuclear fire on a previously unimaginable scale. It is also the first continent to imagine the new world emerging from the ashes of the old one.
    
    Author: Anais Maurer (Rutgers University)
  - ‘Operation Hurricane’: Narrating climate change as part of the ‘imperial mess’ and colonial violence wrought in the Pacific
    
    In ‘Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay About Captain Cook´, Alice Te Punga Somerville writes about colonialism in Aotearoa and the Pacific as a story that can be told in endless different ways, each way having its own message. Number 223, ‘In Montebello Islands’, discusses the British nuclear weapons testing programme. The tests were called ‘Operation Hurricane’, and Te Punga Somerville writes, “It is tempting to call the whole imperial mess of the past five centuries ‘Operation Hurricane’” (Te Punga Somerville 2020, 42). From this prompt, this paper asks what happens if you tell the story of climate change in this way. In doing so, the colonial history becomes the present, where coloniality and resistance entwine, and the ‘way out of the mess’ has to be found in a fight against the whole imperial operation. In this chapter, I retell the history of colonial violence in the Pacific region, framing it as part of the same historical politics of disposability, all of which has a counter history of resistance and solidarity. The violence of climate change is confronted and defied through new stories and a rejection of the fantasies of invulnerability upon which coloniality relies.
    
    Author: Charlotte Weatherill (Open University)
  - Weaving a Transoceanic Web: Antinuclear Solidarities between Greenham Women and Indigenous Pacific Communities
    
    This paper examines the solidarity relations constructed in the organisation Women Working for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (WWNFIP). Close attention to this UK-based network, active between 1984 and 1999, is important for two reasons. First, it challenges accepted understandings of the spatial and temporal boundaries of feminist anti-nuclear activism, and of the identities and ideologies of participants in it. Second, it offers important lessons for present-day activism because of its focus on the role of colonial and post-colonial relations of power, and on Indigenous Pacific peoples’ experiences and knowledge. In previous publications, I have examined the textual representation of identity and connection in the archive of newsletters produced by the group between 1984 and 1999. In this paper, I focus on interview testimonies to explore how participants conceptualised relations between Pacific women and UK-based allies, to unpack the material underpinnings and impacts of these relations in the women’s everyday lives, and to trace their affective and political legacies.
    
    Author: Catherine Eschle (University of Strathclyde)
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  06 Panel / Diverse Challenges to the Protection of Human Rights Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Responsibility to Protect Working Group
  
  Convener: Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Responsibility to Protect Working group
  
  Chair: Jonathan Leader Maynard (King's College London)
  - Militarism in Global Drug Governance
    
    In 2017, illicit drug use resulted in the premature death of 585,348 individuals worldwide. The demand for illegal drugs is staggering, with almost 275 million people aged 15-64 using them at least once in 2016. The question arises as to how to define and construct victory in the war against drug proliferation and how to implement widespread state violence entrenched in narcotic drug governance. The existing scholarly literature on the global politics of narcotic drug regulation is empirically rich but lacks a comprehensive explanatory theory for the persistence of widespread state violence. This paper proposes a theory of militarism in global drug wars to explain the persistence of state violence and abuses in narcotic drug regulation, focusing on the normative justifications and patterns of violent practices by state leaders.
    
    Author: Salvador Santino Regilme (Leiden University, The Netherlands)
  - Is Power from the Western World Dominating? - An International Insight into the Benchmark and Situation of Academic Freedom
    
    Academic freedom (AF) in the Western world typically refers to the right to free inquiry and several responsibilities when conducting scholarly activities. Based on this value and standard, the practice of AF in mainland China has been largely argued as problematic. This type of evaluation and critique seems inevitable as new China has tried to model its modern universities along with the concept of AF in the West. However, different voices have been concerned that the Chinese scenario of AF is not and seems unnecessary to be simply a Western replica. In line with the latter claim, I argue that understanding a context-based AF and evaluating it through international comparisons is necessary, which could be impossible with a perspective overly influenced by Western conventions.
    
    My argument is based on the empirical study of the de facto situation of AF in Chinese universities in 2022. The findings suggest that Chinese scholars had different understandings and practices of AF from the documented meanings and incidents in the West. While AF appears to reflect the notion of liberalism and democracy in the Western world, it should not deter us from reconceptualising its new meanings from the perspective of a socialist country.
    
    Author: Qiyu Zhuang (University of Edinburgh)
  - ‘I Say, You Say’: Transitional Justice and Normative Polarisation in Parliamentary Interactions
    
    Scholars have analysed how different actors in post-conflict societies support or resist reckoning with war crimes. They have compared what they say, revealing that transitional justice is a contested field of practice. By doing, so they have overlooked how these actors engage with each other and how their views may change during the course of interaction. Addressing this gap, we approach discourse as a dynamic construct and foreground an interactional dimension of political communication to evaluate its effect on transitional justice deliberation. We use an original dataset of speeches in the Serbian Parliament from 2003 to 2023. Applying computational quantitative text analysis, including topic models and sentiment measures, we study patterns of MPs’ discourse about transitional justice. We identify how partisan and co-partisan interactions between MPs contribute to normative amplification of messages. This novel insight into political polarisation centred on transitional justice demonstrates how transitional justice is distorted for political purposes. The paper demonstrates how quantitative analysis of discourse advances the evidence base for normative claims about transitional justice, while shifting attention to the little understood role of parliamentary debates in shaping views on global transitional justice and human rights norms at the local level.
    
    Authors: Denisa Kostovicova (London School of Economics and Political Science) , Lanabi La Lova (LSE)* , Ivor Sokolic (University of Hertfordshire)
  - State Extremism and International Relations
    
    Scholarly work on extremism focuses overwhelmingly on non-state actors: on terrorist organisations, armed groups, and political parties. This is odd, since the most famous instances and catastrophic consequences of extremism in human history tend to be bound up with states – i.e. governments and their subordinate agencies. As Qassim Cassam (2022, p. 2) notes: “To get a sense of the scale of human misery for which extremism has been responsible, one only has to think of Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, or Mao’s China.” This neglect of state extremism applies in International Relations as much as in other research fields. The closest IR scholars get to engaging with state extremism is generally through work on revisionist states, revolutionary states, authoritarian states, or states engaged in active atrocity crimes/human rights abuses. Though all these concepts and the scholarly literatures orientated around them are important, they are not effective substitutes for considering how extremism operates within and among states. At a time of potentially growing extremism amongst states, this is a potentially severe analytical gap. In this paper, I therefore, first, argue for the need to bring a focus on states into the scholarly debate over the nature, drivers and consequences of extremism and then, second, consider how International Relations scholars might theorise about state extremism within the international system.
    
    Author: Jonathan Leader Maynard (King's College London)
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  06 Conference event / Exhibition Hall Open Hyatt
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  06 Panel / Has “militarisation” had its day? Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Conveners: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University) , Sarah Bulmer
  
  Chair: Owen Thomas (University of Exeter)
  - Taking Militarizations Seriously: What a Focus on the Heterogeneity of Militarized Childhoods Reveals about a Contested Concept
    
    In this paper, we seek to contribute to ongoing debates around the value and use of the concept of militarization by focusing on the plurality of militarizations that take place in different social and political contexts in relation to children and childhoods. Children across the world navigate, negotiate, contest, and reconfigure ideas, practices, and processes that work to naturalise the use of organized violence in global politics and in their everyday lives. However, understandings of how different children and childhoods are militarized are profoundly political. In some settings, militarization functions as a technology that both authorises and normalises children’s involvement in violent practices or settings without disrupting wider notions of the sanctity of childhood. In others, militarization is framed as a problematic indicator of state aggression and the disruption of childhood. By centring how different modalities of war shape, and are shaped by, the lives of children in different parts of the world, producing different notions of childhood, we therefore aim to show the ongoing value of examining militarizations in their plurality.
    
    Authors: Jana Tabak (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro)* , Victoria Basham (Cardiff University)
  - Beyond Militarisation: The Fylingdales Archive revealing complex negotiations, diversity, and collaborations at RAF Fylingdales
    
    In this paper, we argue that the term 'militarisation' does not adequately capture the complex negotiations between the civil and military spheres. This argument is grounded in our research, which established the Fylingdales Archive at the UK’s Ballistic Missile Early Warning Station, RAF Fylingdales in North Yorkshire. The paper will explore the complex multiplicities revealed in the archive materials held on the base. Through this material, we discovered that electronic music technology preceded technologies related to ballistic missile early warning. The personnel involved in the development of the site historically exhibited diversity in terms of race, gender, and roles. We also explore how the military collaborates creatively with large multinational and national private sector contractors. Consequently, we posit that 'militaries' are an accumulation of various lived experiences and day-to-day practices, encompassing encounters between the civil, military, and private sector engagements. This leads us to call for a focused approach in critical military geographies that emphasizes how lived experiences and more-than-human processes contribute to the production of military phenomena.
    
    Authors: Michael Mulvihill (Teesside University) , Chloe Barker (Newcastle University)
  - (Fifty) shades of militariness in contemporary Britain
    
    This paper explores the ways in which military identities, values, symbols, histories, and communities play out in different social contexts in ways which are not captured by the dominant conceptual tool of militarisation. Drawing on Parry and Thumin (2017) and Parry (2022)’s notion of ‘militariness’, we consider how everyday practices that ‘look’ like militarisation but which feel different, can be explained and understood. We explore militariness in the context of a community-based charity in the north of England called Veterans in Communities (VIC). We argue that the use of military symbols and décor, shared cultural practices like ‘banter’, shared histories of military service form the backdrop of the charity’s community space, but this does not lead to glorification or exceptionalisation of military service. Instead, VIC centres on community relationships, equality between all members (including veterans and civilians) and responding to everyday social challenges in the community. People in this space have taken aspects of military culture, history, and identity, and shaped them around a community of care. These dynamics cannot be captured by militarisation, which relies upon hierarchies, distinctions, and the co-optation of individuals and spaces, but instead demands an analysis sensitive to the nuances, ambiguities and agency of those present in this space.
    
    Authors: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University) , Sarah Bulmer
  - Centering the transnational dynamics of militarization
    
    War has been, for modern states, the ultimate moral arbiter of who counts as a citizen and what counts as a national purpose.” (Lutz and Millar 2012, 482). But not all wars are fought for a national purpose. Instead of defending own territory, militaries are deployed as part of international intervention forces and soldiers spend considerable parts of their professional life in multinational contexts. Nevertheless, military institutions are still primarily organized within state structures and debates about war reflect societies’ particular political cultures. The paper suggests that the concomitant state-centrism of military studies obscures transnational dynamics of militarisation. Therefore, it proposes methodologies that facilitate studying the politico-economic as well as socio-cultural conditions that enable war efforts. First, it outlines the approach of following the social life of a military object as a way for exploring international military cooperation and the defense industry. Second, it presents the North Atlantic Fella Organization as an example of a transnational collaborative project that interlocks memetic warfare in social media with real-world military violence and which has meanwhile grown into a quasi-military alliance. The aim of the paper is to stimulate fresh thinking about how zooming in on transnational dimensions of militarisation can be achieved.
    
    Author: Eva Johais (Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), Bergen)
  - Ready to change? Exploring the possibility of unmaking militarised identities using an ontological security approach
    
    The British Armed Forces faces a plethora of ongoing ontological challenges. For example, the institution’s difficulty to recruit women and other diverse bodies means that it continuously misses proposed targets and aims for diversification, thereby having to redirect resources to develop new strategies for increasing numbers to reflect inclusivity, while also contending with an ongoing fluctuation in funding, service satisfaction and overall personnel targets (Brown, 2023; Grylls, 2023; Ministry of Defence, 2023). Research on militarisation and military masculinities largely argues that the hypermasculine traits which underpin military culture make the space inaccessible and largely prohibitive to individuals who do not conform to this narrative. An ontological security approach, however, indicates that there are significant theoretical and practical connections between ontological securitisation practices and feminist security studies research which can move us from a stagnant view on the Forces to one which integrates potential for change. This paper will embed an ontological security lens within wider feminist security studies literatures to explore possibilities for change in “unmaking” militarised identities.
    
    Author: Tara Zammit (Kings College London)
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  06 Panel / Indigeneity and Contested Identities in Conflict and Post-Conflict Settings Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism
  
  Convener: Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism Working Group
  
  Chair: Leonid Nersisyan (University of Birmingham)
  - Civilian Targeting during Counterinsurgency: the Activities of Militias in Burkina Faso
    
    Since the Islamist insurgency in the Sahel region spread to Burkina Faso in 2015, several self-defense groups have emerged or evolved to counter the insurgency. Three groups of note, the Koglweogo Movement, the Dozo Hunters, and the VDP, contribute the most to the counterinsurgency efforts of the state. The Koglweogo Movement and the Dozo Hunters already existed to provide varying security functions to their communities in the absence of state structures and evolved to engage in counterinsurgency. The VDP was created by the government as a force multiplier in the government's counterinsurgency struggle. This research, through the state-society linkages of militias in Burkina Faso, will explore why these groups target civilians during counterinsurgency. My initial findings indicate that militias in Burkina Faso use counterinsurgency activities as an excuse to execute long-running ethnic conflicts. As a result, while some of the militias selectively target civilians belonging to their communities with less lethal violence, they also selectively target civilians of other ethnic groups, with accusations of collaborating with the Islamist insurgents, to commit more lethal violence like massacres against them. This is especially evident in the relationship between the VDP/Koglweogo Movement (both mainly made up of the Moosi people) and the Fulani people. Using the state-society linkages of militias in Burkina Faso as an analytical framework, I will present which groups are more likely to target civilians in this manner, and why.
    
    Author: Francis Asante (University of Bristol)
  - Whose ethnicity matters? ‘Mixed’ families navigating conflict in the Caucasus
    
    Focusing on the trajectories of Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-Ossetian families in the unresolved conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, this paper explores how ethnically mixed families respond to the unique challenges they face and their ability to contribute to ‘small acts of peace’ (Mac Ginty, 2021, p. 2) in the absence of elite-level conflict resolution. In particular, it sheds light on the gendered experience of ethnic mixing and its implications in the context of violent conflict. After the Georgian-Abkhaz war in 1992-1993, many Georgian women married to Abkhaz men were forced to stay in Abkhazia, whereas Abkhazian women married to Georgian men had to leave to Georgia proper. Drawing on ethnographic material, the paper first analyses the gendered nature of displacement in mixed families, in particular how women in the context of violent conflict are expected to subordinate their ethnic identity to that of their husbands. It then explores how many of these women have negotiated their often-complex web of belonging and the struggles they face when resisting absolute loyalty to one side or another by attempting to move across both physical and cultural borders.
    
    Author: Andrea Peinhopf (Northumbria University)
  - The Chechen Playbook: Russian use of indigenous forces for post-conflict security
    
    With the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 there has been a marked increase in interest in Russian actions in Chechnya during the Chechen Wars. With some of their nascent plans for post-conflict security provision and many of their actions in occupied territories sharing parallels with previous actions in Chechnya. This paper will focus on the Russian use of local forces as an approach to providing security in Chechnya and how did this enable them to pacify a region with a long history of resistance?
    
    The use of local indigenous elements has become a standard part of Counterinsurgency doctrine across the world, with Western efforts to train and equip such a force failing most recently in Afghanistan, despite the seemingly ‘Just’ nature of their cause. How is it that, at least superficially, it appears the Russian approach in Chechnya succeeded despite the brutal and unjust actions undertaken by the forces under their command?
    
    This paper will focus on the Second Chechen War of 1999-2009 and the Russian use of indigenous elements to establish a new government and security apparatus whilst exploring the parallels to their more recent actions in Ukraine.
    
    Author: Alex Crockett (Durham University)
  - Explaining paramilitary mobilization in Ukraine and beyond
    
    The book seeks to explain the pro-government mobilization phenomenon, drawing most of its empirical insights from the Donbas War (2014-2021) period. This study aims to offer the first of its kind nuanced and theoretically-grounded explanation as to why individuals volunteer to mobilize for pro-government militia groups. Who are the pro-government volunteers? Why they decide to abandon their civilian lives in favor of high-risk collective action? How does militia mobilization occur, and which factors are likely to influence it? The empirical findings of this book draw on a unique sample of over 160 in-depth first-hand ethnographic interviews with former and active Ukrainian pro-government militia combatants, conducted between 2015 and 2017. This fieldwork-intensive empirical account is supplemented by the analysis of an original quantitative dataset of 1,123 biographic obituaries of deceased Ukrainian militia combatants. This rich empirical account is supported by a vast body of evidence, collected from the original Ukrainian and Russian language primary sources.
    
    Author: Huseyn Aliyev (University of Glasgow)
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  06 Panel / Interdisciplinary approaches to the role of state and non-state actors in issues of forced migration Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Convener: Mabel Newton (University of Southampton)
  
  Chair: Gemma Bird (University of Liverpool)
  - Navigating Contraceptive Autonomy: Examining Actor Influence on Irregular Venezuelan Adolescent Migrant Girls in Colombia within the Reproductive Justice Framework
    
    The Reproductive Justice (RJ) movement, rooted in the intersectionality of sexual and reproductive health rights with social justice, seeks to address inequalities and combat oppression. An essential component in RJ movement is contraceptive autonomy, understood as an individual's right to make and actualize their contraceptive choices (Senderowicz 2020). Despite the advance of the RJ movement, responses to migrant crises often leave populations, such as irregular Venezuelan adolescent migrants (aged 15-19) in Colombia, without access to essential contraceptive care. This study explores policymakers, public health professionals, humanitarian aid workers, and medical staff justifications for who receives what type of care.
    
    Incorporating secondary health data and interviews with key informants and adolescent migrant girls, I examine how actors shape the decision-making power of this underserved population. The findings show that care is determined by the (ir) regular status ofmigrants with long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), preferred for those without continued access to the health system because they are ‘better’. Applying an RJ lens to unpack these claims, I reveal a pattern of constrained agency. One that curtails the ability of adolescent girls to make fully informed and autonomous choices regarding contraceptive methods. Finally, I claim that it is imperative to avoid non-autonomous use of contraceptive methods at all costs. Instead, it advocates for a transformative shift in responses, urging the creation of autonomy-enhancing conditions for marginalised groups within the scope of RJ.
    
    Author: Hannah Hall (University of Southampton)
  - Asylum and refugee protection norm contestation: an analysis of anti-migration networks in the US
    
    Anti-migration sentiment in the US is one of the core values which drove support for Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Forced migration and the framing of the ‘refugee crisis’ has been examined as a catalyst for the rise of radical right populism (RRP) in the West (Mudde, 2019) and increasing security concerns regarding the influx of irregular migrants via the US-Mexico border as a key factor for the demand and support for Trump’s populist radical right (PRR) leadership (Wright and Esses, 2019). However, research is less clear on how anti-migration and PRR movements contest international refugee norms. To assess this area of contestation, this article investigates the anti-migration movement in the US and identifies a strategic framework employed by networks of state and non-state actors which utilise PRR ideology to contest established international refugee norms. I conduct a qualitative discourse analysis of anti-migration networks and political and legal documents to uncover the mechanisms employed by networks of actors, and the political and judicial platforms used to shape and change refugee norms in the US. The analysis is situated within the International Relations theoretical frameworks of norm resistance, contributing to new understandings of actors as regressive norm entrepreneurs, norm antipreneurs, and norm saboteurs, through a unique strategic framework of refugee norm resistance and PRR ideology. By studying the anti-migration movement in the US, this article develops a deeper understanding of international refugee norm contestation and argues that norm resistance strategies and PRR politics contribute to backsliding of refugee rights.
    
    Author: Mabel Newton (University of Southampton)
  - Wall of Visas: How Race Impacts the Externalisation of (Forced) Migration Control in Brazil
    
    Externalisation is the process where countries use different strategies to extend their borders beyond their territorial limits. The media and literature have called attention to the externalisation strategies of so-called 'developed countries', such as agreements between the European Union and Turkey, the United Kingdom and Rwanda and the Australian policies to stop the boats. Externalisation practices of 'developing countries', however, not only are understudied, but they are also normally implemented differently, with greater use of visas as a hidden type of and more cost-effective externalisation strategy. Moreover, there is little research on whether or not these countries’ externalisation practices are racially determined. In this paper, we hope to partly fill this gap, by studying the case of Brazil, and we demonstrate how it uses humanitarian visas for Haitians and family reunification visas for refugees (mainly Sub-Saharan Africans) as an externalisation strategy to control the (forced) migration of racialised people to Brazil. We draw from thematic analysis of Brazilian legislation, minutes from decision-making meetings on asylum policies and diplomatic correspondence obtained in archival research. We conclude by showing that, despite having a liberal migration policy based on human rights, which includes supposedly 'welcoming' visas, Brazil's visa policies instead function as an important externalisation strategy which operates as a metaphorical ‘racial wall’, keeping racialised (mainly black) (forced) migrants out, and preventing them from receiving protection in the country.
    
    Authors: Patricia Nabuco Martuscelli (University of Sheffield) , Natalia Cintra (University of Southampton)*
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  06 Roundtable / Introduction to Book Publishing Room 101, Library
  
  This roundtable is intended to provide a valuable service to the BISA community by offering an overview of book publishing, especially for first-time authors. This international group of experienced editors represent both university presses and commercial academic presses. They will both describe and demystify how to get published, what you should expect throughout the process, and what you should do after publication to help make your book a success.
  
  Structure:
  Moderator (scholar) plus five book-publishing panelists.
  Brief introductions by moderator and then max 10 minutes of prepared remarks by each panelist.
  • Editors will describe their areas of focus and the types of books that they publish (very brief).
  • Editors will address their assigned questions.
  Lots of time for questions and answers from the moderator and audience.
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Chair: Juliet Dryden (BISA)
  
  Participants: Joanna Godfrey (Senior Commissioning Editor, Yale University Press) , Atifa Jiwa (Bloomsbury Academic) , Don Jacobs (Georgetown University Press) , John Haslam (Cambridge University Press) , Louise Knight (Polity) , Isobel Cowper-Coles (Palgrave Macmillan)
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  06 Roundtable / Less, More, Different? Exploring the Global Politics of Post-Growth Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  Where do we find post-growth (‘beyond growth’) ideas in contemporary global politics? And what would a global politics of post-growth look like compared to the currently prevailing institutions built around the pursuit of (green) growth? The roundtable participants, some of whom are members of the international research network ‘The Global Politics of Post-Growth’ (funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG), address these and related questions by drawing on diverse research agendas. Their work, however, has one key aspect in common: the double aspiration to introduce post-growth thinking into IR scholarship and to ‘globalise’ post-growth scholarship. Located at this budding intersection of critical thinking, the participants discuss the prospects and pitfalls of a global politics of post-growth. The conversation focuses on the potential of post-growth for doing inter-/transnational security and finance differently. In discussing these matters, the participants draw on illustrative examples, including demilitarisation dynamics and (green) extractivism in Latin America, green Islamic finance in Southeast Asia and the role of international organisations in (post-)growth debates. In this context, the roundtable also briefly reports on ongoing and completed work done within and beyond the research network on these and similar topics. Given that for IR at large post-growth presents a formidable theoretical and empirical challenge, the roundtable begins assembling a box of tools that will help us to better understand and, eventually, crack this hard nut.
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Chair: Juanita Elias (University of Warwick)
  
  Participants: Ulrich Brand (University of Vienna) , Lena Rethel , Matthias Kranke (Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg) , Jack Ainsworth (SOAS University of London)
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  06 Panel / Military Learning: Command, Leadership, and Failure Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: WSWG Working group
  
  Chair: Afzal Ashraf
  - Military Learning Practices: Organisational Learning in the Portuguese Army
    
    This paper examines the complex dynamics of organisational learning in the public management context of a national military force, the Portuguese Army. Drawing on 70 interviews with officers across multiple levels, missions, and specialisations, our analysis explores the situated and practice-based nature of lessons learned processes. We find that a range of informal and semi-formal active learning processes and related practices are embedded in the day-to-day practices of units as they gain experience and share tacit knowledge across deployments. This unit-level learning, while essential, also poses challenges for diffusing innovations and improvements across the broader organisation. Tensions emerge between the formal lessons learned bureaucracy and informal or semi-formal learning networks that drive adaptation in practice. Additional insights point to issues of identity, politics, doctrine, and leadership in enabling military learning under uncertainty.
    
    Authors: John Tull (Royal Holloway College)* , Tom Dyson (Royal Holloway College, University of London)
  - Silences: Command and Trauma in Modern Warfare
    
    Silences in war abound. This paper looks at the impact of poor command and its consequences for those who serve.
    
    Authors: Martin Thorp , Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (Loughborough University)
  - Assessing Warlords: Coalition Forces and Partner Selection in Afghanistan
    
    This project examines why American special operations troops, paramilitary officers, and intelligence analysts continued to work closely with controversial Afghan powerbrokers after evidence of human rights violations was uncovered. The decision to partner with disgraced warlords often strained relationships with close international allies, especially countries that shared similar values, cultures, and strategic goals with the United States.
    
    Using recently declassified documents and interviews with intelligence officials, special operations personnel, diplomats, and military commanders, this paper will focus on three controversial warlords: Abdul Rashid Dostum, Matiullah Khan, and Gul Agha Sherzai. All three men enjoyed early support from American forces, but their critics became more vocal as evidence of corruption and human rights abuses emerged and they continued to pursue long-held political ambitions and economic opportunities at the expense of Afghan national and regional interests. Despite growing criticism, special operations troops and intelligence operatives remained enamored with Dostum, Khan, and Sherzai, all of whom processed limited English language skills, demonstrated a rudimentary understanding of western military culture, and regularly invited the Americans to lavish dinners at which the warlords made rousing pro-American statements. This manipulation often manifested itself when warlords identified Taliban commanders and sympathizers to their special operations partners, especially after major combat operations ended. Coalition forces needed little prompting to conduct raids or direct airstrikes against these individuals, and the Americans rarely attempted to confirm the accuracy of the targeting information by consulting other intelligence sources. Although some of the targets were enemy fighters, many appear to have been political, tribal, ethnic, or economic competitors of the trusted warlords.
    
    Author: Stephen Grenier (Johns Hopkins University)
  - Policy, Leadership, and Failure - The USA Experience
    
    Policy, Leadership, and Failure - The USA Experience
    
    Author: Antulio J. Echevarria II (US Army War College)
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  06 Roundtable / Ontological security and securitisation theory: identifying overlaps and divergences Room 103, Library
  
  Ontological security studies (OSS) and securitisation theory have introduced innovative insights and compelling concepts to the discipline of International Relations (IR). Whilst ontological security closely relates to a “security of being” that casts anxiety away, securitisation refers to the political practices of security undertaken whenever an issue is feared and perceived to be existentially threatening to a referent object. Despite their common intersubjective understanding of security and shared emphasis on threats to individual and societal identity, there has not yet been a comprehensive discussion on how these two frameworks intersect, complement each other, and differ. This round table aims to explore potential synergies and points of contention both theoretically and empirically between these two frameworks. It will focus on, but it is not limited to questions such as:
  
  • What factors have contributed to the popularity of these two theories in IR and what does it tell us about the explanatory capacity of their core concepts to understand current global affairs?
  • Can fear and anxiety be regarded as compatible notions in the way they are conceptualised by securitisation and ontological security theories respectively?
  • What are the central differences between ontological security and securitisation theories, and in which way does this difference allows for broadening their theoretical and empirical scope?
  • What are the socio-political implications of viewing ontological security through securitisation lenses and vice-versa?
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Bruno Sowden-Carvalho (University of Birmingham)
  
  Participants: Nina Krickel-Choi , Marco Vieira (University of Birmingham) , Bruno Sowden-Carvalho (University of Birmingham) , Ole Waever (University of Copenhagem) , Rita Floyd (University of Birmingham)
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  06 Panel / Peacekeeping in a multipolar world: Pluralised or (neo-)imperial peace? Exec 10, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Conveners: Aidan Gnoth (Philipps University Marburg) , Philipp Lottholz (CRC; Dynamics of Security)
  
  Chair: Toni Haastrup (University of Manchester)
  
  Discussant: Mark Laffey
  - Building a new world? East-West power disputes on trusteeship between constructive negotiation and imperial competition
    
    Cold War history offers increasingly rich and detailed accounts of the creation of the United Nations and the potential and actual cooperation between Western powers and the Soviet Union that were soon overshadowed by decades of block confrontation. This paper seeks to develop the implications of this agenda for conceptual innovation in IR and peace and conflict studies, and particularly for the current geo-political moment in which contestation among geopolitical blocs appears to loom larger than since a long time. Drawing on security and conflict theory, and engaging with new literature on the history of decolonisation, the paper asks whether and how the increasing confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union after World War II still had a functional role in the governing and ordering of world politics, and particularly of decolonisation and the emergence of internationalised rule. Taking the case of the UN Trusteeship System, we examine debates from the Trusteeship Council to trace different modes of interaction between allied powers from the establishment of the Council after 1945. We show how, notwithstanding prevalent impressions of deadlock and escalation, conflict between imperial powers, especially (but not only) between the Soviet Union and United States, at times occurred in a mode of constructive or at least tacit bargaining for better solutions in international administration, and how significant these are in comparison to the already known zero-sum logics of great power politics of that era.
    
    Authors: Werner Distler (University of Groningen) , Philipp Lottholz (CRC; Dynamics of Security)
  - The language of peace: Exploring alternative visions of peace through linguistic resistance
    
    Contemporary efforts to diversify and broaden conceptions of peace and peacebuilding have struggled to gain significant traction in the face of dominant Eurocentric frameworks that shape academic, policy, and practitioner understandings. Our limited vocabularies of peace are often criticised for favoring existing and familiar frameworks over alternative narratives, given the negative connotations and stigmatised language associated with them. As a result, illiberal, Eastphalian, posthuman, and other emerging peace types that resist the orthodox liberal peace find themselves confined to post-conflict spaces, restricting their transformative potential towards systemic elements of the international order.
    This paper employs a historicising approach to explore resistance to hegemonic understandings of peace and governance through a large-scale linguistic analysis of political contestation within UN bodies related to international operations across Southeast Asia from the 1950s to the 2010s. By scrutinising local, national, and regional resistance to external norms, frameworks, and processes within these spaces, it establishes connections between alternative and often unrealised perspectives of peace and governance and contemporary critical peace endeavours. This approach aims to better account for the ways in which contextually bounded aspirations were silenced in the past and how they might be scaled up to more effectively resist systemic consequences of the liberal peace in the future.
    
    Author: Aidan Gnoth (Philipps University Marburg)
  - The Somaliland peace alternative: Thinking yeyond state-based forms of peace
    
    Somaliland has long been a test-case within academia of successful African peacebuilding. However, while existing scholarship has rightly celebrated Somaliland’s achievements, it has done so in a way that provincialises its lessons, arguing for Somali solutions to Somali peacebuilding problems. In this paper, I argue that Somaliland’s peacebuilding process provides lessons that go beyond the specific case, and instead can tell us much about both what peace is and how it can be brought about globally. Through concepts and practices such as the pluralisation of power, the promotion of mutual dependence, the de-instrumentalisation of political negotiation, the re-localisation of accountability, and the balancing of independence, unity and equality among political groups, Somaliland’s peace settlement can offer a universalisable alternative to state-based and liberal ideas of peace and peace-making. The paper draws on extensive field world in Somaliland, and traces the evolution of Somaliland’s peace compact as it evolved from stateless to state-based forms of governance.
    
    Author: Matthew Gordon (SOAS, University of London)
  - ‘Unconventional’ peace actors: How foreign intervenors integrate and differentiate themselves within the dominant peace
    
    This research aims to show how the focus on the diverse conception of peace can offer a more nuanced picture of states’ foreign policies. As apparent in the liberal peace discussion, the literature on peacebuilding policies, including intervention, has been prone to divide Western from non-Western actors. Investigations of bilateral donor-recipient relationships deal with typical relationships between the developed North American or European countries and the developing African or Asian countries. Non-Western donor countries are often considered to be outside of the framework since they do not fit the popular perception of donor countries.
    Instead, this paper will pay attention to the UK and Japan’s foreign policies in Afghanistan, aiming to articulate the concept of peace in these contexts. The comparison between the UK and Japan – two of the largest donors to Afghanistan after 2001 all the while conducting seemingly opposite policies – will elucidate the ‘conventional’ Western and non-Western approaches to peace. It is also noteworthy that the dichotomy between Western and non-Western actors fosters the binary view of peacebuilding activities. This paper will contribute to academic fields by providing a more comprehensive depiction of peacebuilding without drawing a divisive line between Western and non-Western actors. Notably, non-Western actors can be influenced by the dominant narrative on peace while trying to incorporate their culturally- and historically-informed understanding of peace. Thus, it aims to critically engage the existing literature and expand the parameters of peacebuilding studies.
    Peace not only maintains close links with other essential concepts, but it also prompts the states and nations to recall their memories regarding their notable wars. The emotional link would provide a rich source for the construction of national biography and identity formation. In conclusion, analysing the various connotations of peace would benefit the argument on state action, especially states' foreign policies towards post-conflict countries.
    
    Author: Sachiho Funabashi (SOAS University of London)
  - Protesting protection: Anti-UN dissent and occupational continuities on the Gaza Strip, 1956-1958
    
    This paper examines the first UN peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF, 1956-1967) and interrogates the coloniality of the UN troops’ response to anti-UN protests during its occupation of the Gaza Strip. The mission staff occupied Gaza during a ‘state of emergency’ in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis and imposed a UN administration in the territory replacing the three-month occupation of Israeli forces during the conflict. I explore how UNEF’s officials reacted to anti-UN dissent and how their responses shaped their strategy for ‘protection’ and stability in the region whilst occupying and patrolling the territory. The paper makes two key arguments. First, it examines the content of the anti-UN protests in Gaza at the time to uncover the alternative forms of peace presented in 1950s Gaza and to counter gendered and racialised conceptions of host populations as either uncritically welcoming, passive victims or disorganised guerrilla fighters. Secondly, it argues that spaces of interaction or engagement between peacekeepers and civilians – such as in protests – should be understood as just as instrumental in helping to construct hierarchies between peacekeeper and civilian as sites of UN disconnection or international ‘spaces of aid’. Using photographs, local newspapers, oral histories, and UN archival documents, the paper focuses on how interactions between the UN troops and protestors influenced the troops’ conceptions of the host population and justified their ongoing occupational presence in Gaza. Scholarly attention on this period for the UN has largely focused on member-state critiques of the organisation in New York rather than on the political ideas and resistance of local populations in the field. Thus, this paper takes a ‘bottom up’ approach to international history, seeking to recentre Global South populations and spaces in scholarship on international organizations and peacekeeping.
    
    Author: Margot Tudor (City, University of London)
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  06 Panel / Questioning African unity and diplomacy Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Africa and International Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: AISG Working group
  
  Chair: Peter Brett (Queen Mary University of London)
  - ‘Diplomacy without Diplomats’: The Diplomacy of Africa’s Liberation Movements
    
    In the study of Diplomacy developments in theory and practice are drawn predominantly from European and American thinkers and practitioners. The growing diplomatic studies literature is seeking to address this, with considerable scope to draw on contribution to Diplomacy from the African continent. Through qualitative historical and archival analysis this paper considers the active diplomacy of Africa’s liberation movements. Drawing on the concept of the ‘Right to Diplomacy’, set out by Constantinou and McConnell (2022), this analysis challenges the notion that Africa’s diplomatic engagement in international diplomacy was not present on the international stage during the period of European colonisation. The paper notes that although liberation movements were not perceived as official state representatives, they actively pursued diplomacy through representation, negotiation, and communication on the global stage. Engaging in international relations was as such, a central part of the work of the representatives of liberation movements. This experience continued to underpin the international relations of the newly independent African states. While it is argued that efforts were made by the international community to integrate African states into the prevailing diplomatic espirit de corps, this research finds that the influence of liberation diplomacy continues to shape the principles and practice of African diplomacy.
    
    Key Words: Africa, Colonialism, Diplomacy, Representation, Liberation Movements, African diplomacy
    
    Author: Lesley Masters (Nottingham Trent University)
  - Toward a Theoretical Framework for Analysing African Normative Agency in Global Cybernorms Processes
    
    This paper introduces a theoretical framework that merges Finnemore & Sikkink’s norm life cycle with Acharya’s norm circulation concepts, to illuminate the normative agency of African states in global cybernorms development. Situated within a constructivist ontology and adopting a Global IR lens, the framework challenges conventional assumptions about norm diffusion, internalization, and resistance in the Global South. By applying this blended theory to cases in South Africa, Kenya, and Mauritius, the paper addresses critical questions posed by the conference, prompting dialogue on the centrality of theoretical perspectives rooted in African experiences. This research contributes to ongoing discussions on equality, diversity, and inclusivity in international studies, paving the way for a more inclusive and diverse theoretical landscape within the discipline. Scholarly contributions to this paper would help in strengthening the theoretical framework of my doctoral research.
    
    Author: Ndidi Olibamoyo (University Of Bath)
  - Beyond nation-states: A critical appraisal of African statehood in International Studies
    
    Dr Juweria Ali
    Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University fo Westminster
    
    Abstract:
    The literature on African statehood has been unable to account for the dynamic modes of statehood found in the Horn of Africa due to emphasis on Weberian conceptions of the state. This has led to the inability of the literature to consider African statehood and sense of national expression beyond the limiting category of the nation-state (Mastshanda, 2020, p.28). The rejection of post-independence self-determination claims was institutionalized through the insertion of key provisions on the principles of territorial integrity and non-interference in the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Charter (1963). Between the competing nationalisms underlying the ‘Greater Somalia’ and ‘Greater Ethiopia’ political projects, and the prevailing norms and consensus on African Unity and self-determination which shaped the post-independence political scene in Africa, this paper examines the way Somalis in Ethiopia have articulated their conflictual relationship with processes of boundary-making in the Horn of Africa - a region of 'state formation and decay' (Clapham, 2017). It does so by tracing the evolution of these discourses through the lens of the Somali political verse, a crucial yet under-examined body of knowledge where local sovereignties are (re)produced in the context of linguistic and cultural suppression which has constituted a cornerstone of Ethiopian state-building. The Somali political verse has served as an important form of knowledge keeping, a method of mass political communication during key historical and political junctures, and a means of ‘everyday resistance’ (Scott, 1985). This approach deciphers the continuities and ruptures in how Somalis in Ethiopia conceptualize borders, how regional political shifts and (re)alignements in Somalia and the wider Horn of Africa continue to shape these attitudes, and crucially, the implications for theorisations on African statehood in the context of International Studies.
    
    Author: Juweria Ali (University of Westminster)
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  06 Panel / Reimagining Agency and Identity in International Relations Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: PPWG Working group
  
  Chair: Natalie Jester (University of Gloucestershire)
  - Doing International Relations ‘from the local’s point of view’? Situated knowledges, agency, and the performative logic of social inquiry
    
    The ‘turn to the micro, local, or situated’ has effectively challenged how IR theorizing reinforces the ontological closure of the International, and pioneered novel methods for accessing the situated perspectives and practices through which global ‘macro’- structures are enacted and contested. However, the often one-dimensional epistemological privileging of local knowledge(s) has failed to integrate them into, and can even reinforce their exclusion from the social processes that produce ‘global’ social realities.I build on these critical observations to problematize how the epistemological register that dominates the turn to the micro obscures the complex interactions between scientific inquiry, social agency and structure in the social construction of reality. I draw on insights from performativity theory to criticize how this register reduces agency to a function of knowledge or perspectivity. I then link this argument to Boltanski’s analysis of the conditions under which situated critiques accomplish social resonance to demonstrate why ‘local knowledge’ depends on scientific abstraction and ontological reflection to attain effective translation towards social agency. I conclude my argument by clarifying what this ‘meta-pragmatic function’ of social research entails for how we understand our role as researchers with regard to local knowledges as the starting point for a joint process of inquiry.
    
    Author: Timo Walter (University of Lausanne)
  - Reconceptualising Power: Foucault and Agency
    
    This paper re-conceptualises the existing relationship between power relations and the affixed mechanisms of control that affect the subject under Michel Foucault’s theorisation of power. Foucauldian power has been illustrated through the emphasis on the element of domination, as something that constricts the individual and strips him/her of autonomy and agency by being totalising, insidious, and individuating, and by acting at the most intimate levels of life that previously appeared to be sans power. The author argues that a reading of power through the early Foucault is inadequate and incapacitates the emancipatory and productive capacity a Foucauldian framework can offer when constructed through a comprehensive understanding of the late works on the ethics of the self. The paper aims to examine and employ the underdeveloped elements in Foucauldian thought, identifying three key elements that are misrepresented in the scholarship: the possibility of resistance and agency, the transitive characteristic of knowledge regimes, and the prospect of liberated subjectivities. This framework paves the way to a notion of the power as positive which has the possibility of producing less oppressive discourses and mentalities over time through the understanding that any subjectivity that an individual can conceive of is already a possibility within the web of power we operate within.
    
    Author: Antonia Nicole Alecu (University of Birmingham)
  - Gender, Sexuality and the International Monetary Fund
    
    ‘Gender’ has increasingly become a policy interest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an international financial institution (IFI) established as part of the Bretton Woods system post-WWII. The IMF’s publications on gender were haphazard and inconsistent until 2013, which marked the beginning of an exponential increase in publications with a focus on ‘gender’. This interest emerged relatively late, when compared to IFIs such as the World Bank or other post-WWII global governance infrastructure such as the United Nations. While comparable institutions have also begun to substantively engage with non-normative sexualities, this is an area with which the IMF lacks any meaningful engagement. In this paper, I adopt a queer, post-structuralist approach to analysing the IMF’s discourse on women and gender, specifically interrogating how these discourses (re)produce the stability of a binary gender order and with what effects. In this paper, I analyse 16 online videos produced by the IMF on gender for public consumption located on YouTube. My queer post-structuralist approach to discourse analysis is used to probe the ways that gender, sex and sexuality are generated and sustained by economic discourses, considering the ways that discursive power demarcates the limits for social, political and economic life. This paper is a call for political economists to take queer theory seriously, and for queer theory to seriously consider questions of political economy.
    
    Author: Georgia Peters (University of Sydney)
  - Memories of 'Terus' (struggle) and 'Funu' (Suffering): Examining national identity formation in post-conflict East Timor
    
    The primary objective of this paper is to delve into the development of collective memories in post-conflict East Timor. It focuses on two crucial aspects of East Timorese national identity formation after regaining independence following the UN Referendum 21 years ago. These aspects are centred around the concepts of suffering ("funu") and struggle ("terus"). Two decades after the restoration of independence, the scars of the violence that characterised the Indonesian government's rule and the fight for independence still profoundly affect the lives of the East Timorese people. Thus, while the struggle for independence has concluded, the ongoing battle for memory and remembrance plays a central role in East Timorese society. This paper argues that to understand how suffering and struggle are depicted and remembered in contemporary East Timor, it is crucial to explore how memories are recollected through various means involving human and non-human bodies. Therefore, building upon the ongoing discussion within East Timorese society regarding the construction of the memory of the struggle for independence through official and non-official memorial sites, museums, archives, and policies, this paper aims to investigate how suffering and struggle can be represented through both human and non-human bodies. This paper will focus on the analysis of photographs by Elaine Brière and Steve Cox, artworks by Maria Madeira, East Timor memorial sites, official museums and performances made to remember the Santa Cruz Massacre in Díli, capital of East Timor and how these representations influence identity politics in East Timor.
    
    Author: Marcelle Trote Martins (Liverpool John Moores University)
  - The Manifestation of Hybridity at Hybrid Courts: Personal Reflections from the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL)
    
    Analyses of international justice mechanisms have demonstrated the operation of gendered and racialized power within ad hoc tribunals and more permanent international criminal justice courts. Amidst these critiques, and general efficiency issues, the international community has sought to diversify current structures of international criminal justice, leading to the implementation of hybrid courts as a judicial option following conflict. Discussions around hybrid courts are hopeful about their ability to remedy some of the issues international mechanisms face, with many arguing that these courts are better placed to deliver inclusive and bottom-up justice through the local engagement they foster. However, scholarly literature on hybridity more broadly positions the concept as inherently problematic. Post-colonial researchers have argued that hybridity, rather than addressing existing power structures, can perpetuate these structures by creating amalgamated international/national spaces. Working between these critiques, my research explores how hybridity manifests at hybrid courts, and to what effect. My research examines the manifestation of hybridity by evaluating if two hybrid courts mobilise alternative discourses of gender and race, or if they (re) produce existing racialized and gendered power structures evident within international justice. I explore this question using data drawn from elite interviews I conducted across the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). Using these interviews as discursive artefacts of the courts, this research further contributes to conversations around the feasibility of hybrid courts to remedy some of the gender and race issues within international criminal justice.
    
    Author: Charlotte Carney (University of Sydney)
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  06 Panel / Rethinking Challenges to Mass Atrocity Prevention Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Responsibility to Protect Working Group
  
  Convener: Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Responsibility to Protect Working group
  
  Chair: Samuel Jarvis (York St John University)
  - Rethinking the Institutional Barriers to Mass Atrocity Prevention: The Impact of Competing Agendas in the UN System
    
    The consistent failures of the UN System to effectively respond to and address the challenge of mass atrocity prevention has generated significant academic debate surrounding the need for substantial institutional reform within the UN. Much of this scholarship has placed its focus on the need to dramatically reimagine the composition of members and roles within existing institutions such as the UN Security Council. However, what this analysis has often failed to correctly identify is the larger causes of institutional dysfunction when it comes to mass atrocity prevention which exist beyond the problems of representation or the challenge of political will. Drawing on research into agenda setting within international institutions and case study examples, this paper traces the processes through which competing institutional agendas work to undermine the potential for greater cooperation and information sharing when it comes to addressing mass atrocity crimes. Through analysing the hierarchical nature of the UN System’s approach to prioritisation, it challenges claims of an increasingly embedded human rights focus in the UN’s work and further highlights the contrasting drivers of state decision making within the institution. Consequently, the paper argues that tensions over how best to respond to evolving human protection situations are significantly undermining the potential for more holistic and joined up approaches to the prevention of mass atrocity crimes.
    
    Author: Samuel Jarvis (York St John University)
  - China as a norm shaper: How does China adopt contestation practices across different norms of human protection?
    
    The existing literature has regarded China as a ‘norm shaper’ that contests liberal norms and principles in the field of human protection and human rights, including the Protection of Civilians (POC), the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and long-term principles such as those related to peacebuilding and development assistance. However, what remains relatively unexplored in these studies is whether, and if so, how and why China adopts varied contestation practices towards these norms and principles.
    
    To deepen our understanding in this regard, drawing on elite interviews and English- and Chinese-language official documents, this paper conducts a comparative analysis of China’s approaches to three sets of human protection norms, including POC, R2P, and liberal development assistance. This paper identifies three patterns of variations in China’s contestation practices: differing intensities of contestation practices; various types of contestation practices; varying levels of engagement in norm entrepreneurship, and relatedly, China’s decision to contest within established dominant institutions or outside of them. The study introduces three groups of factors – norm-related factors, space-related factors, and agency-based factors – to shed light on these variation patterns. Building on these analyses, this paper offers implications for the impacts of a rising China on liberal international norms and orders. It specifically provides insights into China’s advocacy for a vision of human protection and human rights that is more state-centric and development-focused, which has the potential to the cosmopolitan underpinnings of international norms.
    
    Author: Qiaochu Zhang (University of Manchester)
  - The Hypocrisy of Pillar Two: Linking Negative Duty Violations and Atrocity Prevention Under the Responsibility to Protect
    
    The crimes of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing listed under the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) directly threaten the right to a minimally decent standard of life. R2P, therefore, as a commitment to prevent atrocity crimes, represents the acknowledgement of a duty to prevent significant harm. But there is a problem: state actors giving assistance in alignment with R2P’s second pillar are often themselves complicit in propagating the underlying structures of mass atrocity. This means that there is a conceptual gap in the logic of R2P’s preventive agenda. The result is an R2P doctrine that misses the vitally important point that, for atrocity prevention efforts to be successful, the international community must recognise that harmful state actions have the potential to exacerbate or facilitate atrocities, and therefore part of states’ R2P must be to curb international actions that have a current or potential contribution to instances of atrocity crime. Building on emerging claims in the scholarship about R2P’s relationship with cosmopolitan negative duties, the main contribution of this article is to explore the potential for an explicit conceptual clarification within the three pillar R2P structure that can begin the process of more clearly aligning R2P’s preventive agenda with a coherent approach to cosmopolitan human protection.
    
    Author: Richard Illingworth (University of Glasgow)
  - The UK’s Reparative Responsibility to Protect: Colonial Injustice, Rectification, and Atrocity Prevention
    
    Despite widespread nominal support for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), application of the norm continues to be inhibited by states which suspect its interventionist aspects and the hesitancy that exists among states to act when responsibility is diffused. The author argues that, given the relative strength of its economy and military, its global influence, and its diplomatic prowess, the UK is one state which should bear a “special” responsibility to protect. However, the UK's controversial past and interventionist tendencies contribute to Global South scepticism. To address this, the author proposes a third path, the “reparative responsibility to protect” (R-R2P), tying the UK's responsibilities to its record of colonial injustice. The moral justifications for the R-R2P include the fact that many legacies of British colonialism pose a risk factor for mass atrocities, as well as that the UK's capacity to act is in part a result of colonial exploitation. The R-R2P attempts to understand more fully how colonial injustice and its legacies are relevant to consolidating the effectiveness of R2P, as well as to develop a broadened understanding of with whom responsibility lies when it comes to mass atrocity crimes happening in former colonies.
    
    Author: Adam Cooper (University of Leeds)
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  06 Roundtable / Susan Strange @ 100: an enduring legacy for contemporary times Sonata, Hyatt
  
  We are a group organizing a centenary celebration of the contributions of Susan Strange to IPE and IR. This event will be organized between the LSE and King’s College, and we are going to run it just before BISA. We wish to organize a round table to celebrate the centenary of Strange’s birth (well, really 101 years, but who is counting anyway!), and just over 50 years of IPE (yes, I know there is a debate about this, but just run with us on this one, because it works nicely!). People who are participating in the centenary event are included here.
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Chair: Randall Germain (Carleton University)
  
  Participants: Benjamin Cohen (University of California, Santa Barbara) , Blayne Haggart (Brock University) , Liam Stanley (University of Sheffield) , Sean Starrs (Kings College London)
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  06 Roundtable / Teaching ‘terrorism’ critically Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  This roundtable will focus on the challenges of teaching terrorism from a critical standpoint. With the Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) approach of questioning the ontological stability of the terrorism thesis (Jackson et al, 2011), how do we introduce students to the idea of ‘terrorism’ without defining it? How do we engage with mainstream approaches to terrorism while maintaining our critical ethos? What does it mean to do research-led teaching within the parameters CTS? Bringing together academics at different career stages, this discussion will help us to learn from their experiences to address these pedagogical questions and tackle the challenges of teaching terrorism critically.
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Chair: Amna Kaleem (University of Sheffield)
  
  Participants: Inés Bolaños Somoano (European University Institute) , Anna Meier (University of Nottingham) , Louise Pears (University of Leeds) , Chidubem Mogbolu (University of Sheffield)
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  06 Panel / The Coloniality of Security Soprano, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: CPD Working group
  
  Chair: TBC
  - Violence and Crime among Palestinians in Israel: Factors and Contexts
    
    Over the last two decades there is a significant increase in gun crime violence among Palestinians in Israel. This phenomenon affects nearly every Palestinian town and village, with the increasing numbers of murder and assault victims, and ever-expanding organized crime. Youth are at the center of the crisis and the most affected, both as victims and offenders. This paper will present the research findings from 2020-22, based on 70 qualitative interviews. The study explores the social, economic, and political factors that drive young Palestinians in Israel to gun crime versus those that are supposed to shield them. We examine the role of Israel as settler colonial regime in perpetuating the phenomenon of violence and crime in the Palestinian society in Israel and focus on the impact on young people. As grounded theory research, it prioritizes people’s voices and their interpretations of the phenomenon.
    
    The study concludes that decades of colonial policies have produced multiple social crises in the Palestinian society in Israel, amongst the most damaging of which are interpersonal violence and organized crime. Under the conditions created by Israel, three main factors attract young people to violence and crime: Communal status, financial opportunity, personal security. The study also reviews two factors that are usually supposed to contribute to reduction of violence: social institutions, cohesion, and law enforcement.
    
    Author: Marwan Darweish (Center for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University)
  - Rethinking militarisation as co-constituting coloniality under military occupation
    
    My paper calls for a rethinking of militarisation as constitutive of coloniality. Challenging liberal/Global North/Eurodominant militarisation thinking, including critical work that characterises militarisation as ‘banal’ and ‘subtle’, my paper enquires into the constitutive logics, forms and effects of India’s military occupation of Kashmir to argue for an understanding of state-enforced militarisation and occupation as a rationality and logic of coloniality. It shows how militarisation and its interlocking with coloniality and occupation are ongoing processes that deploy colonial technologies of control, violence and coercion and are regulated through intersecting hierarchies of gender and racialisation. That dominant theorisations of militarisation have paid inadequate attention to coloniality is not an innocent prospect, and in thinking with Kashmir, my intervention is not simply a call for paying empirical attention to marginal Global South geographies but insists on their epistemic potentialities in disrupting what we understand of militarisation or how critical and feminist knowledge that is oriented towards justice can be produced. In so doing, I propose that we think of location as a reflexive feminist ethic – how do we theorise, with what methodological and epistemic assumptions, the forms of social, intellectual and institutional capital, from where – if we are to address the depoliticisation of and complicities in militarisation literature, and for anticolonial, antimilitarist feminist possibilities to sustain. My paper engages a range of literatures from feminist political sociology, anticolonial feminisms, militarisation and occupation studies to post/anticolonial feminisms.
    
    Author: Niharika Pandit (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Tear Gas and Protest Movements: A Tool of Policing or Weapon of Repression?
    
    The global tear gas market is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Various political regimes have employed tear gas to repress dissent and curb freedom of assembly across the world, from Palestinian supporters in Paris to workers in Dhaka to women in Tehran. This paper will assess the weaponization of this chemical agent by state power to discipline already marginalized groups. Through using insights from postcolonial theory, this paper will evaluate the ways in which tear gas has helped underpin particular power dynamics and functioned as a tool of governance. As colonial logics and methods of violence persist into the present, tear gas can be used as a vehicle to understand the exercise of political power over certain populations. With circumscribed (“othered”) populations rendered deviant, threatening, or even subhuman, this paper sheds light on a specific manner in which tear gas has been utilized to manage and dominate protesting bodies. The routine and punitive employment of atmospheric violence by law enforcement increasingly blurs the line between protecting public safety and enforcing political control. Tear gas should not be regarded as a benign technology but rather as a repressive policing tool that will remain popular as well as alter methods of governance and avenues for resistance / activism in the future.
    
    Author: Shala Cachelin (University of Westminster)
  - Military Identity and postcolonial anxiety in Brazil
    
    The present paper addresses the intersection between the tasks assigned to the armed forces and the political control over the military institutions in the Global South, highlighting military identity and coloniality as explanatory factors. It responds to the growing concerns about the involvement of the armed forces in domestic tasks, as well as the political involvement of the military. Both works on the nexus between internal and international security and the expansion of the armed forces’ activities and studies on civil-military relations, frame the military involvement in domestic security and politics as disruptions of the normal organization of state’s instruments of violence. These phenomena, however, are historically recurrent in countries of the Global South. The ambiguity between exception and continuity is explored through the Brazilian case. It is argued that the way in which the Brazilian military makes sense of its relationship with the state and society is informed by a postcolonial anxiety, grounded on the mismatch between the desired image to be replicated – the modern ideal of a professional military organization – and the role the military has historically played.
    
    Author: David Paulo Succi Junior (São Paulo State University)
  - Whose security? The ‘UK’s ‘hostile’ immigration environment seen through a feminist security lens.
    
    The United Kingdom’s informally called ‘hostile’ immigration environment proceeds against the background of a global racial capitalist political economy, in which the access to our conditions of social reproduction is unevenly distributed along axes of race, class, gender and more. These conditions of daily, collective, and generational social reproduction take concrete material shapes in the (affluent) modern state. Perhaps most foundationally, they take the shapes of our right to settlement, the right to work, the right to rent, the access to public funds, and the access to healthcare. These are insufficient, yet basic requirements for a chance to a safe and healthy life. This insight rests on radical and feminist assessments of what makes us actually secure.
    
    Why is access to conditions of security unevenly distributed in racial capitalism? How does this rationale materialise in the situated context of the UK’s ‘hostile’ immigration environment? And, exactly whose security does the ‘hostile’ environment ‘secure’? The first part of the paper maps racial capitalism theory from a radical and feminist security lens to say why security is unevenly distributed therein. The second part looks at how this rationale reflects in the UK’s hostile environment, highlighting the results of ‘hostile’ policymaking in the areas of work, public funds, and healthcare. The paper’s third part, then, discerns whose security the resulting insecurities on the ground ‘secure’. Concretely, I am discerning how the ‘hostile’ environment feeds crisis governance, cheapened labour, and cheapened lives back into a racial capitalist political economy.
    
    Overall, this paper treats the UK’s ‘hostile’ environment as a question of security. Highlighting the ways in which radical and feminist visions of security can provide compelling insights into the why, how, and who, I intend to detangle the security logics of a situated policy web whose ‘hostility’ otherwise appears as complex, overwhelming, and mystifying.
    
    Author: Laura Zuber (King's College London)
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  06 Panel / Thinking Peace, Conflict and Political Transformation Exec 5, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group
  
  Convener: CRIPT Working group
  
  Chair: Borislav Tsokov (University of St Andrews)
  - Crisis of the Liberal International Order and the Space for the Global South
    
    Crisis of the Liberal International Order and the Space for the Global South
    
    Author: Jonathan Joseph (University of Bristol)
  - David Davies and the problem of peaceful change: A critical reappraisal
    
    Interest in the idea of ‘peaceful change’ has resurged in recent years. The rediscovery of this idea is taking place amidst increasing disillusionment with the idea of collective security. The concurrence of these two trends is worth noting given that peaceful change was widely viewed as inextricably linked to collective security during the interwar years when these ideas entered the lexicon of international politics. How did it come about that peaceful change was decoupled from collective security? To address this puzzle, this paper takes a fresh look at the interwar debate on peaceful change and offers a critical reappraisal of contemporary discourse on peaceful change characterised by the decoupling of peaceful change from collective security. The paper particularly focuses on the international political thought of David Davies (Lord Davies of Llandinam) who in the 1930s argued for creating an international police force with the goal of effectively combining peaceful change with collective security. By comparing and contrasting Davies’s proposed solution to the problem of peaceful change with various solutions offered by contemporary IR theorists, such as Karl Deutsch, Robert Gilpin, and Robert Keohane, this paper seeks to reveal and problematise the unstated assumptions underlying contemporary discourse on peaceful change—assumptions which work to preclude discussion of structural level solutions to the problem of peaceful change, including those based on the understanding of the symbiosis of peaceful change and collective security.
    
    Author: Takamitsu Hadano (Hiroshima City University)
  - Symbolic Dimensions of Surrender: Reshaping Notions of Survival in War Termination and Peace Formation
    
    This paper delves into the divergence between realist perspectives on survival and critiques from realist-constructivist scholars. Through a synoptic examination of surrender processes in the Peloponnesian War and WWII Japan, it challenges the simplistic view that survival is merely an objective or inconsequential concept, emphasizing the often-overlooked element of recognition. Interweaving realist considerations of the 'will of the other' with insights from war studies, the paper reveals that surrender involves a recognition component crucial for war termination and peace-formation, extending beyond mere physical survival or profit concerns. The synoptic analysis illustrates that states may surrender not solely for physical survival or profit but also to secure recognition for perceived essential values. These cases demonstrate how a reconciliation discourse, grounded in recognition rather than mere capitulation, can help reshape domestic balances of power, foster symbolic politics, and influence peace-formation towards reconciliation. In conclusion, the paper suggests that exploring surrender cases transforms the assumption of survival into a symbolic concept, challenging realist theories to reconsider their foundational assumptions. It also urges constructivist theories to scrutinize how societies interpret the symbol of survival amid transformative social processes. The paper advocates a departure from the realism-constructivism binary of power-ideals towards a relational constructivism emphasizing the intricate relationship between the human interpretation of concepts like survival and social processes. This shift prompts a critical evaluation of whose perspectives theories objectifying or dismissing the subjectivity of 'survival' may inadvertently prioritize.
    
    Author: Alexandros Koutsoukis (Universtiy of Central Lancashire)
  - New Materialism, Pacfism and Prefigurative Politics
    
    This paper attempts to bridge a conceptual connection between two areas of research which in recent years have received an increasing amount of scholarly attention – pacifism and prefigurative politics. Originally coined out by the anarchists of the 20th century, research on prefigurative politics has celebrated a renewed interest since the 2011 Wall Street uprisings. Seen as an alternative mode of resistance to the dominant contentious approaches, prefiguration is often conceptualised as mode of defiance in which activists enact and embody the socialites and practices they foster for broader society. Scholarly engagements with pacifism, too, have received a growing amount of interest. Traditionally approached as a deontological ethic, research on pacifism is often positioned within debates on Just War theory and posed as moral and ethical critique of war and militarism. Drawing on the work of contemporary new materialists, namely Rosi Braidotti and Manuel DeLanda’s neo-Spinozian and Deleuzian monolithic ontology of the subject and life as immanence, the paper argues for an ontology of pacifism as a prefigurative practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of the future areas of research that a prefigurative conception of pacifism enables.
    
    Author: Borislav Tsokov (University of St Andrews)
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  06 Roundtable / Why Palestine is a Feminist Issue Exec 9, ICC
  This roundtable will discuss why feminists and feminism should care (more) about the question of Palestine and, more generally, about struggles against settler colonialism, dispossession and imperialist violence. As Global South and feminists of colour have demonstrated, western feminism has been historically complicit with colonial projects, ignoring the structural, epistemic and direct harms caused by empire and even supporting military interventions under the banner of “saving women”. The Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 and Israel’s ensuing massive bombardment, destruction and total siege of the Gaza Strip (still ongoing at the time of writing) have once again raised questions about the relationship between western feminism and empire, with academic Maryam Aldossari accusing western feminists of being indifferent to the suffering of Palestinian women trying to survive under Israel’s bombs. Meanwhile, Sisters Uncut, a UK anti-domestic violence group that have been mobilising many pro-Palestine actions throughout the period of Israel’s bombing campaign, refused the false binary of opposing justice for Palestinians on the one hand, and feminism on the other, after the Jewish Chronicle newspaper questioned why a feminist group would care about Gaza. Finally, Palestinian women’s groups have called on women and women’s organizations worldwide “to speak up and rise up to support our struggle to end this genocide”. This roundtable will bring together a range of feminist scholars to further discuss the intersections of feminism, the Palestine question and anticolonial struggle more broadly. Some of the issues that will be considered include:
  
  Building transnational feminist solidarity with Palestinians
  
  Feminist approaches to imperialism, settler colonialism, war and occupation
  
  The gendered dimensions of Israel’s settler colonialism
  
  The gendered impacts of military occupation, siege, war, violence and incarceration
  
  The experiences and agency of Palestinian women at the intersection of colonial violence and patriarchy
  
  Palestinian women’s resistance to occupation, siege, war, violence and patriarchy
  
  History of Palestinian women’s transnational activism
  
  Palestinian women’s involvement in Palestinian political factions and the national movement more broadly
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Jemima Repo (Newcastle University)
  
  Participants: Afaf Jabiri (University of East London) , Hala Shoman (Newcastle University) , Maryam Aldossari (Royal Holloway, University of London) , Ashjan Ajour (University of Wolverhampton) , Nicola Pratt (University of Warwick) , Sara Ababneh (University of Sheffield)
- 10:30
  
  15 minute transition
- 10:30
  
  Refreshment break Hyatt Hotel
  
  Hyatt Hotel
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  06 Panel / African philosophy, intellectuals and the global political economy of knowledge production Soprano, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Africa and International Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: AISG Working group
  
  Chair: Sara Abdel Ghany (University of Warwick)
  - Tracing the state in African anticolonial thought – on vernaculars and confines of political imaginaries of the international
    
    The modern state exhibits a distinct conceptual economy. Territorialization, centralization of authority, bureaucratization, citizenship and franchise signify modalities of politics that delimit subjectivities and horizons for action. Studying the globalization of the state-from and transition into formal independence through a Eurocentrist epistemology, one would assume a homogenization of political cultures as well as perceptions of legitimate authority on a world scale. Such a stance occludes the global context of institutional and intellectual entanglements that mediated the experiences of political transition in colonized societies. The state was always a contested entity and rarely the only conceivable arrangement in the independence era, yet it became a plausible solution to a specific problem-space.
    
    A sensibility for African anticolonial thought would thus allow insights into how social and political change was conceptualized in a locally specific vernacular of the state-form. This paper therefore studies the experiences of Tanganyika/ Tanzania in the decades around its independence. By investigating the potentialities and limits of Nyerere’s attempts of translating ideas of African socialism into politics within the discursive and institutional context of a post-colonial nation-state, I sketch out the epistemic and international hierarchies that shaped the renegotiation of politics around independence. Special emphasis will be put on categories and concepts introduced by the colonial administrative setup as well as corresponding protracted histories of social formations and sociabilities which influenced the reconstitution of sociopolitical activity and political subjectivity in the postcolonial state.
    
    Author: Paul Witzenhausen (University of Erfurt)
  - Large grant-funded research centres and the political economy of knowledge production
    
    Research centres are increasingly an integral part of the institutional and organisational infrastructure of knowledge production in international studies and related disciplines like Development and African Studies. However, whilst other components of the knowledge production have been problematised for their role in reproducing the hierarchies of the “global-north-dominated science and research ecosystem” (Gebremariam 2022), centres have received little direct attention. This paper identifies a new generation of large grant-funded research centres (LGRCs) as on object of study in themselves. These are large in terms of both ambitions and budgets, yet are distinguished from more permanent departments or institutes in their reliance on fixed- term grant funding. This paper seeks to unpick how their internal organisational dynamics and location within the British and global political economies of development research, may serve to maintain the uneven ability of differently located scholars to not only capture funding for their research, but crucially, to disseminate concepts. Whilst research grants commonly release scholars from contractual teaching and administration obligations, two case studies of LGRCs established to research African politics at a UK university show how this process of ‘buy-out’ can be conceived more broadly, with consequences for which ideas achieve impact in academic and policy discourse and what Paulin Hountondji (1990, 6) calls the “North’s monopoly of theory”.
    
    Author: Portia Roelofs (King's College London)
  - Gatekeeping theoretical applications in knowledge production: What does this have to do with inclusivity in international studies?
    
    This paper addresses how the routine application of theories decoupled from the realities and epistemologies of global south context in framing global south research derail efforts to ensure equality, diversity, and inclusivity in international studies. This is against the backdrop that scholars instinctively advance or borrow theories elsewhere in interpreting and constructing meanings of data from international studies. Thus, I ask whose theories are being taught, frame research, contribute to, and are employed to interpret raw data from the global south? And how does this constitute gatekeeping in knowledge production? I employ data (course outlines for development of theories from six major universities in the global south and global north (the selection is based on the 2023 QS World University Rankings), and other extant data to address the questions. Employing course outlines is crucial because most foundational theories of traditional subjects such as Sociology, Economics and Psychology, found on the outlines are mainly Western theories and these outlines rarely acknowledge theories empirically grounded in the global south. Additionally, new researchers are often discouraged from theory construction from the contextual data they construct. Consequently, theories from the global south remain marginal in relation to other perspectives that frame research in international studies. The paper acknowledges and examine how this practice leads to the suppression of meaning in the interpretation of data, and the power relations and gatekeeping inherent in signposting new researchers to theories external to the context of their studies in reviews and assessment practices. It recommends that reviewers and accessors engage in reflexivity that recognizes and considers personal biases of theories that might stem from their situated knowledge when accessing research outputs. Such reflexivity should also re-imagine power relational dynamics in the accessor-accessed context that structures the adoption of theories. Institutions are also urged to encourage researchers to theorize themselves, formulating their own original theories from the insights, findings, and implications of their work in the global south whilst considering how theories from global south can be normalized into framing everyday research in international studies.
    
    Author: Aboabea Akuffo (University of Oxford)
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  06 Roundtable / Authoritarian futures? International politics and future-oriented foreign policymaking in authoritarian regimes Sonata, Hyatt
  
  Contemporary authoritarian regimes are becoming more sophisticated than their twentieth-century counterparts. Countries like Kazakhstan, Rwanda, and Saudi Arabia are building spectacular capital cities often full of steel, glass, and glitzy modernity, whilst others – like Qatar, Singapore, and United Arab Emirates – are charting ambitious long-term visions for the future of their citizens and country. At their heart, these visions challenge the dominant geopolitical narratives of democratic prosperity in the West and authoritarian impoverishment in the East (or South). Instead, they present exciting futures of technological advancement, green innovation, and prosperity unmatched by anything seen and experienced in the West. They position their regimes as future-oriented leaders with sharp foresight and pro-active attitudes, unburdened by the constraints of democratic politics. Put simply, in all their innovation-oriented galore, they make authoritarianism seem the way to the future. How do we address this rising phenomenon of authoritarian future-making? And what impact does it have on international politics? This panel seeks to explore the topic of authoritarian future making and its impact on international politics from multiple disciplinary lenses, including international relations, political science, geopolitics, and area studies.
  
  Sponsor: University of Birmingham, Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR)
  
  Chair: Petra Alderman (University of Birmingham)
  
  Participants: Natasha Lindtaedt (University of Essex) , Christopher Browning (University of Warwick) , Petra Alderman (University of Birmingham) , Andy Hom (University of Edinburgh) , Jonathan Fisher (University of Birmingham)
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  06 Panel / Beyond Western Paradigms: Adapting Peacebuilding for Africa's Realities Exec 5, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: MartinLuther Nwaneri (Aston University, Birmingham)
  
  Chair: Jelena Obradovic – Wochnik (Aston University, Birmingham)
  
  Discussant: MartinLuther Nwaneri (Aston University, Birmingham)
  - Rethinking Impact: INGOs Strategies and Peacebuilding in Africa
    
    Abstract
    International Nongovernmental Organizations (INGOs) are at the heart of liberal peacebuilding approaches in the Global South, especially in Africa. Despite their huge efforts towards containing conflict and enthroning sustainable peace, complaints persist of imposition, and exclusion of local voices, imported frameworks, and interests. Some scholars even contend that liberal peacebuilding hardly achieves peace. What is, however, not clearly established in literature is why and how the achievement of peace remains a struggle for peacebuilding INGOs in Africa. This study is an attempt to fill this gap. Relying on a case study, it seeks to empirically highlight the case of an INGO peacebuilding intervention with heavy output but lean impact and why. The findings show an interplay of both external and internal factors sustaining this, thus, the need to rethink “impact” within liberal peacebuilding in Africa.
    Keywords: INGOs, Liberal peacebuilding, Output, Impact, Peace
    
    Author: MartinLuther Nwaneri (Aston University, Birmingham)
  - Revisiting Peacebuilding Strategies in South Sudan and the Central African Republic: Beyond Western Paradigms
    
    Abstract:
    This research delves into the practical implications of Western liberal peacebuilding approaches in conflict-ridden South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR). Acknowledging the shortcomings of these strategies in fostering lasting peace in the Global South, particularly Africa, this study critically examines the challenges and opportunities in applying alternative peacebuilding methods adapted to the unique contexts of South Sudan and CAR. The analysis examines local grievances, historical tensions, and political complexities that Western models fail to address, leading to recurring conflicts in these countries. It also explores promising indigenous models of conflict resolution and their potential integration into existing peacebuilding frameworks. The methodology employed in this study is the critical review of secondary sources. This research integrates multidisciplinary perspectives, encompassing political science, sociology, and international relations to inform recommendations for more culturally sensitive and contextually relevant peacebuilding strategies. The study's relevance to international studies lies in advocating for a shift in peacebuilding paradigms, emphasizing local ownership and the incorporation of traditional conflict resolution mechanisms. By highlighting the limitations of the prevailing Western models, the paper strives to influence policies and interventions for a more effective, sustainable peacebuilding agenda in these regions.
    Keywords: peacebuilding, conflict resolution, international interventions, indigenous models, African context, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Western paradigms.
    
    Author: Clyde Collins (Aston University, Birmingham)
  - Navigating Postcolonial Realities: Decolonial Peacebuilding in African States
    
    Much of postcolonial Africa has experienced notably high levels of political violence and
    instability, as opined by Patrick Chabal (1960). The amalgamation of diverse populations into nation-states and the subsequent quest for a new national identity following independence constituted a defining struggle for most African states that resulted in recurring conflicts and violence on the continent. In the diverse landscape of postcolonial African states, each with its unique geography, population, and culture, achieving peace is complicated due to the lasting effects of colonial history. Mahmood Mamdani (2001) pointed out that colonial designs intentionally blurred the lines between ethnicity and political identity in African political and economic frameworks. This similarity is evident globally, as seen in Klaus Dodds (2022) analysis of the lasting impact of British colonial policies in India. With the intersections of colonial legacies and contemporary peacebuilding efforts, this paper observes the crucial impact of non-functional societies in hampering the goal of promoting sustainable peace while questioning the applicability of conventional peacebuilding models in societies deliberately designed to fail.
    The paper draws inspiration from Siphamandla Zondis call for decolonial peace, aiming to contribute to the discourse on decolonial peacebuilding, highlighting the need for nuanced approaches that acknowledge and address the enduring impacts of colonialism on the political and social structures of modern African states. This study adopts a qualitative research approach, leveraging case studies from Nigeria and Rwanda. Drawing on critical insights from scholars like Mamdani and Dodds, the paper aims to establish the foundational elements for developing peacebuilding models that align with the varied realities of postcolonial Africa, contributing to a nuanced understanding of the complexities involved in fostering lasting stability and resilience in diverse societies." In this context, the paper addresses the impact of systemic failures on peace initiatives and advances the necessity of decolonising African states and societies. It seeks to construct a novel framework that transcends traditional models, aiming for lasting stability, resilience, and the realisation of a decolonial peace in the diverse landscapes of Africa.
    
    Author: Joan McDappa (Kingston University)
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  06 Panel / Counter-Terrorism and Colonial Violence Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Convener: CST Working group
  
  Chair: Kodili Chukwuma (Durham University)
  - Embodying counterterrorism violence in the colony: Bodies and the (de-)legitimation of violence in ‘French’ Indochina
    
    How is the violence of counterterrorism made acceptable (to some) and ‘normalised’? In this paper I explore this question by looking at the embodiment of this violence, i.e. the way counter-terrorism violence affects bodies. Counterterrorism violence is intrinsically embodied (both for the victims and perpetrators) as bodies are constrained, tortured, killed, imprisoned, but also retain some agency for resistance. This is why looking at bodies is crucial to better understand how counterterrorism unfolds as well as how it is resisted. Using primary archival material, I explore a specific example of French counterterrorism in its colony: the repression of the Indochinese anti-colonial movements in 1930-31. I analyse how the violence used was affecting bodies and defining the limits of the ‘normal’ and the ‘human(e)’. I also discuss the way bodies disrupted and delegitimised the planned (normalised) violence of counterterrorism, thus revealing its arbitrariness. Overall, I seek to better understand anti-terrorism violence by looking at its physical dimension and by connecting the colonial past with our post-colonial present.
    
    Author: Xavier Mathieu (University of Sheffield)
  - The Coloniality of the Religious Terrorism Thesis
    
    A dominant narrative, produced and re-produced especially by terrorism scholars, holds that terrorism at its worst form is religious. The most dangerous and non-negotiable form of terrorism, in other words, is the religious kind. At the same time, there is a recurring implication, proposed by many terrorism scholars and reflected in public discourse, that terrorism, no matter its official designation, is always inherently ‘religious’ or ‘religious-like’. Both, this implication and the dominant narrative about ‘religious terrorism’s’ uniquely dangerous character - which I summarise as the Religious Terrorism Thesis - builds on colonial knowledge and assumptions about ‘religion’. Religion is also, as I argue, written into the category ‘terrorism’ and enables its negative discursive power and the colonial imagination of ‘terrorism’ as racialised and a system-threat to (Western) modernity. Terrorism, therefore, can never constitute a neutral signifier of a specific kind of political violence. Instead, it functions as a negative ideograph to Western societies, which means it functions to uphold the project of Western modernity/coloniality. The Religious Terrorism Thesis, which I identify as the foundation for the dominant discourse on terrorism today, is a crucial element of coloniality today and justifies many controversial and contemporary counterterrorism practices.
    
    Author: Rabea Khan (Liverpool John Moores University)
  - The Order of Humanisation: How the Label of Terrorism is Awarded
    
    Rabea Khan (forthcoming, n.d.), calls for the abolition of the concept, terrorism; due to the racial, gendered, and colonial structures that have shaped and informed the concept (Khan, forthcoming). This call is something I believe should be adhered to; however, this paper makes an argument for why it might be difficult, maybe impossible for states, the media, political agents and even some academics to stop using the term. This difficulty is what I hypothesise as the ‘order of humanisation.’ I argue that the term ‘terrorism’ is widely used based on an ‘order of humanisation’ constructed by Western actors.
    
    In October 2023 the Prime minister of Israel wrote on the social media platform X, formerly known as twitter referring to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza that ‘this is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle ’. This statement was made in reference to Israel’s ‘retaliation’ to Hamas’ ‘terrorist act ’ as they have called it.
    
    The use of the term ‘terrorism’ created both a justification for the level of Israel’s offense measures and violence while delegitimising Hamas’ acts as simply a case of irrational, savage violence. The paper carries out a critical discourse analysis on how the label of terrorism is assigned. It theorises that there is an ‘order of humanisation’ wherein actors assign the label based on that order. Drawing on race and colonial literature, the paper builds the argument for the order of humanisation. The order runs from civilised/rational humans to uncivilised/irrational humans created through colonial discourse and sustained through coloniality. ‘Terrorism’ as a concept serves as humanising and dehumanising concept for actors.
    
    Author: Chidubem Mogbolu
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  06 Panel / Everyday Militarism Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Julia Welland (University of Warwick)
  
  Chair: Julia Welland (University of Warwick)
  - The banality of everyday militarism: A comparative analysis of the UK and Finland
    
    Militarism can be felt in many different ways, in many different places. From poppies to combat uniforms, Officer Training Corps on campus to conscript discounts, the everyday manifestations of militarism are perhaps the most insidious, and the most insightful aspects of an armed force’s relationship to its civilian population. This paper seeks to firstly see, and then assess, the everyday and banal manifestations of militarism in the UK and Finland. As a founding member of NATO and a (former) colonial power, the military holds a specific, political, and contentious space in British public life. As NATO’s newest member, by contrast, and a formerly colonised nation, Finnish notions of defence, security, and the armed forces are at once less politicised yet more present in the everyday, due in part to Finland’s 300km Russian border. Building on Critical Military Studies’ engagement with aesthetics of militarism, this paper will compare and contrast the banal expressions of militarism in the UK and Finland to better understand the place and politics of martial violence in each state. Specifically, we ask what can a comparison between these two differing contexts reveal about the resilience and/or fallibility of militarism? Empirically, it builds on auto-ethnographical insights from the authors’ experiences working in British and Finnish universities and observations from celebrations of Armistice Day and Independence Day in the UK and Finland respectively.
    
    Authors: Louise Ridden (Tampere University) , Hannah Richards (Cardiff University)
  - The pleasures and depletion of reproducing militarism in the military household
    
    Working at the intersection of feminist security studies and feminist political economy (FPE), this paper examines how militarism is experienced by military families – predominantly wives – tasked with the material and immaterial labour of caring for injured service members and veterans. Drawing and building on the broader FPE literature of affective labour, social reproduction, and their associated depletions, the paper will also explore the attendant pleasures, joys, and rewards that such care affords those responsible for it. The paper draws on and adapts the FPE concept of depletion (Rai et al 2014), exploring it in relation to the overarching structure of militarism as opposed to capitalism. Depletion is thus used both to take account of the myriad of harms – including those oftentimes ignored or marginalised in dominant tellings of war and militarism – that unfold in the everyday and domestic (re)production of militarism, and how such depletion occurs within consensual social relations. The paper argues that the reproduction of militarism relies on this affective labour of carers, and that such labour both works through and supports unequal and deeply gendered relations of power.
    
    Author: Julia Welland (University of Warwick)
  - Eating ourselves safe: intersections of food, militarisms, and national security in Sweden
    
    This paper takes up the ‘question’ of military power (Basham, Belkin and Gifkins 2015: 1) by inviting the reader to accompany us on the most mundane of tasks: our weekly shop. A recent advertising campaign launched by Lantbrukarnars Riksförbund, Sweden’s agricultural association, compels shoppers to buy Swedish produce ‘for Sweden’ – declaring it Sweden’s best / tastiest defence – thereby depicting Sweden’s agricultural sector as the first line of defence in a larger quest for national security. Curious about the effect of such a narrative on the everyday innocuity of the supermarket, we began to ask how processes of militarisation might (re)configure the Swedish family, what relations of power this enables / conceals, and for what purposes. Drawing from an established tradition of feminist critical military scholars seeking knowledge of militarisms far from the battlefield, we use this campaign as a jumping off point to interrogate the ways in which militarisation functions in Swedish society. In particular, we investigate the role of homemaking – and associated dynamics of gender, race and class – in the politics of national security and the implications of this for Sweden’s global security ambitions.
    
    Authors: Luise Bendfeldt (Uppsala University) , Emily Clifford (Royal Holloway University of London)
  - Performing Militarism: From Hegemonic to Public Discourse in Critical Military Studies
    
    Despite the enthusiasm within feminist International Relations and Critical Military Studies to explore the operation of militarism in everyday, public life, few studies centre analysis on the voices and experiences of the public. I argue that, by uncovering how militarism manifests as normal and desirable to the people it supposedly protects, exploring public discourse is critical in understanding how war and violence are made possible. I begin by demonstrating how the dominant approach does not go far enough: by not engaging with those that hegemonic discourses ultimately target, the existing literature can only assume the ways in which militarism operates. Secondly, I discuss how the framework of performance is productive for recognising how the public’s diverse emotions, expressions, movements, and social practices make war and violence possible. Finally, I support this with empirical findings from UK online discussion forums, which reveal fundamental nuances which complicate the conventional link drawn between hegemonic discourse and the operation of militarism in society: the British public diversely perform war and violence in their everyday lives, sometimes rejecting militarism altogether, and this is inherently influenced by assigned social markers such as gender, race, nationality, sexuality, and class. My findings push critical scholars to embrace public discourse in their research.
    
    Key words: Militarism, critical military studies, civil-military relations, discourse, performance, identity
    
    Author: Ellen Martin (University of Bristol)
  - Gender, War and Narrative Force: the atmospherics of soldier story-telling and self-care
    
    This paper explores the idea of ‘war stories’ as a form of narrative power, examining the ripple effects of violent force as they become incorporated into soldiering narratives and embodied processes of self-making and self-care. Based on an ethnography of a British Army Regiment based overseas, the paper uses ‘thick description’ and reflexive data from six months living in the Sergeants’ Mess. Highlighting the relevance of critical feminist ethnography to international studies writ large, the paper insists on an approach grounded in questions of gendered, classed and racialised intersubjectivity, drawing attention to the atmospherics of military power in everyday life.
    The paper offers glimpses of ‘regimented life’ in military-institutional space, capturing the affective repercussions of stories as they ricochet around the room. It is in barrack rooms, shared bathrooms, at dinnertime or in the welfare office where war stories, memory and experience feed into the processes through which soldiers construct themselves as social subjects. And it is through such narratives, this paper argues, that war becomes a frame for gendered experience and vice versa, and where the meanings of state-sanctioned violence are co-opted, resisted and reproduced long after the immediate force of their operations have passed. Developing an affective analysis that posits war stories as a form of narrative force in their own right, this paper explores the impact of their telling and the meanings they produce as an extended mode through which violence endures. It is here that bodies and subjects are granted life, suffer death, are made legible or abject, heroic or base, all of them filtered through the familiar narrative structures of gender and rank, class and race, ally and enemy other.
    
    Author: Alexandra Hyde (University College London)
- 138
  06 Panel / Geocultural Identities in the Making Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: HSIR Working group
  
  Chair: Leonardo Pagano Landucci
  - Postmemory: Public memory in Post-Totalitarian generation. Case of Spain and Romania
    
    This research explores the concept of "Postmemory" and delves into public memory in the post-totalitarian generations of Spain and Romania. Specifically, it compares the oral histories inherited from those who experienced totalitarian regimes to the official narratives found in history textbooks. Postmemory, as defined by Marianne Hirsch (2012), describes how the second generation perceives traumatic experiences preceding their births, deeply ingrained in their own memories.
    The study focuses on the examination of main narratives within Spanish and Romanian history textbooks concerning their respective totalitarian pasts, emphasizing both similarities and differences. The combination of these official and vernacular memories is termed "Public memory," as proposed by Bodnar. Official memory encompasses government-endorsed markers and spaces of memory, while vernacular memory includes diverse collective memory practices (Marschall, S. 2013:79).
    The research not only analyzes the content of history textbooks but also investigates the authors and their methodologies. The study aims to answer questions regarding the guidelines, restrictions, processes, and sources employed in the creation of these textbooks. The sample for the study comprises at least five authors of history textbooks from each country and 20 individuals born between 1975 to 2005 in Spain and between 1989 to 2005 in Romania, providing a broad source of postmemory.
    While previous research has explored public memory in post-fascist and post-communist societies, the unique features of Francoism and Ceausescu's regime make Spain and Romania intriguing case studies. The research seeks to answer several questions, including the differences and similarities in the narratives presented in history textbooks, the comparison between these narratives and the vernacular memory of study subjects, and the perception of daily life during totalitarian times. It also explores potential taboos that history textbooks might avoid, common experiences in the post-totalitarian generations, and discrepancies in how textbooks narrate the enemies of the regime. Additionally, the study delves into the challenges faced by authors during the textbook writing process, examining their guidelines and their alignment with the final outcomes. The research investigates whether post-totalitarian generations perpetuate the same narrative found in history textbooks and how both generations imagine each other's past.
    The hypotheses guiding this research propose that Spanish and Romanian people share common traumas from their totalitarian past, that Romanians may have a sensitive topic related to Ceausescu's execution, Spanish textbooks may simplify sensitive topics like the Civil War and Francoism, Spanish authors may avoid in-depth discussion of the Spanish Civil War, Romanian textbooks might focus on Ceausescu regime victims, Spanish textbooks may mention Francoism victims less frequently, and that both generations imagine their own past as more oppressive than the other's
    
    Author: Jose Francisco Espejo Jiménez
  - Retracing regionness: Disentangling the emergence of the contemporary Latin American regional order back to the nineteenth century
    
    This paper seeks to disentangle the emergence of the contemporary Latin American regional order, by tracing it back to its origins in the regional independence campaigns and confederative congresses of the early nineteenth century, and the first editions of the Pan-American conferences, at the end of the same century.
    
    Through archival work conducted in the region, and throughout engagement with primary and secondary sources, this work explores regional notions, understandings, and framings of shared threats to sovereignty and independence, as well as the ‘regional rise of consciousness’, i.e., the constitution of a distinctive Latin American regional space and identity. Conceiving national sovereignty as inextricably linked to wider regional principles of political autonomy and non-intervention, Latin American politicians, diplomats and jurists forged a defensive notion of regionness in which unionism and multilateralism were seen as the primary means to safeguard their countries’ recently acquired independence against new European incursions, contest ever-increasing American gravitation in regional affairs, and fight for the recognition of an egalitarian sovereign status in the nineteenth-century – Western – international society.
    
    In turn, disentangling the regional origins sheds light on contemporary Latin American dynamics. In particular, on the current conundrum between championing solidarist regional norms and practices concerning the promotion and defence of democracy, human rights, and environmental stewardship, against a regional background of zealous upholding of the pluralist principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs.
    
    Author: Carolina Zaccato (University of St Andrews)
  - Gabooye marginalisation in Somaliland: root causes, legacies and social mobility prospects
    
    Marginalization is a global phenomenon experienced as a part of everyday social life. The major contributor of marginalization is the disparity or difference between two groups, including ethnicity, religion, class, culture, language, geography, income, and status. The Somali society has long been considered a homogenous society that enjoys the same religion, ethnicity, language, culture, and settlements. More specifically, the Somaliland society is purely homogenous. However, social marginalization remains available among the clans in Somaliland against the Gabooye clan. It seems strange to have marginalization among such a homogenous society. Therefore, this study aims to understand the roots and legacies of the Gabooye marginalization in Somaliland. Also, the study investigates the prospects of social mobility among the Gabooye marginalization in Somaliland. The study employed qualitative design, which is essential for offering a platform to pass the marginalized group’s voices to the center of the discourse. Specifically, the study utilizes the grounded theory which involves systematically collecting and analyzing data to develop a theory that is grounded in the experiences and perspectives of the participants.
    
    Author: Zakarie Abdi Bade (Ankara Yildirim Beyazıt University)
- 139
  06 Panel / Global Governance and macro-level peace Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: PKPBG Working group
  
  Chair: Alexander Gilder (University of Reading)
  - Rethinking the Local-International Nexus in Peacebuilding
    
    Much of the rhetoric around peacebuilding missions and strategies neatly separates the 'local' from the 'international'. They are conceived as separate spaces with different sets of actors. 'International' peacebuilding typically refers to official, Track I negotiations led by international organisations, most notably the United Nations. In contrast, 'local' peacebuilding is the domain of indigenous and grassroots organisations that facilitate informal, Track II initiatives designed to support official negotiations. However, when looking more specifically at peacebuilding efforts and actors, it becomes clear that the 'local' and 'international' are, in practice, much more interlinked and overlapping than we might initially assume. So-called 'local' organisations are often funded by international donors and conform to the needs and interests of 'international' organisations. Conversely, 'international' organisations, especially those operating in 'frozen' conflicts, increasingly assume unofficial, Track II responsibilities that we typically associate with 'local' actors. By focusing on the Cypriot conflict, I thereby demonstrate how there is a great deal of hybridity between the 'local' and 'international' spheres. We should be cautious in using these terms as distinct analytical concepts and allow for greater interrelation. There is otherwise a danger that we reinforce a structure of power and hierarchy that doesn't reflect empirical nuances and complexities.
    
    Author: Mark Barrow (University of Cambridge)
  - Conflict Resolution or Conflict Perpetuation? Reframing Territorial Withdrawal as Territorial Consolidation
    
    The existing literature on territorial conflict frequently frames the withdrawal of a challenger state as a necessary condition for conflict resolution. Similarly, international norms and praxis, including United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, advocate ‘land for peace’ to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. By examining Israel’s past operationalisations of Resolution 242, this paper challenges this orthodoxy. It examines Israel’s withdrawals from the Sinai Peninsula (1975-1982), southern Lebanon (2000) and the Gaza Strip (2005) and illustrates that, in each case, rather than implement a comprehensive land for peace deal with its Arab rivals, Israel employed territorial withdrawal as part of a broader grand strategy of territorial consolidation. Israel withdrew from a disputed territory with relatively little perceived value, in order to lessen internal and external pressure to enact a more comprehensive withdrawal elsewhere. This paper therefore identifies the potential negative aspects of territorial withdrawal when a challenger state is involved in multiple territorial disputes. It introduces a new framing of territorial withdrawal as territorial consolidation that is pertinent for scholarly framings of territorial disputes and illustrates how territorial withdrawal - usually considered a positive step towards conflict resolution and peace - can in fact prolong and entrench one conflict, even if it resolves another.
    
    Author: Rob Geist Pinfold (Durham University)
  - Amnesties as Incentives for In-Conflict Bargaining
    
    Transitional justice grapples with a profound challenge: how should societies address a past of human rights violations to create a lasting peace? This challenge revolves around a dilemma between two paths. On the one hand, a punitive approach seeking retribution against those most responsible for such atrocities. On the other, there's the path of pardon aiming to expedite the cessation of violence by offering amnesties. Therefore, our paper aims to answer three interconnected questions: 1. Are amnesties credible incentives for the de-escalation of organised violence in the long-term? 2. Does the magnitude of conflicts influence the credibility of amnesties as incentives for the de-escalation of organised violence in in-conflict bargaining? 3. Are UNPKOs and/or Foreign Military Interventions effective third-parties in alleviating mutual distrust among combatants during amnesty processes? .
    
    To answer these questions, this paper examines 30 amnesty processes that have unfolded since 2001, with a focus on their impact on peacebuilding. Drawing upon insights derived from Credible Commitment Theory, the paper unveils three findings: first, in the majority of cases scrutinized, amnesty processes are associated with a reduction in organized violence. Second, it becomes evident that amnesties in low to mid-intensity conflicts wield a more pronounced pacifying effect compared to those in high-conflict scenarios. Third, amnesties appear to be particularly effective when in tandem with UNPKOs. In summary, the paper posits that amnesties can play a constructive role in conflict resolution processes. However, it emphasizes a critical concern: when amnesties are associated with an increase in fatalities, the escalation in the conflict's intensity is very significant.
    
    Authors: Mattia Cacciatori (University of Bath)* , Sean Garrett (University of Bath) , Timo Kivimäki (University of Bath)
  - The Resolution of Civil Wars: Changing International Norms of Peace-Making and the Academic Consensus
    
    Since the end of the Cold War, the belief that the international community has a responsibility to support negotiated solutions to civil wars has exercised an enduring influence on research and policy making. However, this belief has relatively recent roots. This paper looks at how changing international norms have influenced the way academic researchers view civil wars and expect them to end. The lack of interest in solving internal conflicts during the Cold War was matched among academics by a focus on other security issues and a belief that most civil wars could not be negotiated, although a minority of scholars dis- agreed. After the Cold War, a new international regime for solving civil wars has emerged, with the active support of a large share of the academic community. However, scholars have also criticised the way Western priorities have shaped liberal peace-making attempts and reflected on the assumption underlying international conflict resolution. Paradoxically, while the academic community has become increasingly optimistic, the post-Cold War approach has fallen into a crisis, due to geopolitical transformations and a change in the nature of contemporary insurgencies. I conclude by suggesting new avenues for research in the changing international order.
    
    Author: Giulia Piccolino (Loughborough University)
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  06 Panel / International studies and climate change in the Anthropocene Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Environment Working Group
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Richard Beardsworth (University of Leeds)
  - An Anthropocentric International Relations? Acknowledging, Accommodating, and Governing the Non-Human
    
    The discipline of International Relations canonically so, deals with the issues of state. It is precisely the relations that occurred between the Westphalian states and the new worlds they were discovering that prompted its disciplinary origins, the continental world wars fought in Europe cemented its realist bend. It makes sense therefore that matters of security for the discipline have been seen in nation-state-centric framings.
    Over the years the discipline has evolved as has the nature and organisation of world politics. The 21st century poses an interesting puzzle for International Relations in the form of increasingly planetary issues that transcend the scope and jurisdiction of national boundaries, logically therefore our proposed solutions should do the same. The Anthropocentric approach to international relations is one such attempt.
    The Anthropocene is understood as a geological epoch – one that characterises the impact of human interventions on the Earth and its ecosystems. In the context of International Relations, the Anthropocene poses ontological challenges to our understanding of human and nature relationships. The Anthropocene is considered as the signpost from wherein Earth History and World History are seen to have been intertwined with one another (Chakrabarty 2009). In our canonical disciplinary understanding, Earth history delineates the evolution of the planet while World history decodes the evolution of civilisation(s). For indigenous and native cultures around the world, however, this distinction doesn’t stand. Their oral and socio-ethnic culture has always seen them as being part of their natural world. The metaphysical and spiritual have always been entangled with how they experience their socio-political relations and their natural environment. The scalar and the sacred have always work in tandem.
    This paper aims to highlight how an anthropocentric approach to International relations can open the discipline’s scope to include variables that are otherwise deemed unimportant to the discipline but are crucial to better govern and conserve our endangered ecosystems. Since the Anthropocene opens up the world towards infinite human-nature interrelationships it forces us to reconsider our modernist political mechanisms and look for alternatives in theory and practice that can accommodate these subjectivities (Lakitsch 2021, p 4).
    Although the Anthropocene impacts the Earth as a whole, the severity of these impacts change based on one’s geographical location, socio-political background or ethnic identity. By creating systems that facilitate collaborative policy negotiations between multiple stakeholders involved there is hope that better policy outcomes can be achieved. In order to do so however there needs to be a pivot towards a human and environment-centric approach to security and not a state-focused one – an Anthropocentric approach can bring those sensibilities to International Relations. The paper aims to bring forth these ontological tensions and the mechanisms through which they can be teased and tested both in decision and policy-making and also in disciplinary practice.
    
    References
    Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2009. "The Climate of History: Four Theses." Critical Inquiry 35 (2):197-222
    Lakitsch Maximillian, 2021, Hobbes in the Anthropocene: Reconsidering the State of Nature in Its Relevance for Governing, Alternatives Global, Local, Political, Vol 46(i) 3-16, Sage Publications
    
    Author: Divisha Srivastava (PhD Research Scholar South Asian University)
  - Global Green Visions and World Order in the Anthropocene
    
    The discipline of International Relations has a foundational interest in questions of world order, which define much work on global security and the global political economy. However, the emergence of the Anthropocene ushers in a new world order. At a time of escalating sustainability crises, the world order as we know it is being redefined by various attempts to respond to and prevent further anthropogenic global environmental change. In this paper, we thus argue that a plurality of global green visions – such as “Buen Vivir”, “Ecological Civilization”, “Energiewende”, “net zero”, “Pachamama”, “Ubuntu”, and many more – not only envisions different sustainability futures but also promotes – explicitly or implicitly – distinct and potentially conflicting understandings of an ideal future world order. Moreover, many visions complicate or challenge the notion of ordering the world as a state-centric activity as they have different referent objects and (more) explicitly relational ontologies. The paper, therefore, provides an innovative, theoretically guided, and empirically oriented account of how the global green visions of various actors interact with understandings of world order, thus connecting scholarship on global environmental politics, world order, and imaginaries and futures.
    
    Authors: Bruna Bosi Moreira (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) , Matthias Kranke (Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), University of Freiburg)
  - The Present "We" and the Future "Us": Identification, Securitization, and Temporality in the Case of Climate Change
    
    Climate change has increasingly been framed as a security issue, with scholars exploring its securitization and implications. The issue with investigating the securitization of climate change is that the referent object and subject appear to be the same: humanity, by polluting the Earth, threatens humanity itself. Yet, by generally considering climate change as the threat itself, the literature has overlooked how agency is actually located within the actors responsible for climate change rather than with climate change itself. This raises the question of how we can possibly conceptualize that the threatening entity is the same as the threatened one – in this case, humanity? This paper answers that question by distinguishing between the present "we" and the future "us." The present "we" reflects current patterns of identification, while the future "us" is a projection shaped by present decisions and aspirations. In cases of fundamental threats like climate change, the present "we" may be identified as a threat to the future "us." Understanding the differentiation between these two temporal entities is critical to grasp how the temporal dynamics of identity influence responses to global challenges like climate change. Action is therefore dependent on the intensity of people’s identification to our future “us”.
    
    Author: Jérémy Dieudonné (UCLouvain)
  - On Eco-Miserabilism
    
    Much of our discourse on the contemporary epoch – in academia, politics, popular culture and news media - is framed in terms of an urgent demand to act now in order to pre-empt otherwise imminent catastrophic events. As the doomsday clock inches forward to 90 seconds to midnight, climate reports increasingly indicate that we have reached a crucial tipping point. We start from the position that it is already too late: we are already living in and through an elongated tipping point. We start, therefore, by recognising that the event is already upon us, and what is required is a refusal of the usual temporalities of politics. We argue that it is necessary to refuse the humanist, affirmatory logics of hope and redemption that animate so much of our political discourse. If it is already too late we cannot defer politics into a future in which the ideal will be realised. This puts the progressive logic of modern politics – both governmental and revolutionary – into question. Rather we must focus on the potentialities of an elongated present. This requires us to focus on what Tsing has referred to as ‘life in capitalist ruins’. How are lives already being lived in the context of the precarity of the ruins of capitalism? If the catastrophe is already upon us, if the dreams of managed capitalist progress are ruined, how does life endure? Here we outline belated, improvised arts of living. These arts of living comprise the fugitive coalescing and dissipation of communities of sense. They are a refusal of the futural temporal logic that underpins ideas of progress and hope. They endure below the threshold of transformative change and yet make lives liveable. The question then, without valorising endurance, is how might we recognise such arts of living as opening new political terrains in an era when it is already too late to rescue modern dreams of progress.
    
    Author: Debbie Lisle (Queens Universty Belfast)
  - International Studies, Climate Change and Climate Action
    
    In a 2019 article—following the 2018 IPCC report on 1.5°C—I argued that the discipline of International Relations should focus more on the challenges of climate change (‘Climate Science, the politics of climate change and futures of IR’). Seizing the opportunity of this conference’s theme, and in the specific context of Michael Hulme’s latest book, Climate Change Isn’t Everything, this paper returns to that argument. In the wake of anti-scientist populism in the UK and US (2015-2019) and the move away from ‘state-centrism’ in contemporary International Studies, the paper argued that International Relations should: 1) ‘follow the climate science’ and partly organize its knowledge production in light of the remaining carbon budget (at the time over 500GtC02); and 2) focus – among other, non-state actors – on the developed state and its urgent responsibilities regarding comprehensive climate mitigation and adaptation strategies (those of developing states as well as its own). In Climate Change Isn’t Everything Hulme argues against this kind of ‘climatism’—the alignment of knowledge with climate science-based ‘ticking-clocks’--, suggesting that different framings are needed to elicit more inclusive, less ‘fearful’ kinds of political action (represented for example by the Sustainable Development Goals framework). Despite the large interest of Hulme’s thesis for International Studies, I argue that focus on thresholds is the only way in which political motivation and organisation for collective climate action can take place and that comprehensive state strategies remain necessary leverage for international cooperation around the energy transition and equity. This specific argument implies more widely that International Studies as a whole still needs to address the climate crisis appropriately.
    
    Author: Richard Beardsworth (University of Leeds)
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  06 Panel / Interpreting norms and status in world order Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working Group
  
  Conveners: Kevork Oskanian (University of Exeter) , Nino Kemoklidze , Matthieu Grandpierron (Catholic University of Vendée)
  
  Chair: Matthieu Grandpierron (Catholic University of Vendée)
  
  Discussant: Manon Dehillotte
  - The Multiple Audience Dynamic of Status Dissatisfaction: Examining China’s Shifting Response to the Emerging Global Environmental Regime, 1950-1972
    
    How does status dissatisfaction shape actor’s behavior in an international society? Existing scholarships—those that focus mainly on actors’ frustration about their standing on hierarchical structure in upward social comparison—risk reducing status into a function of materialist attributes that concerns mainly the major powers. This article proposes to replace this substantialist lens with a relational one. Applying a Weberian conception of status as a social process of actors effectively claiming social prestige, I identify two types of status audiences during this process: those superiorly positioned and those inferiorly positioned. Focusing on two sources of status attribution—recognition from above and deference from below—I discover four ideal status scenarios, one pleasing and three dissatisfactory: systematic respect (high recognition and high deference); unfair treatment (low recognition and high deference); bottom-up provocation (high recognition and low deference); systematic exclusion (low recognition and low deference). This multiple audience status dynamic is tested in China’s shifting response to the emerging global environmental regime from 1950 to 1972. Empirically, this is the first article to my knowledge to utilize multinational-multilingual archival records to reconstruct China’s process-level performance of environmental treaty negotiations in particular and the oft-masked global south in international governance in general.
    
    Key words:
    
    Status; Relational IR; China; Stratification; Status Dissatisfaction
    
    Author: Zikun Yang (University of Cambridge)
  - The Golden Mean: Explaining India’s stand on nonproliferation sanctions
    
    In spite of criticizing sanctions imposed by the US, India has adapted to several US sanction regimes aimed to check nuclear proliferation by states. As sanctions became an important part of Washington’s policy tool-kit after India’s first nuclear test in 1974, New Delhi maintained that it will not, and has never supported unilateral sanctions against any state. Despite India’s professed aversion to sanctions, India has lent latent support to several US nonproliferation sanction regimes. India might have maintained a dismissive attitude towards sanctions in general and its rhetoric has remained consistently unsympathetic, however when imposed to check proliferation of nuclear weapons, India has been rather complaisant. The accommodation has however been circuitous, wherein New Delhi has attempted to maintain a balance between its aversion to sanctions as a policy instrument, while lending support to nonproliferation. This article looks into how India’s stand on sanctions became more accommodative and adaptive of the sanction regime initiated by Western states when intended for nuclear nonproliferation. It argues, India has established a golden mean, wherein it adapts to particular aspects of sanctions regime, although expects accommodation from the senders as well
    
    Author: Rishika Chauhan (Department of War Studies, King's College London)
  - I am Selling. But who is Buying?: Trustworthiness and Trust as Norms to be Contested
    
    What are perceptions of trustworthiness and trust? While trustworthiness and trust can be seen as individual or interpersonal-level phenomena emerging from social interactions, they also constitute norms that can be diffused between individuals and from individuals to organizations or even states. As such, how does this diffusion occur? This paper examines the role of entrepreneurial actors relevant to both trust and norm research – namely boundary-spanners, trust, and norm entrepreneurs – to consider how perceptions of trustworthiness and/or trust may operate as a norm, and how norm entrepreneurs operationalise them. To do so, the paper examines the process by which the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) came to be seen as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians – and thus negotiating partner with Israel – between 1988-1992, first by the United States (US) and then by the State of Israel and the role of individuals in establishing the PLO as a potentially trustworthy actor. As such, the paper examines these two related but separate case studies of US-PLO and Israeli-PLO dialogue. Yet these norms were defined and indeed contested by individuals and groups within both governments who continued to hold to the existing and longstanding norm that there was “no one to talk to, nothing to talk about” when it came to the Palestinians, and by extension, the PLO.
    
    Authors: Jonathan Pettifer (University of Birmingham) , David Wilcox (University of Birmingham)
  - How Far Are We from An Efficient Global Governance Architecture: A Normative and Empirical Analysis
    
    Most current discussion of global governance concentrates on specific issue-areas while neglects panoramic understanding across different issues. This paper aims to explain what the optimal mission divisions between global and regional institutions across different issues are, and to give an estimate of how far the practical global governance is from it. These findings contribute to figuring out in which areas reforms in global governance are most needed.
    This study approaches this question using formal models and quantitative analysis. I construct a framework in which three types of factors determine the optimal mission division: functional factors, social factors, and cost structure of missions. The formal model explains how the trade-off among three types of factors determines the optimal authority allocation.
    For empirical analysis, an expert survey for 53 international public goods summarized from annual reports of 9 international organizations using machine learning algorithm is conducted to evaluate three types of factors and their effects on determining whether and to what extent a mission should be managed by a regional or a global institution. Then, I compare the estimated optimal division with current division across missions. It implies that two issue-areas, competition policy and foreign policy, largely deviate from the optimal division.
    The research offers insights into understanding what contributes to an efficient global governance architecture and how to reform current global and regional institutions to improve the efficiency of public goods provision.
    
    Author: Wan Peng (LSE)
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  06 Panel / Memory and the Afterlives of Empire Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: CPD Working group
  
  Chair: Ida Birkvad (LSE)
  - Provincialising the Partition: Framing Jinnah and the League in the Partition Museum, Amritsar
    
    Hailed as Quaid-e-Azam (The Great Leader), Mohammad Ali Jinnah has an understandably exalted status within Pakistani political memory. Quite predictably then, he has remained a controversial figure within India. Curating Jinnah is therefore a tricky exercise. This paper looks at how his memory translated into the Museum's display and in what ways has Jinnah been appropriated within the curated space. The paper argues that by staging nationalism and communalism as distinct features of Indian socio-political life, the Museum renders communalism as the pejorative other to a united, cohesive, and modern spirit of nationalism. Jinnah, then becomes the poster child of communalism within its display, the Museum suggests that Pakistan came into being as a result of Jinnah’s perseverance and intentions. The story is almost totally centred around him and his words. The Congress, on the hand, becomes an organisation that tried hard to maintain India’s unity and multi-cultural fabric. In doing so, the Museum keeps its focus on events and individuals of high politics, which is contradictory to its declared philosophy of being a people’s museum. Secondly, it frames and explains the creation of Partition through a selective reading of history.
    
    Author: Sridhar Krishnan (Ashoka University, New Delhi)
  - The Pantayong Pananaw Movement (“From-Us-For-Us” Perspective) as a Decolonial Approach to Addressing the Ontological Insecurities of Everyday International Relations
    
    This paper explores the potential of the pantayong pananaw (“from-us-for-us”perspective) movement pioneered by the Filipino scholar, Zeus Salazar, in serving as a decolonial approach to addressing the ontological insecurities engendered by day-to-day international relations vis-à-vis the Global South societies. Amidst the growing conversations and efforts towards decolonizing international relations, I interrogate the theoretical and empirical utility of the pantayong papanaw movement as a Global South-centric approach to addressing the deep-seated ontological issues and problems brought about by everyday international relations. To what extent does the pantayong pananaw movement contribute to the Global South’s decolonial struggle? Drawing on the politico-sociological construction of the ‘Filipino’ identity, I argue that the patanyong pananaw movement offers a useful, albeit double-edged decolonial approach to explaining (1) how individuals and communities react and respond to ontological insecurities emanating from the international society; and (2) why they react and respond to these stimuli the way they do.
    
    Author: Michael Magcamit (The University of Manchester)
  - ‘To Frame is to Exclude’: A Contrastive Study of How Two Museums Exhibited their India Collections
    
    Most European museums have deftly avoided direct allusions to colonialism. The paper focuses on the India collections in two museums in the UK, the British Museum (BM) in London and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) in Cambridge. Both museums had curated exhibitions to commemorate 70 years of Indian independence in 2017-2018, the catalogues for which form the basis of the paper’s analysis. The travelling exhibition, ‘India and the World: A History in Nine Stories’, was a collaborative project between the BM and two museums in India. Using objects from the BM’s collection exhibited in Delhi and Mumbai, it crafted a narrative of India’s ‘shared beginnings’ that situated Indian history within global, cosmopolitan frames. The paper argues that such a feel-good framing, which sidesteps the imperial origins of the objects on display, typifies the invisibility of imperialism in the public domain. A telling contrast is the exhibition ‘Another India: Explorations and Expressions of Indigenous South Asia’ that was sited in, and curated by, the MAA. As against the BM that affixed the objects with a certain timeless quality, the university museum recognised their contested and fluid meanings. Acknowledging that many of its exhibits were once looted and the need to make them accessible to their communities, the MAA examined its own role in the politics of knowledge production. While the former exhibition was accepting of the mainstream discourse of a cohesive and linear history, the latter explored, and revisited, India’s alternative histories. While one cast a sidelong glance at colonialism, the other explicitly engaged with its disruptive impacts. The paper undertakes a contrastive study of the curatorial intent that inform these two narratives. It aims to bring out the varied histories that museums construct around objects and which challenge the static significance attributed to them.
    
    Author: Jayashree Vivekanandan (South Asian University)
  - Remember everything but forget IR? The antinomies of anti-disciplinarity in a conservative era
    
    A major contribution of postcolonial scholarship to the field of International Relations (IR) has been a welcome recovery of the multiple histories and memories constitutive of world politics and of the discipline itself. The retrieval of international and disciplinary pasts and their associated exclusions - themselves often integral to the emergence of the field as a distinct scholarly space - has in turn prompted increased reflexivity among IR scholars, including prominent calls to 'forget IR'. Such anti-disciplinary calls, which date from the initial emergence of postcolonial critique three decades ago, grow out of the established complicity of IR with wider patterns of domination and power in world politics. At the same time, however, they also reproduce the anti-disciplinary logics of neoliberal managerial restructuring within universities around the world, which increasingly target disciplines and departments as sites of competing authority and decision. Calls to forget IR also unintentionally undermine the ability of scholars to defend themselves in the midst of conservative attacks on academic knowledge, especially critical work such as postcolonial IR itself. In this paper, we identify the antinomies of anti-disciplinary arguments in the context of contemporary neoliberal and conservative attacks on the university, and argue in defense of disciplinarity and its institutional expression. Our argument is that in the production of knowledge institutions matter, and institution-building is difficult. Before we 'forget IR', therefore, we should be wary of the politics of such a call and the wider implications, both for IR and for the likely future of the institutions through which it is reproduced.
    
    Authors: Mark Laffey (SOAS University of London) , Suthaharan Nadarajah (SOAS, University of London)*
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  06 Panel / New approaches to theorising emotion in global politics Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: EPIR Working group
  
  Chair: Ali Bilgic (Loughborough University)
  - A structural approach to emotion
    
    Literature on vulnerability to increased levels of violence often tends to focus either on individual experiential issues or on societal structures. While the role of emotions in violence and conflict has been researched extensively, little of this work has explored different forms of emotion, and still less has linked emotional experience to the structural level. This theoretical paper asks whether we can utilise emotions research in a way that acknowledges social structures, thus bringing power structures to the fore in the process and content of our research. It does this by developing a framework that integrates psychological insights and a Bourdieusian framework in relation to different forms of shame, exploring how the synthesis of these two distinct areas of theory may open new and rich avenues for enquiry and shed light on processes of violence and non-violence.
    
    Author: Anna Gillions (Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University)
  - Towards a Theory of Banal Modernism: China Managing the Racialised Shame of Unmodernity through “Stigma Reprojection”
    
    This paper proposes a theory of banal modernism, in capturing the process of postcolonial elites responding to stigma. Acknowledging the social as well as stratified dynamics of the international society, it observes how a sense of racialised shame of unmodernity – specifically, in the quotidian, banal aspects – has been construed through postcolonial countries’ historical encounters with the West. Postcolonial elites, in turn, expect the people – both from their own countries and from other countries of colour – to display banal modernism in their everyday practices. Taking China as an empirical case, this paper uncovers how Chinese elites have internalised banal unmodernity as a source of stigma, launching domestic campaigns modernising their nation in the banality, while racializing their African others in writings through the lens of banal modernism. This paper thus observes the stigma reprojection as yet another stigma management response.
    
    Author: Yang Han (University of Oxford)
  - Mapping the Unconscious in International Relations. A Lacanian IR Theory of Trauma and Identity for Conflict Studies
    
    This paper proposes a novel approach to understanding trauma and its connection to identity formation vis-à-vis conflict through a Lacanian IR lens. It does so by mapping out the unconscious as the traumatic ontology of the international. It introduces a bifurcated model of trauma, distinguishing between ontological and relational trauma. The ontological aspect corresponds to the pre-inscription of trauma as within a social structure, reflecting the inherent radical contingency and ontological antagonism in the social order. The relational aspect corresponds to the triggering event in conflict, as it is symbolised within a chain of signification, hence retraumatising the individual all the while they become subjectivised. It is therefore argued that resignifying conflict as ontologically traumatic, rather than essentially violent first, brings about potentialities for emancipation and reconciliation in post-conflict reconstruction, as identities as discursively co-constituted are recognised and overcome. The approach also addresses more on-the-ground, real-life, bodily traumatic experiences beyond traditional approaches that essentialise the latter and the victims. It applies this Lacanian approach to the illustrative case of transgenerational trauma in Northern Ireland as a result of the peacebuilding policies carried out during the peace conflict, and how identities are mutually constituted with and through trauma.
    
    Author: Albert C Cano (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  - Integrating The Appraisal Theory of Emotions into Existing IR
    
    This paper inspired by the seminal question of Sara Ahmed: ‘what do emotions do?’ To answer this question, this paper adopts Lazarus and Falkman’s (1984) two-tier (primary-secondary) appraisal theory of emotions drawing parallel it with a process tracing research methodology. First, it clarifies how the ‘emotional turn’ in neuroscience and psychology has reshaped IR studies, illustrating that emotions act as complements rather than contradicting traditional notion of rationality. Second, it underscores the imperative of positioning emotions as a ‘great frontier’ in IR studies. To this end, the appraisal theory is proposed as analytical tool within the prevailing Realist framework, enabling nuanced integration of emotional dynamics. Lastly, it introduces each stage of the appraisal process between the conflicting states, demonstrating the role of a) the perceived emotions stemming from traumatic events as a primary appraisal b) in accordance with the perceived emotions (negative) to make own risk assessment and formulating effective coping strategies as an integral part of the secondary.
    Key words: Realism, appraisal theory, emotions, trauma, coping stratgies
    
    Author: Selma Imamoglu (Durham University)
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  06 Panel / Norms, Legality & Identity in US Foreign Policy Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  Sponsor: US Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: USFP Working group
  
  Chair: Mauro Bonavita (King's College London - Department of War Studies)
  - Paradoxes of the West/Non-West Cleavage in International Relations
    
    Though denoting a complex geographical imaginary, the 'West', the 'Western', the 'Westernised' have often connoted developed, modern, civilised. The idea of the 'West' is structured in systematically different ways in political and economic domains; 'non-Western' countries have 'western' economies, consumption patterns, and infrastructures, but universal human rights and many other identity freedoms are often exclusively associated with the West (not always with factual grounding), and projected as a malevolent symptom of being westernised, and rejected. The 'West' is projected as a unique champion of human rights and also castigated for colonialism. This paper considers the racial and civilisational complexities subsumed under the west/non-west distinction, and analyses the growing relevance of the 'west' and 'non-west' distinction in contemporary international politics, policy, and public opinion. It argues that in the years to come, this particular cleavage (protean, ideological, shifting, manipulable as it is) will be a most important factor determining issue positions for a wide variety of significant global individual and institutional actors. This includes attending to the projects that promise a resurrection of the 'west' or of the 'non-west', and also those that seek a simultaneous emulation and repudiation of the 'West' (projects suggest a commitment to 'being Western without being Westernised').
    
    Author: Nitasha Kaul (University of Westminster)
  - The United States, Militarism, and Global Governance of Narcotic Drugs
    
    This paper examines the militaristic approach to drug wars employed by the US under the Trump administration (2017-2021). As the world’s most influential state actor, the US wields unparalleled military power and has played a key role in shaping global policy approaches to drug governance. Using a four-step analytic framework, this paper illustrates the mechanisms of US global and domestic drug wars: 1) dehumanizing discourses, 2) moralistic justifications, 3) expansion of state violence, and 4) perpetration of an impunity culture. The paper conteds that Trump’s drug policies and normative justifications demonstrate a militaristic approach to drug wars, reflecting a state-led, violence-oriented, and prohibitionist approach to illicit drug governance. This analysis sheds light on how the US government has promoted militarism in domestic and global governance of narcotic drugs, and raises critical questions about the impact of such policies on human rights and global security.
    
    Author: Salvador Santino Regilme (Leiden University)
  - Promoting Law as Counterinsurgency
    
    This paper explores the engagement of non-state justice actors for counterinsurgency purposes with a focus on the US foreign policy since September 11, 2001, especially the intervention in Afghanistan. When non-state justice enjoys widespread legitimacy and effectiveness, foreign aid providers view these forums as a promising way to advance state-building, promote stability, or even undermine anti-regime insurgencies. International actors seek to capitalize on supporting effective non-state justice systems to maintain order and bolster regime stability by offering material support or technical assistance. At the same time, non-state judicial actors, such as the Taliban’s rival justice system in Afghanistan, can pose a profound, even existential, threat to the state. International actors could support the criminalization of non-state justice forums or even the use of force against non-state justice sector personnel. When non-state authorities enjoy significant authority and autonomy, rejection strategies tend to generate strong, even violent, opposition from those targeted. For example, international assistance in Afghanistan repeatedly attempted to harness the legitimacy and authority of tribal-based justice to defeat the Taliban and bolster the floundering Islamic Republic. However, external efforts alienated powerful tribal authorities. Worse, these efforts led to violent reprisals against the people who worked with international personnel.
    
    Author: Geoffrey Swenson (City, University of London)
  - The Implications of Defend Forward on International Cyber Norms
    
    Defend Forward strategy, first outlined in 2018, outlined a shift in US cyber strategy. Rather than practicing a cyber strategy of total restraint, the United States opted to persistently engage against cyber threats, disrupting efforts of cyber attacks against the US. The 2023 US Cybersecurity Strategy praised the successes of Defend Forward and called for the development of US-led approaches to international cyber norms. Given that the US views such strategies as within the confines of responsible cyber conduct, how will the impact the efforts of the United States to pursue international cyber norms? This research seeks to address the difficulties in which the United States must overcome facing China’s promotion of digital sovereignty? Additionally, how will the United States overcome the desires for digital sovereignty from international allies? Who what will be the motivating factors and parties that seek to act as international cyber norm entrepreneurs? This research seeks to answer how international cyber norms will be shaped by US interpretations of responsible cyber competition that has become increasingly common in recent years.
    
    Author: Oisín Phillips (Royal Holloway, University of London)
- 145
  06 Panel / Para-diplomacy, diasporas, and foreign policy of non-state actors Exec 6, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: Sharad Joshi (Middlebury Institute of International Studies)
  
  Chair: Sharad Joshi (Middlebury Institute of International Studies)
  - Being a Good Global Citizen: Contestation and the Development of Scotland's para-diplomacy
    
    Scotland's external affairs are rarely studied. When they are, it is often through para-diplomacy. Para-diplomacy, however, is simply a descriptor, lacking in conceptual clarity and theoretical development. At the heart of Scotland's para-diplomacy is a guiding role: to be a Good Global Citizen (GGC). The GGC has been described by Dellepiane & Reinsberg (Dellepiane & Reinsberg, 2023) as para-diplomatic nation branding. It would imply that any party opposed to this national branding by the SNP, unionist parties and allies of the UK, would be opposed. However, there are select instances in which unionist parties and international actors share the SNP view of Scotland as a GGC. As I shall show, far from being simply nation branding, the GGC fits the common understanding of a foreign policy role. It derives from an SNP ‘Scottish’ self, infers the appropriate behaviours of the Scottish Government and engenders reactions from others (opposition parties and international actors) that impart expectations of what Scotland should be/do. By using role theory, this contested reproduction of self and behaviour can explain why, in certain spaces, opposition parties are willing to work with the SNP's nation branding. It further highlights that the SNP are often divided over their own sense of Scottish self. By theorising a bottom-up development of Scotland's para-diplomacy I aim to develop para-diplomacy into a distinct bottom-up approach and explain the peculiarities of Scotland’s para-diplomacy.
    
    Author: Alexander Bendix (University of Edinburgh)
  - Driving Australia-China Subnational Relations: the first decade
    
    Australia was an early supporter of subnational relationships. Even before President Eisenhower championed people-to-people diplomacy, the city of Parkes in New South Wales twinned with Coventry (United Kingdom) in 1939 in order to utilise historical and cultural connections. In the three decades after WW2, Australian cities and states, driven by normative and historical alignments, created dyadic links with partners in the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and the United Kingdom. In contrast, relations with China were slower to start. It was not until the 1980s that Australian states and territories began to reach out to their Chinese counterparts. Drawing upon newly opened archival materials, this paper looks at the development of subnational relations between Australian states and cities and their partners in Chinese provinces and cities. While these materials highlight the overarching narrative of cultural connectivity, other issues – such as economic and commercial motivations as well as personal preferences – played a key role in extending diplomatic relations into the subnational realm. This paper explores and weights these different variables in order to analyse which ones had the most impact on these new forms of bilateral engagement. In doing so, it sheds new light on the underlying motivations behind such relations as well as the policy directions on the then growing diplomatic relationship between Australia and China.
    
    Author: Nicholas Thomas (City University of Hong Kong)
  - The International Relations of Non-State armed groups: The case of ETA’s peace diplomacy
    
    Many non-state armed groups engage in sophisticated international affairs, such as maintaining bilateral relations with foreign states, engaging in multistakeholder diplomacy, cooperating with international organisations and humanitarian agencies, mobilising transnationally, and liaising with other armed groups around the world. International Relations as a discipline has, however, shown limited interest in the study of the foreign policy of non-state armed groups. The paper argues that rebels have a foreign policy which plays a fundamental role in their transition from war to peace. Taking the case of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna or "Basque Homeland and Liberty") in the Basque country, based on personal interviews and discourse analysis, the paper generates theoretical lessons on the international relations of non-state armed groups. Moving away from the idea that non-state actors merely mimic the state, the paper also homes in on the important role played by emotions in understanding their foreign policy.
    
    Author: Sophie Haspeslagh (King's College London)
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  06 Roundtable / Pedagogies for Teaching International Relations in the Twenty-First Century Exec 10, ICC
  
  This roundtable discusses the challenges students face learning about International Relations (IR) theories, concepts, (intellectual) histories, and day-to-day experiences of international relations in IR classrooms and the challenges lecturers face teaching these subjects in and across different geographies in an age of polycrisis. It explores how racialized, neo-colonial, imperial, gendered and/or patriarchal discourses and practices in global politics, shifts in global power, the curtailing of academic freedom next to the vicissitudes of neoliberal capitalism, global climate change, ecological and environmental crises, technological changes (e.g., rise of artificial intelligence), and students’ ever-growing needs for intellectual safety and safe spaces due to a threatened sense of ontological security affect teaching and learning about IR and global politics. On the basis of this discussion, the roundtable seeks to identify and discuss how and what different critical, reflexive, inclusive, resilient and student-centered pedagogies can effectively address the challenges for teaching and learning about International Relations and global politics in the twenty-first century.
  
  Sponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Anahita Arian (University of Cambridge)
  
  Participants: Blake Lawrinson (University of Leeds) , Sudhir Selvaraj (University of Bradford) , Anahita Arian (University of Cambridge) , Stephan Engelkamp (King's College London) , Hillary Briffa (King's College London)
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  06 Panel / Popular Culture and World Politics – Keeping Pace by Looking ‘Beyond the Mirror’ Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Convener: Nick Robinson (University of Leeds)
  
  Chair: Louise Pears (University of Leeds)
  
  Discussant: Rhys Crilley (University of Glasgow)
  - “Come All Ye Young Rebels and List While I Sing”: Memory, History, and Identity in Irish Rebel Songs
    
    It is well accepted that popular culture is deeply enmeshed in international politics. Applying these perspectives, we can see that intra-communal, (de-)colonial, and extremist violence in (Northern) Ireland is something that is neither purely political, nor entirely confined to the past but was and is shaped in complex and multi-directional ways by the popular culture it is situated in. In Republican communities music was and remains a popular medium through which stories are communicated and identities shaped and performed. This paper takes contemporary and historical iterations of the popular “Rebel Song” genre to interrogate the ways in which multiple, overlapping, and often contradictory identities are generated. These songs also produce shared and contested histories of Ireland and are mobilised through appeals to continuity, symbolism, technologies of war, and humour. Bringing a broad range of music to bear, this paper explores the ways in which lyrics, form, melody, symbolism, and intertextuality are productive of particular politics. In the context of a still fragile peace in Northern Ireland, greater attention needs to be paid to the ways in which history, memory, and identity are shaped and performed to create a shared future for all.
    
    Author: Cahir O'Doherty (University of Groningen)
  - Foreign Policy Behind the Scenes: Turkish Historical Dramas and the Politics of Production and Circulation
    
    Turkish foreign policy trajectory has experienced a neo-Ottomanist shift in the past decade. However, this shift was not only limited to foreign policy decisions, the same theme has been observed at different political sites from domestic politics to cultural production. While the representation of “Turkishness” has gained a retrospect due to the neo-Ottoman turn at the foreign policy level, the cultural production site has become a site of contestation for Turkish identity. By drawing on the literature on cultural diplomacy, popular culture, and cultural producers, this paper aims to explore the role of meaning-making practices in diplomacy and the fluidity of the meaning that is created by aesthetic practices among political sites. By exploring the production process of Ottoman-themed soap operas and their function as emotion generators, this paper looks at the cultural self-portraits (Caldwell, 2008) of producers which come from semi-structured interviews conducted with them. I aim to engage with the empirical case of the research and examine the Turkish identity representations that take part in Turkish popular culture, especially in two Turkish TV shows, The Magnificent Century (2011-2014) and Resurrection: Ertuğrul (2014-2019). In order to explain how these productions became significant elements in the negotiation of Turkish identity after the neo-Ottoman turn, I present interview findings and their analysis.
    
    Author: Ceren Çetinkaya (Central European University)
  - Imperial fantasies and oppositional readings: the reception of Turkish soap operas by Greeks
    
    Since 2000, the production of Turkish soap operas is in constant development.For many specialists on the subject, Turkish soap operas seem to be considered by the Turkish government as tools in order to enhance a positive image for Turkey and thus, augment its “soft power” particularly in countries that belonged to the ancient Ottoman Empire. Greece is one of the countries that imports systematically soap operas produced by the neighboring country. Based on an audience ethnography, this research focuses on the reception of Turkish soap operas by Greek audiences. This empirical study demonstrated that while Turkish soap operas’ appeal among Greek audiences is owed to the cultural proximity between the two countries, this proximity does not cancel out the political disagreements between these neighboring populations, nor does the Greek population’s taste for Turkish soap operas translate into support for the Turkish government. This study confirms the role of several factors as third-party mediators in the reception of these serial fictions, such as the public’s predisposition, current diplomatic relations between two countries, the audience’s worldview, and collective, family and/or personal memory.
    
    Author: Dimitra Laurence Larochelle (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)
  - Popular Culture and Politics in Times of Revolution and Counter-Revolution: the Case of Egypt
    
    Although there has been increasing interest in popular culture in the Middle East over the last decade or so, particularly in the wake of the 2011 uprisings, nonetheless, popular culture remains marginalised in the study of politics in the Middle East and North Africa. In this paper, I argue that the study of popular culture can contribute toward broadening the concept of politics and ‘the political’ to include the struggle over cultural meanings that are constitutive of politics and political dynamics. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s theory of representation and examining a range of popular cultural texts produced by Egyptians after 2011, including, music, graffiti, satirical TV programmes, cartoons and films, the paper will explore the cultural meanings of the 2011 revolution and how these informed competing political projects and power dynamics in the wake of former president Hosni Mubarak stepping down. Specifically, the paper will reveal the complex relationship between popular culture, power and politics in revolutionary and counterrevolutionary contexts, which does not conform to the binary of domination versus resistance.
    
    Author: Nicola Pratt (University of Warwick)
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  06 Conference event / Poster session - Susan Strange @ 100: an enduring legacy for contemporary times Exhibitor Hall, Hyatt
  
  Speakers: Andreas Kanaris Miyashiro (Warwick University), Dan Wood (University of Warwick), Kasper Arabi (University of Warwick), Korey Pasch (Queens University), Oksana Levkovych (London School of Economics and Political Science)
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  06 Roundtable / Re-visiting the Gulf Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Scope, Theory and Data Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  The study of the Gulf is an emerging academic field under the broader research on the Middle East literature. It is mainly an interdisciplinary area of research, in which multiple understandings and formations of scope, theory and data overlap. This roundtable brings PhD students and scholars working on the six Gulf Cooperation Council states, Iran and Yemen together to delve into the challenges and opportunities in the current study of the Gulf. The participants are from several Gulf nations studying at various academic institutions from diverse professional backgrounds.
  
  The purpose of this roundtable is to examine the interdisciplinary approach to scope, theory and data while delving into the politics, economics, society and culture of the Gulf. The participants are either students or academics from several universities across the world bringing a comprehensive and dynamic approach to their experience with studying the sub-region. The roundtable will analyze certain agendas on the emerging discipline and relate the approaches to scope, theory and data with the current regional and global politics connecting the production of knowledge with personal research experiences and changes in the Gulf societies.
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Chair: Betul Dogan Akkas (Ankara University)
  
  Participants: Abdullah al-Khonaini (Durham University) , Abdullah Al-Maani (Durham University) , Mohamed Shaheem Kizhakke Purayil (Qatar University) , Sarah Muhanna Al Naimi
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  06 Roundtable / Rethinking Connections: The Future of Humanitarianism, Human Protection and Building Peace Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  The purpose of the roundtable is to invite exchanges that reflect on the broadening of the Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Responsibility to Protect working group focus, while engaging critically at the same time with the BISA 2024 challenge of identifying whose international studies we should focus on. We are hoping for panellists to engage in a cross disciplinary dialogue across BISA working group themes and topics related to human protection, human rights, institutional responsibilities, the political economy of building peace, and feminist foreign policy. We are asking panellists to consider questions such as, what connections can be made between disciplines in the study of humanitarianism and human protection? Who benefits from this research? How can we bridge the worlds of academia and political commitment? Is our research limited by narrow theoretical approaches or power structures in academia and beyond? When talking about protecting human life, do we need a broadened understanding of with whom responsibility lies?
  
  Sponsor: Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Responsibility to Protect Working Group
  
  Chair: Chloe McRae Gilgan (University of Lincoln)
  
  Participants: David Curran (Coventry University) , Claire Duncanson (University of Edinburgh) , Anthony Lang (University of St Andrews) , Samuel Jarvis (York St John University)
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  06 Panel / Russia’s Offensive War Against Ukraine Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: WSWG Working group
  
  Chair: Emil Archambault (University of Durham)
  - The Eyes Above: The evolving impact of Satellite Imagery on Accountability, Memory and Agency in War
    
    Satellite imagery analysis has transformed how civil society can monitor, interpret and act on complex events such as armed conflict. Ordinarily the preserve of intelligence services, the traditional barriers of cost, coverage and accessibility of high-resolution imagery have significantly reduced. Consequently, imagery analysis has become a mainstay in legal, journalist and activist efforts to catalogue and analyse scenes of political or historical importance. But what does this mean for academia – its research focus and methodology? This paper uses the war in Ukraine (2014-present) to illustrate the implications of a changing power dynamic in how ‘ground truth’ is defined in international affairs. The decentralisation and democratisation of data has empowered citizens, but the structures and processes for criminal accountability remain in the hands of governmental and inter-governmental authorities. How (and where) do these two sides meet to grant agency to the truth-seeking enterprise? And what role can international studies play in incorporating imagery analysis as a data source and subject for debate?
    
    Author: William Goodhind (Contested Ground)
  - Politics of childhood in the Russia-Ukraine war
    
    The Russo-Ukrainian war has garnered extensive attention from scholars and policy-makers, sparking debates on great power hierarchies and post-Soviet colonial relations. However, childhood as a site of knowledge construction and reproduction of geopolitical dynamics remains largely unexplored in this discourse. Yet, the conflict manifests itself in many domains of childhood, such as militarisation of Russian schools, deportation of Ukrainian children, or the Western media portraying Putin himself as a child. This paper seeks to place childhood as the primary analytical lens to understand the Russo-Ukrainian war. To do so, I will present preliminary findings and analysis of how Russian state-approved media militarises and mobilises images of childhood to legitimise and articulate Russia's invasion in Ukraine. I connect these findings with the wider context of post-Soviet hierarchical relations and Russia's desire to establish itself as a great power while also systematically portraying Ukraine as backwards and in need of imperial guidance. Merging my findings with the critical childhood studies literature, I argue that childhood is a valuable site of knowledge that can provide important insights into war and conflict dynamics in post-Soviet spaces and beyond.
    
    Author: Maya Nguyen (SOAS, University of London)
  - Perspectives on war in international relations: exploring the relationship between war and change
    
    The disciplinary effort within International Relations has led to many major theoretical advances in the study of war, yet mostly on the questions of what causes the outbreak of war. From the security dilemma and democratic peace theory to poststructuralist concepts of self/other relations, the discipline of IR offers a whole range of explanations of what may lead to war but tells us less about why war matters in the first place. First, the paper reviews the perspectives on war within IR and identifies four perspectives: (a) war as collective loss, the most common motivation to study the causes of war and its prevention, (b) war as revelation of private information and actual power distribution, (c) war as acceleration of inevitable change in international relations, and (d) war as transformation of international relations. Second, the paper seeks to develop the marginal, but crucial transformative perspective on war. It explores how organized violence may impose fundamental rule changes within political collectives, creating the conditions for wide-ranging international transformations. Thereby, the paper contributes to the nascent debate within critical war studies and ties the debate to wider IR literature.
    
    Author: Troels Burchall Henningsen (Royal Danish Defence College)
  - OSINT as a Discourse of War
    
    This presentation will examine how techniques and claims associated with “open-source intelligence” constitute a new mode of discourse of warfare, and how this new mode of discourse shapes the experience of war among democratic publics. Since its use as a public investigative technique was pioneered by organisations such as Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture, “OSINT” has gained wide currency as a means of perceived truth-telling, used to reveal hidden violence and contest governmental accounts. However, it is also used by state actors to reinforce official accounts and disseminate credible-seeming propaganda and misinformation. The War in Ukraine and the 2023 Israel offensive into Gaza gave rise to a proliferation of “OSINT” claims, less as an investigative technique and more as a rhetorical strategy meant to convey authority and validity. In this presentation, I examine the spread of “OSINT” as a category of discourse, how it shapes communications about war, and what conceptions of power and truth-making underlie its popularity. I argue that its prevalence as a discourse of war and violence shapes how knowledge of military violence is produced and conveyed.
    
    Author: Emil Archambault (University of Durham)
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  06 Panel / Situating nuclear politics - exploring nuclear politics and places beyond the interstate Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Global Nuclear Order Working Group
  
  Convener: Laura Considine (University of Leeds)
  
  Chair: Laura Rose Brown (University of Leeds)
  - Complexity and depoliticisation in African regional nuclear institutions
    
    The regional nuclear ordering terrain in Africa is increasingly complex, with proliferating and deepening institutional relationships to the institutions of the global nuclear order. We were asked to apply a ‘complexity lens’ to Africa’s contribution to global nuclear ordering, with particular attention to civil nuclear power. However, one important concern when thinking about complex multinational regimes is depoliticisation. Through a study of the ‘meso’-level African civil nuclear institutions AFRA, AFCONE, and the FNRBA, we examined the ‘complexity’ of African nuclear ordering agency around the pursuit of civilian nuclear technology. However, we found that the complexity lens perpetuates depoliticisation when it does not acknowledge the political thrusts which underlie conceptions of ‘order’ and ‘disorder’. Specifically, it obscures how historically radical African nuclear ordering activities are channelled by complex and nested institutions into the preservation of the global nuclear status quo.
    
    Authors: Joelien Pretorius (University of the Western Cape)* , Tom Vaughan (Aberystywth University)
  - More than a half-life? The community impact of nuclear decommissioning
    
    Communities which become home to nuclear facilities are subject to fundamental change. This is experienced when they are first constructed, often accompanied by a population influx and a new built environment. Change of a different kind, however, occurs when nuclear facilities reach the end of their working lives and enter decommissioning, with job losses and associated social instability: both arrival and departure are state-mandated processes.
    
    For communities around such sites, ‘the nuclear’ is part of the everyday, and has been since they were constructed up to 60 or 70 years ago. Rather than something unusual, nuclear facilities become part of a way-of-life. ‘Everyday nuclearity’ (Hecht 2012), is one aspect that differentiates nuclear sites from other locations of deindustrialisation, with them identified as different from common case studies: thus, the histories and consequences of decommissioning have rarely been discussed in academic work on deindustrialisation. As a relatively recent occurrence, this is perhaps unsurprising. Yet a growing body of scholarship is focusing attention on decommissioning communities, showing how public engagement, heritage activities and creative practices can help navigate disruption caused by what is, at heart, a political act.
    
    This paper will use examples drawn from nuclear energy sites in Lithuania, Sweden and the UK to show how this current form of deindustrialisation presents researchers, practitioners and industry representatives with a unique chance to shape legacies whilst change is underway, rather than after the industry has gone.
    
    Author: Linda Ross (Keele University)
  - Blasts from the Past: Echoing Memories and Making Fragile Kin Sixty Years after the H-Bomb
    
    This article presents a postcolonial ethnography of how two distinct but connected nuclear communities, the British nuclear test veterans and Kiritimati islanders, came together in April 2018 on Kiritimati to memorialise, make sense of their experiences, and attempt to make themselves visible in light of shared but unequal exposure. During the tests (1957 to 1962), there was limited, controlled, and imbalanced interaction between military servicemen and the local community. While nuclear test veterans returned to the UK afterwards, the local community remained on the atoll. Firstly, this article considers how veterans reconciled and revisited their colonial memories of island life while co-producing a fragile nuclear kinship with the contemporary island community. This article critiques the limits of nuclear kinship and considers the extent to which these unequally exposed elderly British veterans and Indigenous groups can ever truly be ‘kin’. It provides insights into how memories of the same place and time are constituted through entanglements with power and colonialism to produce alternative realities for different groups. Secondly, this article explores how both groups have been unequally exposed: not just to ionising radiation, but also to the ongoing legacies of empire. Both radiation and post-coloniality are in many ways invisible. However, both phenomena have left traces that can be examined, uncovered, and observed. By contrasting the extraordinarily long half-lives of decaying radiation from the Grapple Tests with the long durée impacts of colonisation itself, the article contemplates the “half-life” of Empire, colonialism, and white supremacy, and how state recognition of each group’s nuclear citizenship differs dramatically due to ongoing coloniality. Finally, this article introduces the notion of echo to describe the way that historical power imbalances may persist and reverberate across space and time, and to consider how fragile nuclear kinship reveals broader issues of environmental imperialism in the Anthropocene.
    
    Author: Becky Alexis-Martin (Bradford University)
  - Base Women and Beyond: Developing a Feminist Decolonial Approach to Military/Nuclear Assemblages.
    
    This paper seeks to revisit and extend Cynthia Enloe’s invitation to take women and gender seriously in the analysis of military bases. Taking the chapter “Base women” in her pathbreaking book Bananas, Beaches and Bases as a starting point, we aim to develop a more systematic feminist analysis of military/nuclear site-specific installations, such as bases, laboratories, training academies. We are interested in exploring the infrastructures and quotidian practices- material, embodied and affective- through which these sites are sustained, experienced, and resisted. To do so, we propose an innovative synthesis of two fields of cutting-edge feminist scholarship: the first understands militarism as embodied, affective and performed, sustained and resisted in the everyday (e.g. Åhäll and Gregory 2015; Baker, 2020) while the second develops a material, decolonial analysis of nuclear politics (Choi and Eschle 2022; Runyan 2022), centring scholarship on the coloniality of the nuclear order (e.g. Das 2010; Biswas 2014) and the intertwined tentacles of militarism and empire (Teaiwa, 2017; Hong, 2020). By bringing under the same frame military and nuclear installations and enabling rigorous analysis grounded in contextual complexities and feminist decolonial scholarship, we hope to expand the material geographies underpinning our critical study of military/nuclear assemblages and the logics of coloniality that sustain them.
    
    Authors: Maria Adriana Deiana (Queen’s University Belfast) , Catherine Eschle (University of Strathclyde)
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  06 Roundtable / Theorising Foreign Policy Exec 9, ICC
  
  This roundtable explores avenues to advance theorising in FPA. While the international and domestic environments of foreign policy have changed radically over recent years, we have only seen relatively modest innovations in FPA’s theoretical toolkit. It seems timely, therefore, to develop and critically assess possible new directions in FPA theorising. To this purpose, the roundtable will explore, for example, the implications of the increasing politicisation of foreign policy and how this can be theorised. Particular emphasis in this regard will be placed on the rise of populism on the one hand and the rise of feminist concerns/feminist foreign policy on the other hand. The participants will also ask whether our (Western) understanding of the state and statehood is an appropriate point of departure for theorising foreign policy making, as well as the extent to which processes of regional integration might urge us to change our understanding of typically state-focused foreign policy making. A related issue is how Western-centred FPA theories can be advanced by insights from the global south. A final question is whether, and how, the recent wave of leader-oriented IR scholarship can be brought into conversation with the extant FPA literatures on leaders in foreign policy.
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Chair: Kai Oppermann (Chemnitz University of Technology)
  
  Participants: Klaus Brummer (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt) , Amelia Hadfield (University of Surrey) , Consuelo Thiers (University of Edinburgh) , Karen Smith (LSE) , Amnon Aran (City, University of London)
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  06 Panel / Unpacking the ongoing tech war between China and the United States Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group
  
  Convener: Eugenio Lilli (University College Dublin)
  
  Chair: Andre Barrinha (University of Bath)
  - What’s got you so worried? Weaponised artificial intelligence, great power competition, and US technological anxieties since the end of the Cold War
    
    This paper examines the puzzle of why, despite the Pentagon’s experiments with these technologies dating back to the 1970s, establishing US global leadership in the field of weaponised AI has only emerged as a goal of US defence planning following the institutionalisation of great power competition as the focus of American foreign policy during Donald Trump’s presidency. Building on three existing sets of explanations for this puzzle – strategic, cultural, and organisational – this paper involves an interpretivist content analysis of two major sets of US defense planning documents published after the Cold War: National Military Strategies and Quadrennial Defense Reviews/National Defense Strategies. Three technological anxieties are shown to have predated – and subsequently been grafted onto – the Pentagon’s more recent thinking about weaponised AI, these being that: (1) advances in dual use technologies have the latent potential to alter the character of war; (2) the diffusion of Anti-Access/Area Denial capabilities threatens the US’ global power projection capabilities; and (3) only overwhelming US technological dominance can prevent destabilising geopolitical competition. Through this intervention, this paper highlights the need for both a greater historical sensitivity toward the technological dimensions of great power competition and an awareness that the Pentagon’s approach to the development of weaponised AI has been shaped by anxieties about both the capabilities of strategic competitors like China and global technological developments since the end of the Cold War. For the various stakeholders contributing to the international debates on this subject, this suggests that a fuller understanding of the dynamics involved with the weaponisation of AI requires consideration of both what US policymakers have been and is currently worried about.
    
    Author: Tom Watts (Royal Holloway University)
  - US Securitization of Chinese Technology: The Case of Huawei
    
    This paper aims at updating the debate on the bilateral relationship between the United States and China by studying the increasingly relevant technological side of such a relationship. Preliminary research points to a shift in the US discourse on China from one of engagement and beneficial interdependence to another of strategic competition and threats. This is especially evident if one looks at what some commentators and policymakers have been calling the USA-China Tech War.
    Drawing on the insights of the Copenhagen School's Securitization Theory, this paper will address two main research questions (RQ).
    RQ1: How did a tech company such as Huawei become a key national security issue? In other words, how has it been securitized? That is, moved from being ordinary public policy to being national security policy?
    RQ2: Has the USA been successful in convincing other countries (especially its Five Eyes partners) to espouse the securitization of such technologies?
    In considering these questions, the paper will cover the US discourse and policies on China during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.
    
    Authors: Eugenio Lilli (University College Dublin) , Zeno Leoni (King's College London)
  - (Re-)configuring human-machine relations: Responsible artificial intelligence and human agency in future warfare
    
    Developments of artificial intelligence (AI) for the military field has grown exponentially in the last years. From mundane tasks like logistics to more consequential applications in decision-support systems or targeting functions, the use of AI in the military realm has broad implications for human agency in future warfare. Already, countries are investing in and developing strategies for human-machine interaction as novel configurations of humans and machines. At the same time, the concept of responsible AI has gained prominence in governing military AI, preserving human agency and retaining responsibility in human-machine configurations. How is the concept of responsible AI already being used? And how can it contribute to the governance of military AI? I investigate these questions by analysing and comparing discourses on human-machine interactions and responsible AI across three countries that are at the forefront of technological and policy development: the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. I build on the growing theoretical literature on algorithmic warfare and critical security studies to analyse how human agency is configured in these human-machine relations in contemporary and future warfare. This paper therefore also contributes to broader questions of what the human role in warfare should and needs to be.
    
    Author: Anna-Katharina Ferl
  - Creativity in the US-China Technology War
    
    In 2022 the world began to realise the dependence of both the US and China on certain key high-tech products, most notably microchips made in Taiwan. Although this issue was made headlines and became a cause célèbre, it is easy to overlook the reality that the US and China have been competing in some high-tech areas for decades – space, telecommunications, and applications. What was seemingly different about microchips was the ‘interdependence’ that it highlighted. Hence, although talk of a new Cold War was rife, the central defining feature ‘separate spheres of influence’ may be missing.
    
    In this paper, I explore some of the dynamics that sit behind the scenes of the tech war: creativity and innovation and I ask the question: what does China’s ability to be creative and innovate tell us about the unfolding technology war? In this paper, I start by drawing on history and education in relation to ‘how people think’ and ‘what people learn’ and I consider these as essential pointers in understanding processes of innovation and creativity. I also reflect back on other technology wars and outline the importance of innovation and creativity in both their initiation and their conclusion. Finally, I make an argument about what sources of China’s (and the US’s) innovation and creativity might mean for the unfolding tensions.
    
    Author: Catherine Jones (University of St Andrews)
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  06 Conference event / Working group convener meeting Room 103, Library
  
  Speakers: Chrissie Duxson (BISA), Juanita Elias (University of Warwick), Juliet Dryden (BISA), Prof. Kyle Grayson (BISA)
- 12:15
  
  Lunch Symphony Hall
  
  Symphony Hall
- 156
  
  06 Conference event / Young people, politics, and peace networking meeting Drawing Room, Hyatt
- 157
  
  06 Conference event / BISA prize giving ceremony Justham, Symphony Hall
- 158
  
  06 Conference event / Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group AGM Concerto, Hyatt
- 159
  06 Panel / (De)Colonial Aesthetics & Poetics Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: CPD Working group
  
  Chair: Heba Youssef (University of Brighton)
  - Postcolonialism and reflections on modernity in Arab horror cinema in the 21st century
    
    The horror genre creates an ideal environment for artists to discuss or comment on the political, economic, social, and cultural effects of colonialism. The symbolism of the supernatural, the creation of a weird or uncanny atmosphere, or general tropes of the genre like haunted houses, blurring the line between dead and alive, or ghosts and otherworldly creatures often used to reflect on historical traumas or conflicts, including the legacy of colonial influence and presence. On the other hand, postcolonialism is present in the horror industry through its thematic and structural relationship with the present film industry of the colonial states, which affects how horror movies are made. These tendencies are visible in the Arab cinema as well, where the horror genre has not been the most popular, artists from Egypt (Blue Elephant), Tunisia (Dachra), and the United Arab Emirates (Djinn) have crafted films that heavily comment on their social history.
    The paper aims to present the main tendencies of postcolonialism and reflections on modernity in the evolution of the Arab horror genre with a special focus on the 21st century. After identifying the role of the genre in modern Arab films, the article focuses on the role of postcolonialism in the themes and structures of these films. The research will focus on not just how the colonial past or post-colonial conflicts are represented but how Arab filmmakers are influenced by the artistic tendencies of their former colonial powers. Special emphasis will be put on identifying the effects of the nature of colonialism in the region and various political cultures.
    
    Author: Mate Szalai (Ca Foscari University)
  - Were The Troubles a Decolonial Conflict? A Lacanian IR History through Intertextuality
    
    This paper proposes a novel Lacanian historical account and analysis of the Troubles, examining the conflict through the prism of decoloniality. Central to this inquiry is the question: can the Troubles be interpreted as a decolonial conflict? Engaging with Lacanian International Relations Theory (LIRT) and concepts such as Kristeva’s intertextuality, Fanon’s decolonialism, and Grosfoguel's internal colonialism, this study seeks to reframe the understanding of this period. Since a Lacanian history of the Troubles necessarily consists of oral accounts, it is through semi-structured interviews and ethnographic work with former combatants from all sides that the research highlights how a decolonial lens provides fresh insights into persistent issues such as transgenerational trauma, the high rate of youth suicide, ongoing low-level violence, and political deadlock. This approach contributes to the scant literature that reads the conflict as decolonial and offers a historical framework within Lacanian IR. The paper argues that a Lacanian historical reading complements rather than contradicts other narratives, emphasizing learning from the adoption of this perspective through intertextuality. By doing so, it does not purport to present an absolute version of reality but invites a reflective understanding of the conflict's continuing impact on society.
    
    Author: Albert Cullell Cano (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  - From Mission Kashmir to Kashmir Files: Exposing Bollywood’s attempts to manufacture the ideal ‘Indian Kashmiri’ citizen.
    
    The Indian film industry, largely dominated by Bollywood, plays an integral role in representing India to the world but also representing various ‘India’s’ and ‘Indians’ to an extremely large viewership across the world. Media representation is crucial to a people’s perception of identity, culture and the ‘other’ (Rajadhyaksha & Willemen, 1994, 10). The representation of Kashmir in Bollywood films has been studied by cultural theorists, focusing on how the territory of Kashmir is shown as a territory of desire (Kabir, 2009), as a tourist paradise and after the period of militancy in 1989, as a conflict zone. This article builds on this existing research to study the representation of Kashmir and Kashmiris in Bollywood post-1989 to the most recent film, Kashmir Files. Employing a postcolonial and decolonial framework, this paper studies the state’s attempt to create the ideal ‘Indian Kashmiri’ through film. Using postcolonial and decolonial schools of thought, the research further explores how these visual representations depict the Indian state’s coloniality and their role in legitimising its exercise of colonial power in the region of Indian Administered Jammu & Kashmir.
    
    Author: Annapurna Menon (University of Sheffield)
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  06 Roundtable / A tribute to the work of Christopher Coker – The Return of History: Christopher Coker and The Study of War Room 101, Library
  
  ‘The Return of History: Christopher Coker and The Study of War'
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Chair: Michael Cox (LSE)
  
  Participants: Aaron McKeil (LSE) , Caroline Kennedy-Pipe , Michael Cox (LSE) , Christopher Dandeker (KCL)
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  06 Panel / Advocacy, Protest and Activism Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism
  
  Convener: Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism Working Group
  
  Chair: Nicola Mathieson (University of Liverpool)
  - A Delay of the Religious Wave, On Time for the Far-Right Wave or In-Between?: Blurred Lines of Bolsoterrorismo
    
    In The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism (2004), David C. Rapoport theorized that modern terrorism can be historically seen and understood through the Anarchist (1st/1879-1920s), Anticolonial (2nd/1919-1960s), New Left (3rd/1960s-1990s) and Religious (4th/1979-2020s?) Waves. Ideologically similar, the organizations within each Wave also share characteristics, such as a signature tactic, weaponry and targets. The energy driving them spreads globally and tends to last one generation. Since then, its explanatory power has been widely debated, sometimes challenged, but usually tested, corroborated and applied to uncover then overlooked Waves. Prominent during the New Left Wave, however, Brazil seems not to have experienced the Religious Wave but Far-Right Wave may already have hit it. Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s supporters-led January 6th and other occurrences made not only Rapoport himself, but many other Terrorism Studies scholars wonder whether these are shaping a Far-Right (5th) Wave What has been already called Bolsoterrorismo had its apogee when supporters of Former Brazil’s President Jair M. Bolsonaro stormed Brazils Congress and Supreme Court on January 08, 2023. Paying especial attention to the Christian themes within Bolsonarismo, the present research discusses how it can be better comprehended: a Religious Waves delay, a Far-Right Wave`s punctual or hybrid phenomenon.
    
    Author: João Raphael da Silva (UWE Bristol)
  - Mobilization strategies, threat narratives and historical parallels in conspiracy theories
    
    There is an increasing recognition of the link between conspiracy theories, violent extremist intentions, and their function in bridging extremist ideas, narratives, and scenes. Conspiracy theories, commonly driven by (perceived) grievances and fear, are postulated through narratives of threat that resonate with perceptions of injustice. More recently, conspiracy theories have increasingly surfaced in post-ideological, post-organizational extremist and non-extremist scenes, and they are often used to delegitimize governments, politicians, 'the elite,' and democratic institutions. Conspiracy theories are not a new phenomenon as they have endured for centuries, transcending time and permeating across generations. These theories have historically served as catalysts for the persecution of marginalized groups and minorities. This paper presents empirical findings of the frame analysis of (online) mobilization strategies implemented by contemporary QAnon and far-right terrorist attacks and compares them to historical defamation campaigns against Freemasons, alleged Witches, and Jews (blood libel). The frame analysis reveals that there are five key ingredients to successful conspiracy mobilizations: two kinds of resonating threat narratives, times of crisis, new means of communication, malicious single actors and renegades’ knowledge.
    
    Author: Janina Pawelz (University of Hamburg)
  - Mining Its Own Business: Chinese Capital and the Land Rights Protests in Myanmar
    
    The paper will critically look at the contestations that China’s resource extraction projects are producing in Myanmar’s borderlands, locating these at the intersection between China’s domestic developmental drivers and Myanmar’s state-building agenda of enclosing its multi-ethnic, resource-rich frontiers. These faultlines are flattening out socio-ecological landscapes, where groups have fought at multiple fronts – against the state, against ‘outsiders’ and frequently against one another. The paper argues for rescaling the capital-ecology question by looking at how subnational actors in the China–Myanmar borderlands are reshaping the discourse on resources and rights from below in far-reaching ways. It maps this evolving heterogeneous subnational policy space of diverse actors and competing agendas in Myanmar, which is producing new forms of conflict while exacerbating old ones. This holds out the promise of forging new transnational advocacy networks while at the same time testing subnational solidarities in the process.
    
    Author: Nimmi Kurian (Centre for Policy Research, India)
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  06 Panel / Emotions and the politics of subjectivity Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: EPIR Working group
  
  Chair: Amanda Beattie (Aston University)
  - Ontological (In)Security as a Political Project: A Queer Perspective
    
    Ontological (in)security as a pursuit of completeness is a normative process where subjects are produced in binary positions as ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ whereas others as perverse, unnatural, and deviant. This gendered and sexualised normative process is affective: anxiety stemming from ‘incompleteness’ entwines with fear and disgust towards those who are framed as pervert and unnatural. This presentation will contribute to the growing literature on psychoanalytical ontological security debates by bringing fundamental insights from queer International Relations (IR) and studies on emotions in IR. It will be argued that through these insights, psychoanalytical ontological security studies can develop a more nuanced and political understanding of ‘collective subject production’ process.
    
    Author: Ali Bilgic (Loughborough University)
  - "I am stolen": Interrogating the coloniality of community and belonging in the western nation-state through the legacy of racialised anger
    
    Feminist, queer and race-critical research has long since pointed out how racist, heteronormative and patriarchal orders structure western societies, and how the ordinary and the everyday come to be potent lieus for the reinvigoration of said orders. Following their lead, this paper interrogates the sentimentalities that shape ordinary experiences of community and belonging in European nation-states in ways that enable said violences. Building on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with members from both queer and racialised communities in East Germany, I argue that these sentimentalities invisibilise the experiences of marginalised people and invite violence towards them. Through the lens of marginalised people’s anger, I uncover the latent white supremacist and patriarchal violences that permeate prominent instantiations of (living in) community in East Germany and trace their connections to histories of colonial and patriarchal oppression. This helps me unsettle white majoritarian feelings of enjoyment and entitlement vis-à-vis notions of community and belonging and make overt their coloniality. Ultimately, this paper makes an important contribution to re-thinking how IR can center those most adversely affected by on-going regimes of racist and patriarchal violence and how our epistemologies surrounding nationhood, the politics of belonging and affect can serve that political end.
    
    Author: Elisabell Beyer (University of Manchester)
  - "A Wall of Pain and Love”: Atmospheric Walls and The UK’s ‘National COVID Memorial Wall’
    
    This article contributes to knowledge on emotional politics and the politics of national commemoration in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by exploring the case of the United Kingdom (UK) and the ‘National COVID Memorial Wall.’ Using a combination of participatory in person and digital ethnographies, this article demonstrates how inequalities exacerbated through the pandemic and heightening 'atmospheric walls' within British society have (mis)informed and are reflected in the physical and virtual construction of the self-proclaimed ‘National’ memorial wall appearing in London and online in spring 2021. Within a context defined by competitive victimhood and commemorative crowding which come to define ‘post’-pandemic society and make for fraught commemorative processes that ought to be approached by Governments’ with specific sensitivity, this paper argues that rather than opening up space within which to make victims of the pandemic visible and amplify marginalised voices and grief, the Wall maintains normalised raced, classed, and gendered patterns of (in)visibility and inequality by fore-fronting the vision and aspirations of a privileged few - reflecting rather than disrupting contemporary UK emotional politics and pandemic (mis)management.
    
    Author: Kandida Purnell (Richmond University)
  - The Affective Citizen-Subject of Neoliberalism: A view from the ‘South’
    
    The notion of a global ‘new turn’ towards authoritarian neoliberalism is built on two central assumptions: 1) that neoliberalism, in its advent and inception, had been a democratic project, or at least a neutral set of ideas and practices of government, and 2) that neoliberalism emanated from the ‘democratic’ global North and spread to the ‘authoritarian’ global South. This paper challenges this view and agrees with recent scholarship that neoliberalism is composed of plural rationalities and affects that are mobilised to create the appropriate conditions of choice conducive for a free market. This paper argues that these conditions of choice are inherently authoritarian and are a result of a global, rather than a North-centric project. While choice implies freedom, constructions of freedom under neoliberalism are intrinsically connected to disciplinary, coercive, and governmental instruments that pre-empt resistance to growing inequality, and provide the conditions for the proliferation of market technologies through which populations are governed. This account of neoliberalism is based on a theoretical and empirical engagement with forms of affective citizenship that inform contemporary technologies of subjectification in Egypt, which operate through displacing structural inequalities onto discourses of affect that limit the imagination and production of emancipatory futures.
    
    Author: Amira Abdelhamid
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  06 Panel / Everyday Ethics of the International: New imaginaries of relation, negotiation and care Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working Group
  
  Conveners: James Brassett (University of Warwick) , Dan Bulley (Oxford Brookes University)
  
  Chair: Darcy Leigh (University of Sussex)
  - ‘Not fair!’ British immigration, moral immunity and the dangers of an everyday ethics
    
    The turn to everyday, vernacular understandings of ethics has brought intriguing possibilities, but is there a danger in associating such ‘ethics’ with practices seen as only normatively ‘good’, or ‘caring’? Everyday understandings of responsibility and obligation can just as easily be careless, inattentive and exclusionary. This paper will examine British immigration politics and the recent turn to justify a hostile environment and illegal international practices (e.g. the Rwanda policy) through an ethics of ‘fairness’ – to the British population and migrants who ‘play by the rules’. Here, everyday language is used to justify racist, white supremacist practices that claim a moral immunity toward ‘undeserving’ foreigners. Fairness has become a way of claiming British society is untouched by obligations to international ‘others’, immune from any responsibility for their welfare. To challenge this via ‘universal’ liberal and democratic principles (human rights, humanitarianism and egalitarianism) is insufficient, as fairness emerges from the same discourse. This paper argues that we need a deeper understanding of this account of fairness in order to challenge the very possibility of moral immunity within liberalism. And we can only do so by using that everyday ethics, turning ‘fairness’ against itself and revealing the impossibility of moral immunity.
    
    Author: Dan Bulley (Oxford Brookes University)
  - Getting Muddy: Towards a Grounded Ethics of War
    
    Ethics of war scholarship today reflects a general concern that exposure to experience will contaminate, not benefit, our efforts to think ethically about war. Hence contemporary ethics of war scholarship has come to prize detachment and abstraction, modes of reasoning that ostensibly enable us to look beyond our own circumstances and to reflect on matters in an impartial, dispassionate and objective manner. Yet there is a problem with this way of proceeding. Namely, it excises the human element from the ethics of war. By bracketing lived experience from the task of thinking ethically about war, scholars risk losing contact with the bloody realities of violent conflict, and, consequently, speaking past the very object they are ostensibly addressing. If we wish to avoid this outcome, and to instead ensure that our ethical thinking connects in a meaningful way to the realities of combat, we must engage with, rather than insulate ourselves from, the lived experience of war. This paper examines how we might set about this task.
    
    Author: Cian O'Driscoll (Australian National University)
  - It’s complicated: The (international) political theory of Gareth Southgate
    
    Taking over in 2016, Southgate has presided over a changing England set up, whose brand has increasingly come into contact (conflict?) with the media spectacle of global politics. From Brexit/Trump, through #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and even international military conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine, the England manager has regularly spoken of his desire to learn, reflect and lead on the ethical responsibilities of football. This paper maps the critical possibilities and limits of Southgate’s everyday ethical praxis in terms of his stated commitments to mental health, anti-racist politics, the continued rise of LGBTQ agendas in football and the encouragement of humility within English national identity. Two literatures provide insight on the marketized limits of this blurring between sport and ethics; first, the critical literature on brand and the commodification of values like humanitarianism and environmentalism; and second, the conservative social theory associated with Christopher Lasch’s culture of narcissism among professionals. While sympathetic to the popular relay of such arguments, that Southgate is a virtue signalling brand manager, who ultimately provides an apology for business as usual, the paper draws out the aesthetic promise of renewal in James Graham’s play Dear England.
    
    Author: James Brassett (University of Warwick)
  - Hospitality for migrant pregnant women in the National Health Service: midwives’ moral dilemmas and the (im) possibility of being ethical
    
    This paper investigates hospitality for migrant pregnant women in the NHS by analysing the ethical dilemmas faced by midwives when providing maternity care for those who are not eligible for free health services. While providing healthcare for migrant pregnant women, midwives are committed to the betterment of pregnancy outcomes by offering them a cordial welcome into the NHS. However, the Charging Regulations have operated data-sharing policies between the NHS and the Home Office, which allow for immigration enforcement through the delivery of health services. As a consequence, while being hospitable to women under their care, midwives are also enabling their arrest, detention and deportation if they are not eligible for free maternity services and unable to cover their costs. By drawing on reports by maternity rights charity Maternity Action, this paper argues that hospitality offered by midwives to migrant women constitutes a practice of welcome which, at the same, enables the enactment of hostility towards foreign bodies marked by pregnancy. Informed by Jacques Derrida’s notion of hospitality, this paper illuminates how midwives find themselves within moral dilemmas which imply acting “unethically” in their attempts to be ethical towards the migrant pregnant women that they attend to.
    
    Author: Moises Vieira (University of Manchester)
- 164
  06 Panel / Feminist approaches to the everyday: Common people in a Complex World Room 103, Library
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: GIRWG Working group
  
  Chair: Juanita Elias (University of Warwick)
  - Senses of safety: the politics and effects of online violence
    
    Gendered and racialised oppression is exercised online but has not been taken seriously as an act of violence in instances of international politics. The effects of online racist and gender-based violence are often downplayed due to the emotional effects for the victims: abuse that happens online is not considered as ‘real’ as offline ‘physical’ violence. However, critically investigating online violence necessarily makes us interrogate how different sets of binaries, such as the online/offline and emotional/physical, work to enable certain forms of violence. Analysing online violence vis-a-vis offline violence may directly challenge our binary understanding of the ‘online/offline-divide’. Furthermore, the analysis of this binary and the ways in which the making of legitimate responses to violence are produced reveal how certain responses can be used to oppress and suppress victims’ experiences, based on how their emotional responses have been gendered and racialised – and to the following extent socially accepted or unaccepted. This paper uses interview data with experts and victims of online abuse, and ethnographic data from an incel forum, to show the effects of online violence and interrogate what is being done to combat this violence. Consequently, this paper explores the role of online violence in international politics as well as ways to tackle online violence.
    
    Author: Elsa Bengtsson Meuller (Goldsmiths, University of London)
  - Common Sense, Common People and the Dehumanisation of Minoritised Groups in the UK
    
    We are currently undergoing an extremely challenging moment in world politics and, in part responding to this, we have seen right-wing populist discourses and politics (re)emerge in countries including Italy, the UK, the USA, Brazil, and India. Studying the UK context, this paper interrogates the operation of ‘common sense’ governing narratives deployed in the 2023 party conference season, as both Labour and the Conservatives set out their stall for dealing with this uniquely complex political moment in the run-up to an anticipated general election. Focusing on the issues of climate change, migration, and the acceptance of trans people in society, the paper argues that the idea of ‘common sense’ was used to actively obfuscate, avoid or oversimplify political issues on which thoughtful decision-making would likely have produced a different conclusion. It further notes that these ‘common sense’ arguments have a disproportionately negative impact on already minoritised groups, and that they serve to reinforce historic ideas of the public sphere as being the domain of White, heterosexual and cis-gendered men. Overall, the paper makes an original contribution by connecting populist and depoliticisation debates with an approach that is informed by queer, feminist and decolonial insights
    
    Authors: Emma Foster (University of Birmingham)* , Nicola Smith (University of Birmingham) , Patrick Vernon (King's College London)
  - The implementation of the UN Women, Peace & Security Agenda in the occupied Palestinian territory: a tool for feminist peace?
    
    The United Nations Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda has become internationally recognised framework within the field of peace and conflict studies over the past 20 years. A lot of hope was invested in the WPS Agenda’s ability to address gendered exclusions, forms of discrimination, and violence that is generated by conflict; however, many argue that the agenda has not proved to be as transformational as was originally thought (Shepherd, 2016; Basu, 2016; Basu et al., 2020). The paper goes to argue how the WPS Agenda’s application and focus in mainly on internationally recognised conflicts, and specifically armed conflicts hinders its transformative potential. The experience of violence continues for women even after the signing of peace agreements and therefore the use of terms such as ‘war’ and ‘peace’ renders women’s experiences of conflict and post-conflict invisible (Ní Aoláin and Valji, 2019). Drawing on interview data with Palestinian civil society organisations and reflecting on feminist views of security, the paper examines how is "security" defined by WPS Agenda and what are the implications of this definition to the implementation process – can it be a tool for feminist peace? The findings demonstrate how the definitions and norms discussed and agreed internationally with regard to women’s security actually affect how the scope of the Agenda is understood at national and local level.
    
    Author: Laura Sulin (Coventry University)
  - The symbolic representation of gender in European External Affairs: the case of the HR/ VP
    
    This paper focuses on the role of the first two High Representatives (HR) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy in framing gender (Catherine Ashton and Federica Mogherini). We examine the positionality of the HR in integrating gender in a highly masculinised institution (the EEAS) in foreign policy, which has traditionally been seen as ‘gender free’. Of particular importance is the role of symbolic representation in defining Normative Power Europe (NPE) and the gendered symbols of NPE regarding the EU as a gender equality actor. Therefore, the fact that the first HRs were women, underpins the principle of the EU’s normative vision as a gender actor and thus the HR is seen as an agent standing for this principle. Hence the primary research question is: ‘Is the HR position, as embodied by Ashton and Mogherini, a symbolic representation of the EU’s norms as a gender actor?’. We focus on Ashton and Mogherini’s speeches, as these help to construct narratives around values and norms, articulated and verbalised by the symbols in legitimising the role of the EU as a gender champion. In this respect the paper provides insights into the EU’s identity as a gender actor, articulated through the role of the HR, which is given added significance as the position of HR is filled by female bodies which provides legitimacy for the gender norms and symbols being articulated.
    
    Authors: Laura Chappell (University of Surrey) , Roberta Guerrina (University of Bristol)*
  - “Home” as a Humanitarian Space: The domestic and international politics of private refugee hosting
    
    The humanitarian practice of private refugee hosting has long been a largely informal lifeline for forcibly displaced people. Outside, or running alongside, institutional responses from INGOs and governments, sanctuary has often been sought and found in private homes, places of worship and community centres. Within Europe since 2015, more institutionalised forms of private refugee hosting have been on the rise, not least with the establishment of the “Homes for Ukraine” scheme in the UK, widely hailed by politicians and charities as a “model” for the future of refugee response in the UK.
    Cutting across all of these forms of private refugee hosting is some kind of conception of the “home”, a largely under-theorised and often ignored concept in IR. However, as critical geographers and feminists have argued, “home” is a contentious material and imaginary space, imbued with power, vulnerability, intimacy, joy, safety and violence. These relations become particularly acute in the context of private refugee hosting.
    Drawing on primary and secondary data, this paper seeks to expand the conceptual understanding of what counts as humanitarian space through unpacking the multiple gendered and racialised affective and material relations of the “home” as a humanitarian space. The paper reconfigures “home” in private refugee hosting as a boundary making site where the domestic and international politics of inclusion and exclusion, generosity and violence, and solidarity and conflict play out.
    
    Author: Synne L. Dyvik (University of Sussex)
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  06 Panel / Frontiers, The Final Frontier: Narratives, Emotions, And Technologies Of Governance Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Conveners: Charlie Price (University of Warwick) , Marcus Nicolson (EURAC)
  
  Chair: Alexandria Innes (City, University of London)
  - Minority Media Border Narratives and Ontological Security
    
    Recent years have seen practices of re-bordering in the larger European Union, a process which stands in contrast to the larger aims of free movement of people. This paper explores media narratives on borders, and their subsequent relationship to the wider European Union project. Specifically, the paper draws upon data collected in the Horizon-2020 B-Shapes project, and its case study regions. It builds on a frame analysis of border narratives in a selection of minority language daily newspapers in five unique European borderzone contexts. Minorities can be conceptualised as a looking glass who provide a unique perspective on bordering processes (Tarvet & Klatt, 2021).
    
    Through the analysis, I seek to establish if media border narratives in these borderzone contexts change during times of crisis and, if so, in what ways? Conceptually, the analysis is stimulated by an understanding of borders as fluid and border politics as shaped by media narratives. A theoretical perspective of ontological security theory is used to shed light on the shifting functions and perceptions of borders, and what these changes may represent for the future of the European project.
    
    Author: Marcus Nicolson (EURAC)
  - The Inward Frontier: Extreme Right Production of Irregular Everyday Borders
    
    The deterritorialization of bordering practices, from the offshoring of migration regimes to the production of ‘hostile environments’, has been well documented. However, border studies – even when focussed on non-state actors - has largely accepted the centrality of state bordering practices. Simultaneously, research has focussed on irregular migration as a core object of contemporary state bordering practices, but less so on the individuals who (re)produce these practices in everyday formats. This paper challenges these approaches by inverting the logic of irregularity to focus on ‘citizen’ bordering practices, drawing on the notion of the frontier.
    
    A frontier is an expansion, a claim to teleological ownership. Whilst states can push a frontier and encourage their citizens to do so on their behalf, individuals can also push their own frontiers. Extreme right groups engage in anti-migrant and racialised violence and many take the state to be hostile to its practices; the extreme right pushes its own frontiers. These act against those individuals already within a state, irrespective of migration status. Irregular practices produce these frontiers; practices from non-state actors acting without state consent, designed to (re)claim territory for a certain people. Therefore, this paper argues for a reconceptualization of bordering practices that focusses on the irregular actions of ‘citizens’ through a logic of expanding the inward the frontier.
    
    Author: Charlie Price (University of Warwick)
  - The embodied frontiers of the “Game”: Migrant material geographies at the Italy-Slovenia border
    
    The border between Italy and Slovenia has undergone several reconfigurations throughout the past decades, up until the dismantlement of border control infrastructures following Slovenian accession to the Schengen area. Nevertheless, the forest and mountainous border areas located in North-East Italy have become an integral part of the informal migration corridor of the so-called Balkan Route. This paper interrogates migrants’ spatial tactics during the final part of their Balkan Route “Games” and their transition towards a new chapter in their migratory projects. Through a focus on the objects left behind by migrants crossing the border and walking towards the city of Trieste, I focus on migrants’ engagement in material and embodied frontier-making practices. The strategic discharging of objects, papers, and pieces of clothing in the forest constructs a material, shifting, and embodied frontier away from the administrative border. These tactics can be seen as part of the construction and negotiation of migrants’ vernacular knowledge of the territories that they cross, which are often mediated by smugglers, information and solidarity networks, and border authorities. Finally, I look at how these objects are co-opted and instrumentalised within anti-migration narratives that leave space for actions directed towards the re-establishment of physical and digital border infrastructures to pull the border back to its administrative location.
    
    Author: Noemi Bergesio (University of Bologna)
  - Seeing the border where you’d most expect it: crisis aesthetics and the racialised hypervisibility of the border at the border
    
    Since November 2018, the so-called English ‘Channel migrant crisis’ has been constructed as a spectacle of militarised maritime border policing, as the British state is continually seeking to performatively ‘take back control’ of its borders. The accompanying political and media discourses of a ‘crisis’ in the Channel have produced an assemblage of images and narratives, mobilising an imagination of the island nation closely associated with aesthetic registers of whiteness, sovereignty, and invasion.
    
    Albeit the escalation of domestic and international hostile environment strategies has led to a proliferation and dispersal of bordering practices, border spectacles such as the ‘Channel migrant crisis’ persist in depicting the border as a ‘line in the sand’ at the limits of the national body politic. Responding to Étienne Balibar’s seminal intervention of “invisible borders, situated everywhere and nowhere” – this paper posits the questions of why, how and to what effect the border is made (hyper)visible at the border. The paper argues that it is precisely due to the diffuse nature of bordering that states pursue a politics of ‘crisis aesthetics’ to make the border hypervisible, ultimately enabling the reproduction of a racialised border regime.
    
    Author: Silvester Schlebruegge (Univeristy of Warwick)
  - Digital Footprints: Identity, Technology and Migration Management in Italy
    
    Digital technologies have become increasingly ubiquitous gateways and necessary tools to access crucial aspects of socio-economical life, a process further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The management of human mobility is central area where this transformation is taking place.
    
    This paper explores how migrants understand, experience, and navigate these processes in contemporary European settings. Specifically, the study analyses data collected in multiple sites across Italy in 2023-2024 through interviews with migrants, NGO workers, legal advisors and other border stakeholders. It focuses on post-2015 Italy, whose position at Europe’s Southern border and its role as a key migratory route has made it a place of experimentation for border practices innovation, especially in the aftermath of the 2015 “refugee crisis”. In its complex assemblage of long-established paper-based processes and newer datafied practices, the digitalized bureaucracies of the 21st century frontier has ripple effects on migrants’ lives, their sense of identity and belonging, and processes of integration. Drawing from the fields of STS, data justice, and the biopolitics of biometrics, I seek to expand the theoretical conceptualizations of the migration-technology nexus beyond the existing focus on data protection and surveillance to include migrants’ embodied experiences of the new, dispersed and datafied frontier.
    
    Author: Alba Priewe (University of Warwick)
- 166
  
  06 Roundtable / In the shadow of bipolarity? The Space Age beyond the United States and China Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  As China and the United States continue to push ahead with mass satellite deployments, quickened launch schedules, and ambitious lunar programmes, are we entering a new bipolar era in space like that of the Soviet-U.S. Cold War? Or, have other actors done enough to warrant another label to describe the international order in space? Does India’s Lunar triumph in 2023, and possible first crewed spaceflight in late 2024, alter the calculations somewhat? How far will Russia’s decline go? Dozens of states and companies registered within them are active in space and are collectively shaping the governance of outer space. Or are they? Join in conversation with a collection of space researchers offering their own perspectives on such questions of power, governance, and rule-making in space. What role is there for non-state actors, civil society, and other communities in a busier and more globalised Space Age? What role is there for states, communities, and organisations that have no presence in space themselves yet will be directly impacted by the industrialisation of outer space? Whilst ‘space for all’ is a common mantra in space treaties, policies, and corporate messaging, this roundtable will grapple with the prospect of a Chinese and US led order in outer space as other powers and interests seek to make their mark in Earth orbit and beyond.
  
  Sponsor: Astropolitics Working Group
  
  Chair: Sarah Lieberman (Canterbury Christ Church University)
  
  Participants: Natalie Trevino (Open University) , Deden Alfathimy (University of Leicester) , Bleddyn Bowen (University of Leicester) , PJ Blount (Cardiff University) , Marissa Martin (King's College London, Defence Studies Department)
- 167
  06 Panel / Migrants and Refugees in Europe Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Convener: IPMRD Working group
  
  Chair: Gemma Bird (University of Liverpool)
  - Perceptions of Everyday (in)security of Nigerian Refugee Women in Newcastle, United Kingdom
    
    This study addresses a significant gap in our understanding of the daily experiences of refugee women, focusing on their subjective assessments of personal security in the pre-migration, transit and post-migration stages, as well as their agency and coping mechanisms in response to the (in)securities that shape their lives. The prevailing literature on forced migration and security has primarily embraced a state-centric and male-oriented perspective, which neglects the experiences of refugee women or incorporating them into more general depictions of refugee situations. To shed light on these issues, an ethnographic examination of the daily lives of Nigerian refugee women residing in Newcastle, United Kingdom was conducted from April 2021-December 2021. Findings uncovered a continuum of gendered (in)securities that persist throughout the various stages of their migration journeys. Five interrelated themes that contribute to this continuum include religion, social relations, finance, education, and the political and legal context. The narratives shared by these Nigerian refugee women reveal most importantly that these thematic elements are dual-pronged in nature, simultaneously conveying feelings of both security and insecurity that evolve across different spatial and temporal dimensions.
    
    Author: Boluwajo Kolawole
  - Understanding the Role of Race and Gender in an Increasingly Hostile Response towards Refugees: A UK Example
    
    The UK has had an increasingly hostile response to refugees and asylum seekers, removing most routes that would allow individuals to claim asylum safely. The UK’s approach can be seen as representative of an increasingly hostile response across Europe, in particular towards non-European refugees. Given the recent global crises that have continued to forcibly displace individuals, understanding responses to refugees and asylum seekers is key to global politics. Taking an intersectional approach, this paper analyses how racialized and gendered language can be traced in UK legislation and debates over a twenty-year period to consider how restrictive responses have been constructed and justified. This paper contributes to the growing body of research that recognises the importance of race and gender in refugee studies (Kromczyk et al, 2021; Tudor, 2018; Young, 2015; Achiume, 2019); however, little attention has been paid to the temporal aspect of language construction. Using discourse analysis through NVivo, this paper analyses how racialized and gendered language has changed over a twenty-year period in UK asylum law and debates. Taking a largely postcolonial feminist approach (Mohanty, 1988; Spivak, 2010), this paper considers how non-European refugees are constructed as different from their European counterparts, using the different responses to Afghan and Ukrainian refugees as an example. This paper argues that discussions of vulnerable women or ‘womenandchildren’ (Enloe, 2014) who cross the channel are constructed alongside the male ‘other’ who is identified as the source of threat for the women. The blame for channel crossings is placed on mostly male refugees or ‘smugglers’, rather than the circumstances which have forced asylum seekers and refugees into those journeys. In this way, restrictive responses that focus on stopping channel crossings are justified and accepted.
    
    Key words: Migration, Refugees, Asylum Seekers, Postcolonial, Feminist theory
    
    Author: Anca Carter-Timofte (University of Liverpool)
  - The everyday political economy of recent Vietnamese migrant labour to/in the UK
    
    Over the past 20 years, the number of Vietnamese people entering the UK ‘under the radar’ has been steadily increasing. The majority of these immigrants come from a few underdeveloped provinces of Central Vietnam and end up working in Vietnamese-run nail salons which have spread to every town and city, drawing the unwanted attention of police and other concerned about them being sites of exploitation and ‘modern slavery’. This paper is based on a pilot study conducted with Vietnamese research participants, both nail salon owners and workers with varying immigration status. It seeks to investigate the dynamics of debt, exploitation, solidarity and support within the recent Vietnamese migrant community, whilst contextualising these relationships within the wider challenges of the UK’s ‘hostile environment’ policies and present economic turbulences. Whilst affirming the agency of Vietnamese actors in carving out an economic niche for themselves, the benefits are unevenly distributed and opportunities for new migrants are diminishing as the nail salon market becomes saturated.
    
    Author: Seb Rumsby (University of Birmingham)
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  06 Panel / Norms, nations, and identity crises in global politics Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Laura Gelhaus (University of Warwick)
  - The Emergence, Cascade, And Internalization Of ‘Bad’ Norms: Xenophobia And Nativism As A Normative Process
    
    According to the traditional constructivist understandings, international norms emerge through a “life cycle” model, involving the emergence of the norm, a ‘cascade’ process whereby adoption of the norm becomes widespread, and internalization of the norm. This process, described by Finnemore and Sikkink (1998) has been used to describe the emergence of international norms surrounding ozone depletion and climate action (Hoffmann, 2005); abolition of the death penalty (Manners, 2002); gender equality (Krook and True, 2012); and regional integration (Acharya, 2004). However, these approaches collectively suggest that norms emerge and develop in a linear, socially progressive manner, bringing the world broadly from a series of ‘bad’ local practices, towards ‘good’ international practices. This article critiques this idea by examining the proliferation of xenophobic and nativist rhetoric in several countries in Europe and North America. Using Mudde’s definition of nativism, we argue that this ideology is beginning to coalesce into an emergent nativist ‘bad’ norm of hostility and antipathy towards immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities. Particularly, we pay attention to the recent global diffusion of an increasingly prominent brand of white nationalism, characterised by an apparent normalization of the “Great Replacement” theory in modern politics. Finally, we argue that nativism is a particularly “bad” norm because it represents the negative image of other, ostensibly “good norms,” such as in this case with the normative co-optation of “indigeneity” as a political identity associated with indigenous rights discourse.
    
    Authors: Michael Toomey (University of Glasgow) , Jeffrey Benvenuto (Gratz College)*
  - Constructing EU-rope: Gastroeuropeanism and European Identity
    
    The connections of food and national identity have gained significant traction in public, policy, and academic debates. Central to these discourses – and policies – are concepts of heritage and terroir. Importantly, these food narratives are highly political both in their construction and their impacts.
    In the EU, the appeal to culinary heritage and terroir is formalised through its extensive Geographical Indication system. While being based on the French appellation of origin system, the EU clearly reconstructs Geographical Indications in terms of European identity, in that they “represent the wealth and diversity of our European culinary heritage” (European Commission 2022). This indicates that beyond reinforcing processes of gastronationalism, the EU also promotes narratives of Gastroeuropeanism in which culinary discourse is tied to European identity constructions. Importantly, the EU encourages non-members to adopt its Geographical Indication legislation, including in the Eastern Neighbourhood.
    Thus, the paper investigates how these processes interact with national and European identity constructions in Georgia. In Georgia, Geographical Indications are narrated as a signifier of cultural similarity to EU-member states, especially France. At the same time, they are used to distinguish from a narrative Other, in this case the country’s Soviet history and present-day Russia.
    
    Author: Laura Gelhaus (University of Warwick)
  - Going Global: Trust Research and International Relations 10 Years On
    
    How has trust research advanced in international politics in the decade? Almost 10 years ago, we published an article that showed how this research agenda could be divided up into rationalist, psychological, and sociological approaches. Since that time, a new generation of trust scholars have developed these research strands and added new perspectives, from power to practice to relationality. This paper shows how each of these new research directions fit or fail to fit into our original typology, suggesting that while the typology primarily holds, there is now greater within variance that gives greater freedom to researchers interested in trust to choose a perspective that best meets the diverse global problems that they wish to study.
    
    Authors: Jan Ruzicka* , Vincent Keating (University of Southern Denmark)
  - Re-securing the imagined West through news language in times of internal crisis.
    
    ‘Western civilization’ is constituted through its representations of ‘non-Western’ Others. How, then, does the West secure its identity in times of internal crisis? Research has shown how news frames juxtapose the West to Others – such as Iran – to secure a coherent and superior sense of Self. However, opposition within the West threatens the normalised relations and representations that constitute members’ existence. An analysis of Western news framing of the 2018 U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord – as a moment of internal crisis – reveals how Western identity was secured in American and British newspapers. News coverage of this crisis took place in the context of broader tensions in the West, notably the aftermath of the Brexit referendum and then-U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidency. In this coverage, Trump was framed as a disruption to routine familial relations within the West. But in framing the U.S. president as a ‘rogue’ Other – the same way Iran was framed – British and American journalists helped resecure long-held ideas of Western identity linked to liberal values and global leadership. By maintaining this comforting and familiar image of Self, this news language re-naturalised Western civilization despite challenges to its very core.
    
    Author: Uma Muthia (Monash University)
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  06 Panel / Political economies of security and geopolitics Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: IPEG Working group
  
  Chair: Roberto Roccu (King's College London)
  - The national security in the international studies: Singapore’s aquaculture promotion
    
    The role of government is significant, across the Global North and South, in the development of local capacity to serve as a critical buffer during and beyond national crisis. During the Covid-19 pandemic, when most countries tightened restrictions to curb Covid-19 surges, a country’s reliance entirely on the imports of foods from overseas could be seriously perilous. This suggests that government’s strategies must target economic, social and environmental sustainability, well ahead of national and international crisis. The appropriate strategies can benefit both during the crisis and serve as a springboard for the country to make a swift recovery in the post-crisis time. Adopting a triple-helix framework, this paper analyzed the rationale, development and implementation of Singapore government’s strategies in its aquaculture sector toward food security. The preliminary results indicated that Singapore has overcome several key challenges and constraints in the aquaculture sector, including the scarcity of sea space, manpower availability and environmental conditions. The Singapore government has adopted strategies to develop local capacity and capability to enhance local food production through “Grow Local”. Singapore Food Agency has set a target to develop its capacity and capability of local agri-food industry to produce 30% of the Singapore’s nutritional needs by 2030 or “30x30”. In the aquaculture sector, Aquaculture Innovation Centre, established in 2019, adopted a consortium model to embrace key actors from local government agencies, universities and industry, and attract international experts to collaboratively develop the aquaculture sector in Singapore. It aimed to advance research and development, create co-innovation models and also offer training and development opportunities to all levels of industry in the aquaculture sector. The Singapore’s success story can become a good example for other countries of limited agricultural resources and fragile food security, to enhance their national capacity and capability.
    
    Author: Rungroge Kamondetdacha (Chulalongkorn University)
  - Matter-of-fact geopolitics? Unpacking the EU's geopolitical discourse in the light of geopolitical theory
    
    ‘Geopolitics’, as used in both EU discourse and scholarly works, is undefined, often trivial, or implies great power competition which is not forthcoming. To define the term, the article uses geopolitical theory as outlined by Stefano Guzzini, concluding that geopolitics is not particularly specific, instead it is made specific by a strategy that links policies to geography. However, the relationship between geopolitical theory and geopolitical strategy is full of contradictions that result in geopolitics’ ‘final indeterminacy’. This ‘final indeterminacy’ is productive, as it militarises policies by linking them to geography. With decision makers’ imagination being dominated by militarisation, the probability of conflict, even if it is unintended, increases. Empirically, the article contrasts the EU’s geopolitical strategy in development cooperation around the Global Gateway and Team Europe and its financial programming documents towards five Central Asian states with geopolitical theory. It demonstrates the existence of geopolitical confusion in relation to decreased EU budgeting, unrealistic expectations towards private financial investors, the EBRD, and the liberal investment framework. The article also shows the intention of geopoliticising additional policies. In Central Asia, politics remain influenced by a larger set of discourses, but to decrease tensions the EU must refrain from matter-of-fact geopolitics.
    
    Authors: Dora Piroska (Central European University)* , Balazs Szent-Ivanyi (Aston University)
  - War of Manoeuvre: The development of the FARC into an insurgent army
    
    This paper reassesses the development of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) from a small rural guerrilla group into a nationwide insurgent organisation with more than 20,000 combatants. Drawing from archival documents in Colombia and interviews with representatives of key social forces, including the protagonists of the guerrilla struggle, politicians, and retired military officers, the development of the FARC is examined through historical materialist theory. The paper shows how the growth of the FARC was fundamentally shaped by underlying social relations of production and changes to Colombia’s state formation and world order. Whereas the literature on armed conflict is dominated by analysis which isolates the drivers of conflict into variables or “problems” to contribute to large-N studies, such approaches overlook the historical specificity of state-making processes. By contrast, this paper will argue that the development of the FARC is situated within a deeper context of struggle involving various social-class forces. Far from simply a product of the FARC’s enormous wealth generated from the taxation of coca production, the group’s development must be understood as driven by changes occurring at the level of production, the state, and world order.
    
    Author: Oliver Dodd (University of Nottingham)
  - Redefining hegemony? The power of the European Union in its region
    
    Despite its geopolitical weakness the EU has consolidated impressive power over the geoeconomic, socioeconomic and legal/regulatory frameworks in its region. The depth, scope and durability of this power given it something of the dimensions of ‘hegemony’. It is formally consensual and it operates through political, legal, economic and ideational power that is structural in nature (shaping the rules and structures within which others operate). European integration is in its 8th decade, having adapting to various geopolitical changes, and crises such as COVID that have only led to the EU’s power increasing. This power extends beyond the EU’s border, countries compete to join it and the one state that has left (despite being a major power) is still a rule-taker in some respects. Yet in other respects the EU’s power contradicts common definitions of hegemony (from Neo-Gramscians or mainstream IR). Far from projecting stability it is often portrayed as fragile (even by supporters), it is widely contested and it is dependent on the US for military security. This paper combines Neo-Gramscian and Strange-ian IPE to explore the EU’s quasi-hegemonic power over its region. It will develop a new definition of hegemony and also contribute to our understanding of the relationship of geoeconomics to geopolitics in a changing international system.
    
    Author: Patrick Holden (University of Plymouth)
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  06 Panel / Re-thinking and resisting in Critical Military Studies Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  - Refusing to Support the Troops: Support, Disengagement, and Resistance on Online Discussion Forums
    
    The expectation that British people should support military personnel unconditionally reflects the dominant positioning of military violence as an inherent public good. By analysing UK online discussion forums, I explore public discourse through a focus on the ‘support the troops’ discourse. Building on Millar’s (2022) findings about how the discourse normalises and legitimates the violence of the British state, I move the focus beyond officials, such as the media and politicians, to illuminate how the public (whom such discourses ultimately target) engage with the discourse in their everyday lives. Principally, compared with official discourse, ‘support the troops’ is not as hegemonic and constitutive at the level of everyday discussion. I outline four main discourses: (1) ardent support for the troops; (2) diluted support, wherein support is conditional on the wars being fought; (3) disengagement, including through feelings of ambivalence or disinterest; and critically, (4) contestation or outright refusal to support the troops. These findings develop understanding about how war and violence manifest as normal and desirable to British people. Given that ‘support the troops’ is by no means uncontested, they also provide avenues for thinking constructively about how militarism can be resisted.
    
    Keywords: Militarism, troops, critical military studies, civil-military relations, discourse
    
    Author: Ellen Martin (University of Bristol)
  - The Coloniality of the British Army: A Decolonial Framework
    
    The British Army is an inherently imperial institution that defies decolonisation. Politically, the decolonisation of the British Army requires its undoing in the present and past through abolition and reparation. Claims about ‘decolonising the British Army’ (King 2021) rely on a “decolonising light” (Raghuram and Sondhi 2023) perspective and fail to reckon with the fact that the political decolonisation (as liberation) of certain institutions and practices is a logical impossibility. Inspired by Barkawi’s work to decolonise war studies (2016), this paper instead explores what a decolonial critique of the British Army can offer epistemically by proposing that its core concepts simultaneously rely on and obscure its continued coloniality. By seeking to decentre the concepts of the ‘soldier/civilian distinction’, the ‘political impartiality of the army’, ‘unit cohesion’ and ‘operational effectiveness’, it makes the more limited and modest claim that a decolonial critique of the British Army can enable alternative understandings of the coloniality (Maldonado-Torres 2007) embedded in the operation and structure of the army.
    
    Authors: Sara de Jong (University of York) , Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  - “I never considered myself as a soldier”: Rethinking Agency and Militarized Identities
    
    In this paper I argue that research on militarized identities has generally paid insufficient attention to the agency of the people who inhabit and negotiate them. I engage with theories of narrative agency to analyse life narrative interviews with 45 veterans that were conducted in South West England in 2017-18. Veterans’ life narratives reveal a high degree of agency, reflexive awareness, and conscious negotiation of their relationship with the military institution and its discourses. I argue that it is narrative agency which enables military personnel and veterans to pursue their own life projects in and through military ideas, behaviours and opportunities, whilst simultaneously situating themselves in critical relation to the institution. It is essential to understand and engage critically with these lived experiences and processes of negotiation to develop more nuanced accounts of militarized identities, and to rethink what we think we know about the military institution, and military power.
    
    Authors: Sarah Bulmer (University of Exeter) , David Jackson (University of Exeter)* , Caroline Micklewright (University of Exeter)*
  - Embracing discomfort: an emergent research agenda for reclaiming military-veteran research as careful, critical, creative encounters
    
    This paper advances a scholarship of discomfort as an innovative CMS approach. Building on research examining the Invictus Games and military/veteran artwork of post-9/11 controversial wars, it explores how discomfort – in relation to aesthetics and affect – can provide more textured representations of war and its experiences. Embracing aesthetics, affect and discomfort as methodologies, this approach retains an openness that accounts for messiness and unease and the politics they embody. While IS scholarship has already provided groundbreaking work on the methodological potency and possibility of affect and aesthetics, this emergent research agenda thinks through how discomfort can be a method. Not only are the sites of research (and) encounter discomforting (by forging connections with military/veteran athletes and artists in terms of what they conducted/carry/create), but how we do this work on/with/in those sites is also discomforting – in challenging us as researchers to reclaim military-veteran research as careful, critical, creative encounters; in (re)thinking IS/CMS/interdisciplinary scholarship through the creative undertaking/presentation of research; in how such creative work can re-present differently the ‘stuff’, re-place sanitised stories of the military, militarism and war; in how such work’s sense of incompleteness – despite traditional approaches’ insistence on easy, fixed conclusions – is a strength. Creative practice offers a discomforting incompleteness where multiple possibilities are reimagined. By examining the Invictus Games and military/veteran artwork through aesthetics, affect and discomfort, this approach offers destabilising conceptual, theoretical, and methodological insights for IR into war, security, and (non-)military/militarised bodies and experiences.
    
    Author: Laura Mills (University of St Andrews)
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  06 Roundtable / Review of International Studies - RIS @ 50. On the Horizon: The futures of IR Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  Review of International Studies - RIS @ 50. On the Horizon: The futures of IR
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Chair: Richard Devetak (University of Queensland)
  
  Participants: Matthew Paterson (University of Manchester) , Lisa Tilley (SOAS, University of London) , Emily Clifford (Royal Holloway, University of London) , Toni Erskine (Australian National University) , Rita Abrahamsen (Ottawa University) , Darshan Vigneswaran (University of Amsterdam)
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  06 Panel / The Intersectional Politics of Nuclear Weapons and Disarmament Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Global Nuclear Order Working Group
  
  Conveners: Rhys Crilley (University of Glasgow) , Megan Dee (University of Stirling)
  
  Chair: Megan Dee (University of Stirling)
  - Temporal Disparities in Intergenerational Justice: A Comparative Analysis of Nuclear Deterrence and Climate Change
    
    Nuclear weapons and climate change both imperil the well-being of future generations by externalizing potential harm long-term. This article conducts a comparative analysis of intergenerational justice concerns in these contexts. Its central argument underscores the distinct temporality of both challenges, identifying three crucial temporal disparities. First, the externalization of intergenerational harm follows different timelines. Climate-related risks intensify across successive generations, whereas the risk of nuclear deterrence failure accumulates long term, meaning that it becomes more likely over extended periods compared to shorter ones. Second, the sustainability of present generations' incentives to prioritize immediate benefits over future generations’ well-being varies. The appeal of fossil fuels is expected to wane over time in the context of climate change, whereas perceived benefits of nuclear deterrence are likely to endure. Third, the visual salience of intergenerational responsibility fluctuates over time. Past nuclear explosions served as stark reminders, while the gradual impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly evident. Studying how intergenerational injustice unfolds through climate change and continued reliance on nuclear deterrence over time may facilitate a review of both mitigation and rectification strategies. It also promotes critical reflection on how we conceive of future generations' suffering and subsequently conceptualize their moral standing.
    
    Author: Franziska Stärk (Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy, University of Hamburg)
  - What happens when gender-talk meets nukespeak? Analysing the effects of gendering nuclear weapons policy
    
    In recent years, policymakers, advocates and scholars alike are ‘gendering’ nuclear weapons policy. Yet, the nature and implications of this work in policy and scholarly terms is under-researched. Gendering nuclear policy comes at a time characterized by escalating nuclear risk, the entrenchment of power politics between nuclear armed states, and increased hostility towards gender expression, gender politics and scholarship in its name. Funding cuts across the nuclear policy community places the non-proliferation and disarmament complex in questionable health. In this context, what does it mean to gender nuclear weapons policy? This paper presents my current PhD project asking: ‘what happens when gender-talk meets nukespeak?’. Drawing upon the experience of members of the nuclear policy community, the project takes up the mantle of using the co-productive potential of discourse and affect to consider alternative political realities. The project goes beyond a purely discursive approach, taking affective responses to gendering as a site of political struggle, with implications for transformative feminist politics. In providing a critical examination of how actors locate gender and feminism in nuclear policymaking, this paper considers how gendering nuclear weapons policy relates to specific ideas about political possibility and nuclear weapons politics.
    
    Author: Laura Rose Brown (University of Leeds)
  - The Global Politics of Exterminism: E.P. Thompson and Nuclear Weapons in the Anthropocene
    
    E.P. Thompson was once described as ‘the single most influential British public intellectual of his generation,’ and his work, such as the 1963 book The Making of the English Working Class, is regarded as essential reading for historians and sociologists. Yet despite such accolades, Thompson has had little impact in the discipline of International Relations (IR). This is surprising given that Thompson’s oeuvre speaks directly to issues at the heart of the discipline; the formation and sustenance of national identities, the everyday politics of resistance, the intersection of economics, culture, and society through an account of history-from-below, or indeed, the perils and politics of nuclear weapons. In this paper I address IR’s oversight of Thompson’s work by drawing upon and reappraising his writings about ‘exterminism, ’and I argue that it can help us understand and address the interconnected crises of the Anthropocene. This article first introduces Thompson’s work, articulates and advances his understanding of ‘exterminism’, examines the significance of exterminism in the ‘Third Nuclear Age’, before finally reflecting on how exterminism may also account for issues outside of the realm of nuclear politics, highlighting how, for example, states fail to address the catastrophic threat of climate change.
    
    Author: Rhys Crilley (University of Glasgow)
  - A Third Wave of the Nuclear Disarmament Movement? Popular Campaigning and the Re-emergence of Nuclear Politics
    
    As nuclear relationships between the great powers have increased in salience with Russia's 'nuclear blackmail' over Ukraine and the strengthening rivalry between the USA and China, this paper examines the potential for popular campaigns to shape a new global nuclear politics in the light of the historical experiences of antinuclear movements in the last 70 years. Based on a study of The Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons in Britain to be published in 2024, this paper explores the relationships between national and international campaigning; claims for the success and failure of the two previous mass movement phases (late 1950s/early 1960s and early 1980s); and the significance of goal proliferation - the extent to which antinuclear campaigns have merged into and even become submerged in wider social movements, including antiwar movements from Vietnam to Iraq and Gaza. The paper will discuss the relationships between the criteria of concrete policy impacts and wider educational, cultural and political effects in evaluating 'single-issue' social movements.
    
    Author: Martin Shaw (Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals)
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  06 Panel / The foreign policy and international relations of authoritarian middle-powers Soprano, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: University of Birmingham, Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR)
  
  Conveners: Marie-Eve Desrosiers (University of Ottawa) , Nic Cheeseman (University of Birmingham)
  
  Chair: Nic Cheeseman (University of Birmingham)
  - Reshaping engagement: How autocratising middle powers redefine the patterns of interactions with civil society organisations?
    
    The global rise of autocracy poses a significant threat to democratic values, challenging not only established democracies but also states on the path to authoritarianism. In this paper, I focus on middle powers – actors promoting democracy, human rights, and openness in international organisations – now experiencing democratic declines. While extensive literature explores the challenges and domestic shifts associated with rising authoritarianism, less attention is paid to how middle powers facing autocratisation alter their relationships with civil society organisations (CSOs). Addressing this gap, I examine the politically relevant and theoretically under-theorised behaviour of middle powers experiencing democratic regressions by asking how middle powers undergoing democratic decline alter their relationships with CSOs in international and regional organisations. Through a case study of Southeast Asian middle powers, I suggest that institutional design and democratic homogeneity may hinder the co-optation of civil society. However, noticeable shifts towards informality grant state actors greater control over CSOs despite the formal structures in place.
    
    Author: Anna Grzywacz (Polish Academy of Sciences)
  - The rise of authoritarian middle powers and what it means for world
    
    Amidst the current global wave of autocratization, two countries – China and Russia – have dominated academic and media discourse as the main threats to the liberal international order. There is a growing recognition, however, that a much wider set of states shape current global autocratization. This includes a number of ‘middle powers’, a concept popular following the end of the Cold War, that is once again gaining prominence. Significantly, this category includes states that are clearly authoritarian, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey (Aydin-Düzgit 2023; Burton 2021; Han 2022), and countries that have moved away from democracy, such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Mexico (Aydin 2021; Grzywacz and Gawrycki 2021). The undemocratic nature of these countries means that we are likely to require a new framework to understand their foreign policy and its impacts. Traditional middle power theory was predominantly developed to explain the strategies of countries such as Canada and Norway, and largely argued that such states positioned themselves as liberal internationalists and defenders of multilateralism and liberal-democratic values to gain domestic and international legitimacy and influence abroad (Kutlay and Onis 2021). This literature is unlikely to be able to fully account for the strategies of authoritarian middle powers, not least because it was premised on the idea that a state’s foreign policy and international behaviour are fundamentally shaped by its size and domestic characteristics. Based on a review of 253 academic sources and grey literature, we propose a new conceptual framework through which to understand authoritarian middle powers and their impact on global trends. This discussion is organized into three broad themes, namely: alliances and networks; diplomacy and aid; and ideology and branding. Comparing democratic and authoritarian middle powers across these three areas reveals that the latter are distinctive in the extent to which they are driven by a logic of regime survival. This leads states to: engage in multilateralism, but in order to subvert democratic standards; form a wide range of networks and relations, but principally to hedge rather than contribute to the production of public goods; and, project hard and soft power, to exert greater influence over their region. In this way, the article sheds light on how this increasingly influential set of states act and interact globally, and once again demonstrate the complex “entanglement” between domestic and international politics (Putnam 1988). It ends by exploring what the ascendance of authoritarian middle powers is likely to mean in terms of impacts on world politics, in a context where the trend towards authoritarianism is likely to embolden them to pursue non-democratic strategies abroad.
    
    Authors: Nic Cheeseman (University of Birmingham) , Marie-Eve Desrosiers (University of Ottawa)
  - To what shall I compare thee? Challenges of conceptualising Turkish foreign policy and what this reveals on middle powers in an era of renewed geopolitical competition
    
    Resisting the temptation of analysing Turkish foreign policy through President Erdogan’s rule or binary questions of ‘East vs West’ ‘Islamism vs Secularism’, this paper makes the case for a multi layered analysis that embraces global and regional developments, as well as domestic political and structural factors that shape Turkish foreign policy. It argues that tensions between highly rational policies, as explained by traditional IR theories such as realism, and highly personalised or politicised state managed that cause a sudden change or crisis hold the key to decoding how middle or regional powers develop and execute foreign policy. The case of Turkey, specifically, shows a complex dynamic between global and regional factors that force a reaction or stand on the part of Turkish authorities, and domestic political and structural factors as well as key political figures shaping both the tone and ambitions and outcomes of foreign policy. The implications of these tensions on regional and international order and multilateral organisations become clear in how the country approaches to Syria, the accession of Sweden into NATO, bilateral tensions between US and Turkey, as well as in the complexity of Turkish-Russian relations. Neither language of ‘alliances’ nor ‘transactional foreign policy’ capture the underlying desire by Ankara to maintain ‘strategic independence’ and be taken seriously as an important player within a global context of renewed geopolitical competition.
    
    Author: Ziya Meral (SOAS)
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  06 Roundtable / Palestine: The label of ‘terrorism’ and the permissibility of violence Sonata, Hyatt
  
  The Critical Studies on Terrorism sub-discipline was created 20 years ago to interrogate the concept of terrorism and the violence that is perpetrated to counter it. Following the latest episode Israeli state violence in Gaza, we want to re-open this conversation and reflect on how the label of terrorism has been used to justify war crimes and ethnic cleansing. This enquiry is urgent because the discourse on terrorism has not only made permissible unparalleled state oppression but is also being used to curtail the expression of solidarity everywhere, with Western governments maligning Palestine solidarity efforts and imposing restrictions on free speech and the right to protest.
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Chair: Amna Kaleem (University of Sheffield)
  
  Participants: Sophie Haspeslagh (King's College London) , Carl Gibson (University of Nottingham) , Nicola Pratt (University of Warwick) , Jasmine Gani (University of St Andrews) , Rabea Khan (Liverpool John Moores University)
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  06 Roundtable / Towards an IPE of Raced Finance: a conversation Exec 9, ICC
  
  The roundtable aims to interrogate and advance scholarship on finance as the lifeblood of racial capitalism. The participants will provide theoretical, methodological, and empirical re-conceptions of the relationship between finance and race, re-orienting the field of International Political Economy (IPE) to cutting edge and new directions which address the most pressing issues relevant to the discipline today. The roundtable will debate the extent to which racial capitalism is inseparable from financial power, and how a focus on the latter can help us better understand the ways in which race and capital are entangled and shape each other. Reciprocally, studying race/capital can also yield fresh insight in the IPE of finance.
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Chair: Ilias Alami (Cambridge University)
  
  Participants: Nick Bernards (Warwick University) , Vincent Guermond (Queen Mary University of London) , Ali Bhagat (Simon Fraser University) , Lisa Tilley (SOAS, University of London)
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  06 Panel / Whose Counter-terrorism? Exec 10, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Conveners: Aoife McCullough (London School of Economics) , Adam Sandor (University of Bayreuth)
  
  Chair: Adam Sandor (University of Bayreuth)
  
  Discussant: Yvan Guichaoua (University of Kent))
  - Grassroots geopolitical imaginaries in the Sahel: Civil society security narratives in Burkina Faso and Niger
    
    Recent shifts in the international security partnerships of several Sahelian countries have become a matter of fierce public debate. The article analyzes the link between geopolitical imaginaries, military-led governments, and civil society formations in Burkina Faso and Niger. On the one hand, it aims to explore how civil society actors in Burkina Faso and Niger co-construct different geopolitical imaginaries about security and foreign policy in the Sahel, while on the other, it examines how the governments respond to these actors that they identify as either supporters or critics. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the article argues that civil society actors in both countries play a pivotal role in shaping these imaginaries. In Burkina Faso, military transitional authorities galvanize (and are galvanized by) Pan-Africanist-inspired civil society organizations that support martial discourses of radical sovereignty and the attainment of modern territorial sovereign control beyond the interference of neocolonial forces. In Niger, by contrast, depending on the regime in power, civil society actors have had to navigate government repression for their sovereigntist advocacy stances, moving then toward ardent support of their post-coup government's increasingly anti-Western actor involvement over the country's security affairs. The article shows that civil society actors are neither challengers of authoritarian governmental practice, nor simple pawns in support of military-led governments, but instead act as geopolitical practitioners that work to consolidate a reorientation of their governments' foreign policy strategies to challenge what they view as continued neocolonial dominance of the contemporary world order and their states' marginalization therein.
    
    Author: Adam Sandor (University of Bayreuth)
  - Counterterrorism, conspiracy theories and state legitimacy in Niger
    
    Before the coup in Niger on 26th July 2023, there was a widely believed conspiracy theory. The main elements of this theory were that the French military in Niger were not fighting terrorist groups but were supporting them and that France controlled the Nigerien government. In this paper, I show that this conspiracy theory did not represent paranoid thinking by fringe groups, nor were these beliefs a result of deficient cognitive or analytical abilities. Rather the conspiracy theory offered an alternative narrative that explained puzzling, contradictory and morally problematic phenomenon, connected with foreign military presence. I argue that belief in the conspiracy theory eroded the legitimacy of parts of the state in different ways. In areas that were directly affected by terrorist attacks, belief in the conspiracy theory was associated with a breakdown in cooperation between civilians and local authorities. Outside of areas directly affected by terrorist attacks, the conspiracy theory challenged the state’s ability to construct a metanarrative about the presence of foreign militaries. But more insidiously, foreign military presence accentuated the inequality between Nigeriens and Westerners highlighting the lesser value of black bodies compared with white bodies in the Global War on Terror. The conspiracy theory did not elucidate the ways in which structural inequalities work to produce a counterterrorism strategy that protects Europeans and Americans while failing to offer the same protection to Nigeriens. However the conspiracy theory articulated unacceptable relations of power between foreigners (and in particular French) and Nigeriens. By accepting increasing foreign military presence, the Nigerien government led by President Bazoum, appeared to support these power arrangements. In doing so, the system of power (i.e. the government and specific parts of the state) that facilitated and enforced alignment with Western militaries lost its moral authority and its perceived right to rule.
    
    Author: Aoife McCullough (London School of Economics)
  - Leading from behind? Transforming US counterinsurgency into Iraqi counterterrorism during operation "New Dawn" in Iraq (2009-2011)
    
    This presentation deals with the transnational circulation of counterterrorism in the wake of counter-terrorist interventions, during the phase of withdrawal of foreign forces. The point of departure is a field-research carried out in Iraq in the context of the transfer of security operations from US to Iraqi security forces in 2010. The US were departing, leaving behind a catastrophic operation started in the name of counterterrorism, purportedly thanks to their embrace of a less ‘enemy-centric’ and more ‘population-centric counter-insurgency’. Behind the scenes, the main battle was now the one for the reconstitution of Iraqi security forces. In this context the focus of US forces was however primarily on exporting the precise ‘enemy centric counter-terrorist’ approach that had brought Iraq to the brink of catastrophe in 2006. How can this paradox be explained? The question is important because it highlights a broader trend of appropriation of ‘population-centric counter-insurgency’ in the form of ‘enemy centric counter-terrorism’ during US ‘advise and assist’ missions, from Afghanistan to Iraq. Being arbitrary policy-labels, the question is here not whether ‘counter-terrorism’ and ‘counterinsurgency’ are in essence similar or radically different. Rather it is why certain constellations of practices castigated as ‘narrow counterterrorism’ at one moment tend to be reproduced in the context of ‘advise and assist’ missions that claim to learn from past errors. As such, his presentation also provides clues as to the Iraqi aggressive approach that would trigger the advent of ISIS in 2013 and 2014. Focusing on the interaction between ‘trainers’ and ‘trainees’, the explanation that I here suggest focuses on the logics of non-discursive practices and its potential disconnection from 'what is said' in doctrinal discourse.
    
    Author: Christian Olsson (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
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  06 Panel / Youth, Violence and Conflict transformation: Exploring mobilization into violence and the role of youth in peacebuilding Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: Jessica Northey (Coventry University)
  
  Chair: Bahar Baser (Durham University)
  - A 'Youthed' Peace? A Framework for Understanding Youth Participation in Colombian Peacebuilding
    
    Following the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), there was a significant change in Colombia’s peacebuilding landscape. This new era enabled Colombian youth to forge new pathways, roles and spaces for participation. This paper explores the way youth participation in peacebuilding has developed in the post-2016 era. Drawing on interviews carried out in Colombia in 2019 and 2022, it presents an innovative framework for understanding the repertoire of peacebuilding actions undertaken by Colombian youth in this period. We propose to repurpose and expand Gready and Robin’s (2017) typology of civil society interactions with transitional justice mechanisms, to better understand the full range of ways that youth in Colombia seek to engage and influence efforts to build peace, directly, indirectly and within themselves. In doing so we ask to what extent this represents a ‘youthed’ approach to building peace, and whether the framework has wider resonance with other groups engaged in building peace in Colombia, and elsewhere.
    
    Authors: Egoitz Gago Anton (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) , Elly Harrowell (Coventry University) , Justina Pinkeviciute (Coventry University)
  - Looking back to move forward: former underage child soldiers from the 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina
    
    It is well known that children and young people are drawn into conflict as fighters and soldiers and face unique challenges that shape their lives long after the war has ended. This paper focuses on the youth-to-adult transition of former child soldiers from the 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. We explore the influence of the legacy of Yugoslav militarism and the ‘Spirit of the Partisan Fighter’ in the motivations of young people to join the fighting, which contrasts with the motivations of child soldiers in more recent conflicts. Drawing on surveys, life history interviews, and collaging, we explore the legacy of the ‘Spirit of the Partisan Fighter’, the forced maturity of these former underage fighters in the transition from youth to adult and its impact on this group in the post-conflict era.
    
    Authors: Michaelina Jakala (Coventry University)* , Marija Šarić (Wings of Hope)* , Sinisa Sajevic (Wings of Hope)
  - Experiences of displacement and return: The journeys of conflict-affected youth and families across Iraq and Syria
    
    The humanitarian situation is dire for conflict-displaced people in camps and leaving camps across Northern Iraq and Syria. Our study focusses on women and families at different stages of the return journey; those still in camps, transitioning to places of return, or relocating to new places.
    The international community committed to 25,000 people returning over 3 years, even as UNOCHA and other agencies are withdrawing from the region. Donor de-prioritisation and drawdown is hampering ongoing relief and recovery efforts, despite the persistent humanitarian crisis. Protection mechanisms are weak, and women and their families suffer compounded vulnerabilities around security, education, healthcare and basic services such as drinkable water. Many people have left camps. However, with nowhere to go, some are stuck living next to the camp as their sole contacts and sources of information are there. Such informal settlements are likely to become shantytowns.
    Working with local researchers, we examine the priorities and needs of people at various stages of displacement. What protection networks exist for women and children, and what gaps are here highlighted? We investigate the implications for children of displacement, camp life, then the chaos of return, and ask whether these traumas might increase the risks for future radicalisation and violence?
    
    Authors: Laura Payne (Coventry University) , Chas Morrison (Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University)
  - The Intergenerational Dimensions of Peace: Peace clubs and the preservation of cultural knowledge amongst displaced youth in the Glavda community in Abuja
    
    How do you foster healing and belonging amongst displaced youth who have little or no memory of where they come from? Often overlooked are the ways that inter-generational symbiosis within communities has been severed, which in itself can compound social and cultural isolation, particularly in displaced communities. In this presentation we explore the ways that the knowledge systems carried by elders from Nigeria’s rural Glavda community can be conveyed to younger generations, in a context of displacement. The Glavda community are originally from Borno State in Northeast Nigeria, and were displaced by Boko Haram between 2010 and 2013. Not only are displaced Glavda facing the challenges of finding purpose and belonging in new locations, they are also alienated from their own practices of cultural preservation, creating a double-edged experience of alienation – both within their new environments, and from their old practices. This alienation is even greater amongst Glavda youth and children, most of whom were either born in displacement camps, or have very little memory of their home.
    
    Author: Stephen McLoughlin (Coventry University)
  - Youth politics, citizenship and inclusion: The Algerian hirak and everyday activism
    
    The Algerian hirak social movement mobilised millions of Algerian citizens in wide scale marches and different forms of protests over fifty-four weeks from 2019 to 2020. Collectively, the movement, in its different manifestations, transformed political life and the aspirations of young people in the country. What happens after the protest movement? How do youth now see the future of the country? How are they invested in societal transformation in a context which has previously been difficult for civil society to operate in? Exploring youth activisms on the ground in Algeria drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with civil society youth leaders, we try to understand what motivates youth, what prevents them from acting, and what achievements they have made over the last five years. In the context of significant political upheavals, the global pandemic and fluctuating hydrocarbon revenues impacting state capacity to act, young people have increasingly taken on new roles in civil society and in civic activism. Still rejecting politics, despite government attempts to mobilise them through quotas and incentives, young Algerians are using the private sector, start-ups and associations to transform their communities and their own trajectories. We explore what this activism means in terms of citizenship, opportunity and belonging for Algerian youth, as well as for peace and intergenerational relations in the wider context.
    
    Authors: Adel Chiheb (Jijel University)* , Jessica Northey (Coventry University)
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  06 Conference event / War Studies Working Group Keynote by Ed Hall: Finding Rainbows in the UK’s Armed Forces: from sacking lesbians and gays to promoting LGBT soldiers, a journey in diversity and inclusion SPONSORED BY POLITY. Followed by film screening at 3pm Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  Speaker: Chair: James Patton Rogers
- 14:45
  
  15 minute transition
- 14:45
  
  Refreshment break Hyatt Hotel
  
  Hyatt Hotel
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  06 Roundtable / Book Talk: The End of Peacekeeping Gender, Race, and the Martial Politics of Intervention Concerto, Hyatt
  
  This roundtable is focussed around Marsha Henry's new book, The End of Peacekeeping, and invites participants to speak to the interdisciplinary, intersectional and international interventions that the book brings forward. What do participants think about the idea of peacekeeping as an epistemic project? Does peacekeeping rhetoric reinforce binary and problematic notions of sex and gender? How do the martial foundations of peacekeeping mask the colonial desires that continue to persist in humanitarian environments?
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Chair: Maria Adriana Deiana (Queen’s University Belfast)
  
  Participants: Roger Mac Ginty (Durham University) , Aiko Holvikivi (LSE) , Toni Haastrup (University of Manchester) , Marsha Henry (Queen's University, Belfast)
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  06 Roundtable / Cultural heritage in peace and conflict – from theory to practice Exec 6, ICC
  
  Heritage is often at risk and under attack, either directly or indirectly, when violence and conflict escalate. Although targeting cultural heritage sites during conflict is not a new development, the role of cultural heritage in times of peace and conflict has gained international attention in the past few years. Attacks on heritage during violent conflict in Syria, Ukraine and Iraq, as well as contestation around monuments in the US and UK have gained widespread attention. There has also been an increasing amount of funding targeted for the protection of heritage sites in conflict areas. Discussions on the role of cultural heritage practices and sites in provoking conflict, but also as opportunities for building peace have gained prominence (Harrowell & Sellick, 2023). However, much of the focus has been placed on tangible cultural heritage, whereas lesser attention, both in policy and academia, has been on the impact of conflict and war on intangible cultural heritage.
  This roundtable gathers together both academics and practitioners to discuss the role of intangible and tangible cultural heritage in conflict, from theory to practice. Drawing on number of different case studies, the participants will focus on questions such as how heritage interventions intersect with conflict dynamics and power relations in conflict-affected contexts. What impact this has on building peaceful communities? What is role of both intangible and tangible cultural heritage in conflict? What are the implications for organisations seeking to protect and restore conflict-affected heritage?
  
  Convenors:
  Laura Sulin, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations,
  Elly Harrowell, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations
  Aurélie Broeckerhoff, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations
  Marwan Darweish, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations
  Mahmoud Soliman, Visiting Fellow, Centre for Trust, Peace & Social Relations
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Chair: Marwan Darweish (Center for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University)
  
  Participants: Mahmoud Soliman (Coventry University) , Elly Harrowell (Coventry University) , Stephanie Grant (British Council) , Stanley Jachike Onyemechalu (University of Cambridge)
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  06 Roundtable / Egyptian Stories: Narrating Spatial Memories in Evanescent Spaces of Belonging Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  In Arabic Cairo- Al Qahira- officially translated as the Vanquisher (or the Conquerer), standing strong against all odds, vanquishing its enemies across time and space. However, the Arabic word hold another meaning: the Oppressive one. The dichotomy of strength, driven by the city’s people, history and culture, and oppressiveness embedded in its very structure, is the work of the panelists. In a multidisciplinary approach, the panelists- six Cairenes- excavate the City’s memoires locked in its evanescent neighborhoods, and the muted voices of its resilient inhabitants. Through a critical political examination of the City; its material existence, as well as its erasure, its ever-changing tempos, the violence embedded in it, and the violence that expands with it, and resistance that raises and falls within it. While telling a story(ies), when things were said/ and things have been hidden and muted, the narrators question the linearity of time. While narrating spaces as Cairenes, the narrators question their belonging to the City, as the City expands at the cost of their memories and spaces of liberation.
  
  Sponsor: Africa and International Studies Working Group
  
  Chair: Sara Abdel Ghany (University of Warwick)
  
  Participants: Mohamed El-Shewy (Newcastle University) , Sara Abdel Ghany (University of Warwick) , Reem Abu Zaid (University of Warwick) , Aya Nassar (University of Warwick)
- 182
  06 Panel / European National Security Strategies: Dynamics of Change Exec 5, ICC
  
  Sponsor: European Security Working Group
  
  Convener: ESWG Working group
  
  Chair: Andrew Cottey (University College Cork)
  - A history of threats: mapping changing security issues and their conceptualisation in national security documents globally
    
    Since 1998, the number of countries publishing a public national security or defence document has risen from 1 to 125. This paper is part of a wider project to analyse a comprehensive corpus of these documents using an innovative methodology based on natural language processing technologies. This paper will (1) map the changing issues identified by countries in their top-level public security documents over the past 25 years, and (2) analyses the varied and changing conceptualisation of these issues as threats, risks, priorities, etc.
    
    Authors: Andrew Neal (University of Edinburgh) , Roy Gardner (University of Edinburgh)
  - Outermost Regions as geostrategic assets of the European Union: the Azorean case
    
    Over the last few decades, regions have been increasing their competences and powers within the framework of the European Union, albeit linked to their respective States. Although recognised in the Single European Act (1987), in the Treaties of Maastricht (1992), and Amsterdam (1997), it was through the Treaty of Lisbon (2007) that their participation at European level grew in prominence. Today, the ‘ultraperiphery statute’ is legally enshrined in the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. Academic research on the Outermost Regions’ strategic position in EU foreign policy has grown over the years, although this issue continues to be overlooked in literature. The Outermost Regions play a key role in EU geostrategic missions and policies. Through a qualitative analysis, this article assesses the evolution of this understanding, through European and regional strategies and instruments, focusing on the Azores, whose geostrategic relevance has been exploited for centuries, including by great powers. Located in the middle of the North Atlantic, this Portuguese Autonomous Region contributes to the EU relevance in several areas: strategic location, environment and biodiversity, and space. It is concluded that the Outermost Regions play a growing geostrategic importance in several areas, including the Azores.
    
    Author: Nuno Santos Lopes (Nova University of Lisbon; University of the Azores)
  - Eastern European Divergence: Exploring the Czech Republic and Hungary's Contrasting Stances on Ukraine Support
    
    According to data from the Ukraine Support Track compiled by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, more than 85% of the support for Ukraine has originated from European Union member states and Anglo-Saxon countries. This article aims to investigate the Eastern European region, which consists mostly of former Soviet republics or states and is geographically closer to Ukraine and Russia. These countries may have distinct security concerns compared to their Western European counterparts.
    
    The data indicates that Eastern European countries, such as the Czech Republic, which are members of both the EU and NATO, have demonstrated a more committed approach to supporting Ukraine when compared to Western European countries. The Czech Republic has fulfilled a significant portion of its commitments to Ukraine and has contributed nearly 60% of its own weapon stock.
    
    However, the situation differs in countries like Hungary, which shares an even closer proximity to Ukraine than the Czech Republic. Despite Hungary's participation in sanctions imposed by the European Union, it has not displayed a strong inclination to support Ukraine. This article seeks to delve into the underlying reasons for these varying decisions and explore the implications of this contrast between these two Eastern European nations.
    
    Authors: Jim An Chin Cheng (IPS, NSYSU) , Jacky Wei-ming Chien*
  - There and Back Again: How UK-EU De-Engagement after Brexit shaped Re-Engagement after Ukraine
    
    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 disrupted the status quo of the European security order and brought about a re-engagement in the UK-EU security relationship. However, this cooperation remains informal and ad hoc, which contradicts theoretical expectations for security cooperation in the face of an external threat. Applying the theoretical approaches of Historical Institutionalism and drawing from semi-structured interviews conducted with UK and EU officials regarding post-Brexit security cooperation in 2017-23, our article explains why shock as severe as the Russian invasion was not sufficient to bring about the wholesale renewal of UK-EU cooperation. Our analysis demonstrates that the shock of war interacted with path-dependent dynamics stemming from the Brexit process, shaping the institutional outcomes and profoundly limiting cooperation. Thus, UK-EU security re-engagement has been a notably phased process, with cooperation stepping up discernibly as several boundary conditions have been met, including the agreement of the Windsor Framework.
    
    Authors: Monika Sus (Hertie School)* , Benjamin Martill (University of Edinburgh)
  - Evolution of Natural Gas Conflicts in Europe: A Network Analysis of Energy Security
    
    The strategic value of natural gas also increases the likelihood of conflict along the value chain. This presents two fascinating puzzles for political scientists: What are the key political and economic sources of natural gas conflicts? How do political debates and security concerns around natural gas evolve over time? In a refreshing theoretical divergence from the traditional energy security literature, this paper analyzes natural gas trade as a complex production network. It uses a cutting-edge new method called Discourse Network Analysis (DNA) to analyze how political and economic actors frame natural gas security. By tracing how certain political frames around natural gas appear and diffuse, this method identifies key points of stability and disruption within the network and reveals patterns of cooperation and conflict in natural gas trade over the last two decades. Overall, the key argument of the paper is that natural gas transit security in Europe is affected by institutional discontinuity across political territories, power asymmetries between producers, transit states and consumers, and competition for rents among state and non-state actors. These three key variables explain why natural gas routes have been constantly reimagined in the last two decades. This original and innovative work will transform the academic conversation on natural gas trade by bringing transit networks and their impact on security to the forefront.
    
    Authors: Tim Henrichsen , Kerem Öge (University of Warwick)
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  06 Panel / Feminist Security Studies: Gendering, Strategy, Tactics Sonata, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: GIRWG Working group
  
  Chair: Laura Sjoberg (Royal Holloway, University of London)
  
  Discussant: Laura Sjoberg (Royal Holloway, University of London)
  - The Feminist Exoneration of Drone Violence
    
    Because of their supposed disruption and transgression of established configurations of military violence and gender, US and UK military drone programmes have come to be theorised as sources of critical feminist hope and alternative within international relations scholarship. In this article we characterise this as a misplaced wishful futurology, in which fantasies of radical alternative military futures obfuscate and erase the realities of liberal military violence, invest in the renewal of liberal war, and displace deeper feminist reckonings with it. Central to existing analysis is an empirical and normative investment in the apparently transgressive figure of the US or UK drone pilot conjoined with the drone itself which is understood to be a bearer of inherent technological emancipatory potential. We argue that feminist analysis of military drone programmes should recentre violence and a clearer attention to the international, both in conceptual and empirical terms. Doing so would, we suggest, necessarily entail an ethically important empirical adjustment away from the figure of the drone pilot as the referent site of globally distributed drone violence and trauma, oblige us to treat claims concerning liberal military progress and refinement with deliberate caution, and open space to question feminist stakes and investment in war.
    
    Authors: Victoria Basham (Cardiff University) , Jamie Johnson (University of Leicester) , Joanna Tidy (University of Sheffield)
  - Drones, Precision and Gender: Exploring Gender Dynamics in NATO Drone Strike Regulations
    
    Armed drones have increasingly become a weapon of choice of both democratic and non-democratic states alike. As a result, their use is a much-discussed topic in academia and beyond. The relevance of gender in the context of drone strikes, however, remains largely unexplored. This is highly problematic as feminist research has shown how gender produces the distinction between combatants and civilians, is used as a ‘shortcut’ to assigning combatant status and thus has decisive implications for the protection of civilians. Therefore, this paper investigates how gender is implicitly and explicitly structuring the framework regulating the targeting process of NATO drone strikes by conducting a feminist critical discourse analysis of both relevant military doctrine and semi-structured interviews with NATO officials involved in the drafting of these regulations. It is informed by the approaches of Feminist Security Studies and Critical Legal Studies. The insights gained through this analysis have crucial implications for the protection of civilians, the ‘precision claim’ often brought forward by proponents of armed drones and the regulation of the use of armed drones more broadly.
    
    Key words: gender, armed drones, targeting, civilian protection
    
    Author: Karia Hartung (Royal Holloway, University of London)
  - ‘Knights of the Caliphate’: The Gendered nature of ‘Knighthood’ within the visual and multimodal propaganda content of the Islamic State
    
    Keywords:
    
    Islamic State, Feminist IR, Gender Based Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Visual Methodologies
    
    Abstract:
    
    More than 80% of Islamic State (IS) foreign fighters travelling from ‘the West’ were men (ICCT 2016) and roughly 90% of gendered subjects referred to in IS magazines are represented as male (Roose 2018). However, gendered analysis of IS has focused on the recruitment of women and the representation of female IS members by the group and Western media. The more limited literature on the role of masculinity for IS has focused primarily on the relationship between masculinity and acts of extreme violence (Impara, 2018; Crone, 2020; Vale, 2022). There is space for examinations of IS’s construction of masculine identities which analyse other discursive practices used to construct masculine identities and the relationality of these identities. This paper will analyse the frequent representations of ‘knighthood’ in the propaganda produced by IS and on the multimodal nature of these. It will explore how IS uses these representations and their intertextual relationship with texts and images produced in the Islamist milieu and the Islamic historical tradition. It contributes to literature on gender and IS, broader Feminist literature within Critical Terrorism Studies, and work at the intersection of Communication Studies and Terrorism Studies regarding how terrorist organisations construct messages aimed at specific audiences.
    
    Author: Harrison Swinhoe (University of Exeter)
  - War as Postcolonial Adventurism: China Revising Positionality in the Global Racial Hierarchy through Wartime Femininity during the Sino-Indian Border War
    
    After an escalated border dispute with India, the People’s Republic of China waged the Sino-Indian Border War and gained a clear positional advantage. Contrary to feminist consensus on states performing masculinity in wars, China curiously made a unilateral retreat and exhibited the feminine qualities of forbearance, pacifism, and nurturing towards India, avoiding venturing on its military success for maximized territorial gains. This paper argues that performing femininity towards India was not only part of China’s legitimation strategy for its use of violence but shall be understood as a strategic and intentionally moralized attempt to revise the PRC’s positionality within the global racial hierarchy. PRC’s deliberately orchestrated femininity during the Sino-Indian Border War was informed by Confucian war ethics, enabled by Beijing’s foreign policy radicalization and desire for leadership in the global Cold War. This paper demonstrates Confucian war ethics around three elements, i.e., opposing aggressive conquest, supporting punitive expeditions, and minimizing loss of life in the process, and that PRC's feminine performativity aligned closely with these elements. The article sheds light on the intersection of race and gender in understanding the postcolonial war dynamics, provincializing Eurocentric feminist perspectives on states’ wartime performativity whereby foregrounding the agency of postcolonial states.
    
    Author: Yang Han (University of Oxford)
  - Exploring Women's Participation in Collective Violence: Women Cadres of the Khmer Rouge
    
    Eyewitness accounts and other historical documents illustrate that women contributed to the Cambodian genocide as members of the Khmer Rouge. These women have received almost no scholarly attention, which is a missed opportunity to learn more about the dynamics of mass violence. In response to this gap, my paper will explore the types of activities performed by women cadres of the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian genocide. The study will draw on 57 interviews I conducted as part of my PhD fieldwork over summer 2023 with former women cadres, unit leaders, and survivors. Genocide is often regarded as a process involving “whole layers of society” (Shaw, 2003: 155). As such, examining women’s involvement provides a window into how genocide unfolds at multiple levels of society, helping us to understand how it develops and how it can be prevented. In examining the diversity of roles women perform during episodes of collective violence, this paper contributes to feminist security studies
    
    Author: Jennifer Howe (King's College London)
- 184
  06 Panel / Global Social Theory and 'The International' Exec 10, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: HSIR Working group
  
  Chair: Pedro Dutra Salgado (University of Portsmouth)
  - Kenneth Waltz’s Neglected International Social Theory
    
    Kenneth Waltz’s writings are often cited as the reification of the international as his theory of balance of power ostensibly has both its cause (anarchy) and effect (balance of power) operating at the international level. Domestic processes, it seems, are irrelevant. Yet, there exists in his theorising an international social theory that, albeit little explored, does connect the two: the observation that survival-seeking behaviour is a result of anarchy. However crude this international social theory is, this paper argues that instead of neglecting it as a part of Waltz’s broader reification of the international, only by disentangling it can the recent scholarly wave of international social theorising correctly carry forward Waltz’s important identification of the causal significance of anarchy while precisely rectifying what its proponents deem his theorising limits. The paper shows one way to do so through (re)juxtaposing Waltz’s theorising with the theory of uneven and combined development.
    
    Author: Huu Phu Gia Nguyen (University of Sussex)
  - Fields, Frontiers, and the Making of Global Agrarian Order
    
    Given the centrality of food and agriculture to human life, and thus to international politics, the International Relations (IR) discipline has paid remarkably little attention to the contradictory dynamics of “modern” agriculture and its impact on international order. The present article aims to re-direct IR’s attention away from the noisy sphere of trade disputes within the WTO, and towards the very soil under our feet, as a means of understanding how humanity’s transformation of the earth simultaneously transforms the “international”. To this end, I analyse the making of a global agrarian order during the long 20th century via four inter-related “frontiers”: territory, commodity, technology, and institutions. The coeval development of capitalist agriculture and the international system was heavily shaped by the contradictory relationship between all four frontiers, leading both to the elevation of global governance and international cooperation, as well as the uneven development of world agriculture and its geopolitical consequences. This novel approach to the global politics of food offers a potential entry-point for IR scholars to more firmly grasp the current crises and challenges of today’s global food (dis)order.
    
    Author: Rowan Lubbock (Queen Mary, University of London)
  - Decolonise development? Abandon the state! Insights from the Brazilian experience
    
    The institutional framework of international politics with the nation-state at its core has shaped development thinking through the assumption of the state as the representation of a social totality that defines its interests and benefits from its policies. This premise has been somewhat shielded from the influence of a rich literature has been dedicated to discussing the class policies and colonial legacies that shape the construction of a nation. I argue that taking the colonial legacies of nationalism and statehood to their conclusions entails an impossibility of conceiving the state as an agent for development in any sense that does not reproduce its colonial foundations. I demonstrate this by drawing briefly from the Brazilian experience of state-formation, analysing how it shaped the foundations for its developmentalist policies throughout the 20th century, and how colonial violence continues to play a fundamental role in current development policies under Lula.
    
    Author: Pedro Salgado (University of Portsmouth)
  - International Relations at the End of the Atlantic
    
    A new era of global disorder has taken root in world politics, marked by the rise of China as a new pole of geo-political and economic power, the eruption of novel military and geo-economic conflicts, and protracted international economic instability (Lavery & Schmid, 2021; Thompson, 2022). A key dimension of this global conjuncture is an apparent ‘eastwards’ shift of power, accompanied by a wider de-centring of global capitalism (Buzan and Lawson, 2014; De Graaff, 2020). For many IR scholars, this portends a crisis of the post-war Atlantic order, centred on the primacy of the United States and its Western European partners (Anderson et al., 2016).
    
    How might international relations grapple with the apparent end of the Atlantic order? A crucial starting point is the observation that the Atlantic order is both a concrete historical formation and an abstract set of social relations. Throughout the post-war era, US hegemony was articulated through a concrete nexus of trans-Atlantic institutions, including the geo-political reach of NATO and deep entanglements between US and Western European capitalism (Panitch and Gindin, 2013). At the same time, the post-war Atlantic sphere was shaped by a more abstract series of relations - a shared ideology, a distinctive liberal political economy, and simmering rivalries between various trans-Atlantic social forces (Van Apeldoorn, 2003; Lundestad, 2005). To trace the long rise and the possible decline of the Atlantic order, it is necessary to deploy a perspective capable of navigating both history and theory.
    
    Numerous scholars have grappled with the question of the Atlantic and its relationship to international order. In this paper, we engage three classic contributions - what we term the “three Atlantics” - before drawing-out some of the lessons these approaches might have for contemporary international relations theory. First, we review the field of Atlantic history, an historical approach that paints a panoramic portrait of the Atlantic world but eschews wider theoretical questions (Bailyn, 2005; Games, 2010). Second, we explore the Braudelian Atlantic, a series of historical sociological approaches that mobilise a range of concepts - the world economy, uneven development and international interaction - to illuminate the deeper structures of Atlantic development (Anievas et al., 2013). Third, we engage the Black Atlantic, an approach which problematises universalist perspectives and foregrounds questions of Eurocentrism and the entanglements between Atlantic expansion and coloniality in the making of hybrid modernity (Gilroy, 1993; Bhambra, 2007; Shilliam, 2013).
    These “three Atlantics” all illuminate important aspects in the long formation of the Atlantic order. Each also provides a lens through which to conceptualise the limits of the Atlantic as a historical formation. Taken collectively, these different Atlantic perspectives also contain deep internal contradictions - between the universal and the particular; the abstract and the concrete; the structural and the agential. Rather than ignoring or side-stepping these contradictions, we advocate for an approach that actively embraces the tensions between concrete historical enquiry and the abstract generalisations of social theory. We claim that international relations is well-placed to offer such an integrative and synthetic perspective. By mobilising a series of mid-range concepts - multiplicity, interaction, continuity, change, and politics - we argue that an integrative and interdisciplinary perspective can effectively mediate the concrete and abstract dimensions of Atlantic development, whilst shedding new light on the limits to and possible pathways beyond the Atlantic constellation of international order.
    
    Authors: Davide Schmid (Manchester Metropolitan University) , Scott Lavery (University of Glasgow)*
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  06 Panel / Global climate governance: Policies and finances of the climate crisis Exec 9, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Environment Working Group
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Geoffrey Swenson (City, University of London)
  - Banking against sustainable finance. The effect of the Eurozone Collateral Framework on Green Bond prices
    
    Are Central Bank’s monetary policies helping achieve a green transition? Central bank collateral frameworks can exert a systematic effect on market behavior by providing information on the institutions’ willingness to buy individual bonds from investors. While collateral frameworks have been subjected to some analysis, their relationship with sustainable finance has been overlooked. Here, I find evidence of an anti-green bias at the European Central Bank, whose collateral framework demands higher ‘haircuts’ in return for holding green bonds. I also show that the ECB collateral framework moves markets as the higher haircuts that the ECB imposes on green bonds negate the premium with which such debt instruments trade in the secondary market, translating into higher borrowing costs for green bond issuers and thus becoming an additional barrier to access new and additional finance that can help achieve a green transition. Given the ECB's commitment to ensure that all of its policies are aligned with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, it is important that its impact on green bonds and potentially other forms of sustainable finance be subjected to further review and analysis.
    
    Author: Julio Galindo-Gutiérrez (University of York)
  - Populism at the UN Climate and Biodiversity Negotiations
    
    Climate change and biodiversity loss are the two existential issues of our era, and simultaneously, the number of populists elected is rising. In the lifetime of the UNFCCC and the CBD - the only global forums for state-led negotiations on climate and biodiversity - roughly 1/3 of states have been populist-led, representing significant political and economic influence. And by the CBD’s and UNFCCC’s own metrics, the negotiations have failed - emissions are now 36% higher, and 30% of biodiversity has been lost. It is therefore crucial to understand how populists interact with these two negotiations, and how this differs between the two, including between right and left-wing populists. The literature has explored the most headline-grabbing populist interventions: Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, and Bolsonaro’s withdrawal from hosting COP25 - but literature concerning populist’s behaviour beyond this is sparse, not exhaustive of all populists across all COPs, and not comparative between the UNFCCC and CBD.
    
    My paper will present the preliminary results of my PhD. I have conducted a quantitative analysis of delegations and ratification timelines, a content analysis of the negotiation reports to code populist’s positions and behaviour, and interviews to understand the ‘insiders perspective’ for populist behaviour.
    
    Author: Adam Barnett (University of Lincoln)
  - Gaps Everywhere: How UNEP Frames Climate Problems and Solutions
    
    The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been at the forefront of framing the need for proactive climate policy in terms of ‘gaps’. This strategy manifests itself in its Emissions Gap Report, Production Gap Report and Adaptation Gap Report series. As the phenomenon of governing through gaps has received limited attention overall, the more specific logics behind the UNEP’s heavy discursive reliance on gap-centred arguments are also largely unknown. This paper therefore employs qualitative content analysis of key UNEP reports to examine how the organisation has, over time, constructed its policy agenda around the general notion of ‘gaps’ and specific instances of them. I focus on detailing UNEP’s use of gap language in connection with ‘planetary boundaries’ and related concepts that assume the existence of certain environmental limits. Such references work to naturalise gaps in climate policy as something physically determinate and, thus, externally given, rather than expressing their contingency as negotiated social agreements. By looking into the deployment of ‘gaps’ in UNEP policy discourse, the paper advances our understanding of the organisation’s attempts to shape the international climate agenda and, more specifically, cajole states into action.
    
    Author: Matthias Kranke (University of Freiburg)
  - Varieties of sustainable finance: States, markets, and the political economy of green bond performance
    
    While green bonds have attracted significant scholarly interest over recent years, there has to date been limited focus on exploring variation in green bond issuance and performance across national financial systems. Through this paper, I construct a typology of national varieties of sustainable finance that differentiates between systems according to the predominant issuer type in a given setting. Where green bond issuance is dominated respectively by states, financial institutions, and non-financial institutions, I classify the national systems as ‘interventionist’, ‘financialised’, and ‘industrial’. I explore variation in the scale of green bond issuance across these varieties of sustainable finance system, and in the extent to which green bonds attract lower borrowing costs for issuers. Overall, I show that there is scope for effective performance across all three models of sustainable finance, suggesting the multiple pathways exist toward effectively incorporating green bonds into national systems.
    
    Author: Liam Clegg (University of York)
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  06 Roundtable / Meet the Editors of Review of International Studies and International Affairs Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  Meet the Editors of Review of International Studies, European Journal of International Security and International Affairs
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Chair: David Mainwaring
  
  Participants: Andrew Dorman (Chatham House) , Cian O'Driscoll (ANU) , Andy Hom (University of Edinburgh) , Maria Mälksoo (University of Copenhagen)
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  06 Panel / Militarised childhoods and resistance in education Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Sean Carter (University of Exeter)
  
  Chair: Sean Carter (University of Exeter)
  - The opportunities and challenges of zine-making as pedagogy: Critically engaging with militarism in the classroom
    
    This presentation reflects on the pedagogical opportunities of incorporating zine-making into an undergraduate module titled ‘The Military, Security and Society’ which is part of the University of East Anglia’s BA Sociology programme. This module introduces students to Critical Military Studies by (1) exploring different sociological explanations of the relationship between the military and society, (2) tracing military power across different social sites, and (3) reflecting on possibilities for social change.
    At the end of the module, in dedicated workshops, students are invited to co-create zines on topics which enable them to critically engage with military power. Through the cutting, re-arranging, re-writing, and sticking of the module handbook (designed for this purpose) along with other materials, students work together to co-produce commentary which traces and engages with the implications of military power, and reflects on possibilities for resistance and change, in a creative, empowering and perhaps even hopeful way. Importantly, the workshops create space for students to explore valuable connections between the personal and political, encouraging them to engage with their own relationships with military power. This presentation will detail how zine-making was incorporated into the module and will reflect upon the pedagogical and practical opportunities and challenges encountered throughout.
    
    Author: Emma Huddlestone (University of East Anglia)
  - British Army Supporting Education (BASE): Militarism and the reproduction of (in)securities in UK Schools
    
    This paper traces discourses of (in)security through the critical analysis of lesson plans and teaching resources created by the British Army for use in schools. Specifically, we focus on the 31 documents on the British Army website in the BASE "Lesson Library." Lesson plans are aimed at pupils in Key Stage 3 and 4, covering subjects including STEM, History, Music, Citizenship, and PSHE. These differ, but each incorporates a military-flavour into school subjects, e.g. a mathematics class invites pupils to imagine they have been kidnapped by smugglers and need to escape their captors, tackling difficult terrain and guards. This plan resonates with the British military’s "Survive, Evade, Resist and Extract" training courses, where personnel are taught survival, capture evasion, and interrogation resistance techniques. This paper examines these teaching resources using the discursive concepts of articulation (asking how ideas are attached to subjects and objects) and interpellation (asking how people are "called into" particular subject positions). We contend that the materials 1) normalise and justify militarism through the framing of social problems as holding military solutions, and 2) should be seen in the broadest terms as recruitment materials, potentially increasing future personnel numbers.
    
    Authors: Natalie Jester (University of Gloucestershire) , Emma Huddlestone (University of East Anglia)
  - Exploring the intersection between militarism and peace in Ukraine’s educational landscape: "I Vote for Peace"
    
    On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale war in Ukraine. This most recent invasion is part of a larger conflict between the two countries that accumulated in illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia (2014) and continued fighting in Eastern provinces of Ukraine. Russians perceive this invasion as a necessary step to counter Western hegemony, while Ukrainians respond to the invasion as part of a broader fight for national identity and independence against a former colonising power. As a result, many people in both countries hold negative images of the “other”. In Ukraine, University teachers have reported heightened feelings of aggression and militancy towards Russia among its student population, introducing projects aimed at shifting the narrative from militarism to peace. This paper explores the impact of a project named, “I Vote for Peace,” introduced at a University in Western Ukraine to help alter how their students respond to the war at a pivotal point in their education and socialisation. It highlights the insights of teachers and students at this university, who either helped create or were recipients of this project, through focus groups and semi-structured interviews. It explores how effective this bespoke peace project was in changing narratives among the youth community at this university and offers conclusions on its ability to be rolled out more broadly in war-torn countries.
    
    Authors: Yesid Cubides (Bath Spa University)* , Allyson Edwards (Bath Spa University) , Iryna Budz (International University of Economics and Humanities, Rivne.)* , Yanina Pocheniuk (International University of Economics and Humanities, Rivne.)*
  - Childhood, Museums and Curating War Games
    
    In 2023, the Imperial War Museum (London) curated an exhibition entitled War Games, the ‘UK’s first exhibition to explore what video games tell us about conflict’. Ten years previously, the V&A Museum of Childhood (London) had curated an exhibition of the same name, focused more broadly on a range of war play and war toys. The opening text panel that greeted visitors to this exhibition stated;
    
    ‘The vast majority of children play with toy weapons… The use of toy guns by children is often discouraged, and is seen as glamorising and encouraging violence. However, the links between playing with toy guns and increased aggression are not clear’.
    
    This paper explores what we might learn from paying attention to the informal learning spaces of museums and museum exhibitions in relation to debates regarding children, childhoods and militarism. For example, to what extent do these exhibitions reproduce and amplify discourses of militarism? Or in what ways do they seek to challenge and question the entanglement of children, childhood and war play? And how might we make space for audience/child agency in relation to the exhibitions that they encounter? Conceptually, this paper seeks to bring together recent work on childhood and politics (e.g. Beier & Tabak (2020) on childhood and everyday militarisms, Woodyer and Carter (2020) on the geopolitics of play, and Carter & Woodyer (2023) on childhood agency and resistance), with work on the politics of curating war in museum settings (e.g. Lisle 2006, Van Veeren 2020, Sylvester 2018).
    
    Author: Sean Carter (University of Exeter)
  - (Re)Making home after civil war: Exploring child soldiers’ reintegration imageries in the DRC
    
    This paper explores reintegration imageries in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and engages with former child soldiers’ experiences of (re)making home after war. Specifically, it interrogates how they visualise their reintegration and critically engages with wider Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) scholarly discourse. Resting on short films produced by former child soldiers in the DRC, it critically emphasizes a failure to engage with the complexities of life after civil war, particularly its assumption of a “return” to a home that has been lost and the “remaking” of home among sometimes unwelcoming communities.
    
    To situate the research, it first establishes the limitations of DDR in addressing questions of displacement, trauma, and stigma. It then presents five visual histories of reintegration produced by former child soldiers in Goma, DRC, that broadly explore themes of survival, hope, belonging, and community. In doing so the paper proposes pushing our scholarly gaze to go beyond the boundaries of reintegration and toward the “new” space of return and homecoming that results from it. Lastly it suggests visual histories as a valuable avenue of inquiry in researching homecoming and reintegration as an approach to theorise beyond the boundaries of DDR. By focusing on these visual histories produced by former child soldiers themselves, this research shifts academic focus to those who live through the legacy of reintegration programmes.
    
    Author: Pauline Zerla (King's College London)
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  06 Panel / Narratives and dilemmas of global security Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: European Journal of International Security
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Katherine Pye (LSE)
  - Waiting for arms control
    
    The major states and their respective allies are today engaged in intense arms competition. Taiwan and the war in Ukraine loom large in the geopolitical imagination, and the conclusion drawn by many foreign policy establishments is that it is prudent to buy more weapons. The question which we will attempt to engage with in this article is this: when can we expect, if ever, that these foreign policy establishments will recognise their common interest in limiting the present arms competition? To try to answer this question, we will engage in two broad historical case studies. The first of these will analyse the political process from the onset of naval arms competition in the late 1890s and leading up to the Washington naval treaty in 1922. The second case study will focus on nuclear arms control, from the onset of competition in this weapons category towards the end of the WWII and up to the first SALT agreement in 1972. The analytical goal is to identify 1) the point at which foreign policy establishments coalesced around the notion that arms control was desirable and should be pursued as a serious proposition; and 2) the time lag between this point and the actual signing of an arms control agreement.
    
    Authors: Thomas Müller (Bielefeld University) , Laust Schouenborg (Roskilde University)
  - The Security Dilemma Beyond the Malign-Benign Dichotomy
    
    The concept of the security dilemma is often constructed around a dichotomy between so-called “malign” and “benign” actors. The security dilemma is said to explain the emergence of conflict between two benign actors who mistakenly view each other as malign. If one of these actors is “genuinely” malign, however, the conflict is no longer deemed attributable to the security dilemma. In this article we seek to problematise the malign-benign dichotomy in several ways and argue that adherence to it by security dilemma theorists has limited the potential and reach of the concept. We do this by first highlighting the litany of epistemological and ontological issues that the malign-benign dichotomy faces and has provided no solutions to; and second, by arguing that security dilemma theorising should reorientate itself away from attempting to identify malign-benign actor “types” as rigid categorisations. Instead, we argue that security dilemma theorising should embrace a relational view of actor type, where these identities are neither static nor wholly dispositional, but instead emerge from relations and interactions in often contradictory and in-flux ways. Re-thinking the security dilemma along these lines drastically broadens the scope and potential contribution of the concept, while still accounting for its original, tragic dimension.
    
    Authors: Daniel Rio Tinto (Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV)) , Joshua Baker (University of Leicester)
  - ‘I Am the State, and It Is Up to Me to Defend It’: Ukrainian Civil Society and the Decades-Long State of Emergency
    
    This paper challenges elite-centric approaches to the Russo-Ukrainian war and emergency politics more broadly by switching the focus to the agency of Ukrainian citizen groups. With the help of 30 semi-structured interviews and hermeneutic textual analysis, I argue that the ability to mobilise in response to emergencies is not an inherent property of Ukrainian civil society but a result of the cascade of emergency events that happened between 2013 and 2022. I begin by demonstrating that civil society first became drawn into the politics of security during the Revolution of Dignity when it spontaneously emerged as a securitising actor in opposition to the government. The onset of the Donbas war in early 2014 was the second emergency that propelled the growth of civil society into a full-fledged provider of security in competition with the state. I then examine the changes that Ukrainian civil society underwent against the backdrop of low-intensity warfare that preceded Russia’s full-scale invasion. I capture a curious dependence of civil society on the reproduction of emergency politics as a means of preserving its concerted power, which explains its resistance to the idea of returning to politics as normal. The paper concludes by highlighting important continuities between the pre- and post-2022 periods.
    
    Author: Bohdana Kurylo (University College London)
  - From Security as Emancipation as to Dignity as Emancipation: Alternate Narratives from India
    
    The paper has two-fold purpose: it seeks to bring emancipation at the fore and/but it seeks to redefine emancipation. The paper begins by addressing the question: why are certain alternate narratives marginalised and silenced in International Relations? The discipline of IR undermines any effort of engaging with certain alternate narratives due to which its scope, applicability and reliability remains narrow. This further facilitates the perpetuation and sustenance of exclusion and maintenance of hierarchies. The paper focuses on alternate narratives of select caste-based minorities in India that are excluded from the dominant narrative. It locates the perpetuation of exclusion by identifying sustenance of ‘epistemic violence’ at two levels: first through colonial practices where caste was solidified through naïve archival process; second by the hegemonic Hindu social order that denied the so-called low caste people of any agency.
    Theoretically, the paper is rooted in critical-theoretical understanding but seeks to redefine the idea of emancipation. The contours of ‘security as emancipation’ is also Eurocentric and it ignores the social bearings of marginalisation. The paper favours a standpoint theorizing to present the idea of ‘dignity as emancipation’. It uses the writings of Ambedkar and Periyar alongside the untold stories from the margins to redefine emancipation and counter social hierarchies.
    
    Author: Abhishek Choudhary (University of Delhi)
  - Failing again, failing better: The meaning-making narratives of EU peacebuilders in the Sahel
    
    Existing academic and policymaking literature tells us that security sector reform (SSR) has operated effectively in very few conflicts globally: there is a dearth of ‘success stories’ and interventions have overwhelmingly failed to deliver on the SSR vision. Yet around the world international staff are dedicated to implementing a failed model: the EU continues to prioritise SSR in its interventions. This article looks to the everyday level to explain the attachment of peacebuilding staff to the ‘reform’ of foreign security forces, despite their full awareness that these efforts have been unable to deliver their intended results. Through interviews and field observations of EU personnel in Mali and Niger, this paper argues that personnel have invested in the idea of ‘productive failure’ whereby lessons are learned in one conflict to improve SSR in another conflict, in an endless learning process where judgements of failure can be deferred. Staff create meaning out of micro-level practices and routinised relationships with Sahelian security forces, which enable them to carry on implementing demonstrably ineffective policies. I move beyond judgements of how to make SSR more effective, but rather ask how it is possible for failed policies to be sustained by agents on the everyday level.
    
    Author: Katherine Pye (LSE)
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  06 Panel / Negotiated State-Building: Unravelling the Complex Relationship between the State and Non-State Actors Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: Sarajuddin Isar (Radboud University Nijmegen)
  
  Chair: Oliver Walton (University of Bath)
  - Negotiated State-Building in Afghanistan: Unpacking Power Relations between the State and Non-State Actors
    
    This paper examines the shifting dynamics of negotiated state-building in a conflict setting, using Afghanistan as a case study. Applying Mushtaq Khan’s political settlement framework which is focused on the organisation and distribution of power and resources (rent distribution) and the organisational arrangement to sustain this, this paper compares the changing dynamics of political settlements between Karzai (2001-2014) and Ghani administrations (2014-2021) exploring how shifts in the nature of political settlement between the state and powerful elites led to contrasting outcomes to the state-building efforts to the two administrations. Karzai forged a political settlement with powerful elites at the centre and periphery by co-opting them into the government and distributing them rents to buy their loyalty. This policy sustained some degree of order and stability, though it was fragile. In contrast, Ghani disrupted the existing political settlement forged by Karzai halting rent distributions to powerful elites. Ghani’s approach yielded few gains in terms of the government’s capacity and legitimacy; however, it proved destabilising amidst an escalating war. This policy weakened key peripheral powerholders, who could have fought against the Taliban. Ghani’s disruption policy, along with the US peace talks with the Taliban, expedited the collapse of the state.
    
    Author: Sarajuddin Isar (Radboud University Nijmegen)
  - The Liberal Consequences of Illiberal Peacebuilding? Civil-Military Relations in Post-Conflict Côte d’Ivoire
    
    Liberal reforms implemented in the aftermath of a violent internal conflict, especially Security Sector Reform (SSR), aim to strengthen civilian control over the military, but they are not always successful. This paper argues that, paradoxically, illiberal or ‘a-liberal’ strategies can be more effective, drawing from the case of Côte d’Ivoire. After the conclusion of an internal conflict in 2011, Côte d’Ivoire struggled with the integration of the former rebels of the Forces Nouvelles (FN – New Forces) in the security forces. The fragmentation of the security sector and the power of the former comzones (zone commanders) of the FN were seen by many observers as a threat to civilian leaders. Fears were further heightened by major military mutinies in 2017. However, as of 2023, the civilian regime appears to have successfully consolidated its control over the security forces. This paper argues that, rather than formal SSR, this control has been achieved through informal strategies such as strategic appointments, co-optation and purging. Building on the literature on civil-military relations in authoritarian regimes and coup proofing, I ask whether illiberal peacebuilding can in the long term have unexpected liberal consequences, such as reducing the power of the military to unsettle civilian rulers.
    
    Author: Giulia Piccolino (Loughborough University)
  - Resistance and Co-option in Colombian State-building: A Comparative Analysis of Criminal Bands and Victim Associations
    
    Following the 2016 peace agreement with the Colombian Government, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) demobilised, resulting in a significant decrease in violence in the country. While the guerrilla´s role in post-conflict politics and state-building has diminished, other two non-state actors have risen in significance –criminal bands and victim associations. Drawing on MacGinty´s three key responses to post conflict state-building interventions–acquiescence, resistance and co-option–this paper provides a comparative analysis of two non-state actors. It explores their interactions with liberal state-building efforts assessing their influence on the state legitimacy, the dynamics of peace politics and the functioning of welfare institutions and mechanisms.
    On one hand, we explore how criminal armed groups feeling excluded from the peace agreement have escalated their military actions. At the same time, they are engaging with post-conflict justice and peace institutions entering peace talks with the government, seeking amnesty for war crimes and political recognition. On the other hand, victim associations are influencing transitional justice, truth commissions and other mechanisms created in the peace process as tools of resistance. Through active participation and political agency, these associations gain visibility, establish networks, and critically engage with state institutions, therefore reshaping the post-conflict welfare institutions.
    
    Authors: Francy Carranza-Franco (University of Birmingham) , Louis Monroy-Santander (University of Birmingham)
- 190
  06 Panel / Perspectives on Nuclear Narratives: Discourses, Ethics, and Global Implications Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Global Nuclear Order Working Group
  
  Convener: Soul Park (University of East Anglia)
  
  Chair: Soul Park (University of East Anglia)
  - How to justify inaction: Dealing with nuclear remnants and injustices
    
    The use, testing and production of nuclear weapons have been and continue to be associated with extensive and pervasive harm to people and their natural and social environments. The long half-life of radioactive remnants continues to violate the rights of affected communities, thereby creating persistent nuclear injustices. However, despite increasing international attention to the consequences of nuclear weapons uses and their production, the legacies of the nuclear past have not been adequately addressed, particularly by those states that bear historical responsibility for nuclear harm. This paper examines how nuclear weapon states and survivors of nuclear violence deal and have dealt with nuclear injustices. The paper specifically focuses on the persistence of nuclear injustices and seeks to understand what has prevented the coming to terms with the nuclear past. In order to understand how nuclear weapon states deal with their nuclear legacies and justify their actions or inactions in dealing with the past, the paper analyses discourses and practices of legitimation, justification and normalisation on the part of these states. In this way, the paper highlights the continuity and structural embeddedness of nuclear injustices that continue to shape international nuclear weapons politics to this day.
    
    Author: Jana Baldus (Peace Research Institute, Frankfurt)
  - A Cinematic Catalyst for Rethinking Nuclear Narratives
    
    This paper explores the transformative potential of the 2023 film Oppenheimer to serve as a catalyst for both illuminating and challenging prevailing narratives surrounding our perceptions of nuclear history. Responding to the question, ‘Who do we do our international studies work for, and with?’ we build on the argument that popular entertainment about nuclear weapons has serious and immediate implications for contemporary nuclear policy. Through a three-stage analysis, we delve into the deliberate accomplishments of the film, positioning it strategically in the evolving timeline of our understanding of nuclear narratives. We argue for the importance of simultaneously engaging with Oppenheimer as a source material by reflecting on its present relevance, and its potential to inform and even reframe how we (can) engage with cultivated nuclear discourses in the future. Oppenheimer contributes to an ongoing mythologizing of the bomb in connection to the myth of the man, J. Robert Oppenheimer. With a specific emphasis on concepts such as grievable life and knowledge creation we contribute to a nuanced dialogue on nuclear narratives and popular culture. We invite scholars to join us in exploring Oppenheimer not only as a film but as a thought-provoking lens through which we can re-evaluate the past, engage with the present, and anticipate the future in the realm of nuclear discourse.
    
    Authors: Rebekah Pullen (McMaster University) , Emily Faux (Newcastle University)
  - Nuclear Metaphorics and Foreign Policy Decision-Making: the case of Egypt
    
    For decades, nuclear futures have been–implicitly or explicitly–conceived and predicted through imageries of dominoes, cascades, snowballs, waves. Betting on the ‘when’, instead of discussing the ‘if’, remarked a central belief: nuclear proliferation as an inevitable historical process impervious to alteration. Metaphorical representations emerged as natural conceptual images for encapsulating this underlying logic, consistently accompanying scholarly and policymaker predictions concerning future proliferation dynamics. The nuclear domino metaphor, while serving as a quintessential example, is part of a larger constellation of analogous metaphors that have been consistently and comprehensively integrated into discourse over time. More specifically, it showed that this metaphor’s influence extends across a diverse spectrum of actors, including governments, international bodies, academics, non-governmental analysts, and media commentators. Furthermore, it has demonstrated remarkable resilience, persisting as a prominent conceptual tool for over seven decades. This might suggest that the metaphor in question is not merely isolated linguistic verbiage, but rather a systemic metaphor that may be infusing and shaping policymakers’ thinking and approach to certain issues.
    Systemic metaphors, those that have become firmly entrenched in both academic and non-academic discourse, hold particular significance due to their enduring constitutive functions, which are poised to impact the formulation of policies. The nuclear domino metaphor introduced a new conceptual lens through which nuclear trajectories could be predicted and nuclear policies enacted. Throughout the years, the nuclear domino metaphor has been consistently scrutinised and criticised as a formal theory. Nevertheless, its linguistic and cognitive dimensions have remained largely unexplored. While its empirical validity has been widely challenged and its theoretical assumptions extensively criticised, it remains a contemporary metaphorical exercise whose ‘problem-framing’ function continues to potentially mould perceptions and thought processes.
    Having identified these metaphorical constructs as systemic ones, given the particular temporal (resilience) and spatial (ubiquity) boundaries that define them, this study explores what role they might have had in a particular case of nuclear diplomacy: Egypt.
    
    Author: Ludovica Castelli (University of Leicester)
  - The making and maintenance of extended nuclear deterrence: A critical discursive approach to an international security policy.
    
    The US’ extended nuclear deterrence (END) is widely regarded as a necessary security policy for the protection of NATO members. This perception necessitates the assumption that END is effective at deterring military challengers. However, this view is largely based on materialist explanations and on nuclear weapons’ material properties. Extant research indicates that both aspects do not provide sufficient reasons for supporting the effectiveness of END. This leads to the following research question: How were the proponents of END able to establish and maintain END as a central security strategy of NATO despite reasonable doubts about its effectiveness as a deterrent threat, against opposition, and despite potential alternative strategies? This study argues that the existence of END is mainly based on the discursive construction of its meaning as an effective deterrent threat and the necessity of providing such a threat. These meanings are created by authorized speakers using discursive strategies, e.g., by presenting this effectiveness as commonsense, thereby delegitimizing counter-discourses. By approaching the discourses on END via a Critical Discourse Analysis, this study aims to show how decision-makers can function as agents of stability in discourses by focusing on times of the establishment and contestation of END. Such times of contestation are often based on significant changes in the political and ideological context (e.g., the beginning and the end of the Cold War). Understanding the stabilizing role of authorized speakers against contesting discourses is of particular interest in times of rising counter-discourses challenging the further existence of END. This study expects to identify discursive strategies to better understand the establishment and maintenance of END, and the strategies used by decision-makers to establish and maintain security policies in general. Finally, the findings are likely to have implications for policymakers regarding the maintenance of existing and establishing of new END cooperation.
    
    Author: Konstantin Schendzielorz (University of St. Gallen)
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  06 Panel / Political economies of development Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: IPEG Working group
  
  Chair: Pedro Perfeito da Silva (University of Exeter)
  - The Enlightenment of the British Urban and Rural Coordination Policy on the Urban and Rural Integration Strategies of Developing Countries
    
    Currently, narrowing the urban-rural gap is a common challenge faced by all countries around the world in order to reduce poverty and achieve common prosperity. From a global perspective, the large urban-rural gap is usually more obvious in some developing countries. Most of these countries are at a period that industrialization is expanding, urbanization is accelerating, and government governance capabilities are failing to meet the growing needs of the people. Therefore, narrowing the urban-rural gap has become a common issue that developing countries need to solve urgently. Looking back at the urban-rural development process in the United Kingdom, the world's first urbanized country, rules such as the "Enclosure Movement", the "Poor Relief Law", and the "Settlement Law" after the Industrial Revolution have led to unbalanced urban and rural development. However, the Ranis-Fei model that centered on urban-rural economic relations after the 1950s provided evidence for cities to plunder rural resources, capital, and labor. Subsequently, the British government began to adopt the coordinated development of urban and rural areas as an established national policy to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas. For example, it formulated the first urban and rural planning law; it established the first garden city Letchworth which was also the first Satellite city; it was the first to implement an urban and rural social security system; it was the first to realize suburban urbanization, etc. The specific measures are reflected in the following aspects: 1) Vigorously promote large-scale agricultural operations and encourage the establishment of rural enterprises. 2) Government financial investment in rural infrastructure and public utilities 3) The government strengthens services and guidance for rural economic development. 4) Establish an integrated urban and rural social security system. 5) Strengthen urban and rural overall planning and legislation. Ultimately, the UK leads the world in urban-rural integration. Currently, many somewhat wealthy developing countries are in the expansion stage of industrialization, which means that urbanization tasks are arduous and rural resources are being squeezed, and the government is in the process of dealing with the contradiction between rapid urbanization and the widening gap between urban and rural areas. Therefore, learning from the British concept and policy measures on urban-rural integration will play a positive role in developing countries' overall planning of narrowing the urban-rural gap. The fundamentals are to focus on coordinating urban-rural factor markets, to make up for the shortcomings of agriculture and rural areas, and to achieve coordinated development of urban and rural areas by improving government governance capabilities and ensuring policies.
    
    Author: Ximing Yang
  - A new UK policy agenda for international development cooperation
    
    This paper, derived from extensive research and refined through collaborative academic-practitioner workshops, introduces a new framework for UK international development policy and aid. Our paper moves from research to actionable insights, and endeavours to make our scholarship relevant and accessible beyond academia. As such we propose four key directions, grounded in extensive qualitative and quantitative policy evaluation, analysis of aid distribution and our assessment of the evolving domestic and international landscape. The first direction is to humbly recognise the complexity of development and the limits of international development policy and aid, the second is to consolidate and prioritise in areas where the UK can add value, the third is to centre peer-to-peer cooperation with the global south and the fourth is to ensure the principles of "do no harm" across government policies. This research contributes towards a more inclusive, impactful, and globally aware UK development paradigm.
    
    Authors: Melita Lazell (University of Portmsouth) , Ivica Petrikova (Royal Holloway University of London)*
  - ‘We need to use the leverage we have’: North-South Debt Relations, Debt-for-Nature Swaps and the State in Britain
    
    This article contributes to the green state debate by presenting the first archival case study of the contradictions between climate and debt policy in the UK. I firstly contend that the existing literature lacks an adequate conceptualization of the state’s intimate relationship with global capitalism as constituted on unequal North-South economic relations, which I argue entails an additional barrier to climate action. Secondly, the literature’s epistemological and methodological shortcomings have meant an inability to locate policymakers as agents that actively reproduce this unequal world order. The article remedies these weaknesses by analysing newly released British governmental documents through a combination of Marxist approaches on debt relations and the North-South divide. I argue that the Thatcher government faced profound contradictions between Western debt policy objectives and environmental goals, and consistently eschewed climate measures such as ambitious debt-for-nature swaps. Indeed, those were seen to conflict with the successful advance of neoliberal reforms in the Global South, and more largely with the capitalist imperatives that permeate Western debt policy and North-South relations at large. These findings reveal Western state managers’ fundamental unwillingness to engage in international cooperation, which would challenge market discipline but would allow to tackle pressing climate and environmental issues.
    
    Author: Thomas Da Costa Vieira (London School of Economics)
  - The political economy of capital controls in Latin America: assessing the variegated effects of the Left Turn
    
    The article assesses the determinants of cross-border financial regulation in Latin America for the period between 1995 and 2019. Building upon the recent political economy literature on post-neoliberalism and the re-regulation of capital flows, I contend that the impact of government partisanship is conditional to the targeted capital flows. In this sense, the gradual change of the position of mainstream economists and the International Monetary Fund led to the depoliticization of inflow controls, eroding partisan differences on this policy tool. On the other hand, restrictions over outflow capital flows remained outside the mainstream consensus, being only adopted by post-neoliberal left-wing parties that challenged capital mobility to gain policy space for their inclusionary goals. The estimation of time-series cross-section models for 17 Latin American countries and the analysis of selected regulatory choices in Argentina and Brazil provide support for this theoretical argument. Specifically, I found that administrations led by post-neoliberal parties have been associated with an increase in the level of outflow controls, but had non-significant effects on inflow restrictions.
    
    Author: Pedro Perfeito da Silva (University of Exeter)
  - Mobile Capital: capturing rent from digital financial services in Ghana, Uganda and Kenya
    
    How can governments in lower-income countries capture a share of the rents from platform businesses? Drawing on fieldwork and value chain analysis of Ghana, Uganda and Kenya’s mobile money sectors, we find that internationally active telecommunications and finance companies shape the ways in which these locally-specific industries become integrated into the global digital economy, using their power in the value chain to hold on to rents, monetise data and invest it offshore. These countries all implemented taxes on mobile money users - the burden of which falls heavily on those with lower incomes - but each was designed differently, reflecting different fiscal pressures and the political power of finance, fintech and telecoms sectors. The paper contributes to broader debates about how lower-income countries may benefit from digital transformation as a source of revenue and economic power.
    
    Authors: Mary Abounabhan (Institute of Development Studies)* , Florence Dafe (Technical University of Munich)* , Martin Hearson (Institute of Development Studies)
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  06 Panel / Popular Culture and World Politics – new sites of activity in a changing world Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Convener: Nick Robinson (University of Leeds)
  
  Chair: Cahir O'Doherty (University of Groningen)
  
  Discussant: Danièle Andre (University of La Rochelle)
  - From Global To Universal Agency? District 9 and the Politics of Migration
    
    The use of popular culture to explore questions of global politics has become more common in recent years. This paper follows that tradition, interrogating the film District 9 (2009) as a narrative depiction of the many issues surrounding international migration. When scholars have assessed this movie, set in a post-apartheid South Africa, they have focused on questions around race. While we draw upon some of these issues of race in the film, we contest this reading as too limited, and perhaps driven by the assumption that any film set in South Africa must be about race. Instead, the fact the film depicts alien visitors who are quarantined into a large camp run by the United Nations suggests a more important global political issue is that of refugee and migrant politics. After a short overview of the film, the paper briefly reviews various aspects of migration – the migrant as unwelcome visitor; as the source of danger; as an economic resource; and as an antagonist for identity politics. We draw upon a range of different theorists to elucidate these themes, including Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt. Our primary focus, however, is on the agency of the refugee in the film and in the way that refugee camps can become sites of political activism and resistance, drawing on the work of Natasha Saunders. By exploring the latent power of the aliens in the film and the means by which one of the central characters becomes an alien, we suggest the film can provide insights into contested areas of identity politics, migration, and global (in the film’s case universal) conceptions of political action.
    
    Authors: William Vlcek (School of International Relations) , Anthony Lang (University of St Andrews)
  - Ecological art at the borders: the politics of environmental imaginations and bordering practices
    
    This paper investigates ecologically attuned knowledge practices that emerge at the intersections of human-made borders, the ecological processes of the more-than-human world and creative interventions to expose and build upon these dynamics. By reviewing a range of art-based projects and communal resources that reflect on and work with ‘borders’ we seek to tease out ways of knowing and modes of being that connect and heal rather than separate, transforming familiar imaginations of both sovereign borders and the environment. In this effort, drawing inspiration from Jacques Rancière’s politics of aesthetics, decolonial thinking and eco-feminism we seek to destabilize the aesthetic distribution of bodies, capacities and movement across time and space, drawing out alternative political imaginations for communal being.
    
    Authors: Rahel Kunz (University of Lausanne)* , Erzsébet Strausz (Central European University)
  - Militarism, popular culture and social media: where users and content collide
    
    Social media provides the space in which content and users come together in unpredictable and frequently unregulated ways. This paper draws on extensive focus group research to explore how the public interacts with militaristic popular culture and recruitment materials on social media. We argue that to understand how militaristic content becomes meaningful we need to consider how it is acted upon, maneuvered and resisted within and on social media. Crucially, the implications of militaristic popular culture matters less in relation to the content itself instead being a product of who the user is and how they experience that content. We show that the way that militaristic content is experienced varies due to the affordances of social media and the agency of social media users. We thus address important gaps in present understanding of the significance of militaristic content on social media and, more widely, of how social media users consume and negotiate political content.
    
    Authors: Nick Robinson (University of Leeds) , Louise Pears (University of Leeds)
  - The right-leaning be memeing: Extremist uses of Internet memes and insights for CVE design
    
    This article constitutes a first step in understanding how Internet memes are used by current extreme-right milieus. In the last years, the Global North has experienced a wave of right-wing extremism characterised by a strong online subculture of racism, misogyny and xenophobia. This new wave has its own symbols and language, characterized by internationalization and digital nativism. This wave of extreme right actors also has an unmatched capacity to encourage xenophobic tendencies in public opinion, effectively whitewashing or “mainstreaming” violence towards their chosen enemies: women, Muslims, LGTBQ+, etc.
    At the same time, counter-terrorism programmes in Europe have sought to counter this wave of online radicalisation to right wing extremism, with CVE (countering violent extremism) programmes. But these initiatives often miss the mark, either because they lack legitimacy in the eye of Internet users, or because they underestimate the extent today’s online extremist culture and capacities to mobilise people and resources.
    Internet memes, an established form of Internet language, happen to also be a key aspect of the extreme-right online culture. This paper, firstly, approaches right-wing extremism as a visual, cultural and political space, and borrows from other authors to offer a conceptualisation of the extreme-right presence as an online ecosystem, heterogeneous and multifaceted. Secondly, the article identifies the various functions of Internet memes for these groups; identity formation, communication/propaganda, whitewashing violence and gate-keeping. The article concludes with an assessment of how and when to successfully incorporate Internet memes in counter- extremism campaigns.
    
    Author: Inés Bolaños Somoano (European University Institute)
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  06 Panel / Populist foreign policies, authoritarianism, and democratic back-sliding Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: Marianna Charountaki (University of Lincoln)
  
  Chair: Marianna Charountaki (University of Lincoln)
  - Gender Equality in Right-Wing Populist Foreign Policy - continuity or change?
    
    In recent decades, gender equality has become more institutionalised within national and international policy making such that gender equality is now firmly established as something that both states and international bodies must address in relation to their international work. As the visibility of gender in foreign and international policy has grown however, there has been a concurrent rise in the populist radical right (PRR). The discourse around these political parties and their related social movements are often very hostile to feminist ideas and equality policies writ large. Many reject the concept of gender as a social structure and instead talk of the idea of ‘gender ideology’, often as being forced on them by outside, elite forces. Furthermore, such administrations are often hostile to multilateralism and the liberal international order more broadly. In countries where these states have seen electoral success, we might therefore expect them to be resistant to work on gender equality within their foreign policy.
    
    Despite the centrality of gender to PRR ideology, there has been little discussion of gender in PRR foreign policy. This is surprising given the ways in which gender is often coded in PRR discourse as being imposed on the ‘pure’ nation by unaccountable, external others.
    How then do PRR governments approach the issue of gender within their foreign policy? We consider this question in relation to contemporary US politics from the Obama to the Biden administrations. Under Obama, and with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, there was a wealth of architecture and policies around gender equality in foreign relations created. When politics lurged to the nationalist, right-wing, anti-gender Trump, what happened to gender equality in foreign policy? With the successive Biden administration, as there a return to ‘normality’ with gender equality once again assuming a fairly central position within foreign policy discourse and practice?
    
    Authors: Jennifer Thomson (University of Bath) , Sophie Whiting (University of Bath)*
  - Contesting US foreign policy: Populism and the reimagination of the US-led liberal order
    
    With the US being imagined and solidified as the head of a liberal international order since the Second World War, there has been an unmistakable break with the Presidency of Donald Trump. Clearly, the Trump administration was not representative of this liberal order with, for instance, the voiced exit from NATO and its continued presence as a global strongman with his handpicked autocratic allies. However, this paper argues that the break was already made possible through partly liberal and even populist understandings of his predecessor President Barack Obama and fellow competitor Hillary Clinton. This gave rise to rival hegemonic projects as the former did not cover the different demands made by Americans. In general, observers tend to see the US exclusively through its liberal understanding, but this paper asks whether we are not reifying this and therefore overlooking the discursive shifts that helped enable a different foreign policy. It opened up a “mythical space” and “floating signifiers” with the potential of new meanings to be attached to the US and the international order. To explore this further, this paper interrogates the liberal and populist understandings based on an Essex School’s view of discourse.
    
    Author: Carina van de Wetering (Leiden University)
  - Norm Contestation, Populist Foreign Policy and the Convergence of Venezuela and Turkey
    
    Since 2016, as democratic backsliding intensified in both Turkey and Venezuela, their
    governments solidified their relationship through economic partnerships and
    displays of solidarity in moments of crisis. These unprecedented demonstrations of mutual
    support within ideologically diverse governments in the context of heightened pressure from
    international and domestic actors signified a historic transformation of the two countries
    bilateral relations. This paper explores the dynamics of this convergence by bridging the
    norm contestation framework (Jose, 2018; Wiener 2018) with populist foreign policy analysis to demonstrate how these agents constructed shared frames to contest the liberal
    international order. Primarily, the article identifies two core contestatory frames among the
    political elites in Turkey and Venezuela: amplification of the perceived hypocrisy among
    liberal actors and the assertion of a superior ethical stance through the articulation of an
    alternative identity in contrast to major actors that uphold the liberal international order.
    Secondly, the article demonstrates that these actors primarily engage in discursive
    contestations against the interpretations of key international norms integral to the liberal
    international order, including democracy and human rights. Overall, the study contributes to
    the debates on norm contestation and populist foreign policy by highlighting their
    interconnected nature and offers insights into the ongoing discussion concerning the
    challenges of the liberal international order, asserting that these forms of contestation fall
    short of constituting a comprehensive challenge to the entireness of the liberal international
    order.
    
    Author: Begum Zorlu (City, University of London)
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  06 / Screening event: Keynote speaker Ed Hall, "Forced out" Justham, Symphony Hall
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  06 Roundtable / The World of the Right: A Discussion Room 103, Library
  
  The starting point for this Roundtable is the book 'World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order' (Cambridge University Press 2024). The book develops an analysis of the radical Right as a global phenomenon, and argues that its ideologues and activists have developed extensive, divers transversal alliances and political strategies with potentially significant implications for global order. The Roundtable will discuss the book's argument and contribution, and also reflect on the challenges represented by the radical Right for the discipline of International Relations and for contemporary global politics.
  
  Sponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group
  
  Chair: Michael Williams (University of Ottawa)
  
  Participants: Jean-Francois Drolet (Queen Mary University) , Tarak Barkawi (Johns Hopkins University) , RBJ Walker (University of Victoria) , Rita Abrahamsen (University of Ottawa) , Katharina Rietzler (Sussex University) , Karin Narita (Sheffield University)
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  06 Panel / The emotional politics of leadership Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: EPIR Working group
  
  Chair: Karl Gustafsson (Stockholm University)
  - Ontological (In)Security: EU Foreign Policy Narratives and the War in Ukraine
    
    War narratives can impact the way states shape policies, characterize global politics, and interact with other states. In the case of the war in Ukraine, the conflict has deep roots in competing narratives of world order, memory contestation, and identity questions. This indicates the importance of ontological security in matters of conflict and cooperation, and similarly of the importance of storytelling and narrative alignment shaping the way actors see the world. This research cuts into both these questions by analyzing the way EU member states narrate the war, where they diverge from EU narratives, and how pillars of self-identity are used to justify or explain their actions.
    
    Using Finland and Estonia as case studies, I show not only that the narration of the war has changed over time, but also that key autobiographical narrative elements have been activated and deactivated to maintain a coherent sense of self during the crisis. I do so by developing an analytical framework that uses the core pillars of ontological security: significant relations, identification, autobiography, home. Ultimately this research demonstrates that ontological security questions, and narratives that emerge therefrom, have a real impact on global politics and our understanding of security in the international system.
    
    Author: Lauren Rogers (The University of Edinburgh)
  - The Trauma Competition: how narratives of the cultural trauma of the communist past are narrated by Bulgarian political elites
    
    Recently, increased academic attention has been paid to the role of narratives surrounding trauma and humiliation in populist political discourse. Originally, this attention largely examined the narrative responses of populist political figures to the genuine grievances of the people they claim to represent (cf. Homolar and Löfflmann 2021; Giurlando 2020; Hochschild 2016). Contrastingly, an emergent body of literature focuses on the active construction by political elites of the traumas and humiliations underpinning these narratives, through the manipulation of politicised readings of historical events (cf. Toomey 2018; Freistein et. al. 2022). We contribute to this latter approach by examining the case of Bulgaria, where conservative and liberal elites both lay claims to being the ‘true’ agents responsible for resolving the ‘traumas’ of the country’s communist past. This is based on contested constructions of the nature of Bulgarian communism, and its (assumed) function as the main obstacle to the rectification of the country’s economic and social challenges and for its future westwards foreign policy orientation. We demonstrate that this contestation creates competing narratives of who ought to be considered the true ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ of the crimes of the past, while subsequently serving to legitimise (or delegitimise) the policies and practices of the rival factions as being necessary for the country’s restitution.
    
    Authors: Michael Toomey (University of Glasgow) , Petar Bankov (University of Glasgow)
  - Managing Distrust, Pursuing Peace: Intra-Party Rivalries in Bilateral Conflict Negotiations
    
    Within current International Relations (IR) trust literature, the focus for examining interpersonal trust has been on state leader relationships and their impact on bilateral relations, including between conflict parties. Nevertheless, intra-conflict party relations, such as between a state leader and their foreign minister, can impact how inter-conflict party relations are developed. Intra-conflict party relations can affect how decision-making is conducted, how negotiations develop, and, crucially, the selection of representatives for those negotiations. This paper examines how intra-conflict party relations are managed during negotiations between conflict parties. Using a case study of the Oslo negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, this paper will focus on the relationship between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and examine how the relationship between the two was managed in the lead up to, and during, the Oslo negotiations.
    
    Author: David Wilcox (University of Birmingham)
  - Emotions, identity, and leadership in diaspora diplomacy
    
    This paper explores the neglected role of emotions in the study of diaspora diplomacy (Ho & McConnell, 2017), bringing together strands of literature in public diplomacy (Dolea, 2022, 2023), migration and diaspora studies (Boccagni & Baldassar, 2015), as well as international relations with a focus on emotions (Bleiker & Hutchison, 2014; Koschut et al., 2017). Drawing on 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with representatives of Romanian diaspora organizations in the UK (September – November 2023), it seeks to answer how they define their identity and role in the community, as well as the constant negotiation of emotional ties with home and host state. Findings show a range of individual emotions play a key enabling role in their decision to establish and lead a diaspora organization. At the same time, these emotions become collective and political as the shared loss and trauma of emigration (Volkan, 2017) is invoked as triggering their responsibility towards the community. It is thus possible to establish a typology of roles: cultural mediators, partners of home diplomatic authorities, facilitators of contacts with host state authorities, activists giving a voice to the unheard, the marginalized and the neglected and even political representatives of the community.
    
    Author: Alina E Dolea (Bournemouth University)
  - ‘Geopolitics of Sympathy’: George F. Kennan and NATO Enlargement
    
    In the light of the dramatic escalation of the Russian war on Ukraine since February 2022, questions concerning the handling of Russia in the post-Cold War era, and the enlargement of NATO in particular, are timelier than ever. This paper scrutinises the views of George F. Kennan, one of the most influential critics of the decision to expand NATO. It is widely accepted that Kennan's opposition to NATO was grounded in realism about international affairs. A careful study of the development of his thinking, based on his private papers and archival sources from many countries, suggests that his perceptions of developments inside Russia and his imagination of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe were more important than any theoretical premises. Kennan's criticism was grounded in his ‘geopolitics of sympathy’, understood as a fusion of mental maps, sympathies and personal connections toward the region affected by NATO enlargement. However, Kennan’s geopolitics must be considered in conjunction with his ideas about international order, in particular with his defence of empire.
    
    Author: Kaarel Piirimäe (University of Helsinki)
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  06 Panel / US Diplomacy, Alliance Politics and National Security Narratives Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: US Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: USFP Working group
  
  Chair: Mauro Bonavita (King's College London - Department of War Studies)
  - A Part-Time Arsenal Of Democracy: Ontological Security Narratives in U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Ukraine and Israel
    
    Applying a mixed-methods approach, this paper explores shifting patterns in ontological security narratives as presented with regards American foreign policy involving the wars in Ukraine (2022-) and Israel (2023-). Examining narratives produced by leading governmental voices, including from the White House as well as Congressional sources, the paper charts the inconsistent ontology underpinning contemporary U.S. security policy-making. In particular, it explores the variable ontological attachment afforded to the idea of "defending democracy", despite the apparent ontological significance of this ideal within broader American national identity. In so doing, it seeks to both critique the hypocrisy of contemporary policymakers, as well as identify a hierarchy of ontological needs in contemporary U.S. security politics.
    
    Author: Stephen Dunne (The University of Warwick)
  - Narratives of Withdrawal: U.S. Ontological (In)Security in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan
    
    The burgeoning study of narratives and war in International Relations has effectively highlighted how conflicts have been legitimated to domestic publics and the international community. Far less attention, however, has been devoted to the narratives of war termination (for notable exceptions, see Sanders and Tuck 2020; Walldorf 2022). Accordingly, this paper conducts a discourse analysis of the language used by policymakers and politicians in the United States to justify and contest the American withdrawals from the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars. These cases cover variations in presidential partisanship and different international security environments, highlighting important commonalities and differences in the language used by elites. In particular, the paper utilises the insights of ontological security studies to explore how these withdrawals relate to America’s identity as a ‘winner’ in war and world politics more generally (see Hall 2022). Especially given the widely agreed political costs of ‘losing’ wars across regime type, this study thus contributes to filling an important gap in International Relations scholarship concerning the politics of war termination.
    
    Author: Jonny Hall (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  - South Africa’s AGOA status VS Brigety and the Lady R incident: Diplomatic trade-offs in US Foreign Policy towards South Africa
    
    What happened between May 2023, when US Ambassador Reuben Brigety accused South Africa in a public statement of sending arms to Russia and was threatened with expulsion by the South African government, and November 2023 when Brigety, restored to diplomatic graces, welcomed the US delegation to Johannesburg for the AGOA summit?
    How was the midyear impasse in relations resolved, and why were the calls from US senators to expel South Africa from the AGOA list of preferential trading states on the basis of Pretoria’s perceived support for Russia in Moscow’s war in Ukraine, not heeded in Washington?
    This article will utilise Putnam’s ‘two level game theory’ as well as Zimmerman’s issue areas to unpack the dynamics at play in relations between the US and South Africa in the current period. It will present research into the diplomatic trade-offs in US foreign policy towards South Africa under the Biden administration, positing likely scenarios. Interviews with key stakeholders from the US and South Africa, as well as a survey of recent literature on the relationship, will underpin the analysis.
    
    Author: Martha Bridgman (South African Institute of International Affairs)
  - Transborder Learners: Negotiating and Resisting the U.S.-Mexico Border through Border Hacks
    
    The U.S.-Mexico border is a space of complex socio-political configurations. The high level of racialization and securitization of this border affects all border crossers including those with a visa or a passport. The objective of this paper is to contribute to the further understanding of the Mexico-U.S. border racialization and securitization through the experiences of transborder learners, and how border hacks help them navigate this border. This population is pupils or students that live in Mexico whilst studying in the U.S. and experiencing regular and physical border crossing through U.S. checkpoints. This paper discusses the process of border racialization and securitization through the lens of the ‘White nation fantasy’ (Hage 2000) and The Racial Ignorance (Mueller 2020) looking at the everyday border that transborder learners negotiate, navigate, and resist through border hacks. Border hacks are resilient mechanisms created by these learners that helped them navigate through this border and its border(ing) practices that overall permeate their academic journey. Lastly, this paper expands the analysis of border hacks to practices observed in California by a student-led organization, San Diego State University, Southwestern College, and by the introduction of CA Assembly Bill 91.
    
    Author: Mabel Meneses (Sheffield Hallam University)
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  06 Panel / Understanding diplomacy and peace processes Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: PKPBG Working group
  
  Chair: Walt Kilroy (Dublin City University)
  - Modelling Peace: Understanding the Northern Ireland peace process through a new framework
    
    Can technology help us understand peace processes better? Can we track peace agreements? Can we see where certain ideas came from and how they were altered through the negotiating process? Through the Quill Project model, platform and web interface, the answer is now, yes (www.quillproject.net). The Quill model, created by Dr Nicholas Cole, has implications for both research and teaching, and allows for a new depth of qualitative and quantitative analysis of negotiations. This paper demonstrates how the Quill platform shows the contribution of civil servants, how different departments are run, and how the origins of the Good Friday Agreement emerge much earlier than the mid 1990s. This paper is important because the Good Friday Agreement is used internationally as an example of a successful peace agreement. Therefore, the more in depth and nuanced our understanding of the agreement is, the greater chance there is for the right lessons to be taught globally.
    
    Author: Eleanor Williams (Oxford University)
  - Exiled, Marginalised, and Maligned: The Fall and Rise of the NUG
    
    After the 2021 coup d’état the Myanmar people were left without a legitimate government. The military established an unelected interim authority that remains in power today. The morning of the coup the previously elected government were imprisoned and those ready to take officer were left in limbo, unable to complete their swearing in ceremony. In the months that followed an elected, but unofficial, government was established in exile, the National Unity Government (NUG). Since its inception the NUG has struggled to achieve recognition and has fought to build its legitimacy both domestically and internationally. Often what has aided its development on one level has created conflict on another. The NUG’s backing for armed resistance was greatly supported on the domestic level – but led to condemnation by the international community. Further, though the democracy promoters continue to condemn the legitimacy of the junta, they have shied away from publicly supporting or engaging with the NUG. This phenomena, and the dilemmas of governments in exile, remain critically understudied. This paper traces the development of the NUG within its first two years, analysing how limited international recognition and, at times, international condemnation has impacted its development and legitimisation both domestically and internationally.
    
    Author: Anna Plunkett (King's College London)
  - Negotiating Education: The Impact of Rebel Educational Services on Civil War Peace Agreements
    
    Does the presence of rebel educational services encourage the adoption of education provisions in intrastate peace agreements? While studies on rebel governance have largely focused on civil war dynamics and post-conflict conditions, few works have considered how the services offered by insurgent groups impact on the design of peace accords, and how education reforms figure in these documents.
    Looking at a comprehensive dataset of civil conflicts from 1989 to 2012, our results show that when rebel groups offer educational services during a conflict, warring actors are less likely to include education provisions in their peace agreements. We argue that this is because states are unwilling to officially recognize and legitimize the rebels’ provision of highly valued services to the population. Drawing on the case studies of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, we argue that this unwillingness results either in rebels continuing to handle education in their own territories or in the state imposing its control over education in previously rebel-held areas.
    
    Authors: Mehwish Sarwari (SUNY Buffalo)* , Giuditta Fontana (University of Birmingham)
  - Can Theo-Diplomacy Provide A Pathway Towards Achieving Sustainable Peace
    
    Kaleem Hussain, author of "Peace and Reconciliation in International and Islamic Law"- describes "Theo-Diplomacy- as an approach wherein the interlocutors and advisers of the parties to a situation of conflict have religious literacy, appreciation and understanding of the contextual sensitivities of the conflict the help facilitate a pathway towards peace and reconciliation."
    
    With the world mired by multiple conflict hot spots ranging from Israel-Palestine, Russia- Ukraine in more recent years along with other epicentres of conflict such as Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Kashmir, this session will explore whether a theocratic approach based on a "Theo-Diplomacy" model of international diplomacy would help or hinder the pathway towards facilitating a speedier resolution to a conflict.
    
    https://www.cambridgescholars.com/news/item/book-in-focus-Peace-and-Reconciliation-in-International-and-Islamic-Law
    
    Author: Kaleem Hussain (University of Birmingham)
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  06 Panel / Whose foreign policy? Re-assessing Turkey in International Relations after the Centenary Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: Thomas Diez (University of Tuebingen)
  
  Chair: Tom Walsh (Durham University)
  - Representations of liberal democracy in the EU-Turkey discourse since Gezi Park
    
    This paper will examine the EU’s relationship with Turkey – and vice versa - in the decade since the Gezi Park protests. This time has seen a marked increase in illiberal governance within Turkey. However, whilst it has made minimal progress towards accession since candidate status was granted in 2004, Turkey remains a candidate state. The research puzzle revolves around the EU’s apparent toleration of increasingly illiberal policy by the AKP government and how this is justified discursively. At the same time, it will examine the reaction of Erdogan and the AKP government to the EU’s attempts to balance an adherence to the Copenhagen criteria in the progress reports against the need to maintain the relationship for security reasons. This research takes the European Commission’s progress reports on Turkey since 2014 and the official press releases and statements associated with them. It will also gather the Turkish government’s official responses including presidential statements and reports by the Anatolia News Agency, to the progress report each year. These two datasets will be analysed using thematic analysis to isolate the ways each side seek to justify and react to the progress reports which waltz around Ankara’s very obvious, and arguably increasing, democratic backsliding. The paper seeks to place this contemporary situation within the Turkish centenary framework and consider whether the current stalemate dynamic relates in any way to the original Europeanisation focus of Mustafa Kemal.
    
    Author: Natalie Martin (University of Nottingham)
  - The Transformation of Turkey’s Foreign Policy Since 2011
    
    This article aims to explain the Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments’ reorientation of Turkey’s foreign policy during the 2010s from prioritising Turkey’s European Union (EU) membership and seeking to increase Turkey’s influence through soft power instruments during its first decade in power to seeking to increase Turkey’s autonomy, portraying Turkey as the leader of the Muslim world, championing the Palestinian cause, building an international coalition to combat Islamophobia, and calling for the reform of the international order. Using insights from poststructuralist foreign policy analysis, this paper situates the transformation in Turkey’s foreign policy within the domestic and regional political developments and seeks to understand (a) why a reorientation was perceived as necessary and possible by the Turkish decision-makers and (b) the role it has been playing in the AKP governments’ efforts to change the domestic order in its attempt to extend its religious-nationalist hegemony over Turkish politics. It analyses the representation of foreign policy practice to the domestic audience to unpack foreign policy’s domestic impacts and understand why the foreign policy discourse has been resonating with the Turkish public.
    
    Author: Cengiz Gunes (The University of Tübingen)
  - Talking Past While Needing Each Other: The Complex and Ambiguous Relationship between the EU and Türkiye
    
    This paper points to the ambiguities of the relationship around five themes: identity, integration, economy, society, and strategy, which we believe are both the main forces behind and affected by Turkey’s hundred years old Europeanization process. We contribute to a more nuanced understanding of EU-Turkish relations in understanding them as an ongoing struggle between competing and coexisting forces, and navigating a complex terrain of identities and interests pulling in multiple directions. We emphasize the constant struggle over the future direction of the relations between whatever is defined as “Europe” and “Türkiye” as well as the reversibility of current trends. We see Türkiye and Europe entangled too deeply as to completely break apart, and being too diverse as to be wedded to a clearly delineated joint future. Our paper proceeds in five steps. First, we discuss the ambiguities of Turkey`s European identity and the perceptions of Turkey within EU member states. Secondly, we trace the ambiguous history of the political integration process before discussing mutual dependencies and divergences in trade and other economic aspects of the relationship. The final two sections deal with the ambiguous effects of Westernizations and Europeanization efforts in Turkish society and the tensions between the two sides in military matters. We argue that it is important to study the relationship between Türkiye and Europe across such a range of policy fields rather than focusing on only one of them to avoid biases resulting from idiosyncrasies of the respective field. Our conclusion reiterates that there is no unavoidable teleology in the Europe-Türkiye linkages. They are the product of constant struggles of a range of interested actors who push them in different directions. While at various historical junctures, circumstances benefitted different sides in these struggles, the result is a complex web of entanglements and ruptures that defies reductionist characterizations as “pro-“ or “anti-European”.
    
    Authors: Damla Cihangir Tetik (Assistant Professor)* , Thomas Diez (University of Tuebingen)
  - Ontological Security and Turkish Foreign Policy: a Buzzword or a Trend?
    
    The studies focusing on ontological security mainly assume that the states do not only seek physical security but also ontological security through routines and habits in a similar way with the individuals. As Mitzen claims, states acquire ontological security through routinized relations with significant others in which their identities are anchored. The picture gets even more complicated when it is the Turkish foreign policy in question. Starting from the early years of the Republic, Turkey’s ensuing sense of ontological insecurity has stigmatized the predominant geopolitical discourse in the country as regards her relations with Europe as well as with various international actors such as Russia and the United States. As a latecomer to the modern state system, Turkey became extra-sensitive to concerns regarding belonging, recognition, and status, which shaped its identity and foreign policy. This paper looks at the ambivalent relationship between Turkish foreign policy and ontological (in) security debates. By periodising the Turkish foreign policy in line with the ontological (in) security modalities it had employed and conceptualising the relationship between foreign policy decisions and elite narratives drawing on ontological security considerations, we will aim to uncover the relevance of the ontological security conceptual framework for Turkish foreign policy. This endeavour will also introduce a critical engagement with the ontological security conceptual framework which fails to address the complex relation between the domestic and international
    
    Authors: A. Erdi Ozturk (London Metropolitan University)* , Basak Alpan (Middle East Technical University)
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  06 Roundtable / ‘Making the Sandwiches’: Gender, Race, Social Reproduction, and Academic Labour Soprano, Hyatt
  
  Who does what labour? Who gives what? Who carries what? And, for how long? Academic labour is a profoundly gendered and racialised practice. The phrase ‘making the sandwiches’ reprises the age-old sexist stereotype that women belong to the domestic sphere, aka the kitchen (Smith 2015). This is reflected across academia where departments are often run on a gendered division of labour which maps onto the division of labour and gendered inequalities that are rooted in structures and processes of political economy (True 2012). According to Nicola Smith (2015) that labour is divided between ‘wife work’ – teaching, admin, and service work, and, to extend the metaphor, ‘husband work’, coded as ‘proper’, academic work, aka research, which carries all the gendered and racialised associations and expectations that link expertise with white, male, able bodies. This has exacerbated levels of underrepresentation and inequality in the sector. The UK political science landscape highlights striking representational issues: women, and particularly women of colour, are severely under-represented across political science departments, thinning higher-up the ranks, especially at professorial levels. Pushing for change itself is a form of gendered labour resulting in depletion (Rai, Hoskyns, & Thomas 2013), not least because institutions are often resistant to gender change. “‘We still have a long way to go’ is the catchphrase used by patriarchy to gain time, justify its opposition to change and lull feminist analysers into believing that real progress are made” (Puechguirbal 2012, 15). This roundtable brings together colleagues grappling with the question: “What, in short, does it mean to make a sandwich, and who is being asked to make it?” (Smith 2015). Calling for cross-departmental thinking, and applying feminist theories, the roundtable considers feminist solutions for change.
  
  Sponsor: University of Birmingham, School of Government/POLSIS Gender and Feminist Theory Research Group (GAFT)
  
  Chair: Columba Achilleos-Sarll (University of Birmingham)
  
  Participants: Sameen Ali (IDD, University of Birmingham) , Charlotte Galpin (University of Birmingham) , Nicola Smith (University of Birmingham) , Emily Scott (University of Birmingham) , Sameera Khalfey (University of Birmingham) , Kailing Xie (University of Birmingham)
- 16:30
  
  15 minute transition
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  06 Panel / (In)tangible cultural heritage and conflict (transformation) Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Conveners: Aurélie Broeckerhoff (Coventry University) , Marwan Darweish (Center for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University) , Laura Sulin (Coventry University) , Elly Harrowell (Coventry University) , Mahmoud Soliman (Coventry University)
  
  Chair: Aurélie Broeckerhoff (Coventry University)
  
  Discussant: Marwan Darweish (Center for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University)
  - "The harvest is a poem" - how indigenous cultural practices support Palestinian everyday resistance
    
    The Palestinian farmer and Bedouin communities in the South Hebron Hills (Masafer Yatta), occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), face double marginality: from the Israeli occupation and within Palestinian society. In the 1980s, the creation of an Israeli closed military zone threatened them with displacement. Following decades of legal challenge, a recent court ruling to uphold the military zone is threatening the existence of the people and their way of life in Masafer Yatta (Bröckerhoff & Soliman, 2022). This paper examines indigenous cultural heritage in the form of agricultural practices through the analytical lens of everyday resistance. Through an analysis of songs sung during the harvest, we advance the argument that in restrictive contexts, indigenous practices that are not politically articulated constitute a form of everyday resistance. The paper demonstrates an original contribution how the upholding of traditional cultural practices in Masafer Yatta contributes to unintentional, yet consequential everyday resistance in the maintenance of traditional lifestyles. It thus extends current approaches in heritage studies, bringing them into conversation with resistance and peace studies that have engaged primarily with an intentional, bottom-up use of culture.
    
    Authors: Mahmoud Soliman (Coventry University) , Marwan Darweish (Coventry University)* , Laura Sulin (Coventry University)* , Aurélie Broeckerhoff (Coventry University)
  - Exploring a conflict transformational approach to heritage
    
    Contemporary scholarship examining the role of heritage in peace and conflict recognises the ambivalence of heritage, which can act as both a driver of conflict and resource for building peace. This can be particularly acute in the case of contested or war-damaged heritage. We propose that integrating elements of a conflict transformational approach to the ways we approach contested and conflict-affected heritage could provide the basis for reimagining this heritage as a space of agonistic engagement and contestation between equals, and for living together differently. This argument exploits the dialogic turn in its key concepts (heritage and conflict) and seeks to exploit the synergies between the two. A conflict transformational approach avoids the temptation to use heritage to attempt to build a falsely unifying narrative of the past, instead making room for dissensus and making problematic power asymmetries visible. The paper sets out the theoretical basis for this approach, drawing on research at a contested heritage site in the occupied Palestinian territory. It then goes on to discuss how this might be implemented in practice by heritage professionals and community members seeking to maximise the conflict transformational potential of heritage even in the midst of conflict.
    
    Authors: Elly Harrowell (Coventry University) , Patricia Sellick (Coventry University)*
  - Youth Engagements with Heritage Futures: Enhancing resilience, cohesion, and community in Iraq and KRI
    
    Increased incidents of internal conflict, along with the desire to assert power and control territory, has seen cultural heritage become a key target in warfare, positioning heritage as
    a source of tension and violence. Building on the notion of 'pacific heritage' (Hammami et al. 2022) which attends to the potentialities of heritage to advocate peace, and peace as a means of protecting heritage in all its myriad and changing forms, this paper investigates how affective encounters and engagements with community heritage are conceived and employed in acts of everyday peace and resistance. Drawing on research undertaken with ‘Heritage Gatherers’ from religious minorities in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq who collected and documented their communities’ heritages over the course of one year from 2021-2022, this paper highlights how increased knowledge and awareness of heritage processes and practices assisted in fostering identity, belonging and pride that worked to enhance aspects of social cohesion within and between communities. This was due to the connections established between members of the same communities and with other religious groups. As such, young people became agents of both continuity and change; demonstrating the ways and conditions through which multiple and diverse heritages can become a means of working towards greater understanding and building more resilient futures.
    
    Author: Sofya Shahab (University of Sussex)
  - Reversing displacement: Navigating the spontaneity of spatial networks of craft, tradition and memory in post-war Old Mosul
    
    The destruction of Mosul's Old Town has led to sudden and unmanaged displacements of different ethnic, cultural and professional communities who departed northern Iraq's medieval trade and cultural centre. While the reconstruction of historic monuments was prioritised for the post-ISIS recovery process, the disappearance of trade, culture, and communities had a more lasting impact on the erasure of memory, traditional practices and social interactions in the Historic Centre. Moving away from the conventions of planned and structured return in post-conflict cities, this paper investigates the growing and unstructured spontaneous processes of displacement, relocation, and rebuilding as an unmanaged process where the central government and the local authority had limited impact on the daily and active return of displaced communities and craftsmen. We argue that the active and interconnected networks of trade, craft communities and livelihoods in the Old City can be activated by individualistic efforts to trigger a spontaneous, yet effective and decentralised approach to post-conflict return in Iraq. This paper navigates local narratives, spaces of memory and spatial patterns of displacement and return, using the observations, spatial mapping, first-hand local narratives and flows of displacement.
    
    Reversing displacement: Navigating the spontaneity of spatial networks of craft, tradition and memory in post-war Old Mosul
    
    Author: Yousif Al- Daffaie (Nottingham Trent University)
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  06 Panel / Critical engagements with war and war labour Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Mirko Palestrino (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Chair: Mirko Palestrino (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Late modern war and the geos
    
    This article works towards an ontology of war centred on the life of the planet, or geos. Noting a disciplinary tendency to focus on the makers of war, we ask what if our analyses of war begin not with the technologies of killing but with the life that is targeted? Our response proceeds in four sections. We first identify a “militarised ontology” of war that forms through the ways that militaries figure violence as spatially and temporally “precise” and thus distinct from longer-term environmental effects. We then argue that these ontological bounds persist also in critical scholarship on war. Writing against such ontological contingencies, we learn from feminist IR to set out a theoretical path for knowing war on different terms, from the perspective of the geos. From here our main contribution forms: attending to war ecologies and non/human health, war appears in a form that critically contrasts with a large part of current work in IR, it is no longer a primarily accelerated, aerial or remote activity but rather an enduring, terranean, and proximate intervention in the environment and the life it sustains. We close with explication of the significance of geos-centred study of war in IR and beyond.
    
    Authors: Henry Redwood (King's College London) , Mark Griffiths (Newcastle University)
  - Battle Imaginaries in World Politics
    
    War is a constitutive concept for IR yet - despite its centrality to both popular and elite conceptions of war - battle is not. We consider whether it should be, the conceptual frame that makes it useful as such and the strengths and limits of this approach. We begin by asking what battle is? Initially, battles appear as epistemic containers for fighting. By focusing on this fighting or the myths made out of it, scholarly inquiry produces valuable knowledge but disassembles battles as social and historical processes. In response, we situate the category of battle within a co-constitutive field of fighting and social relations. We develop the concept of a ‘battle imaginary’ to do the analytic work of braiding combat and society; interpretation and practice; and the place of battles in the distribution of power in polities during peace. Situating battle imaginaries amid the violent and contingent reciprocities of fighting shows how the evidence fighting produces - the audit of death, destruction and loss - only signifies as real when situated in a social imaginary field. At the same time, fighting and its interpretation drive the reproduction and transformation of battle imaginaries themselves.
    
    Authors: Tarak Barkawi (Johns Hopkins University) , Shane Brighton (Queen's University Belfast)*
  - War and military power from the perspective of work and labour
    
    Anthropologist Daniel Hoffman observes that "there has been a curious inability, or perhaps unwillingness...to think of violence as literal work, to think of the labour of war as labour". In this paper we make a case for understanding war and military power from the perspective of work and labour, reflect on what this might look like, and consider some implications. Feminist theorists have, of course, demonstrated that forms of feminised labour, namely domestic, informal, and socially reproductive, underpin war and military power. There is also a modest cross-disciplinary literature that centres labour in various ways within the analysis of war, military power, and military institutions (we might cite inter alia Deborah Cowen, Adam Moore, Amanda Chisholm, Radhika Singha, Daniel Hoffman). Drawing on this work and our own research (respectively: labour relations underpinning the civilian manufacture of military and dual use objects, and gendered occupational cultures within the British Army) we explore how we might conceptualise and empirically locate war as a matter of labour, and outline the implications of doing so. For instance, what is revealed when we trace the entanglements of the means of production and the means of violence? What comes into view when we trace the organisation of military labour for specific forms of military violence? What might the lens of work and labour reveal about global configurations and relations of power, economy, and violence?
    
    Authors: Joanna Tidy (University of Sheffield) , Elena Simon (University of Sheffield)
  - ‘Sow the seeds of victory’: wartime gardening and the making of military victory
    
    During the First and Second World Wars, the German, UK, and US government all launched national initiatives to foster “wartime gardening” among their non-enlisted citizens. ‘Victory gardens’ had a double function: enrolling the home public to the war effort and stimulating the national production of vegetables to counter food scarcity. In these countries, massive campaigns were launched to ask citizens to grow fruit and vegetables in their houses and other public spaces. Profoundly patriotic in nature, the propagandistic effort adopted an exquisitely martial rhetoric, deploying slogans such as ‘every garden a munition plant’, or ‘sow the seeds of victory!’. This paper centres ‘victory gardens’ as an under researched martial practice that plays a central role in the cultural and material production of military victory. It shows that wartime gardening is but one of many seemingly peaceful victory practices. The paper concludes that in the critical study of war a new ontology of military victory is needed: one that straddles the lines between war and peace and that can attend to both kinetic and non-kinetic practices of wars.
    
    Author: Mirko Palestrino (Queen Mary University of London)
- 203
  
  06 Roundtable / Depletion – the cost of social reproduction: 10 years on Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  The concept of depletion through social reproduction (DSR) (Rai Hoskyns and Thomas 2014) seeks to capture the costs borne individuals, communities and societies when the socially necessary work of social reproduction is undervalued and un supported. Emerging out of feminist IPE work exploring how and why women tend to bear the brunt of economic crises, the DSR concept provides a conceptual language for thinking about how economic restructuring is experienced as a gendered harm, how such harms can be mitigated and also how they can be destabilized as part of feminist struggles against economic injustice. This panel has been formulated to reflect on how feminist IPE work on depletion has developed in the decade following the publication of Rai et al’s article ‘Depletion: The Cost of Social Reproduction’. The roundtable brings together scholars who have engaged with this concept from a range of perspectives and different locations. The panellists are invited to reflect on how the concept has informed their work and the field o feminist IPE more broadly and to reflect on what insights the concepts brings to thinking about contemporary global political and economic transformations and challenges. The panel coincides with the 2024 publication of Shirin M. Rai’s book Depletion: the human costs of caring (OUP) – an important milestone in the development of feminist IPE which this panel also seeks to celebrate.
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Chair: Juanita Elias (University of Warwick)
  
  Participants: Jayanthi Lingham (University of Sheffield) , Victoria Basham (Cardiff University) , Aida Hozic (University of Florida) , Shirin Rai (SOAS, University of London) , Laura Sjoberg (Royal Holloway, University of London)
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  06 Panel / Ethics and World Politics Exec 5, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: EWPG Working group
  
  Chair: Robin Dunford (University of Brighton)
  - Sceptical Bases of Cicero’s Theory of Just War and “Just Empire” and its Uncritical Reception in Western Political Thought
    
    This paper explores Cicero’s work on peace and war and its contribution to the development of Western political thought. It argues that Cicero’s just war approach contains the same contradiction seen between Rome’s actual policy of waging mostly aggressive wars and its claimed adherence to just wars to be seen as waging wars in line with the law of nations. It explores how Cicero developed this approach from a combination of moderate versions of Scepticism and Stoicism to justify Rome’s preventive wars, wars to avenge injuries, wars for supremacy and glory, and extensive military interventions on behalf of global human society. It argues that notwithstanding Western scholars’ critique of his public career and his philosophy as largely derivative, he is seen as an adherent of just war in Western political thought despite being an advocate of Rome’s aggressive policy of war. It explores the contribution his work made to the development of Christian and Renaissance humanist just war traditions, theories of colonialism, and modern international law. It examines what Rome’s policy of war and its justification by Cicero may tell us about modern war trends especially the US policy of preventive, humanitarian, and regime change wars and their justifications by Western just war theorists.
    
    Author: Muhammad Ashfaq (University of St Andrews)
  - One category fits all? An assessment of vulnerability and its categorisation in national research ethics guidelines.
    
    National research ethics guidelines form the benchmark for research institutions and institutional review boards (IRBs) to assess the ethical acceptability of academic research. They provide advice on all manner of ethical research practices, including how to conduct research with vulnerable participants. Despite their centrality in setting ethical standards, there has been little attention to how these documents conceptualize vulnerability, and in particular how this stands to shape ethical review for qualitative social scientists. Our article, therefore, conducts a systematic study of the national-level ethics requirements for 44 countries across the global North and South, examining how they use and define the concept of vulnerability, the specific groups or categories they seek to protect, and what this reveals about their assumptions about research purpose and practice. The conclusions show that much as we may wish to reform national-level guidelines to recognise more relational, contextual, and dynamic understandings of vulnerability, such a reform can only be meaningful if paired with a much more significant overhaul of a regulatory structure premised largely on assumptions drawn from biomedical research.
    
    Authors: Sophie Moxon (University of York)* , Rebecca Tapscott (University of York; The Graduate Institute (Geneva))
  - International morality and the standard of civilisation in Georg Schwarzenberger’s classical realism
    
    Georg Schwarzenberger’s works stand out from those of other classical realists through their focus on the nature of international law, its problems, and its relation to power politics and international society. He was widely regarded as a preeminent member of the realist school and his works were compared to those of Carr, Morgenthau, and Schuman. The incisiveness, range, depth, and encyclopedic propensities of his conclusions appear as common features in the great majority of the published reviews of his works. Despite this prominence, however, Schwarzenberger has been all but forgotten by current IR literature, and his importance as a theorist has been vastly underestimated. This paper explores Schwarzenberger’s forgotten theory of IR. Through a detailed examination of his works, it unveils the ethical component of his realist theory and works. It does this by examining his analysis of international morality and the standard of civilisation and their effect on the development and application of international law. In doing this, the paper points to and reveals the conflicting and joint roles of international ethics and power politics on state policy and international law.
    
    Author: Carmen Chas (University of Bath)
  - Manifestations of consent and necessity in formation of the State in the digital era
    
    The use of Big Data & Artificial Intelligence in public governance is changing how individuals and groups interact with the state. My research explores how these changing relationships impact on the legitimacy of decision-making in the public sphere, focusing on challenges of consent to digital governance.
    The importance of consent to the legitimate exercise of authority by the state is central to the idea of a social contract. The state, and its right to exercise authority, only exists through a common agreement of the people to abide by the decisions of the state. However, how consent is or can be reached is under-theorised.
    In our daily lives, we are asked to give our consent to the collection and sharing of the data that we produce. However, it is rarely clear to the ordinary person, exactly what data is gathered, what happens to it once gathered, and how it can be used.
    The gap in understanding by the public about the nature of the data they generate, and what happens to it, raises important ethical questions about the role of consent in digital governance. My project thus aims to update social contract theory for our new digital age.
    
    Author: Truman Venters (University of St Andrews)
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  06 Panel / Identity construction: Soft power, mediation, public diplomacy, security policy Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: Sharad Joshi (Middlebury Institute of International Studies)
  
  Chair: Sharad Joshi (Middlebury Institute of International Studies)
  - Liminal Identity of Turkey in Humanitarian Government
    
    During the past two decades, Turkey’s strategies in aid and assistance have been premised on its liminal identity as both Western and Eastern, to present itself as a ‘different actor’ compared to Western traditional donors. Turkey is neither in the West nor in the non-West but continues to be an active global actor in the traditional structure of the international humanitarian order. This liminal identity can be considered as a positive, albeit ambivalent, status reinforcing Turkey’s activism. Turkey invokes Islamic and Ottoman aspects of its identity in recipient countries through bilateral relations, while it reinforces its Western liberal dimensions through implementing traditional practices of multilateral humanitarian government. This article argues that Turkey, being suspicious and critical of traditional actors at the discourse level, remains integrated into the conventional and Western structure of humanitarian government. This article analyses the different constitutive elements of Turkey’s liminal identity and how Turkey operationalizes its humanitarianism.
    
    Author: Efser Rana Coskun (Social Sciences University of Ankara)
  - Identity in Crisis? A Critical Analysis of European Identity Construction through the Common Foreign and Security Policy
    
    A stated objective of the European Union's (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) is to reinforce collective European identity (Treaty of Maastricht, 1992). In recent years, the EU has faced several crises which have challenged the role and viability of European identity and the cohesiveness of the European polity (Kaschuba, 2000; Billing, 2008; Lambert, 2023). We know that the CFSP is a significant tool in EU crisis governance, and that European identity can serve as a predictor of support for European integration, especially during crises (Mayer and Palmowski, 2004; Hooghe and Marks, 2008; McNamara, 2015; Nicoli et al., 2020). Despite this, existing scholarship has overlooked the role of the CFSP in managing and promoting European identity during times of crisis. This paper fills these gaps by asking the following question: “how does the EU produce conceptions of European identity through the CFSP during times of crisis?” Examining primary documents produced under the framework of the CFSP in response to the “Schengen Crisis”, COVID-19 Pandemic, and Russian Invasion of Ukraine, this paper argues that the EU defines who is European, and who is not predominantly through its strategies of public diplomacy, especially in the realm of migration. The EU’s public diplomacy strategies contribute to clear racialized, and place-based ideas of belonging in Europe; for audiences both within and beyond Europe. Competing policies and rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion demonstrate the ways in which European identity is defined through crisis, and how the EU uses the CFSP to reinforce certain senses of belonging. This study contributes to greater understandings of the EU specifically, and the role of public diplomacy more broadly; including how scholars can better understand the ways in which it influences senses of belonging in global politics.
    
    Author: Eric Hubberstey (University of Waterloo)
  - From Neutrality to Prosperity: Oman's Soft Power Dynamics in Diplomatic Mediation and Economic Stability
    
    Soft power is defined as the capacity of a country to influence the behavior of other countries and actors through methods of persuasion and attraction, than through coercion or force (hard power). Soft power is often grounded on a country's culture, values, and policies. Sultanate of Oman has traditionally pursued a foreign policy characterized by fundamental three pillars: diplomacy, neutrality, and non-interference. The Sultanate approach is frequently discussed as one of balancing regional and international interests with a primary focus on upholding stability and security within the Gulf region. Soft power is a crucial element in Oman's foreign policy strategy, and the country has leveraged diverse elements to enhance its influence in the global arena. This article discusses two main aspects of soft power in the Omani foreign policy. First, Oman's strength in the international arena lies in its diplomatic approach, specifically its role as a mediator in regional conflicts. The skillful Omani diplomacy and ability to facilitate dialogue between conflicting parties is derived from its commitment to maintaining stability in the Gulf region and its non-aligned foreign policy. The country has maintained good relations with a diverse range of nations, allowing it to play a role in various regional and international initiatives. Second, Oman's economic stability and the ongoing efforts to diversify its economy, besides its investment in cultural diplomacy and tourism, also contribute to its influence and attractiveness on the global stage. Oman enjoys a rich culture and heritage, which it uses to promote itself on the world stage. Examples will be examined and analysed, supported by secondary data.
    
    Author: Abdullah Al-Maani (Durham University)
  - Identity Reconstruction in British Foreign and Security Policy
    
    Role Theory, one of the several theories applied in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), has recently come back on the trend. Originally used in sociology, it shares many of its assumptions with Constructivism in International Relations (IR). Their basic assumption is that identity is constructed by the people, and it is not a reality which exists independently from the society, and therefore needs interpretation by the researcher.
    Horizontal and Vertical Domestic Role Contestation is one of the dominant approaches to Role Theory. It provides helpful insights to the study of foreign policy. However, like other approaches to FPA, it assumes that there is one dominant Role Conception for a country at a specific period, and tries to explain all policy outcomes based on that, or a competing one which replaces it. This leads to confusing arguments by assigning contradictory policies to one Conception.
    Gaskarth’s ‘Role Theory and British Foreign Policy’ is an attempt to address this confusion by providing a set of Role Orientations, Conceptions, and Performances which are applicable to British FPA. Although it is a very promising start, and I apply its proposed structure as the foundation for my theory building, it still leads to contradictory assignments between Role Performances and Role Orientations.
    Through carrying out Quantitative Content Analysis on a comprehensive case study on ‘British Foreign Policy to Iran’s Nuclear Programme (2002 – 2022), and by collecting 186 debates on Iran in British Houses of Parliament in that period, I aim to propose a model explaining ‘Identity Reconstruction in British Foreign and Security Policy’, which rests on a new interpretation of ‘alter’ (explaining Role Orientations), ‘ego’ (explaining Role Conceptions), and advocated policies by the British political elites (explaining Role Performances). The diversity of actors involved in the JCPOA helps to see how the British interpret each country’s role.
    
    Author: Ali Askari (University of Kent)
- 206
  06 Panel / Multiple Practices of Humanitarianism and Beyond Exec 10, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Responsibility to Protect Working Group
  
  Convener: Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Responsibility to Protect Working group
  
  Chair: Blake Lawrinson (University of Leeds)
  - Refuge in Peril: The UK and US Responsibility to Protect Syrians Fleeing Mass Atrocities
    
    This draft monograph (to be conditionally published as part of CUP's Asylum and Migration series) offers the missing story of how powerful liberal democracies are partially responsible for creating barriers to consensus around the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). This is demonstrated through the empirical case study of the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) in Syria. This is because the research revealed that the way the UK has understood R2P shows a clear resistance to R2P’s explicit requirements around peaceful measures in favour of the norm’s most controversial and contested aspect (intervention). Thus, a significant problem arises as this interrelation exacerbates existing contestation making effective mass atrocity responses and prevention impossible. The UK case study is then compared and contrasted to an empirical study on the US, which will be undertaken in the next few months. The peaceful measure of refugee protection is explored in terms of how it interacts with R2P in the UK and the US case studies around Syrian refugees.
    
    Author: Chloe McRae Gilgan (University of Lincoln)
  - Everyday (in)security in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh: a vernacular security study
    
    Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, lacking any permanent legal refugee status, are frequently labelled as a “threat to national security”, “criminals”, “terrorists” and “dangerous”. At the same time, their camps are often described as breeding grounds for terrorism’ by the government and its security forces. These narratives and their transverses, which are subject to change based on political agenda, heavily influence the existing security discourse and practices in the camps. By drawing upon in-depth semi-structured interviews with 171 Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, this article explores the experiences and impact of the existing security strategies from the refugees’ perspectives which is absent from wider debates. This article offers two overarching arguments- firstly, the state’s existing omnipresent security approach in the camps is targeting refugees, making them further insecure and vulnerable through creating fear, negative labelling, and narratives. Secondly, in the absence of a well-defined and human-centred security policy, these approaches are adversely affecting refugees' ability to attain justice, human rights, education, freedom of movement, sustenance, safety, right to protection, voluntary repatriation, livelihood opportunities, integration, and more. Based on my empirical findings and analysis of the existing security discourse, this article offers three contributions. First, a problem-driven meta-method for comprehending everyday (in)security combines ethnography and discourse theory in a global South country- Bangladesh. Second, empirical findings of the gendered dimensions of everyday (in)security within the Rohingya refugee community resulted from the state’s security strategies. And finally, an intellectual contribution to contemporary scholarship on vernacular security by shedding light on the underexamined experience and perspectives of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. This analysis and contributions, I conclude, have significance in the contemporary debate of critical security and security politics in humanitarian contexts.
    
    Author: Sabrina Ahmed (University of East Anglia)
  - Reconstruction for whom? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Ukraine's Recovery Plan
    
    This study uses critical policy discourse analysis to examine Ukraine’s 2023 Recovery Plan, focusing on power dynamics embedded within the plan. By analysing the language and discussions at the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2023 and its side events, this paper seeks to understand whose interests are prioritised within the recovery framework and to identify ideological narratives and power structures that sustain these preferences. A central point of the analysis is the tension between civil society’s aspirations and private sector interests, particularly the conflict between corporate economic gains and the socio-economic rights of those most affected by the ongoing war. The study examines policy texts and conference dialogues, seeking to understand how business economic interests are either prioritised or harmonised with claims for socio-economic justice. The study contributes to the academic debates on post-conflict reconstruction by providing insights into how reconstruction efforts can potentially advance or hinder social equality. It offers a critical lens on policy-making processes, arguing for a more inclusive approach prioritising economic redistribution over profit-making in societies scarred by large-scale violence and destruction.
    
    Author: Justina Pinkeviciute (Centre for Peace, Trust and Social Relations)
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  06 Roundtable / NATO at 75: Challenging Times Sonata, Hyatt
  
  In July 2024 NATO will mark its 75th anniversary at a summit in Washington, DC. NATO's longevity is remarkable and it has emerged from the first eighteen months of the Ukraine war with a renewed sense of purpose. Yet NATO faces continued uncertainty and serious challenges. These include: the evolution and eventual endpoint of the war in Ukraine; the possible re-election of a NATO-sceptic US President (Donald Trump) in November 2024; long-term uncertainties about the balance and relationship between NATO and the EU; the issue of whether and how a more stable long-term relationship with Russia might be constructed; the issue of whether and how NATO may be relevant to the strategic challenge posed by China's rise and Sino-American geo-strategic competition; and the question of what role (if any) the alliance may have in addressing the global problem of climate change. This round-table will explore these issues, addressing both policy challenges and how IR and political science concepts and theories can help us think through NATO at 75.
  
  Sponsor: European Security Working Group
  
  Chair: Andre Barrinha (University of Bath)
  
  Participants: Rita Floyd (University of Birmingham) , Andrew Cottey (University College Cork) , Mark Webber (University of Birmingham) , Lorenzo Cladi (University of Plymouth)
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  06 Roundtable / No feminism without anticolonialism: towards a just feminist international thinking Soprano, Hyatt
  
  That some strands of dominant feminisms (including academic feminist work) have consistently been unable to grapple with the liberationist pasts and presents of feminist thinking and solidaristic organising is not a new story. These silences among ‘feminists’ become even more pronounced in times of imperial wars, settler coloniality and genocidal violence, and often emerge as a wilful refusal to build bridges across struggles or identify the intertwined nature of gender with racialisation and coloniality. This critique comes alive in a 2023 protest poster calling for ceasefire in Gaza that reads ‘Feminist Silence on Palestine, Sudan, Congo is Patriarchal Violence’.
  
  Decolonial feminist thinker Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso has carefully demonstrated how often the interests of feminists in Latin America and beyond diverge from anti-racist and anticolonial struggles, and insists that we map these ‘feminist’ silences and expose ‘feminist’ complicities that have failed to recognise that liberal frameworks and agendas are often ungirded by colonial frames of thinking. Within IR, this is reflected in how analysing the gendered effects of war are often delinked from the root causes of why wars are waged, or how occupations often take hold because of the imperial, racist, ethnonationalist and violent conceptions of state sovereignty. Further, the persistence of ‘women-centric’ or even ‘peace and security’ discourses have failed to sufficiently account for the violence of coloniality that most of the world continues to live with. Differential processes and effects of war and occupations not only impact women but also marginal racialised subjects including men who are stripped of their humanity. Or how discourses around queer and gender liberation are often co-opted by violent states to further their colonial agendas.
  
  Thinking through feminism as a project of collective liberation, this roundtable refuses liberal, imperial and racist feminist iterations, and engages with anticolonialism as both imperative and urgent for a feminist politics of planetary social justice. This roundtable brings together scholars working with communities and issues rendered marginal within dominant critical studies of the international, and how they imagine feminism as always entangled with the politics of anticolonialism. In thinking with the questions of ethics, location, accountability and creative methodologies, this roundtable directly responds to the BISA theme of ‘whose international studies?’ by locating the place of anticolonial feminisms in the international we are thinking with/towards.
  
  The roundtable features early career scholars engaging with gender, state, human/non-human, borders, de/anti/postcolonial feminisms, war and coloniality who will discuss how we can weave anticolonialism in our feminist praxis, and how we can collectively imagine a ‘just’ international that centres collective liberation.
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Chair: Niharika Pandit (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Participants: Senel Wanniarachchi (LSE) , Mandeep Sidhu (University of Brighton) , Nour Almazidi (LSE) , Participant to be confirmed
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  06 Panel / Peacekeeping, Peacebuilding and conflict resolution Exec 9, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: PKPBG Working group
  
  Chair: Nancy Annan (Coventry University)
  - Civilian protection 25 years on: norm diffusion as a lens for understanding how protection is promoted, internalised, and undermined since Security Council Resolution 1270 (1999).
    
    In the 25 years since the UN Security Council approved the first peacekeeping mandate with specific obligations for the protection of civilians (Sierra Leone in 1999), the scope and depth of this responsibility has developed considerably. More components of multidimensional peace support operations are seen to have a role in protection. The ambition has also increased, and the caveats and qualifications have been weakened. At the same time, civilian protection mandates have been added to more complex deployments where there may not be any peace to keep. A key question is how these mandates are operationalised, internalised, and prioritised. These include training, operational guidelines and manuals, and how lessons from the field are institutionalised. As a complement to these processes, this paper seeks to understand the processes from the perspective of norm diffusion. Civilian protection is itself a new norm which has been created and promoted by various means – formal and informal. It must compete alongside other norms and principles for priority, resources, and attention, especially when there are tensions between protection and other mandate responsibilities.
    
    Author: Walt Kilroy (Dublin City University)
  - Global, Regional, and National Dynamics of Legitimacy in Partnership Peacekeeping
    
    In response to the changing and complicating conflict environment, partnership peacekeeping has increasingly become a norm in addressing peace and security challenges globally. The partnership between the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) is a highly institutionalised case of such contemporary strategy, with the hybrid mission in Darfur (UNAMID) being seen to epitomise the operationalisation of partnership peacekeeping. While recent studies focus on the partnership’s effectiveness, less attention has been paid to the legitimacy dynamics in play. These legitimacy dynamics are crucial in understanding the rationale for partnership peacekeeping, as well as the challenges it faces when navigating through different audiences. This paper in progress therefore aims to uncover the global, regional, and national dynamics of legitimacy in the AU-UN peacekeeping partnership. Drawing primarily on strategic documents and interviews, it argues that multi-level analysis is necessary to understand the relationships – whether complementary or conflictual – between legitimacies in partnership peacekeeping. It focuses on the case of UNAMID, less because of its uniqueness as a hybrid mission but more due to the complex interplay of legitimacy dimensions throughout the mission’s progress. In doing so, the paper proposes a largely unexplored analytical lens through which we can understand the multiplicity of audiences in contemporary peace operations and their interactions with the normative structure of international peacekeeping.
    
    Author: Daeun Jung (University of Warwick)
  - Inclusive-Hybrid Peace: A more inclusive, less exclusionary approach to peace for international military interveners
    
    This paper explores the extent to which military personnel involved in peacekeeping and/or peacebuilding activities engage in hybrid peace, and the potential that these activities can be reinforced through a greater awareness of inclusive peace. As military interveners gain a better understanding of the important roles that locals can play in ending violence and establishing and maintaining peace, the more hybrid peace approaches are utilised. Often, military interveners focus their hybrid peace approach entirely on engagements with key local leaders. While this does constitute hybrid peace, it is problematic as it is not inclusive, potentially excluding significant parts of the population (e.g., youth, women, minorities), which could contribute to perpetuating current conflicts or fostering new conflict (e.g., between those excluded and political elites). This raises the question of how inclusive these hybrid peace approaches are, and if hybrid peace can be more inclusive. To explore this, the paper starts by examining where hybrid peace and inclusive peace overlap in conceptual work on peacekeeping and peacebuilding in post-conflict societies, before engaging in policy guidance from actors such as NATO and the UN. The paper then turns to identifying ways in which an inclusive-hybrid peace dynamic can be explored in the context of researching the activities of international military interveners in Kosovo (NATO’s Kosovo Force, KFOR).
    
    Author: Gena Sturgon (Coventry University)
- 210
  
  06 Roundtable / Precision: The American Way of War? - In conversation with Professor Mick Cox and Professor Caroline Kennedy-Pipe. THIS IS AN INVITE ONLY EVENT Dolce, Hyatt
  
  We think of precision warfare as a modern invention, closely associated with the Gulf War, the Kosovo Campaign and drone technologies. But its origins go back much further in history. As historian James Patton Rogers reveals in his new book, 'Precision: A History of American Warfare', this quest to achieve precision in war began in 1917, during the early years of powered flight in the United States. This means that precision has been a significant, if not always achievable, feature of American strategic thought for more than a hundred years. In this BISA War Studies Roundtable, leading of foreign policy and security analyse the core arguments put forward in Dr Patton Rogers' new book and debate the future of precision warfare, drones, and American military power.
  
  The session will be followed by a drinks reception and book launch sponsored by Manchester University Press.
  
  Chairs – Dr James Patton Rogers (Cornell) & Dr Patrick Bury (Bath)
  Discussion – Professor Mick Cox (LSE) & Prof Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (Loughborough)
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Chair: James Patton Rogers (Cornell University)
  
  Participants: James Patton Rogers (Cornell University) , Caroline Kennedy-Pipe (Loughborough University) , Michael Cox (LSE) , TBC
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  06 Panel / Re-focusing transnational connectivities: new conversations on diasporas, activism, and repression Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: Lucia Ardovini (Lancaster University)
  
  Chair: Lucia Ardovini (Lancaster University)
  
  Discussant: Dana Moss (University of Notre Dame)
  - Transnational Repression in an Age of Global Authoritarianism: Experiences of Uyghur Diaspora Activists in Sweden
    
    Recently, research on global authoritarianism and transnational repression has expanded rapidly and deepened our understanding of the ways in which less- and non-democratic regimes seek to control or silence parts of their non-resident populations. While we have a fairly good understanding of the underlying operating logics and authoritarian regimes’ strategies and tactics, we know comparatively less about the ways in which the intended targets or victims experience these practices. To further help fill this gap, the present article focuses on the lived experiences of exiled Uyghur activists in Sweden, and how they perceive, react and adapt to Chinese efforts to silence their voices thousands of miles from home. Building on semi-structured interviews with diaspora activists and secondary sources, we find that repressive practices such as surveillance, harassment as well as repression by proxy seem to be rather widespread. At the same time, we find these practices, at least in this particular context, to be less efficacious than the perpetrators might like. We identify the host country context – understood broadly – to be a key issue for further research in this space.
    
    Authors: Michel Harb (University of Gothenburg)* , Arne Wackenhut (University of Gothenburg)
  - Resilience in Exile: Turkey's Intelligentsia's Narratives on Migration and Advocacy
    
    The shift towards authoritarianism in Turkey forced many citizens to alter the course of their lives, resorting to drastic measures like migration and exile. Over the past decade, thousands have departed Turkey, marking one of the largest Turkish migrations to Europe and other destinations. Among these migrants were individuals who either supported or opposed the current regime's political and social policies, as well as members of marginalized minority groups. This group also encompassed members of the Gülen movement, accused of orchestrating the failed 2016 coup attempt, alongside white-collar professionals and secular Turkish citizens who chose to migrate due to political and economic changes in the country. This paper specifically delves into the experiences of a particular subset of this new wave, referred to as Turkey's intelligentsia in exile. These individuals made the decision to leave Turkey following the Gezi protests in 2013. The insights shared are drawn from 25 interviews conducted in 2021 with former academics, activists, artists, journalists, and politicians who relocated to various places due to pending legal trials or arrest warrants against them. The paper presents their perceptions on exile, lived experiences in host countries and their coping mechanisms with transnational repression.
    
    Authors: Ahmet Erdi Ozturk (London Metropolitan University)* , Bahar Baser (Durham University)
  - Transnational Human Rights Violations: Institutional Strategies to Address Globalized Repression
    
    Many targets of transnational repression either fear seeking help or find an absence of suitable domestic avenues for assistance. When they do seek help, domestic institutions may lack awareness, capacity and understanding of the human rights responsibilities on the state. Examining this complex and growing problem through the lens of states’ responsibility to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of all individuals on their territory, this article proposes a new institutional response mechanism to address these challenges. Beginning by identifying a range of methods currently used to target individuals, we identify the relevant human rights standards, state responsibilities, and critically assesses recent steps taken by national governments in the US and UK to address particular aspects of transnational repression. We then highlight the unfulfilled potential for National Human Rights Institutions, working domestically and through their transnational networks, to identify and monitor violations, support targeted individuals in the exercise of their rights, help state bureaucracies understand relevant obligations, and develop mechanisms by which to penalise perpetrators and enable targets to seek redress.
    
    Authors: Kirsten Roberts Lyer (Central European University)* , Andrew Chubb (Lancaster Universiry)
  - Between and rock and a hard place: the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s struggles with diasporic subjectivity and transnational repression.
    
    In the decade following the 2011 Arab Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Europe has seen the emergence of new MENA diaspora communities due to new patterns of displacement – forced and by choice – amidst conditions of rising authoritarianism. Forced into exile, communities escaping authoritarianism and state repression have resettled into societies across Europe, reshaping transnational activist networks and establishing new patterns of diaspora activism in the process. Diasporic communities differ widely in nature and practice, including members and leaders of Islamist organizations and social movements, with different relations to the homeland. These are typically different from pre-existing Arab diasporas, since the Islamist nature of their members means that they build on decades of political participation through civil society, electoral processes, and oppositional politics, making them more politically oriented. It is this political orientation that also makes these movements and their members more likely to be subjected to different forms of repression, both from their home countries and their host states.
    
    This paper focuses on the experience of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, whose members and supporters have been living in forced exile since the 2013 coup, mostly relocating in Turkey and the UK. The paper focuses on the changes in the Brotherhood’s activism and ideology brought about by its new diaspora dimension, and by the limitations and renewed repression on the movement that are being caused by Turkey’s growing authoritarianism and shifting foreign policy interests.
    
    Author: Lucia Ardovini (Lancaster University)
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  06 Panel / Rethinking epistemologies and representation in international studies Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Andrew Milne (University of St Andrews)
  - Necropolitics and Necropolice: Immortality and Death Art-Activism in Late Putin’s Russia.
    
    The growing field of IR literature that studies visual politics of death and a corpse shows that power does not release its grip over the dead even though death is supposed to put an end to power (Auchter 2021; Heath-Kelly 2017). Having escaped discourse, a corpse can be returned to it once more and transformed into a symbol – or on the contrary, never be welcomed back and left unacknowledged because it has never been visible in the first place (Otele, Gandolfo, and Galai 2021; Okoth Opondo and Shapiro 2020). This paper contributes to these studies by looking at how “the dead” are articulated in the performances of the art-activist group “the party of the dead” as an “aesthetic” (Shapiro 2013) and political subject challenging the exercise of necropower by contemporary Russia. Aiming to make the dead speak as the dead through macabre visual style, language of hopelessness, and ritualistic “burials” but inevitably failing in this task by virtue of being alive, “the party” articulates death as the limit of experience and positions it against the everyday aesthetic regime that erases the experience of life’s finitude and posits the existence of the immortal subject thereby enabling the proliferation of killing. Analyzing “the party’s” aesthetic interventions via Rancière’s notion of “politics” and Bataille’s conceptualization of sovereignty as a miraculous event, the paper puts forward the concept of affirmative necropolitics as the operation of countering the sovereign desire for immortality by articulating the experience of finitude. In a world where death has been erased and so is omnipresent, where no end is in sight and hence apocalypse is imminent, where history is over and so things will get worse and worse, true death is akin to a miracle, however painful, unendurable it is. Its articulation turns out to be a powerful political statement valuating life and making space for hope.
    
    Bibliography
    
    Auchter, Jessica. 2021. Global Corpse Politics: The Obscenity Taboo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    
    Heath-Kelly, Charlotte. 2017. Death and Security: Memory and Mortality at the Bombsite. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
    
    Otele, Olivette, Luisa Gandolfo, and Yoav Galai, eds. 2021. Post-Conflict Memorialization: Missing Memorials, Absent Bodies. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
    
    Okoth Opondo, Sam, and Michael Shapiro. 2020. “Cinematic Encounters and Frontiers of Precarity.” In Necrogeopolitics: On Death and Death-Making in International Relations, edited by Caroline Alphin and François Debrix, 121-41. London: Routledge.
    
    Shapiro, Michael J. Studies in Trans-Disciplinary Method: After the Aesthetic Turn. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.
    
    Author: Vladimir Ogula (Central European University)
  - Comparative Experiences with 'Affirmative Action': Findings from a New Dataset
    
    ‘Affirmative action’, sometimes called ‘positive action’, favouring members of marginalized populations in, for instance, university enrolment, public employment, and political representation, is a core policy approach to addressing group-based inequality. Affirmative action policies targeting racial and ethnic minorities have been adopted by dozens of countries as a means of correcting historical injustices, supporting marginalized groups, and promoting equality. Sharply debated, they have been criticized especially in terms of fairness to non-target groups and their potential to contribute to societal conflict.
    
    Although there is a large literature on affirmative action, much of it focuses on a limited set of countries, in particular the United States, India, Brazil, Malaysia, and South Africa (see Schotte, Gisselquist, & Leone 2023). While much can be learned from these experiences, without a stronger sense of the universe of cases, we have little leverage on the generalizability of findings drawn from them. Indeed, the extant literature suggests clearly that macrostructural, institutional, and other factors influence the adoption, implementation, and impact of affirmative action policies, yet to date, we have lacked a cross-country dataset providing the sort of comparative information that would allow for systematic consideration of such relationships.
    
    Speaking to this research gap, this paper presents the new Affirmative Action Dataset. The dataset provides detailed information in a standardized format on the design and modalities of affirmative action policies targeting ethnic and racial minorities, as well as on their adoption, implementation, and impact. A pilot Version 1, completed in January 2023, covered 53 countries based on review and analysis of material by at least two coders per country. Version 2 (December 2023), which is used in this paper, offers expanded coverage of 70 countries. In addition to the database, country factsheets explaining the data codings and providing additional context information have been prepared and will be released with Version 2.
    
    The paper begins with brief review of the literature on affirmative action, situating the value of the new Affirmative Action Dataset. Section 2 summarizes the research methodology, including the scope, country selection, information sources, and coding strategy. Section 3 discusses the range of affirmative action policies as adopted, summarizing broad trends based on the data compiled at the policy domain level and exploring several country examples. Section 4 offers synthesis of findings on the factors influencing affirmative action policy adoption, amendment, and abolition, while Section 5 discusses common controversies identified in the country codings. Section 6 considers evaluations and assessments of policies. A final section considers implications for future research.
    
    Author: Rachel Gisselquist (UNU-WIDER)
  - Epistemic Injustice and Quantum IR: Improving inclusivity by granting ontological status to the unconscious
    
    The utility of quantum ontologies to international relations has been a recent point of contention. A critique of the prospect of a ‘quantum international relations’ is that the so-called ‘quantum turn’ offers nothing new: its claims to novelty are redundant, predicated on an unhelpful science fetishism and an ignorance of both post-structural and critical theory. In this paper I argue that a unique utility of quantum ontologies pertains to the problem of epistemic injustice. I posit that epistemic injustice – the evaluation of someone’s knowledge as less legitimate than someone else’s as a result of identity prejudice or, more pertinently, a lack of the necessary epistemic tools – often has its roots in a limited scientific understanding of the world based in classical physics. In short, religious and Indigenous knowledge-systems are often unjustly, and perhaps unconsciously, dismissed as ‘backwards’ or ‘unscientific’. Quantum ontologies offer the antidote to those whose minds are closed to religious and Indigenous knowledge-systems, and to the role played by creativity and intuition in knowledge-production. By putting the literature on epistemic injustice into dialogue with that of quantum social theory, I point in the direction of a more inclusive international relations.
    
    Author: Andrew Milne (University of St Andrews)
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  06 Panel / Shifting roles in Middle East politics: collaborators, newcomers and dealbreakers Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Conveners: ISMMEA Working group , Bahar Baser (Durham University) , Betul Dogan Akkas (Ankara University) , Rory McCarthy (Durham University)
  
  Chair: Dan Wang (Durham University)
  - From Bystander to Game Maker: Changing Roles of Russia in Libya
    
    After the outbreak of Arab uprisings, Libya was the first country to experience foreign military intervention. The NATO-led military intervention in 2011, which initially started as a campaign to protect civilians, escalated into an operation aimed at regime change. Giving a green light to this operation by abstaining from the UN Security Council, Russia’s initial reaction to the developments in Libya followed a conciliatory approach. This stance evolved into a more assertive, multi-faceted policy, characterised by an increased military presence, the hosting of peace talks in Moscow, and direct engagement with both local and international stakeholders in the conflict. Covering the period between the NATO operation in 2011 and the ceasefire in 2020, this study explicates the change in Russia’s role in Libya by using role theory. It examines how Russia relocated its roles in the Libyan conflict influenced by its socialisation with the West: from the hopeful 'reset' policy to the intensifying rivalry.
    
    Authors: Abdullah Kesvelioglu (University of Edinburgh) , Yusuf Topaloglu (University of Edinburgh)
  - Kuwait-Turkey Relations: Regional sub-system collaborators or pragmatic allies?
    
    What role does Turkey play in Kuwait's sub-regional and regional power projection? This is the key question that this research will examine in respect with these states potential role in supporting proposed guideline by Our Common Agenda. Although the challenges at the domestic, the sub-regional, the regional and the global level are complex and multidimensional, yet Kuwait’s and Turkey’s foreign policy strategies are improving to promote their power projection.
    
    This paper will have three purposes. The first one is to examine Turkey’s role in Kuwait’s power projection. Kuwait-Turkey relations has been in a steady and balanced relationship but high-level visits and multilateral cooperation have been increasing since the AK Party re-oriented its foreign policy. Kuwait and Turkey's policy making in the wake of the Arab uprisings and the Qatar crisis of 2017 had a logic of equivalence rather than of differences. Due to the Arab Uprisings, the regional atmosphere has changed dramatically, and Turkey and Kuwait have both logic of equivalence and differences in their perceived roles.
    
    Secondly, the paper will answer the question of do Kuwait-Turkey relations impact the parties' regional policies in a new way? In other words, in what ways does the consolidation of relations in these agents' regional roles benefit them? In order to answer these agent-structure questions comprehensively, the paper will use the Role theory's approach to the national role in systems and in the agent-structure relationships (Holsti, 1970; Backman, 1970; Harnish et al, 2011; Kaarbo, 2015; Candir & Kaarbo, 2016; Ozdamar, 2016). In particular, the concepts of "regional subsystem collaborator" refer to "a state's commitment to build regional systems of cooperation and to cooperative efforts with other states to build wider communities or crosscutting subsystems" (Ozdamar, 2016, p. 91). A question arises at this stage: Do these bilateral ties serve as regional subsystem collaborations? In what ways do these states have unique roles to play within the Middle East system and the GCC sub-system that benefit from bilateral ties? While conceptualizing their foreign policy making towards each other, the research could discuss "role conflict" (Harnisch, 2011) and "role change" (Breuning 1995; Thies 2010). Third purpose of the research is to examine the role of these bilateral relations in addressing the issues raised by the UN Secretary-General. These agents' regional roles and their bilateral ties will be examined especially in three proposed titles, promoting peace and preventing conflicts, building trust, and boosting partnerships, that are relevant to Kuwait-Turkey relations.
    Consequently, the this study will fulfill a valid gap in the literature regarding Turkish-Kuwaiti relations. In doing this, the research will combine the agendas of two states, rather than focusing exclusively on the Turkish or Kuwaiti approach. Methodologically, focusing on ties rather than one single facet of policy making is based on the conceptual discussion of national role.
    
    Author: Betul Dogan Akkas (Ankara University)
  - Understanding Russia's Role in the Syrian Conflict
    
    Russia’s interventions in Syria are intrinsically linked to its broader grand strategy and global foreign policy. This paper seeks to understand Russia's intervention in Syria through a role theory analysis of its hybrid warfare strategies there and how they relate to Russia’s historical socialisation, which has given rise to a self-identifying discourse of messianism within a context of developing global multipolarity. The Syrian conflict was the first war in which Russia intervened outside the former Soviet Union since the USSR’s collapse. Alongside Moscow's annexation of Crimea, Russia's military intervention in Syria has ushered in an era of Russian foreign policy assertiveness unprecedented since the Cold War, signalling Russia's shifting role in global politics. Russian official foreign policy discourse, enshrined in Russia's Foreign Policy Concepts, emphasises Russia's protective role of statism globally, the global benefits of multipolarity promoted by Russia, and the dangers of interventions under the pretence of humanitarianism. These principles guide an alternative normative framework Moscow seeks to promote through its foreign policy, such as its interventions in Syria, the key tenets being: non-intervention in the internal affairs of states (unless invited); democracy between states; and the sanctity of state sovereignty, especially in the face of the increasing importance of the rights of the individual in international law. This has not been without friction and the reception of Russian activities globally, and in Syria, has been a major factor in its emerging role.
    
    Author: Kasia Houghton (University of St Andrews)
  - China’s international roles and goals in mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia
    
    China’s international roles and goals in mediation between Iran and Saudi Arabia
    
    Author: Jia Liu (Durham University)
  - Understanding Saudi-Iran Détente Using Role Theory
    
    This research paper investigates the intricacies of Saudi-Iran détente, centering the analysis on the role of Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, through the theoretical framework of Role Theory. Against the backdrop of transformative geopolitical dynamics in the Middle East, the thawing relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran present a noteworthy development, with Mohammed bin Salman emerging as a pivotal figure. This study aims to unravel the nuanced roles, expectations, and identities that shape Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's engagement with Iran, utilizing the lens of Role Theory to understand the underlying factors influencing his diplomatic decisions. The analysis encompasses contemporary geopolitical considerations and socio-cultural dimensions, providing a comprehensive exploration of Mohammed bin Salman's role in the evolving Saudi-Iran détente. This research seeks to deepen our understanding of the broader implications of the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince’s involvement in regional diplomacy, contributing valuable insights to both the specific case study and the broader field of international relations.
    
    Author: Mohamed Shaheem Kizhakke Purayil (Qatar University)
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  06 Panel / Spatial Logics of Violence in Global Politics Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: PPWG Working group
  
  Chair: Jeffrey Whyte (Lancaster University)
  - Nonviolence as a rejection of permanence? The temporality of unarmed civilian protection
    
    Thought of as a moral yet naïve principle, or simply the opposite of violence, the possibilities and limits of nonviolence, particularly in the context of armed conflict, remain neglected (Jackson, 2020). As such, nonviolence is both a principle and a practice which remains under-theorised in IR. Unarmed civilian protection (UCP) is a nonviolent method of civilian-to-civilian and civilian self-protection, which instrumentalises nonviolent bodies in protection of themselves and each other. Building on interviews and workshops with UCP practitioners who embody nonviolence through protection practices, this paper seeks to engage the question of what nonviolence is. Rejecting the binary notion of nonviolence being simply not-violence, it explores the experiences of nonviolent practitioners to argue that nonviolence instead is a rejection not only of violence, but of permanence. Moving away from responses to armed conflict which are shaped through the finality and permanence of killing and death, UCP practitioners commit to a constant (re)production of nonviolent spaces which are, and will always be, necessarily in a state of becoming. As such, this paper asks how can nonviolence be understood as a necessarily temporal phenomena? And what is the relationship between nonviolence and permenance?
    
    Author: Louise Ridden (University of Tampere)
  - Recognising Violence: The Embodied Production of Atrocity
    
    In this paper, I investigate how the body and embodiment are significant in the production of ‘atrocity’ violence. While invoked in both academic and public political discourses to convey moral outrage at – and hence delegitimise – certain forms of violence, atrocity remains a nebulous concept. Broadly speaking, it is understood either through legalistic and policy-oriented factors such as scale, time, and distribution of violence, or more anthropologically through reference to the infliction of unnecessary cruelty and/or pain. Both approaches counter-intuitively minimise the embodied experience of violence and produce objectified ‘victims’, to be measured against quantitative factors (in the first approach) or the rationality/necessity of violence of the perpetrator (in the second). Drawing on testimonies from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established following the 1991-2002 Sierra Leonean civil war, I combine psychoanalytic and post-colonial approaches to consider firstly how the body in its vulnerability to pain, wounding, and death is politically affective, and secondly how ‘atrocity’ arises from this affective horror being linked with ideas of rationality. I argue that existing accounts of violence and atrocity neglect these embodied experiences of both the violated subject and the subject confronted with this violation, which thus impoverishes understandings of how violence becomes politically salient. My research contributes to recent post-structuralist investigations of the embodied and bodily production of politics, and broader ongoing critical debates around the sanitisation and racialisation of political violence.
    
    KEYWORDS: atrocity violence; embodiment; bodies; psychoanalysis; post-colonialism
    
    Author: Nicholas Gribble (University of Manchester)
  - Can the Subaltern Speak in Village Assembly? Reflections on Caste Dynamics in South Asia
    
    This paper critically examines political power in local governments for the past three decades concerning deliberative democracy and decentralization of power at the grassroots level in South Asia in general and in India in particular. However, substantial political power was still concentrated in the hands of Landowners from the dominant caste in most of the villages. Moreover, voicelessness, powerlessness and helplessness among subaltern sections are prevailing. Constitutional provision in thirty years has established local elites among the dominant caste and created puppets among marginalized communities. When it comes to women, still proxies are exercising power in all the communities. Meanwhile, graduates and white-collar job holders from lower castes have migrated to urban cities for employment opportunities. However, lockdowns during the pandemic made them work from home. As a result, they had to stay in the village. In that conscious period, they have seen the visible and invisible forms of oppression, suppression and exploitation of the dominant caste over the subaltern communities. They also saw how the dominant caste was an organized minority who helped each other from top to bottom to perpetuate their power. This made the educated people among the unagonized majority organize themselves to resist. however, the main objective of this paper is to understand the methods of resistance against the local elite and also to analyze the possibility of shifting the power to the people to achieve total democracy.
    
    Author: Chintala Venkatramana (university of allahabad)
  - Queering responses to domestic violence: the impact of international contestation in the conceptualization of domestic violence
    
    Despite its prevalence and impact, limited attention has been paid to domestic violence within the discipline and practice of IR and, in particularly, as it is experienced within queer relationships. However, within this context, the international human rights framework on gender-based violence has been instrumental in leading the narrative created and shaping the policy and programmatic responses at the regional and national levels to domestic violence. Though this has advanced the work on domestic violence, contestations in the international realm surrounding gender, sexuality and race have created a conceptualization of domestic violence which is narrow. This paper combines ethnographic research conducted in South Africa and the United Kingdom with queer people who have experienced domestic violence, with a poststructural policy analysis of the international policy framework centred on domestic violence. In doing so, it lays bare the silences and effects of the current conceptualization of domestic violence within the UN system – including the precedence given to heteronormative relationships and marriage, the dismissal of the interconnectivity of homophobia, transphobia and racism with how domestic violence is experienced, and the neglect of queer peoples’ needs in addressing the problem.
    
    Author: Leah de Haan (University of Amsterdam)
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  06 Roundtable / The politics of development: Institutions, interests, and ideas Room 101, Library
  
  The roundtable discusses a textbook on the politics of development due to be published in 2024.
  Everything about development is political. Politics is not an add-on, or a discrete academic angle on development, but rather, the way development happens. Explicitly recognising this encourages us to analyse development politically. This panel seeks to advance the analysis of the politics of development by exploring the political dynamics behind the everyday lived realities that prevent people from realising the resources, rights, and freedoms they need and value. We conceptualise the politics of development as a process of contesting alternative desired futures. Everywhere this happens, there are formal structures and informal rules or institutions in place, being contested by more (or less) rational actors with competing power and interests, driven by underpinning ideas about what is right and fair. The panel explores how these three ‘I’s of the politics of development can bring a fresh lens on some of most pressing development challenges facing the world today, showing that politics is not only an obstacle, but the way change happens.
  
  Sponsor: University of Birmingham, International Development Department (School of Government)
  
  Chair: Sameen Ali (IDD, University of Birmingham)
  
  Participants: Emeka Njoku (University of Birmingham) , Claire Mcloughlin (University of Birmingham) , Kailing Xie (University of Birmingham) , David Hudson (University of Birmingham) , Jonathan Fisher (University of Birmingham) , Emily Scott (University of Birmingham)
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  06 Panel / Theorising (counter)terrorism Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Convener: CST Working group
  
  Chair: Rabea Khan (Liverpool John Moores University)
  - Continuity and change in the construction of Terrorism Expertise: Struggles for Epistemic Authority on the Islamic State Group
    
    The dramatic emergence of the Islamic State group (IS) in 2014 disrupted and revitalised the landscape of Western knowledge production on ‘terrorism’, ‘jihadism’ and ‘radicalisation’. A gold rush to construct ‘expertise’ on the group emerged across academia, think tanks, the media, and further afield. This paper uses Bourdieusian-inspired tools to reveal a deep contestation over who was (and crucially, was not) an ‘ISIS expert’, and as to what exactly constitutes epistemic authority on the group. It proceeds to examine the struggles for expert recognition amongst IS knowledge producers and consumers, including contested sources of legitimisation, diverging strategies aspiring experts undertake, and the impact of the spaces where these struggles occur. Finally, it places these findings on the state of IS expertise within the context of existing accounts of terrorism expertise, largely situated post-9/11, but before the rise of IS, in a different political, media and technological context of knowledge production and circulation. In doing this, it unpacks what the IS-era tells us about the continuity and change in the processes of constructing expertise and the attempts to ‘discipline terror’ (Stampnitzky, 2013).
    
    Author: Dylan Marshall (Aberystwyth University)
  - The New ‘New Terrorism’? Terrorism's temporalities and their resilience
    
    Recent years have witnessed growing political and media reference to the novelty of contemporary terrorism. Terrorism, today, is widely seen to be characterised by: (i) the growth of racist and misogynistic violences associated, for instance, with the far-right and Incels; (ii) the increased prominence of ‘lone actor’ or ‘self-starter’ extremists; and (iii) a less predictable and therefore more challenging threat. This article argues that this composite construction warrants attention for two reasons. First, because it demonstrates clear rhetorical continuity with an older set of claims associated with the ‘new terrorism’ thesis popularised in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Second, because this rhetorical continuity masks an ontological discontinuity with that earlier thesis’ referents and arguments. By exploring this tension and its importance, the paper offers: (i) original empirical reflection on contemporary discourse relating to terrorism’s (constructed) temporalities; (ii) analytical conceptualisation of this contemporary framing as an important evolutionary moment within ‘new terrorism’ discourse; and, (iii) theoretical reflection on the resilience of temporal periodisations of terrorism, by highlighting the ability of the ‘new terrorism’ discourse to outlive its original purposes, case studies, contexts, and advocates.
    
    Authors: Michael Lister (Oxford Brookes University)* , Andrew Whiting (Royal Holloway) , Lee Jarvis
  - Deconstructing terrorism as a contested term: A social constructionist thematic analysis of the Nigerian government use of terrorism in labelling groups as terrorist and legitimising their counterterrorism responses
    
    Terrorism is an issue of global concern, and the use of the term is widely contested with no agreed definition. Yet, there exists a paucity of research on how government, including state actors, construe terrorism and their response to it from a critical terrorism perspective using the herdsmen, banditry, and the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) in Nigeria as case studies. Drawing on a Critical Terrorism Studies lens and underpinned by social constructionist theory, the study dissects how the language of ‘terrorism’ is used in problematic and contested terms to decide what group gets labelled as terrorists. It finds that factors such as politics and religion of key state actors, including the government, seems to influence how terrorism is construed and inadvertently lead to the labelling of groups such as IPOB seeking self-determination as terrorist whilst herdsmen and banditry that have led to the enormous loss of lives and properties appears not to be considered same. The study also found harsher counterterrorism responses to such groups so labelled as terrorist compared to those not receiving such label and further building public resentment and distrust for the government counterterrorism response. In conclusion, the study calls for and recommends a better conceptualisation and fair usage of the term ‘terrorism’ n a way that is devoid of bias and regardless of the state’s political or religious affiliation.
    
    Authors: Tarela Juliet Ike (Teesside University) , Mieyebi Lawrence Ike* , Evangelyn Ebi Ayobi (National Open University)*
  - From ‘Political undesirable’ to ‘friendly agent’? Negotiating power dynamics in elite security interviews in critical security research in Nigeria
    
    The literature on elite interviews in security research has received growing attention from critical security scholars. This debate has mainly concentrated on the dynamics of power imbalances that emerge during the interview process between the researcher and the researched, especially from the global North. However, little is understood regarding the deliberate utilisation and instrumentalisation of relational positionalities to redefine the researcher's identities in shaping data accessibility and knowledge production in security research. Drawing on ethnographic field experience with counterterrorism security actors in Nigeria, this article explores this gap in a global south context where terrorism and counterterrorism knowledge are securitised. I present two interrelated arguments. On the one hand, I demonstrate how the researcher's constructed positionality by state security actors as a 'political undesirable', a shorthand for outsiderness to mainstream security idiosyncrasy, shaped not only access to interviewees and the practical structure of interviews but also the openness to share. On the other hand, the experiential dynamics emanating from normative dimensions of the post-interview process led to the reconstruction of the researcher's identity as a 'friendly agent', and this emergent relational-positional dynamic transformed the data collection. The article contributes to the discourses on power dynamics in researcher–researched relations and underscores the challenges and tensions of security research in the global south.
    
    Author: Joshua Akintayo
  - Narrating the discipline of terrorism studies: Historiography, waves of rebel terror, and terrorism ‘for’ the state
    
    Recent high-profile attacks have drawn public attention to the threat of right-wing terrorism. This has led to an increased scholarly and policy attentiveness to the dangers posed by this form of political violence. Within the discipline of terrorism studies, right-wing terror is being discussed as a potential ‘5th wave’, following Rapoport’s analysis of the ‘4 waves’ of modern terrorism.
    
    Yet, as this article argues, it is not possible for terrorism studies to merely integrate the far-right, or what I frame as ‘terror for the state’, as another case study. Indeed, the challenge for the discipline is that the current moment reveals an uncomfortable and troubling silence concerning the historical importance of terrorism for the state, and its absence from the historiographies of contemporary terrorism.
    
    Developing under-utilised empirical cases, this article argues that first, there is a pressing need to reconceptualise the histories we tell of contemporary terrorism, beyond a focus only on stories of clandestine, ‘rebel’ organisations. And second, that attentiveness to terrorism for the state throughout modernity challenges the conceptual boundaries of the discipline itself, drawing attention to significant differences between disciplinary accounts of terrorism and that often found with right-wing terror, notably concerning their relationship to both state and society.
    
    Author: Thomas Martin (Open University)
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  06 Panel / Theorising International Orders – historical and social scientific perspectives Room 103, Library
  
  Sponsor: International Relations as a Social Science Working Group
  
  Convener: Kamila Stullerova (Aberystwyth University)
  
  Chair: Kamila Stullerova (Aberystwyth University)
  
  Discussant: Kamila Stullerova (Aberystwyth University)
  - The Liberal Order of Fear: the facts and values of international order
    
    The paper addresses the question whether the concept of political order, specifically international order, can ever be solely analytical, value free. By re-examining the work of Stanley Hoffmann and Judith Shklar, which was prompted by the crisis of international order in the 1930s, the paper demonstrates, firstly, that there is always a normative dimension in the concept of order and, secondly, that the specific way in which liberal progressivist norms were associated with the 20th century international liberal order prevented analysists from identifying its crucial problems before the challenges of the 21st century laid them bare. Hoffmann and Shklar wrote about those as early as the 1960s. Misrecognition of its normativity has only contributed to the current crisis of the liberal international order. Using Weberian sociology, the paper finally explores how international order might be salvaged as an analytical, normative and praxeological concept by forefronting its normativity in an ontologically weak, ‘of fear’ manner, to borrow Shklar’s seminal attribute.
    
    Author: Kamila Stullerova (Aberystwyth University)
  - International Order and the Struggle for Symbolic Capital: the Global South between Rising Powers and the West
    
    This paper presents a Bourdieusian view of hierarchy and contestation in the Liberal International Order (LIO). It first introduces Bourdieu’s own multidimensional view of ‘class’ as epiphenomenal to the complex interactions between inherited capital and habitus in a variety of fields, and of social orders as geared towards their own reproduction through misrecognitions of their hierarchical nature. With those at the bottom of such hierarchies lacking the capital required to effectively resist, effective questionings of the prevalent order and its symbolic boundaries usually emerge from the upwardly mobile, who, while accumulating certain forms of capital, still lack the symbolic variant required for elite recognition. The paper postulates that similar processes can be found in International Society, where the hegemonic West’s central role in shaping the global modern, and, subsequently, liberal social space elevated its own, largely inherited forms of capital and habitus to misrecognised symbolic markers of privilege and status. As in the case of upwardly mobile individuals and groups in first-order societies, the more effective challenges by middle and rising powers against the LIO’s symbolic order are said to emerge from their partial accumulation of various forms of capital without the commensurate elite recognition associated with its symbolic variant. The range of responses by smaller powers in the global South - from resignation to active but ineffective resistance - is finally linked to similar patterns seen among individuals and groups in the lower strata of first-order hierarchies.
    
    Author: Kevork Oskanian (University of Exeter)
  - Rethinking the Problem of International (Dis)order
    
    Why have modern international orders recurrently descended into disorder, despite ambitious and repeated attempts to bring order to international politics in the modern world? This article advances the argument that the problem of international order can be more fully explained and understood by appreciating the complex political sources of disorder beyond its traditional understanding as the presence or absence of constraints on the use of force. The article reviews the literature of the problem of international order, considering its insights, main assumptions and limitations, before offering an alternative more complex picture of the problem, refined into a theoretical framework. This alternative picture and theoretical framework in illustrated by revisiting the classic case of the decline of the interwar order. This argument for an alternative perspective on the problem of international order does not bring any new “solutions” to it, nor does it necessarily overturn some of the more pervasive ideas and assumptions in this literature, but it does qualify them, by contributing an arguably fuller understanding and theoretical framework for appreciating the political-structural sources of recurrent but dynamic international disorder.
    
    Author: Aaron McKeil (LSE)
  - The System Concept in International Politics
    
    This paper examines the deployment of perhaps the primary concept of order in theories of international relations: system. Rather than specific characteristics of a given international system like anarchy, equality, or society, the paper focuses on the implications of the ontology of order implied by the system concept itself. I argue that the kind of system concept most frequently employed across a range of otherwise opposing theories of international relations is based on an organic model of order with roots in eighteenth century European debates in natural philosophy. This model, I show, is based on the idea of an irreducible relation between a system and its component parts. This runs counter to contemporary critiques of international relations that argue that theories of international relations are based primarily on a mechanistic conception of order and who identify a related lack of unity and attention to relation as the sources of contemporary political problems like inequality and environmental destruction. Rather than a solution to the problems of mechanistic order, I argue, a relational concept of system has been present in the discipline across a range of approaches and presents a political predicament for efforts to transform international order in response to climate change and inequality.
    
    Author: Regan Burles (Queen Mary University of London)
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  06 Roundtable / What do we know about war in 2024? Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  'What do we know about war in 2024?'
  
  Sponsor: Journal of Global Security Studies
  
  Chair: Jamie Barrow Gaskarth (The Open University)
  
  Participants: Georgina Holmes (The Open University) , Anthony King (University of Exeter) , Kenneth Payne (King's College London) , Kodili Chukwuma (Durham University)
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  06 Roundtable / Whose International Studies are we teaching? Exec 1, ICC
  
  There is an increasing discussion on decolonising teaching practices and the curriculum In the UK High Education. However, decolonisation is a contested term. In the area of International Studies, there is evidence that most of our International Studies curriculum is white, heteronormative coming from the so-called Global North Countries. International Studies is considered an Western and Eurocentric discipline. In that sense, this roundtable proposes to reflect on the following questions “Whose International Relations are we teaching?; “Should we change that?”; “How can we change that?”. The participants will reflect on their teaching practices by sharing their ideas, challenges and ways ahead. The diversity of the panel involves early career scholars marginalised in different ways teaching in the UK Universities with different backgrounds including nationalities, stories and perspectives to see the world.
  
  Sponsor: Learning and Teaching Working Group
  
  Chair: Patricia Nabuco Martuscelli (University of Sheffield)
  
  Participants: Louise Pears (University of Leeds) , Annapurna Menon (University of Sheffield) , Sara Ababneh (University of Sheffield) , Arshita Nandan (University of Kent) , Megha Kashyap (London South Bank University) , Madeleine Le Bourdon (University of Leeds)
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  06 Panel / Whose Nuclear Governance? New(er) Trends of Interpretive Scholarship in Understanding Nuclear Governance I (Structural Approaches) Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: Global Nuclear Order Working Group
  
  Conveners: Aniruddha Saha (University of Oxford) , Stephan Engelkamp (King's College London)
  
  Chair: Stephan Engelkamp (King's College London)
  - Stigmatisation or Victimisation? The Iran-US Nuclear Relationship from 2015 to 2021
    
    In studying international state behaviour and interactions, scholars have increasingly focussed on developing a dichotomy of good versus bad international citizens based on adherence to international norms and conventions. Within this distinction, there have not been adequate studies that examine the underlying problems associated with good/normal states and bad/deviant states coming to socially share a common and meaningful understanding of international order. In nuclear politics, this gap segways into normal states having a recurring problem of not being able to socialise deviant states in nuclear governance, and consequently make the latter forego thinking about acquiring nuclear weapons capability. In examining both these gaps, this paper asks: How do normal and deviant states interact with each other in the existing international system? In answering this question, this paper develops two main arguments. Firstly, norm-abiding states are often unable to interact with deviants in a socially meaningful way as the former remain unaware of the agency that encourages deviants to undertake non-compliance. Secondly, because of the lack of meaning and development of common understandings through these social interactions, deviants often view themselves as having lost out in this unfair international system. The paper illustrates these arguments by employing the empirical case of Iran and the United States in nuclear politics from 2015-2021. It contributes to the scholarship on the fluidity of state interactions, identities, behaviours of contestation, and nuclear governance.
    
    Author: Aniruddha Saha (University of Oxford)
  - Identity, Difference, Gender: A Poststructuralist Approach to Nuclear Policy
    
    Drawing on poststructuralist and feminist critiques of mainstream International Relations approaches, this paper reconceptualizes nuclear politics as a discursive arena where states construct and reinforce their relational and gendered nuclear identities. Recognizing nuclear identity as relational implies its constant constitution in relation to difference. The paper argues that difference need not always be radical, stressing the importance of considering varying degrees of “Otherness” along with three dimensions of identity construction: spatial, temporal, and ethical. Following feminist IR perspectives, the paper emphasises powerful ideas of masculinity historically attached to nuclear weapons that underpin nuclear discourses. It problematizes the causal relationship between identity and policy, viewing nuclear identities as both constitutive of and a product of states' nuclear policies. Such conceptualizations foster a deeper understanding of how identities function in discourse and how policies gain legitimacy, revealing the inseparable entanglement of ideas and material factors. Furthermore, the poststructuralist emphasis on the historical contingency of identity and policy challenges rationalist assertions of objectivity and universalism, illustrating how different historical modes of representation yield distinct political consequences. This recognition is crucial in perceiving nuclear proliferation and disarmament as dynamic, non-fixed, and non-universal processes, potentially explaining the challenges faced by advocates of the latter.
    
    Author: Luba Zatsepina (Liverpool John Moores University)
  - Is It All about the Big Bang? Examining the Evolution of the Stigmatisation of WMD in the 21st Century
    
    In 1948, the United Nations Commission for Conventional Armaments defined weapons of mass destruction as “atomic explosive weapons, radioactive material weapons, lethal chemical and biological weapons and any weapons developed in the future which have characteristics comparable in destructive effect to those of the atomic bomb or other weapons mentioned above.” In previous papers, I have argued that a stigma has emerged towards these weapons and that the term is synonymous with the stigma. The stigma process is an evolving process. Within this decade we have witnessed the use of chemical weapons and have seen the possibility that nuclear weapons could be used in Europe. Government strategic documents now downplay the term weapons of mass destruction. The UK Integrated Security Defence Review barely mentions the term, this is also the case with the US National Defence Strategy. This paper examines the significance of the stigmatisation of WMD today and questions the role of nuclear weapons in reinforcing the term and the stigma. The development of non-nuclear strategic weapons, as well as technological advances in warfare and threats from non-state actors further highlights the evolving conceptualisation of this term. It is argued that the stigma is still important and efforts to address the proliferation of these weapons need to be reinforced to strengthen this.
    
    Author: Patricia Shamai (University of Portsmouth)
  - The Role of Knowledge Infrastructures in Global Nuclear Governance
    
    This paper examines the role of knowledge and non-knowledge in global nuclear governance, particularly in nuclear verification. The authors argue that knowledge cannot be seen as pure factual truth emerging directly from data but as the aggregated outcome of both technical data and interpretations. Such interpretations are often unquestioned if the overall verification regime is functioning well. However, the thus produced knowledge in nuclear verification is of high strategic value: it is subject to political negotiation processes and is potentially contested. Since the produced knowledge forms the basis for decision-making processes associated with confidence-building, its quality, and the production process must be of interest beyond the technical level and must be considered systemically: knowledge is produced in far more complex systems, so-called knowledge infrastructures. These infrastructures are a part of epistemic regimes consisting of norms, rules, agreements, institutions, and practices that regulate and organise the production, distribution, and use of knowledge by defining collection and processing standards. By using the IAEA as a case study, our contribution aims to shed light on the challenges of knowledge production and decision-making. In doing so, we contribute to an interpretive understanding of nuclear governance that recognises the importance of knowledge, discourse, and power.
    
    Authors: Julian Schäfer (RWTH Aachen University)* , Linda Ostermann (RWTH Aachen University)
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  06 Conference event / Gendering International Relations Working Group business meeting Fortissimo, Hyatt
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  06 Roundtable / What does the future hold for the US and UK’s ‘Special Relationship’? Examining the transatlantic partnership in the year of elections: roundtable followed by drinks reception. SPONSORED BY The Foreign Policy Centre, University of Birmingham and BISA. Although this is open to all conference delegates you need to register in advance to attend at: https://www.bisa.ac.uk/events/what-does-future-hold-us-and-uks-special-relationship-examining-transatlantic-partnership The Exchange, The Assembly Room
  
  Speakers: Dr Julie Norman (UCL), Professor Mark Webber (University of Birmingham), Professor Mick Cox (LSE), Rosa Prince (Politico), Sir Peter Westmacott
Friday 7 June
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  07 Roundtable / Author meets critics: Rita Floyd's The Duty to secure Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  This roundtable brings together a range of scholars from security studies and IR that will discuss Rita Floyd's The Duty to Security: From just to mandatory securitization, forthcoming with CUP in May 2024.
  
  States have social contractual duties to provide security for their people, but what measures are morally required? Should states be morally obligated to address real/objective existential threats via securitization (i.e., by using threat-specific, often liberty defying, rigorously enforced and sometimes forcible emergency measures)? And what of non-state actors or international organizations, can such actors have a moral duty to securitize? If so, why, when, and to whom? Notably, do such duties pertain ‘only’ to selves (e.g., populations of one’s own state) or also to others (e.g., people in other states)? This book offers answers to these and other questions. Building on Floyd’s Just Securitization Theory, it sets out a rigorous theory of morally mandatory securitization that examines the duties of actors at all levels of analysis. Morally mandatory securitization has practical implications, including for NATO’s Article 5 and the responsibility to protect norm, both of which currently take account of only a narrow range of threats.
  
  Sponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working Group
  
  Chair: Anthony Lang (University of St Andrews)
  
  Participants: Ole Waever (University of Copenhagem) , Chris Brown (LSE) , Rita Floyd (University of Birmingham) , Toni Erskine (Australian National University) , João Nunes (Comillas Pontifical University)
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  07 Panel / Borders, boundaries, frontiers, and borderlands of South East Europe: Enacting, engaging and performing Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: South East Europe Working Group
  
  Conveners: Gemma Bird (University of Liverpool) , Mate Subašić (Manchester Metropolitan University)
  
  Chair: Gemma Bird (University of Liverpool)
  - Fostering solidarity at sea: The maritime shipping industry and the rescue of migrants in distress in the Mediterranean Sea.
    
    On May 6, 2021, the Sea Eye 4, a civil rescue ship, received a distress call in the Maltese search and rescue zone. Malta denied responsibility and the Sea Eye 4 was a three-day journey away from the case. At that point, the people in the wooden boat had been adrift for four days. At the same time, a cargo vessel passed by, and, while they claimed they could not take the people onboard, they assisted them with food and water. Two days after the distress call, another cargo ship rescued the people. The ship’s company then asked the Sea Eye 4 to meet them halfway and transfer the people to the rescue ship, where people could access better assistance. Tracing these examples of solidarity, and lack thereof, as well as the systems in which merchant vessels operate, this article explores the conditions that should take place to foster solidarity from the maritime industry and ways to trigger it. This industry is known for operating within conditions of modern slavery and exploitation. In this context, this article demonstrates how the systems that incentivise these conditions are the same ones that allow migrants and refugees to die and disappear at sea with no remorse: capitalism and the imperialist white supremacist patriarchal culture. Understanding the structures in which merchant vessels operate as well as their objectives allows us to understand under what conditions solidarity can arise, and how we can involve this industry in conversations around solidarity.
    
    Author: Pat Rubio Bertan (Aston University)
  - The externalisation of asylum after the 2015-2016 'refugee crisis'; The EU's internal actions between external and internal borders
    
    The paper builds on the analysis of European Commission policy documents between 2015 and 2018 dealing with the so-called refugee crisis in Europe, addressing border control inside the EU through a multi-layer process between the external borders like Greece and the internal borders like Germany. It juxtaposes Europe's external borders representing the periphery of the continent and Europe's internal borders representing the continent's centre from the perspective of 'crisis'. It highlights the use of European countries with external borders as a 'shield' to Western and Central Europe.
    The paper will tackle two dimensions: the external dimension, including measures at the level of external borders of Europe like Italy and Greece, to halt primary movement inside Europe and the internal dimension, dealing with measures in other Member States aiming at halting secondary movement.
    The paper highlights border spaces inside Europe, emphasising exclusion through inclusion in a border space where asylum seekers are confined to external borders. Therefore, migrants are seen by the European Commission as a threat and an interruption to the celebrated Schengen system. The system excludes people without a membership and includes people with a membership.
    
    Author: Sarah Elmammeri (University of Liverpool)
  - On borders, boundaries and transnational ties: lived experiences of Romanians establishing diaspora organisations in the UK
    
    The paper aims to explore narratives of lived experiences and the construction of transnational ties (Faist & Baucöck, 2010) between homeland and host land by Romanians establishing diaspora organisations in the UK. It focuses specifically on their biographies and motivations to engage with the Romanian community in the UK, to establish an organisation and lead it or to join existing organisations in order to serve the Romanian migrants in Britain. The Romanian diaspora in the UK is a rather recent one, emerged after Romania joined the European Union in 2007 and especially after 2014 when Romanians received access to the British labour market; yet it grew quickly to become one of the largest European diasporas in the UK – over 1 million Romanians are estimated to live here (Dolea, 2022) and Romanian is the 3rd most spoken language in England and Wales (ONS Census, 2021). The paper draws on a series of 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Romanian leaders of diaspora organisations carried out between September and November 2023; it shows how belonging to Romania and (more broadly) Eastern Europe is negotiated constantly in relation to the new home, the UK, and how engagement is constructed in narratives of duty, responsibility, care or even guilt.
    
    Author: Alina E Dolea (Bournemouth University)
  - A border in the everyday: Transborder ethnic communities and the Schengen
    
    The transborder ethnic communities – communities who reside just outside the state to which they claim ethnic belonging – more often than not seek their kin-state to pursue policies that could make the border between them obsolete. In many cases, such policies are successful, especially when the kin-state extends the citizenship policies to include the transborder ethnic communities into its citizenry. However, strengthening the border, as demonstrated between Croatia and the Croat community in Herzegovina amid the introduction of Schengen, paints more complex insights.
    Building on the interview and focus group data collected in expectation of the Schengen border introduction, this paper evaluates the encounters and experiences of local communities with the border. Even if they have privileged access to Croatia and the border, members of the transborder ethnic community, especially the young and those residing in the vicinity, still understand it through the prism of distance. Moreover, they advance claims that link to a) security concerns imported from Croatia, vis-a-vis non-Croat and non-Schengen migrants, b) their feeling of inferiority concerning Croatia, and c) inequalities the citizenship, most explicitly illustrated at the border, generated within Bosnia and Herzegovina.
    
    Author: Mate Subašić (Manchester Metropolitan University)
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  07 Panel / Colonialism and the Reproduction of Agrarian Labour Exec 9, ICC
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: Ben Richardson (University of Warwick)
  
  Chair: Ben Richardson (University of Warwick)
  - Colonialism and the Reproduction of Agrarian Labour: Contested Relations of Class, Gender and Race
    
    The study of colonialism and agrarian labour has been explored from several angles. Marxist literature has considered the role of plantation slavery in kickstarting European capitalism and of settler colonialism in managing the mass displacement of peasants from agriculture. Feminist literature has used concepts like plantation patriarchy to understand the gender roles ascribed within these agrarian labour regimes and their division of workplace-household responsibilities. Black Radical and decolonial literatures have highlighted the racialisation underpinning such processes and the hierarchies of difference they produce, legacies evident in the contemporary treatment of migrant farmworkers and subsistence farmers among others. Drawing on International Political Economy scholarship that has theorised capitalism’s multiple axes of oppression, this paper sets out a framework to bring key insights from these literatures together, and, in so doing, offers two claims of its own. First, that European colonialism/coloniality is not fixed in the past: historicising its effects on and through agrarian labour helps reveal its role shaping contemporary patterns of food production. Second, that a relational analysis of social differentiation shows how people are classed, gendered, and raced through colonial modes of exploitation in ways that are mutually interdependent.
    
    Authors: Merisa Thompson (University of Birmingham)* , Natalie Langford (University of Sheffield)* , Ben Richardson (University of Warwick) , Jessica Underwood (University of Warwick)*
  - Negotiating Contestation Between Oil, Agriculture and Fisheries on the Post-Colonial Extraction Frontier
    
    Processes of colonial violence and extraction are both highly gendered and racialised. However, they are rarely studied as such. This paper studies the gendered and racialised power dynamics of extractive capitalism at the global and local level through an examination of ongoing contestations between the oil sector, agrarian labour and fisherfolk in the post-colonial nation of Trinidad and Tobago. The extraction of oil and gas in Trinidad has dramatically reconfigured coastal and marine environments, landscapes and livelihoods, and produced a range of ecological problems, such as water pollution and oil spills. This paper combines indigenous Caribbean theorising and a feminist and intersectional approach, to explore the gendered dynamics of negotiations over material and ecological resources. It develops and re-deploys the concept of ‘frontier masculinity’ as a useful tool for examining a complex range of subjectivities, identities and cosmologies, struggles over territory, power and resources, and the ways in which gender and race are coded into global and local political practices. Often seen as a peripheral region, even of the Global South, a critical and feminist examination of Caribbean political economy illuminates’ the on-going nature of processes of colonialism, extraction, dispossession and struggles over ecological resources, and how these processes are intimately connected to unequal relations of gender, race and class. Ultimately, it finds that colonial extraction has produced a range of peripheralised and disempowered – and distinctively gendered and raced – positionalities that struggle to negotiate a place in the contemporary political economy.
    
    Author: Merisa Thompson (University of Birmingham)
  - Who is the American farmer? Neglected agrarian stories of differently racialised women in Turtle Island history
    
    The agrarian myth has played a prominent role in American political identity for centuries. In a simple telling of this narrative, American national strength originates from the self-sufficiency, industriousness and mastery over the land exhibited by the yeoman farmer. This myth idealizes racialized, gendered and colonizing imagery of the relationship between the North American continent and the people who have cultivated crops there for their self-reproduction. Combining a ‘neglected stories’ methodology from legal studies with a decolonizing framework in political studies, I provide an agrarian history of Turtle Island that centres the experience of First Nations, African American and other differently racialized people, particularly women. I begin with contextualising the emergence of the agrarian myth with structures of colonization, white supremacy and patriarchy. Following this, I reconceptualize the values of the American farmer through the authority of named women in Turtle Island history. Finally, I suggest this offers an opportunity to reimagine agrarian values through neglected authorities, where economy is defined by interdependence, care and harmony. I conclude that re-narrating the agrarian myth with stories that have not had the hearing they deserve demonstrates the value of pluralising the study of economic ideas for the crises of the twenty-first century.
    
    Author: Jessica Underwood (University of Warwick)
  - Colonial afterlives in the global cocoa supply chain: sharecropping, labour exploitation, and relations of (re)production
    
    This paper brings together a social reproduction lens with insights from the literature on racial capitalism to understand gendered labour relations in the global cocoa supply chain, using a case study of Ghana. The paper demonstrates that women’s exploitation at the base of cocoa supply chains is not only rooted in patriarchal customary practices and norms, but in sharecropping as a specific mode of control over land and capital that relies on women’s unpaid (re)productive labour. The paper historicises contemporary patterns of gendered labour exploitation in relation to the longue durée of colonial capitalism in Ghana and specifically the shift towards sharecropping arrangements in what was then the “Gold Coast” from the 1920s onward. On the basis of this analysis, the paper argues that existing studies of gender within Global Value Chains (GVCs) pay insufficient attention to three key dynamics: the colonial foundations of labour regimes, modes of production, and commercial dynamics within agricultural GVCs; the historical interrelationship of gendered and racialised hierarchies as these are constituted through relations of (re)production; and how exploitative labour relations at the base of agri-food GVCs are characterised by continuity as well as change i.e. they are not just reflective of social and economic “downgrading” under neoliberalism. Empirically, the paper draws on data gathered as part of a multi-sector study of gender, migration and labour exploitation in Ghana in 2020-2021, which comprised 30 interviews with migrant women working in cocoa production across five cocoa-growing communities.
    
    Author: Ellie Gore (University of Manchester)
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  07 Panel / Critical spaces: engaging with Queer, feminist and postcolonial IR Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: GIRWG Working group
  
  Chair: Mandeep Sidhu (University of Brighton)
  - “Gay at home, straight in the UK”: bisexuality, asylum and bordering
    
    People claiming asylum on the basis of a bisexual+ orientation appear much less likely to be successful than gay or lesbian claimants, despite facing the same risks of persecution. Bisexual+ people are therefore simultaneously understood as “too queer” in their countries of origin but “not queer enough” to access international protection in receiving states. I investigate how bisexual+ people are filtered out of the category of the “good queer refugee” in the UK and France. I explore the specific obstacles bisexual+ people face to a successful asylum claim and where these reflect or differ from those of other sexuality or gender identity-based asylum claims. To do so, I draw on semi-structured interviews with lawyers, workers and volunteers in support organisations, and people with lived experience. The analysis is informed by theories of racial capitalism, critical border studies and queer theory. The specificities of bisexual+ experiences provide an insight into asylum’s role in bordering and the sexualised nature of ideas of deservingness and access to mobility.
    
    Keywords: LGBTQ+, asylum, migration, borders, sexuality
    
    Author: Aine Bennett (Royal Holloway University of London)
  - Gendering International Studies and Maternal Activism in the Global South: A Case of Saturday Mothers in Turkey
    
    The landscape of International Studies has historically been surveyed through Euro-centric, androcentric, ethnocentric, and gendered lenses, sidelining the voices of women until the late 1980s. By taking the opportunity from the predicament to explain the end of the Cold War by the traditional realist paradigm, students of gender and feminist research spotlighted women as essential knowledge producers in International Studies and their experiences as legitimate sources of knowledge. However, a noticeable limitation persists in the knowledge production by women, primarily confined to the perspectives of the Global North. This study aims to shift the focus to evaluate and acknowledge the merits of women's activism in the Global South concerning gender equality and political inclusion. Specifically, it explores the phenomenon of maternal activism, wherein women utilize their identity as mothers to organize politically, either to effect change or protect the existing status quo. Maternal activism is one of the phenomena that creates a fierce debate among students of feminist research, as critics concern about the potential co-optation of women’s movements by patriarchal institutions and the reinforcement of traditional gender roles. By revisiting the renowned feminist slogan "the personal is political and international," this article contends that maternal activism can yield significant gender impacts at both individual and societal levels, particularly in the Global South in which women’s everyday experiences and practices are constructed by conflict, violence, and gender-based oppression. The primary case study focuses on the Saturday Mothers in Turkey, a group of women whose loved ones disappeared during the 1980s and 1990s. Through semi-structured interviews with the members of the Saturday Mothers and analysis of their weekly protests since 1995, the article argues that despite initial divergence from broader feminist movements and goals in Turkey, a nuanced exploration of the country's historical and socio-political trajectories unveils the discernible impact of the Saturday Mothers and their protests on gender relations at both individual and societal levels.
    Keywords: gender, feminist international studies, maternal activism, women’s movements in Global South, Saturday Mothers
    
    Author: İpek Bahar Karaman Yılmazgil (Bilkent University)
  - Queer Anti-Fascism: Transnational Sexual Politics Beyond Homonationalism
    
    This talk inquires into the possibilities of identifying common politics amongst minoritised queer communities internationally in the face of the inability of the analytic of homonationalism to fully capture contemporary violence against trans and queer people. While fascist and other right-wing authoritarian movements draw on homonationalist politics – stirring up fears of dangerous and/or conservative racialised ‘Others’ who threaten sexual freedom – these movements increasingly position themselves in opposition to LGBT rights, enshrine racial conceptions of the heterosexual nuclear family as the backbone of the nation, and recement a naturalised, often colonial, gender/sex binary. This paper takes the concept of ‘queer anti-fascism’ to think through and against these transnational mobilisations. While many anti-authoritarian queer movements have adopted the terminology of fascism and anti-fascism, others remain skeptical of this vocabulary and the historical weight it carries. Thinking across Germany, Brazil and India, this paper discusses what analyses and forms of resistance an anti-fascist queer perspective allow us to imagine and enact and critically investigates to what extent queer anti-fascism can work as a useful framework for understanding the historical present without recentering Eurocentric perspectives on the violence of modernity.
    
    Authors: Billy Holzberg (King's College London) , Howie Rechavia-Taylor (LSE)
  - The Feminism of Zainab Al-Ghazali: A Case for Epistemic Plurality.
    
    Western feminism has universal pretensions, although it is not inclusive enough. Other potential sites for feminist IR that do not conform to the liberal framework have been marginalized. While it questions mainstream IR's epistemic violence, it indulges in it. However, if our concern is with the emancipation of women (In whatever ways possible), we should welcome epistemic plurality in Feminist IR. It can be done by identifying alternative sites instrumental in women’s emancipation. One such site of broadening this horizon can be the works of the Egyptian Islamist activist Zainab al Ghazali. In the proposed paper, I will explore how she has tried to find women’s agency and visibilize women and their contribution to Islamist movements. Ghazali’s experience does not fit neatly into feminist epistemologies, especially in their traditional Euro-American guise; however, it also stretches the bounds of non-Western experience. Her ability to articulate an Islamic female subjectivity in a traditionally patriarchal structure while resonating with the principles of this very structure against a secularising state aiming to ‘empower’ the individual subjectivity of Muslim women merits attention. By giving space to epistemic plurality, we will not fall into the trap of essentializing feminism, and it can also be a way of realizing and accepting diverse paths to female liberation. Furthermore, contemporary feminist perspectives subscribe to radically different ontologies and epistemologies against Al-Ghazali’s which is situated in an Islamist paradigm. Hence the contribution of the work will also be to broaden the “understanding [between the two] through dialogues across boundaries and cultures in which voices of others, particularly those on the margins, must be seen as equally valid as one’s own” (Tickner, 1997, p. 629). The research also highlights the need to have “pluriversal” (Trownsell et al., 2022, p. 788) knowledge systems to make knowledge production more diverse. It also highlights the need to “devise alternate and disruptive knowledge categories by learning from the lived realities of people around the globe” (Trownsell et al., 2022, p. 798) so that the hegemonic discourses are ‘provicialized’. (Chakrabarty, 2009). By taking into consideration different histories, we can draw new theoretical lessons to produce a global account of world politics and challenge the “provincial representation that effectively equates the international and indeed the global with Europe and the West” (Hobson, 2014, p. 575).
    
    Author: Hammaad Mehraj Syed (South Asian University)
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  07 Roundtable / Developing a British Kashmiri Studies Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  Migration from Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK or Azad Kashmir for short) to Britain commenced during the colonial period, however it was not until the 1950s that larger waves of migration from the disputed territory began to take place. Today it is estimated the diaspora form half of all British Muslims, and one of the largest non-European origin communities in the UK. Yet very little is known about the socio-economic, political, and ethno-linguistic nuances outside of the community itself; and although a growing number of scholars, activists, and writers continue to emerge from the British Kashmiri community, their work remains at the periphery when discussing minorities in the UK.
  
  Therefore, what is unique about this community is that, although it forms a large share of the ethnic minority population in Britain, it remains ‘hidden’. This is largely a result of coming from an internationally disputed territory (Jammu and Kashmir) and being amalgamated with Pakistanis, by British officialdom, upon settlement in the UK. However, as grassroots identity movements continue to demonstrate, a significant number of those from the community (in the homeland and diaspora) believe this masks both internal nuances, but also has a detrimental impact on the lived experiences of the community for representation and policy provision. Although many pioneers from South Asia who participated in political activism and trade unions, were from Azad Kashmir, there is evidence of discrimination by other South Asian heritage groups within a British context. This often involves negative stereotyping and degradation of language and culture, as well as access to political platforms as ‘Kashmiris’. Yet issues of identity and recognition as a result of originating from an internationally disputed territory continue to play out, both decades on and thousands of miles away.
  
  BISA provides an excellent platform for a roundtable discussion on ‘Developing a British Kashmiri Studies’, given Birmingham is home to the largest diaspora from Azad Kashmir and the city was part of key developments in terms of maintaining transnational links, including the creation of the historically significant Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). The contribution of British Kashmiris to both the city and the UK as a whole is seldom acknowledged and all but absent in terms of academic study on minorities, despite this presence.
  
  In recognition of a lacuna of voices from this diaspora within public platforms of this nature, the roundtable is formed entirely of British Kashmiri heritage scholars and writers, comprising of: Associate Professor Serena Hussain (Coventry University), author of ‘Society and Politics of Jammu and Kashmir’; Professor Zafar Khan one of the first British Kashmiri academics and an active senior member of the JKLF; Professor Tahir Abbas a Professor of International Relations (Leiden University); Shams Rehman, a journalist and founder of the online news platform Jammu Kashmir TV; Dr Karamat Iqbal, an expert in minorities in education; and early career researcher, Awais Hussain (University of York) a social historian and linguist specialising in migration from Azad Kashmir to the UK. The roundtable Chair, Dr Yasmin Farooq, is an expert on the experiences of ethnic minorities within the NHS and a former Magistrate.
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Chair: TBC
  
  Participants: Awais Hussain (University of York) , Zafar Khan (JKLF) , Karamat Iqbal (Forward Partnership) , Serena Hussain (Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University) , Tahir Abbas (Leiden University)
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  07 Panel / Ethics and World Politics: the Anthropocene, Mobilities and Neocolonialism Exec 10, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: EWPG Working group
  
  Chair: Robin Dunford (University of Brighton)
  - The International Politics and Global Ethics of Degrowth
    
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    Scholarly discussion on and activism surrounding degrowth has been growing exponentially. As of yet, however, conversations between international studies and degrowth scholars have been minimal. This misses opportunities for exploring the international dynamics of degrowth. This paper opens a conversation between degrowth, on the one hand, and international relations and global ethics on the other, outlining two areas in which international studies can enrich debates on degrowth. First, it outlines pathways supporting change that compliment the politics of localisation that lies at the heart of degrowth, highlighting the role that international actors and norms can play in enabling or stymying transitions to a degrowth future. Second, it facilitates exploration of the global impacts of degrowth’s relocalisation agenda by highlighting, for instance, the effect on people in export-oriented economies of reduced demand in economically affluent areas. In the process, an international studies take on degrowth offers invaluable resources for considering how to balance economic contraction with the demands of global justice.
    
    Authors: Vasileios Leontitsis (University of Brighton) , Robin Dunford (University of Brighton)
  - Exploring Frontiers: Demographic Change and Global Existential Risks
    
    Auguste Comte famously argued that ‘demography is destiny’. Yet this dictum is hardly explored in existential risk studies, especially as humans are now the main driver of planetary change, ushering in the so-called Anthropocene. As such, this article examines how rapid demographic change can amplify catastrophic or even existential risks. Drawing on the nexus of ethics and uncertainty in International Relations (IR) theory, I examine how extreme climate impacts are inducing societal collapse and threatening to extinguish some of the most vulnerable communities. I show that the undue focus on, and predominance of, strong versions of utilitarianism and long-termism has led to overlooking the more immediate impacts of catastrophic climate change. In conclusion, I suggest a research agenda in IR and global governance on the demographic dimension of catastrophic and existential climate impacts.
    
    Author: Kennedy Mbeva (University of Cambridge)
  - Hispanismo, shared values, universality: neocolonialism in International Human Rights Law
    
    This paper provides a historically-grounded analysis of the connection between shared values and universalism in justifying state claims for decision-making and agenda-setting capacities within International Human Rights Law. I address the ways in which (neo)colonial relations are reframed into notions of shared values and instrumentalised as geopolitical power in the pursuit of allegedly universal aims.
    
    Specifically, I look at Spain’s construction of the myth of Hispanismo—an alleged cultural unity amongst Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin American states resulting from a common language. Through a discourse-historical approach, I address its emergence in Spain as a racialised, nostalgic reminiscence of empire. Being framed instead as a shared value, and therefore as an ostensibly apolitical, mutually beneficial cultural connection, Hispanismo obscures neocolonial socioeconomic relations, being instrumentalised by Spain as a means to justify its involvement in Latin America for the alleged defence of human rights.
    
    Simultaneously, I analyse the possibilities for emancipatory, bottom-up coalitions that may emerge from alternative understandings of shared values and universalism. Disrupting dominant historical narratives, I consider Indigenous resistances in Latin America to the Creole elites’ use of Hispanismo, as well as Latin American involvement in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.
    
    Author: Marta Fernandez Albuerne (University of St Andrews)
  - Burying the Migrant Dead: Humanity and Death in The Refugee Crisis
    
    Since 2014, more than 55.000 migrants have died in border zones such as the Mediterranean and the USA-Mexican border. The rising number of migrant casualties has drawn attention to the politics of death and dead bodies and made increasingly evident an apparent paradox. While many of these deaths have been the product of the growing securitization of undocumented migration, suspension of search-and-rescue missions, and deliberate inaction to help migrants in need, governments often invest considerable resources in recovering the dead bodies of migrants, identifying, and giving them a proper burial. This raises a momentous question: Why do states grant rights in death that denied to migrants in life? We argue that ‘caring for the dead’ and particularly the granting of proper burials is not primarily a late recognition of the humanity of the dead migrants but a recognition of the humanity of those populations that, through their states’ securitization of migration, contributed to let the migrants die. This paper thus analyses the connection between humanity and burials in the context of the refugee crisis by exploring how, from Greek antiquity to modern times, burying the dead, and particularly the enemy dead, has become a fundamental measure of a people’s humanity.
    
    Author: Luca Mavelli (University of Kent)
  - Feminist eco-centric pacifist praxes for the Anthropocene
    
    The Anthropocene entails new ethical dilemmas and shows the futility of abstract ethical norms detached from everyday world politics. In this new planetary context, the rights of nature paradigm transcends national constitutions and jurisprudences. On the one hand, it represents the recognition of the intrinsic values of nature as well as the complex, dynamic and everchanging net of human/non-human/more-than-human relationalities and interdependencies that form the web of life. On the other hand, it also demonstrates the interdependency of and continuity between epistemology, ontology, politics, ethics and affects. In this sense, Almazán and Reichman (2023) talk about poli-ethic challenges in the context of energy transitions.
    The argument of my paper is that the global in global ethics requires, first of all, the expansion of the subject of ethics so it also includes present, future and past human and non-human and more-than-human generations and their complex interconnections (Väyrynen 2023). Second, it requires an approach to ethics from below as a grounded, worldly, lived and material practice and not as a set of universal abstract norms. Third and last, it requires the recognition of the indivisibility of epistemology, ontology, ethics, politics and affects “in this-worldly relations, values and goals” (Hutchings 2018). Hence, I focus on the United Nations resolution 77/169 on an Earth Assembly and the Harmony with nature dialogues as case studies that illustrate how to think post-anthropocentric and post-androcentric ecosophies of care (Comins Mingol 2016) if we are to be “ethically responsible for the intra-actions we share with all beings” (Väyrynen 2023) and finally make peace with humans and more-than-humans alike. In order to work towards feminist eco-centric pacifist praxes, I draw on feminist peace research and feminist posthuman thinking.
    
    Author: Beatriz Arnal Calvo (University of Brighton)
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  07 Panel / Evaluating the Intellectual Project of Critical Military Studies: its First Decade in Review Soprano, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Harriet Gray (University of York)
  
  Chair: Harriet Gray (University of York)
  
  Discussant: Joanna Tidy (University of Sheffield)
  - Embodiment as an analytical category: an inquiry into the ten-year publication of the journal Critical Military Studies
    
    Embodiment has slowly and partially been integrated as a category of analysis in (Critical)Military Studies (Dyvik & Greenwood 2016). In this article, we argue that embodiment (Baker2021; Narozhna 2021)–and related concepts such as body, affects and emotions–have become growingly prevalent concerns over the ten-year consolidation of the intellectual project of the journal Critical Military Studies. We propose an inquiry organized around three axes:(1) the qualitative and narrative review of the analytical category of embodiment through out the ten years of the publication of Critical Military Studies; (2) the contribution of the journal’s articles in perspective with the wider field of Critical Military Studies and, finally; (3) the way forward in integrating embodiment in the field and pushing the research frontiers. To do so, the article is based on a narrative review (Ferrari 2015) of the concept of embodiment in the Critical Military Studies journal since 2015. From a cursory search, themes of such as the martial body/militarized body, relationships with technology, emotions and death, disability/material health, masculinities/femininities and gender/sexuality, race/racialization, resistance to militarization, as well as pedagogical and methodological interventions are already emerging.
    
    Authors: Priscyll Anctil Avoine (Swedish Defence University)* , Bibi Imre-Millei (Lund University)
  - Beyond Familiarity: The Evolving Role of Theories of Masculinities in Critical Military Studies
    
    Critical military studies employ masculinity theories as critical lenses to examine a diverse range of issues – such as (resistance to)violence, (anti)militarism, conscription, – across different temporal contexts, including conflict, post-conflict, and ‘peacetime’ periods. However, these theories, in particular the concept of military masculinities, have also faced scepticism for becoming ‘overly familiar and “comfortable”’ (Zalewski, 2017, p.200).This scepticism has encouraged efforts to “keep the concept curious, sceptical, and uncomfortable.” In a further exploration of this concern, this article examines the impact of theories of masculinities on critical military studies. Through a meta-synthesis analysis, it explores the methodological, theoretical, and geographical orientations, as well as the contextual focuses (including public, institutional, domestic, etc) of the articles that adopted theories of masculinities and were published in the Journal of Critical Military Studies. This exploration aims to provide insights into the predominant concerns within critical military studies and highlight areas that remain unexplored or under emphasized. Additionally, this article investigates the potential enrichment of critical military studies through intersectional perspectives. It scrutinizes whether current literature propose alternative narratives that redefine masculinities and violence by considering their impacts on diverse segments of societies. By situating these findings within the broader framework of critical military studies, it suggests future directions for research.
    
    Author: Demet Asli Caltekin (Durham University)
  - Critical Military Subjects? Reflections on critical thinking and thinking critically in Professional Military Education
    
    Professional military education (PME) has so far attracted only limited attention within critical military studies (CMS). This contribution provides an opening for further engagement with this important aspect of modern militaries. Specifically, we zoom into an increasingly central aspect in the provision of PME: boosting critical thinking within the armed forces. Yet, what it means to foster ‘critical thinking’ within military institutions is anything but clear. To reflect on this aspect and its importance for warranting the attention of CMS, we engage in a conversation that brings together voices from both PME instructors and recipients. By juxtaposing these distinct viewpoints, this contribution addresses the concerns raised in this Special Issue, specifically what counts as critical knowledge (and critical pedagogy) when thinking about military power, through a series of inquiries: What are the limits and possibilities for critique in PME? Can one truly maintain a 'critical' stance within PME, and if so, what forms of critique are deemed acceptable and which are excluded? How do the limits of critique manifest themselves within pedagogical interactions? This dialogical encounter illuminates the myriad ways in which PME is central to the construction of military subjectivities while simultaneously penetrating civilian spaces of HigherEducation.
    
    Authors: Hannah West (Newcastle University) , Norma Rossi (University of St Andrews)* , Malte Riemann (Leiden University)* , Sebastian Larsson (Swedish Defence University)* , Anna Danielson (Stockholm University)* , Annick T.R. Wibben (Swedish Defence University)*
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  07 / Exhibition Hall Open Hyatt
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  07 Panel / Foreign Fighters: Returnees, Repatriation and Recidivism Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism
  
  Convener: Ces Moore (University of Birmingham)
  
  Chair: Chi Zhang (St Andrews)
  - The Dynamics of Islamist Insurgency and Transnational Activism in the Caucasus
    
    This chapter of the doctoral thesis examines the dynamics of Islamic transnational activism in the Caucasus. The central argument posits that Islamic resistance in the Caucasus has consistently transcended regional boundaries, involving a variety of actors. The chapter delineates five distinct periods of resistance. Firstly, during the Russo-Caucasus war in the 19th century, adherents of Naqshbandiyya Khalidiyya established well-connected networks between Caucasus peoples and Middle Eastern actors. Secondly, the nationalist-secessionist conflicts in the former Soviet Union, encompassing the Armenian-Azerbaijani war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the secessionist conflict in Abkhazia, and the first Russo-Chechen war. Although the Islamic factor played a minor role in this period, it attracted foreign fighters from the Caucasus and the Middle East, motivated by ethnic or religious solidarity. The third period examines the second Chechen war, characterized by a notable presence of jihadi foreign fighters in a predominantly nationalist conflict. The fourth period explores the Imarat Kavkaz insurgency in the North Caucasus, wherein the nationalist frame was supplanted by a jihadi one. Finally, the chapter delves into the conflict in Syria, where Caucasian foreign fighters became integral participants in global jihad.
    
    Author: Aleksandre Kvakhadze (Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GIFSIS))
  - The Returnee: Narratives on Threat and Citizenship
    
    The presence of foreigners and the role they play in conflicts abroad has increasingly become part of the public discourse. This has most recently been portrayed in the cases of fighting both for and against the Islamic State, but also with the creation of the Ukrainian Foreign Legion after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Both contexts have resulted in questions regarding continuation and escalation of the conflicts, but also what happens when these individuals decide to return to their home countries. Narratives help provide an understanding of the relationship between different actors: In this case between the state, society, and the returnee. This paper aims to understand how the German state and the media have reacted to citizens returning from various conflicts abroad. From neo-Nazis in the 1990s to those who joined the Islamic State, the paper asks to what extent these different returnees were perceived as belonging to their home state? By looking at examples across multiple ideologies and time periods, the paper provides an important contribution to understanding the differences in threat perception and how this affects a returnee’s place in society – if it does at all.
    
    Author: Louise Tiessen (University of Kent)
  - Problematising ‘radicalisation’: a community-based approach to understanding religion & political violence in the UK and France
    
    With numerous foreign fighters (FFs) still detained in makeshift prison facilities in Syria and Iraq, European governments continue to prevaricate over whether to repatriate and prosecute FFs domestically or leave them to face justice elsewhere. Responding to a relative dearth of understanding and lack of in-depth academic interviews with European FFs on the causes of radicalisation, this article responds to the twin questions: ‘What are the underlying causes of radicalisation amongst European foreign fighters engaged in transnational Islamist violence abroad? And what implications, if any, does the nature of their radicalisation have for the manner in which they should be prosecuted?
    
    This research project will adopt a mixed methods approach to understanding the sources of radicalisation. First, it will conduct quantitative analysis of relevant data sets relating to both foreign fighters who have engaged in transnational Islamism, those who have returned to Europe, and those prosecuted domestically in universal jurisdiction cases. Second, it will design and distribute questionnaires to returnee FFs to gain a preliminary understanding of the sources of radicalisation as well as to identify potential participants for subsequent in-depth interviews. Third, once a suitable sample has been identified through analysis of the questionnaire responses, selection of returnee FF participants for in-depth interviews will take place. Based on these findings, the article will analyse the particular sources of radicalisation of European foreign fighters who have travelled abroad to engage in transnational Islamist violence and, in turn, assess the implications of these findings for European policy on repatriation and prosecution.
    
    Author: Charles Hierons (Durham University)
  - Narratives of Repatriation: an assessment of the repatriation of foreign combatants from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
    
    In 1938, the League of Nations established a special committee to oversee the repatriation of foreign combatants from the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The departure of these foreigners, who would now be defined as foreign fighters, was a coordinated international process. Though some states had misgivings about the leftist political leanings of some returnees, the formal cooperation among states to safely repatriate its citizens stands in stark contrast to modern approaches to foreign fighters. Repatriation of foreign fighters today–now widely referred to as Foreign Terrorist Fighters—is highly politicised and is grounded in narratives of counterterrorism. Rather than repatriate citizens, states have removed citizenship and pathways for return. Drawing on primary documentation in the recently digitised League of Nations archive, this paper revisits the repatriation process during the Spanish Civil War to determine how international cooperation developed and the potential applicability to modern repatriation debates. This paper forms a part of a larger project focusing on narratives of repatriation across time and their consequences for international security.
    
    Author: Nicola Mathieson (University of Liverpool)
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  07 Roundtable / Grant Culture, Impact, and Critical Scholarship Dolce, Hyatt
  
  This roundtable will look at the challenges of conducting critical research within a neoliberal higher education system that measures success in terms of grant capture and ‘impact’. Over the past few years, conversations within Critical Terrorism Studies scholarship have focused on the need to engage with policymakers but is this the only way to create ‘impact’. Does this emphasis on ‘impact’ compromise the emancipatory principles of critical research? And how does this translate into grant capture strategies, is it possible to win grant funding without engaging with policymakers? Can impact be directed in the opposite direction, towards grassroots advocacy organisations? Is it possible to do impact without contributing to violent government policies? We will explore these questions with academics who have received funding from different sources and conducted critical research.
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Chair: Amna Kaleem (University of Sheffield)
  
  Participants: Ruth Blakeley (University of Sheffield) , Anna Meier (University of Nottingham) , Hannah Wright (Queen Mary University of London) , Participant to be confirmed
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  07 Panel / Great Powers, Rising Powers and Deterrence Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: WSWG Working group
  
  Chair: James Patton Rogers (Cornell University)
  - India's Naval Diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific - A strategic driver in a post-Western regional order
    
    India's strategic ascendancy in the Indo-Pacific region represents a pivotal juncture in the global geopolitical landscape. In the face of China's growing influence and presence, India has strategically harnessed the power of naval diplomacy as a means to counterbalance its neighbor while simultaneously shaping the contours of the post-Western regional order in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). This paper delves into India's multifaceted naval diplomacy efforts, illuminating the central role it plays in India's foreign policy toolkit.
    
    The Indo-Pacific's strategic importance has grown exponentially in recent years, making it a focal point for international security and economic interests. Central to this dynamic is China's proactive expansion, underscored by the Belt and Road Initiative, the militarization of artificial islands, and the presence of its maritime silk road—the Maritime Silk Road initiative—across the IOR. India, with its advantageous geographic location, demographic power, and historical maritime traditions, has embarked on an assertive trajectory to maintain equilibrium and assert influence in the region.
    
    One key facet of India's naval diplomacy is its capacity to counterbalance China, despite India's resource disadvantages compared to its northern neighbor. Indian policymakers have adeptly leveraged its strategic partnerships and alliances, such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) with the United States, Japan, and Australia, and the strategic cooperation with nations in the IOR. These alliances and coalitions are integral to India's efforts to limit China's influence, primarily in the South China Sea and the broader Indo-Pacific region. The Indian Navy's proactive deployments, bilateral and multilateral naval exercises, and the quest for information sharing mechanisms have bolstered its counterbalancing role.
    
    Simultaneously, India employs naval diplomacy as a means to influence and shape the emerging post-Western regional order in the IOR. It acknowledges that the IOR is a complex geopolitical theater characterized by a multitude of actors, including China, the United States, regional powers, and non-state actors. India has recognized the opportunity to emerge as a leader and architect of this regional order, premised on principles of inclusivity, cooperation, and sustainable development.
    
    This paper will analyze India's evolving approach to naval diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific, examining its objectives, strategies, and operational frameworks. It will also explore the challenges and limitations that India faces in maintaining this dual-role policy. India's efforts are beset with resource constraints, technological gaps, and complex geopolitical rivalries that have the potential to impact its pursuit of strategic objectives.
    
    The role of India's navy in its naval diplomacy efforts, along with its expansion and modernization, will be assessed in relation to its twin objectives: counterbalancing China's presence and asserting its influence on the post-Western regional order. Additionally, the paper will scrutinize India's regional partnerships, strategic initiatives, and multilateral engagements aimed at furthering these objectives.
    
    In conclusion, this paper endeavors to contribute to the discourse on the evolving dynamics in the Indo-Pacific, offering insights into the significance of India's naval diplomacy. As India navigates this dynamic and increasingly contested maritime space, its ability to effectively counterbalance China and shape the post-Western regional order will continue to be a subject of scholarly inquiry and international significance.
    
    Author: Mauro Bonavita (King's College London)
  - The US-South Korea Alliance at a Crossroads: Seoul’s Defence Dilemma in the Age of Nuclear-armed North Korea
    
    South Korea lies at the epicentre of geopolitical tensions in Northeast Asia. Faced with a heavily militarised North Korea to the north and rising power China to the west, South Korea has implemented a comprehensive defence strategy focused on deterrence, which includes the nuclear umbrella provided by its ally, the United States. However, since Pyongyang successfully developed an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which enables them to target American cities directly, there is increasing uncertainty in South Korea surrounding the US defence commitment to the region. Drawing on interviews with twenty South Korean policymakers, this paper argues that these developments have prompted a rethink of South Korea’s defence strategy. Although the South Korean government has consistently and confidently announced how rock-solid South Korea-the US relationship and US commitment to the Korean Peninsula are, behind the scenes, policymakers are increasingly focused on strengthening South Korea’s military capabilities and developing alternative deterrence strategies. This has included debating whether South Korea should develop its own nuclear weapons programme to deter North Korea. This research will contribute to deepening the understanding of the complex management of an asymmetric alliance while expanding the theoretical model of the alliance as a tool of management by Paul Schroeder.
    
    Author: Wooyun Jo (Loughborough University)
  - Far from Home: Explaining European Naval Deployments in the South and East China Seas
    
    Since 2016, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands have all sent naval vessels to the South and East China Seas and these deployments are becoming more frequent. Yet, China is a distant threat, European powers have few alliance obligations in the region, and the United States and its Asian partners already have a robust naval presence. Why not focus on Russia and free-ride on American deterrence in the Pacific? This article seeks to fill a gap in our understanding of military statecraft by analyzing state motivations for deploying military force near their adversaries in peacetime. It focuses on the mechanisms by which states can influence other states with deployments and develops a theory to explain which states chose to use adversarial deployments. Challenging the conventional wisdom, I show that deterrence is an insufficient motivation, and deployments are instead motivated by influencing a patron, allies, and partners. This article evaluates the theory on cases of European naval deployments to the South and East China Seas from 2016 to 2022, using a novel dataset. The cases show European states used deployments to facilitate cooperation with Pacific partners, manage their relationship with the United States, and gain status in EU strategic dialogues. The article has important implications for scholarship on signaling, statecraft, and defense policy in an era of intensifying great power competition.
    
    Author: Victoria Henley (Massachusettes Institute of Technology)
  - Offensive cyber operations and Iran's military strategy: a study
    
    There is no doubt that the bilateral relationship between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States is a very consequential one. Accordingly, scholars have written extensively about it. Not as much, instead, has been written about the cyber side of this relationship. This is problematic for at least two reasons. First, because offensive cyber operations have become an Iranian "top priority" (Tabatabai 2020, 8). Second, because cyber space has been identified as the "newest frontier in the four-decade-long US-Iran cold war" (Anderson & Sadjadpour 2018, 5). To address this unfortunate situation, this project contributes to the literature on the Iranian-US relationship by investigating the cyber side of it. The project starts by presenting Iran's military strategy and singling out its key features. After that, it analyzes a number of select empirical cases from the last decade of Iranian cyber operations targeting the US homeland and/or its interests in the Middle East. Finally, the project concludes by advancing the argument that Iran's increased reliance on cyber operations has been facilitated by the fact that cyber operations seem to match very closely the key features of Iran's military strategy.
    
    Author: Eugenio Lilli (University College Dublin)
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  07 Panel / Militaristic Popular Culture – keeping apace in a war economy? Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Convener: Nick Robinson (University of Leeds)
  
  Chair: Louisa Rogers (Northumbria University)
  
  Discussant: Nick Robinson (University of Leeds)
  - #QUEERARENATO: Secretary General Masculinity, Entangled Personas and Queering NATO
    
    This paper will ask if we can understand what it means to ‘queer NATO’ by exploring the (re)construction of Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s masculinity and the entangled personas he embodies as he advocates for LGBTQ rights and inclusion within and across the alliance in increasingly public ways. Using a thematic analysis of Stoltenberg’s social media posts dating from 2017, the paper explores how Stoltenberg promotes ‘strength via diversity’ and ‘unity despite difference’ narratives to obscure marked differences in LGBTQ rights within member states of the alliance. The paper traces out how these moves align with broader NATO online campaigns such as #WEARENATO but highlights how, when deployed to promote LGBTQ rights, are only made even tenuously possible through the cisgendered, heterosexual, white, northern European ‘Secretary General Masculinity’ that Stoltenberg embodies. The paper further identifies how this Secretary General Masculinity draws upon and reinforces militarised paternal protection logics wherein ‘different’ (read non-hetero) sexualities are problematically and paradoxically framed as a security commodity in need of alliance protection.
    
    Author: Matthew Hurley (Sheffield Hallam University)
  - “The last thing we want to see is the whole Terminator going crazy [scenario]”: popular culture and the regulation process of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems
    
    The ongoing review and regulation process of Autonomous Weapon Systems in the UN’s Convention on Certain Weapons - Group of Governmental Experts (CCW-GGE) is a unique case as the debate revolves around weapon technology that has not yet been deployed. We explore how popular culture influences the review and regulation process of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS). Unlike previous humanitarian arms control processes, the CCW-GGE process is not based on empirical data regarding the implications of the use of these weapons. Therefore, other sources, such as popular culture products, seem to be mobilized to imagine and make sense of how such technology would manifest and how the threats arising from it should be mitigated. To study this we focus specifically on how LAWS notions offered by the movie franchise ‘The Terminator’ have influenced the narratives of CCW-GGE members on LAWS. We start by collecting and analysing online publicly available assertions conflating LAWS and ‘The Terminator’ by relevant stakeholders to the CCW-GGE process. Then, we analyse the proceedings of CCW-GGE meetings and the recommendations and submissions published by participating member-states to identify any trace of science fiction-inspired conceptions. This study enhances our understanding of the decision-making process involved in the CCW-GGE process. By doing so, it seeks to delve into the complexities and implications of regulating a system that does not currently exist. This research will shed light on the challenges and impacts associated with establishing regulatory frameworks for hypothetical autonomous weapon systems, thus contributing to the academic discourse on this topic.
    
    Authors: Avihai Stollar (University of Coimbra, Portugal)* , Raquel da Silva (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
  - Time and Politics at the Movies: Temporal constructions of victory in the War on Terror
    
    This paper brings together the literature on popular culture, temporality, and war termination in IR to aid our understanding of how claims of victory in war are made and shaped and ultimately how conflicts end. Building on existing work that explains how the War on Terror was temporally framed, this article shows that this was not achieved solely through political rhetoric and discourse, but also through popular culture, specifically contemporaneous cinema. Furthermore, this politico-cultural inscription of a linear temporality onto the war imbued it with a sense of inevitable victory for the United States and its allies. Analysing Edge of Tomorrow (2014) in the context of its alternative cinematic temporalities, this article poses the question of whether popular culture has the potential to undermine this dominant linear construction of time in war and the politics and political violence made possible by it. The finding is that despite the possibilities of critique in the film, this potential is unfulfilled. Not only does this indicate the challenges faced by mainstream cinema to articulate critique, but it also demonstrates the resilience of politically articulated temporalities to change and such disruption.
    
    Author: Cahir O'Doherty (University of Groningen)
  - The State of War and the Sense of Community
    
    When a country is at war or under attack, the people usually rally behind the head of state and unite, the sense of belonging and defending what is the motherland becomes stronger, and divisions are muted; but it is quite different when the country is at war with itself. Then the divisions between groups and communities are exacerbated and the sense of belonging to one's group or community is strengthened. This is not unusual, but what is striking about DMZ is that this sense of community is much more complex than what is usually portrayed, all the more so because it takes as its example a multicultural city in which ancestry and cultural heritage are linked less to territory than to migrations or shared values. Therefore, what is emphasized and what we will study is how both ethnicity and socio-economic background mix to show how complex and paradoxical the consequences of this sense of belonging can be, and how the behavior of individuals and groups can move away from their traditional spheres.
    
    Author: Danièle Andre (University of La Rochelle)
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  07 Panel / One Destination, Many Roads: Distrust-Reduction, Hope, and Trust Building in Conflict Resolution Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: Jiyoung Chang (University of Birmingham)
  
  Chair: Nicola Chelotti (Loughborough University)
  - What is the role of hope in devising conciliatory gestures?
    
    Why do some decision-makers, even when facing an adversary, respond not through threats and coercions but by initiating conciliatory gestures? Some rationalist IR theorists assume that there is always a permanent state of fear under anarchy, which impedes sending conciliatory gestures. Other scholars open up spaces for trust as a precondition for peace/cooperation rather than the unavoidable tragedy. However, the former president of South Korea and Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Kim Dae-jung, said “We try all our best to keep peace on the Korean peninsula. It is not because we trust them, but because we hope for peace.” Even though trust and hope need to be distinguished in terms of a precondition for cooperation/peace, existing studies have marginalized hope and it has been paid biased attention at best in terms of an obstacle to impede sensible decision-making. Therefore, this paper investigates (i) how hope becomes possible and (ii) how hope shapes conciliatory gestures in adversarial relationships by examining two different South Korean conciliatory gestures toward North Korea: Sunshine Policy and Trustpolitik.
    
    Author: Jiyoung Chang (University of Birmingham)
  - Dissolving Distrust in Adversarial Nuclear Relationships
    
    Despite the need to replace distrust with dialogue, leading trust-building theories in International Relations have focussed on how to build trust between adversaries. Drawing upon conceptualisations of distrust as distinct, but related to trust, we argue that the trust-building assumption fails to recognise the importance of distrust-reduction as a distinct area of academic and policy inquiry. Noting the absence of trust does not equate to distrust, we develop a Distrust-Ambivalence-Trust model to show actors can transition from relationships of complete distrust to shared appreciation of vulnerability by engaging in an empathic dialogue.
    
    Authors: Chiara Cervasio (BASIC)* , Nicholas Wheeler (University of Birmingham) , Mark Saunders (University of Birmingham)*
  - Must distrust disrupt a peace process?
    
    Herbert C. Kelman observed that “parties can not enter into a peace process without some degree of mutual trust, but they cannot build trust without entering a peace process” (200: 640). And yet, Henry Kissinger blamed the failure to press home the United States’ nuclear advantage over the Soviet Union in the 1950s on the belief that trust was a necessary condition for negotiations to begin. So, is it possible for participants to enter peace process, negotiate and successfully conclude a peace agreement, without some degree of mutual trust? Does distrust necessarily disrupt a peace process? Drawing on empirical and theoretical evidence, this paper examines whether entrenched distrust between some, or all of the participants is an inevitable part of a peace process and investigates, if so, whether there intentional efforts which can be taken to minimise the negative impact of distrust on peace processes.
    
    Author: Darren Murphy (University of Birmingham)
  - Doves Returning With Olive Branches: Trustworthiness Entrepreneurs and the Transferring of Perceptions of the Other Side
    
    While individuals gain perceptions of others through face-to-face interactions, how do individuals gain perceptions of others who they do not meet? This is particularly important for decision-makers who often have to make decisions about representatives of other states, organisations and conflict parties, without the benefit of face-to-face interactions. This article proposes a new concept - the trustworthiness entrepreneur - to capture the role that individuals can play in transferring perceptions, gained regarding representatives of another party, to their own leadership. To demonstrate the utility of the new concept, I discuss the activities of Dr. Yair Hirschfeld and Joel Singer as trustworthiness entrepreneurs in the 1992-1993 Oslo Channel, in convincing the Israeli decision-makers they answered to, that the PLO negotiations were trustworthy interlocutors for meaningful Israeli-Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) dialogue. I draw on a range of English-language discursive materials and elite interviews to argue that Hirschfeld and Singer’s roles were crucial for the development of the Oslo Channel from Track II initiative to Track I process.
    
    Author: David Wilcox (University of Birmingham)
  - From the relational to the institutional: The Moscow-Washington hotline as a repository of the interpersonal trust developed between Kennedy and Khrushchev.
    
    IR trust scholarship has emphasized the importance of developing trusting relationships between leaders of adversarial states to overcome interstate distrust. However, the utility of such relationships seems to be temporary: once one of the leaders leaves office, interpersonal trust development must start anew. Taking up this issue, this paper asks if and how leader-to-leader trust can be preserved for future generations to rely on. It contends that a way to do so is to vest such trust into informal trust institutions. We put forth the Moscow-Washington hotline as such an institution and show how it grew out of trust development between President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev. We will demonstrate that both Kennedy and Khrushchev recognized the lack of and need for trust and strove to establish it. We will then trace the process of such trust development, showing how it culminated in the mutual understanding that each leader wished to avoid nuclear war by late 1962. This led to the creation of the Moscow-Washington hotline—the first tangible outcome of arms control negotiations—, which paved the way for the long-sought Test Ban treaty. Finally, we will show that future generations built on the trust narrative that surrounded the hotline to facilitate major arms control agreements in the Cold War.
    
    Authors: Eszter Simon (Nottingham Trent University) , Agnes Simon (Comenius University Bratislava)*
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  07 Roundtable / Pedagogies of the everyday in International Studies Room 102, Library
  
  In recent years, International Studies as a discipline has been enriched by its on-going engagement with the ‘everyday’ – providing an alternative lens through which to examine global relations of power, security and political economy. In this roundtable discussion, we consider how encounters with the everyday can reshape teaching practices and what it means to bring ‘the everyday’ into the International Studies classroom.
  This session will include discussions of specific projects and pedagogical approaches that get students to engage with the everyday as an important site of global politics – for example by encouraging students to investigate the local-global politics of frequently used mundane objects, to rethink family stories in light of global political dynamics, or to engage in learning activities that motivate them to see how global power relations and hierarchies shape their own and others’ everyday lives. This will be a wide-ranging discussion with input from scholars teaching across the discipline of International Studies (security studies, critical military studies, IPE, European Studies etc).
  
  Sponsor: Learning and Teaching Working Group
  
  Chair: Juanita Elias (University of Warwick)
  
  Participants: Kandida Purnell (Richmond University) , Laura Mills (University of St Andrews) , Tom Chodor (Monash University) , Akinyemi Oyawale (University of Warwick)
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  07 Panel / Sites and bodies of violence Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Owen Thomas (University of Exeter)
  
  Chair: Owen Thomas (University of Exeter)
  - Moral Injury: A Theory of Sexual Violence Against Men in Counter-terrorism Operations
    
    Studies examining conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) have delved into the complex motives driving perpetrators, ranging from using it as a weapon of war to opportunistic acts, recreational rape, and even spiritual or ritual goals. These investigations, however, have frequently neglected the profound psychological ramifications endured by people caught up in such violence. This study sheds light on the understudied aspect of how asymmetric violence, such as terrorism, can cause moral injury among Counter-Terrorism Security Personnel (CTSP) by using ethnographic data collected in Nigeria.
    
    In the complex realm of counter-terrorism, CTSP personnel may often face moral dilemmas that can lead to moral injury. This phenomenon occurs when CTSPs are forced to kill young men and boys who have been abducted and coerced into serving as assets for terrorist organisations in self-defence. It also happens when CTSP either participate in or witness sexual violence as a form of reprisal. The influence of cultural norms and personal beliefs that contradict their actions exacerbates the internal conflict and causes strong feelings of shame and guilt.
    
    Furthermore, CTSP is dealing with feelings of betrayal and seething rage directed at military officials. Mismanagement of security funding, insufficient welfare support, and the loss of colleagues' lives all contribute to their mounting angst. If untreated, this frustration can present itself in self-harming behaviours and violence against others, most often resulting in the sexual victimisation of male terrorist suspects.
    
    This study not only adds a new perspective to the continuing debates about CRSV, but it also provides critical empirical data about the existence of moral injury among CTSP. It is a reminder of the critical need for comprehensive psychological assistance and intervention for CTSP as they negotiate the morally perilous terrain of asymmetric warfare and its consequences for their mental health.
    
    Authors: Scott Romaniuk (Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies (CIAS) Corvinus University of Budapest) , Emeka Njoku (University of Birmingham) , Isaac Dery (Simon Diedong Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies, Ghana)*
  - Legitimating violence: military operations within Brazilian borders
    
    The distinction between armed forces and police is traditionally addressed through the division between the domestic and international realms, which equates three different and independent kinds of boundaries: physical borders, the reach of political authority, and the belonging to a community. Drawing upon this conception, scholars have claimed that contemporary security policies blurred these lines. However, the blurring argument, grounded on an aprioristic conception about how the state’s instruments of force are to be organized, fails to explain both cases in which military domestic deployment is not a historical exception, being instead socially and legally institutionalized, and the processes through which a particular kind of the state’s use of force becomes accepted or rejected. The present thesis tackles this gap by moving away from the aprioristic inside/outside framework and focusing on the question of how certain uses of the armed forces are legitimated and delegitimated. It provides an analytical framework to empirically address the legitimation of military operations, which is applied to the domestic mobilization of the armed forces but is also appropriate to analyze other uses of violence. Legitimacy is regarded as the process of shaping and reshaping the line of the acceptable action, which is grasped through discursive patterns forging an apparent consensus around the adequacy or inadequacy of a course of action. The instrument of analysis proposed here is applied to the Brazilian case, mapping out the public debate on three major domestic military operations against crime – Operation Rio (1994-1995), Operation Arcanjo (2010-2012), and Operation Rio de Janeiro (2017-2018).
    
    Author: David Paulo Succi Junior (São Paulo State University)
  - Epistemic violence in archives of war: thinking beyond transparency in British inquiries into the use of force
    
    Public accountability for Britain’s use of military force is problematic. Official oversight mechanisms, including inquiries and freedom of information, are criticised as ineffective due to a culture of official secrecy, exemplified by complaints regarding the discovery of secret files on colonial violence or the government's refusal to disclose its targeted killing policy. Our analysis transcends the question of whether the state has sufficiently revealed itself and instead explains how archival processes produce distinct forms of knowledge. Selecting case studies from various official inquiries into Britain’s use of force since 1900, we trace how official archives always already imposed ways of thinking and a hierarchy of experience about war. Exposure is never neutral. No matter how transparent an inquiry’s hearings and records are, archives preconfigure who and what is heard, which is then amplified by historians. This occurs through a preoccupation with high politics, establishment voices, and classified evidence that reflects societal prejudices of race, gender, and class. We highlight how age, technology (including email and WhatsApp), human carelessness, and even intentional destruction shape the archives of war. We suggest how these limitations could be overcome to promote dialogue about Britain's role in a just international order.
    
    Authors: Owen Thomas (University of Exeter) , Margot Tudor (City, University of London)
  - The Officers' Resurgence: Military-Militia Competition and the Eruption of Civil War in Sudan
    
    A common feature of security orders in countries that have experienced prolonged civil wars has been governments’ increasing reliance on semi- or irregular militias to operate as counterinsurgency, chiefly at the periphery. However, the ascent of such forces has been at the expense of the regular forces. Army officers, once a privileged elite, now witnessed a growing competition over resources from the side of militia commanders and their patrons in the periphery. In some countries, militia commanders have become key figures in politics and the economy (licit and illicit alike), thus replacing military officers. However, in others, the army has risen to the challenge, remobilising its sources and power to undermine the increasing power of the militias and their leaders on regaining its influence in the country’s politics.
    Why have some armies been able to recuperate and retain their position amid the rise of militias from the periphery? Are the leading causes for the survival of the army’s institutional power like conflict, society, political economy and state? What tactics have the army officers used to regain or retain their influence? To answer these questions, the paper employs the case of Sudan. After years in which the Rapid Support Forces, a militia whose roots are in the Darfurian countryside, has become the dominant armed force in the country, the army, under the leadership of Abd al-Fattah al-Burhan, rose against the RSF, pushing the RSF outside of Khartoum. By so doing, the Sudanese army succeeded where other armies have failed. This paper aims to use Sudan’s case to probe the factors that enable the army to regain its position and face a threat from the militia, which carries important lessons for other cases in which militias have risen to prominence.
    
    Author: Yaniv Voller (University of Kent)
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  07 Panel / Transatlantic Relations: the US, the EU, the UK and NATO Room 103, Library
  
  Sponsor: European Security Working Group
  
  Convener: ESWG Working group
  
  Chair: Andrew Cottey (University College Cork)
  - The Post-Cold War Anglo-American Military Relationship
    
    This paper argues that military cooperation makes an important contribution to the so-called Anglo-American ‘Special Relationship’. Working alongside a superpower has been a challenging task and the British armed services have invested considerable effort to ensure their capability to achieve this end. Looking through the lens of historical institutionalism helps to explain how predictability and persistent cooperation has been achieved. Two aspects will receive particular attention in this paper. First, UK-US military cooperation has taken place within a dynamic environment in which the nature of conflict has been evolving. Their armed forces have been required to not only engage in high intensity warfare, but also fashion military doctrines to address insurgency, peace enforcement and nation-building tasks. Second, working with the US military has generated risks as well as benefits for the UK’s armed forces. The UK has engaged in tasks that have weighed heavily upon its resources and this has contributed to tensions between their two armed forces.
    
    Author: Wyn Rees (University of Nottingham)
  - Dealing with rivals together? The US and its relationship with European allies after the Russian-Ukrainian war
    
    The US is still the most powerful state in the international system, and it is very difficult for a peer competitor to measure up to the US in the near to medium term. Whilst the system is still unipolar, the US is no longer in a position to fall for the hegemon’s temptation. There are two different unipolar moments. The first one lasted from the end of the Cold War to until about 2008 and that is when the US fell for the hegemon’s temptation. The US recovered from the financial crisis of 2008 remarkably, but it has not been in a position to fall for the hegemon’s temptation since then. In the second unipolar moment, whilst rivals are not able to balance against the US, they are no longer afraid to engage in revisionist behaviour. The US, therefore, needs functioning alliances in this second unipolar moment. Whilst during the first unipolar moment, the US could engage in wars of choice, it now needs to be more restrained and nurture its alliances with a view to strengthening its own response to the revisionist behaviour of rival great powers. I exemplify this with reference to the US relationship with its European allies after the Russian-Ukrainian war and I critically discuss how safe the second unipolar moment is.
    
    Author: Lorenzo Cladi (University of Plymouth)
  - Economic Sanctions: The Absent Instrument for NATO Dealing with Emerging Challenges
    
    Economic sanctions are not an instrument in policy toolbox of NATO in present. Most member states of NATO unilaterally, or through the EU, apply their own sanctions based on national legislation. Examining Western sanctions against Russia since Russo-Ukraine War, the effectiveness of economic sanctions has been undermined by Russia, which exploits non-EU membership of NATO as a loophole to evasion. NATO's commitment to European collective security is devoided and then, both in terms of capacity and credibility, in absence of coherent sanctions policy. Kremlin exploits mislabeled “NATO sanctions” as disinformation resources for hybrid war against alliance.
    Effectiveness of sanctions has been questioned for failing to thwart what war launched by Putin and deter escalation. However, economic sanctions are in the middle of war and words, which are clearly already punishing Russia’s economy. The longer war lasts, the more effect sanctions will have on Russian economy. The question addressed is economic sanctions how to be compatible with NATO’s traditional role and where it did not have much experience or expertise. For the latter, the restrictive measures (sanctions) of EU are valuable assets for NATO under the legal-binding relation framework of NATO-EU strategic partnership. The mutually reinforcing strategic partnership contributes to strengthening security in Europe and beyond through sharing economic coercion means.
    This contribution outlines NATO’s options for sanctions in the context of strategic rival among great powers. The first section provides a political-legal framework for legality of international sanctions within alliances. Section 2 is the lessons and experiences of economic sanctions drawn through Russo-Ukraine war. Section 3 focuses on the accessibility and availability of economic sanctions under the evolution of EU-NATO strategic partnership in predictable future.
    
    Author: Peiran Wang (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
  - Disconnected? The UK’s ties with the European Union’s foreign intelligence network after Brexit
    
    Since the United Kingdom (UK)’s departure from the European Union (EU), Euro-British cooperation on security and defence appears uncertain and problematic. In the field of foreign intelligence, observers speculate about the current and future state of the relationship: the UK appears less interconnected and influential, while the EU has lost a prominent Member State at a time when its foreign policymaking relies on enhancing shared strategic intelligence.
    This article approaches the EU’s intelligence framework from a network analysis perspective, in a longitudinal study that compares the UK’s ties with the EU structures before and after Brexit. It unveils how intelligence cooperation consists of a multitude of relationships on three levels: interpolity relations, interorganizational ones, and interpersonal exchanges among practitioners. Through semi-structured elite interviews with security and intelligence professionals, it explores how these ties have changed with Brexit and how trust, resilience, and the UK’s departure are understood differently on each level of interaction.
    The results show how the EU’s intelligence network presents various degrees of resistance to change, depending on the level of ties under study. Each presents different priorities and needs, the understanding of which is crucial for European and British policymakers to ensure collective security. This article contends that, despite the British position appearing less central since Brexit, its informal linkages with the EU at interorganization and inter-personal level ensure that London remains an influential player in the European intelligence stage. Moreover, I argue that the proposed differentiation of ties (interpolity, interorganizational, interpersonal) would advance the application of network analysis to the field of international relations, allowing more precise predictions in terms of tie formation and network evolution.
    
    Author: Lucia Frigo (Royal Holloway, University of London)
  - Exploring public-private cooperation in Maritime Critical Infrastructure Protection in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland
    
    The explosion that rendered part of the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea significantly damaged, highlighted the presence and vulnerability of subsea critical infrastructure to a global audience. Over 850,000 miles of cable lies beneath the world's oceans, powering nations and ensuring the smooth operation of global communication networks. States have become increasingly aware of the need to map their maritime critical infrastructure, better understand the threats posed to it and adequately prepare protective measures. However, in many cases the infrastructure itself is financed, installed and maintained by the private sector. This situation demands that public and private actors effectively cooperate on maritime critical infrastructure protection, a situation that requires appropriate governance structures to ensure strategic and operational synergies. This paper explores the nature and extent of public-private cooperation for critical maritime infrastructure protection in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, advancing the case that more networked governance can offer a more flexible and dynamic structural arrangement through which cooperation can flourish.
    
    Authors: James Malcolm (Coventry University) , Robert McCabe (Coventry University)
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  07 Panel / Turkey’s Tightrope: Navigating Domestic and International Crosswinds Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Conveners: Samuele Abrami (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan) , Karolin Tuncel (Oxford University) , Riccardo Gasco (University of Bologna) , Melek Kucukuzun
  
  Chair: Bahar Baser (Durham University)
  
  Discussant: Massimo D'Angelo (Loughborough University London)
  - Defying the Odds: A Political Economy Analysis of Turkey’s Defense Industry within the Systemic Vulnerability Framework
    
    Defying the Odds: A Political Economy Analysis of Turkey’s Defense Industry within the Systemic Vulnerability Framework
    
    Author: Melike Bozkurt (Loughborough University)
  - Assessing Turkey's Foreign Policy Behavior as a Middle Power Between NATO and Russia
    
    The primary research question of this project revolves around understanding Turkey's foreign policy behavior in the early XXI century by analyzing its relationship with a set of different partners: a traditional strategic ally such as NATO and a non-traditional ally such as Russia over the last 20 years. By analyzing Turkey's relations with NATO and with a non-traditional ally over the past two decades, this research project seeks to contribute empirically to the literature on middle-power behavior in the international system. The project seeks to illuminate the intricacies and conduct of Turkey's foreign policy, particularly during crises, to scrutinize Ankara's stance and the factors that influence the nation's alignment or divergence with NATO and Russia. The findings of this study will provide valuable insights into the complex dynamics of middle power conduct, shedding light on the strategies employed by countries like Turkey as they navigate the global arena and strive to carve out their own space and increase their posture in an ever-changing geopolitical landscape. Furthermore, the project will empirically contribute to the literature concerning international alliances, which, starting from the 21st century, have not been deemed of primary significance and are coming back to the agenda following the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This project employs a qualitative research methodology grounded in foreign policy analysis and process tracing techniques.
    
    Author: Riccardo Gasco (University of Bologna)
  - Negotiations of Gender Normativity in Everyday Life Ethnographic: Insights from Young Couples in Contemporary Turkey
    
    Given the global context of transformations of and contestations around gender norms, this ongoing research project aims to contribute local everyday perspectives from Turkey to the transdisciplinary field of gender studies. I investigate how gender norm attitudes relate to broader societal structures of belief or, in other words, on what ideological grounds certain gender norms are being reproduced, adopted or rejected in everyday life. My overarching research question is: To what extent and in which ways do which systems of belief function as a discursive source of legitimacy in the making of gender norms in contemporary Turkish society? Following a social-constructivist lens, I explore this question empirically through a qualitative study of Turkish young couples’ gender norm attitudes, primarily building on semi-structured in-depth interviews. Empirically, I follow the question: How do people negotiate gender norms in conversation with me and with their partners? What systems of belief do people reference when justifying their support for or opposition to certain gender norms? Analytically, I particularly focus on the role of religious ideology as a source of legitimacy in the (re)production and transformation of gender norms. Thus, further to refining global theories of norm contestation, this project also contributes to literature at the intersection of religion and gender.
    
    Author: Karolin Tuncel (Oxford University)
  - Internal and External Parameters of Turkey’s Foreign Policy Change. A Historicized Inside-Out Anatomy
    
    Since 2002 an unprecedented activism in Turkey’s Foreign Policy (TFP) behavior has been widely recognized. However, the combination of a multifaceted stance towards many issues with domestic alterations under AKP-led governments have polarized the debate around whether changes in TFP are mostly explicable either by systemic or domestic, either by material or ideational dynamics. In response to such dichotomies, this study builds on a multilevel analysis that examines the interplay between internal (domestic changes, leader images, strategic culture(s), institutional environment, socio-political constituencies) and external (systemic stimuli, international/regional power relations, external threat perceptions, political economy) factors.
    Therefore, aiming to overcome traditional debates in IR, it theoretically relies on a pioneer flexible analytical framework drawn on recent theories of Foreign Policy Change. By integrating Foreign Policy Analysis with elements of Historical Institutionalism, it includes both material and ideational factors in order de-hierarchize the relations between three major parameters: transformations in the regional and global international system, shifts in domestic politics, and changes in individual leadership. Methodologically, it operates through a process-tracing (PT) for a cross-time analysis of TFP with the objective to capture: (1) elements of continuity and change along historical lines; (2) the two-way effect linking changes in foreign policy and domestic politics; (3) the dynamics at play in the decision- and foreign policy- making.
    
    Author: Samuele Abrami (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan)
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  07 Panel / US Foreign Policy and the Indo-Pacific Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: US Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: USFP Working group
  
  Chair: Michiel Foulon
  - From Ally to Ambiguity: Thailand in US Foreign Policy
    
    Recent years have seen an increasing drift in US-Thai relations as the Rise of China has altered geopolitical and economic dynamics throughout South-East Asia. The relationship was once defined by common interests during the Cold War in opposing communist movements in the region, despite Thailand’s authoritarian politics, and then Thailand’s brief democratic era in the 1990s and 2000s culminating in Thailand being designated a major non-NATO ally in 2003. This has been fractured by an increasing turn to anti-democratic forms of government since the 2006 coup in Thailand and its subsequent closer relations with China. This paper draws on an eclectic blend of International Relations theories to account for both US geopolitical concerns with regards to Thailand in East Asia and the broader cultural significance of Thailand in US foreign policy. Overall this paper will identify and describe the key themes in US foreign policy towards Thailand over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries to better assess relations between the two countries today.
    
    Author: Benjamin Coulson (University of Edinburgh)
  - President, Generals and Broken Foreign Policy: US Troop Withdrawal from Korea in the Cold War
    
    After the Vietnam War, the United States attempted to reduce its troops, which led to the deterioration of the South Korea-US alliance. However, interest in the withdrawal attempt by the Carter administration, which was ultimately unsuccessful, has been limited. This paper explores Why US civil-military preferences clashed, and how that led to the failure of President Carter's all-out withdrawal of US ground forces from Korea. Previous studies suggesting that US foreign policy patterns and strategic interests determined the withdrawal of US forces stationed abroad have not provided a coherent account of the domestic determinants of the withdrawal failure, particularly the intervention by military elites. An alternative, yet essential factor to consider is civil-military relations. Even in mature democracies like the United States, foreign and national security policy preferences can differ significantly between civilian leaders and military elites. In such cases, military elites have resisted the president's foreign policy leadership through various political tactics and alliances with Congress. This paper uses a dual principal-agent model and causal process tracing to trace the trajectory of strategic interactions between the president, Congress, and military elites. In doing so, this paper demonstrates how US military elites can undermine presidential supremacy over US foreign policymaking.
    
    Author: Juhong Park
  - Small Powers and the US-China Competition: Using Public Opinion Data to Evaluate the Potential for Foreign Policy Change
    
    How do populations of small powers think about their country‘s relationship to China and the US? How are preferences for future bilateral ties distributed within populations, particularly in countries that are not committed to either camp? And what are possible implications of this for foreign policy-makers in Beijing and Washington? In a recent survey we asked 15,105 respondents in 32 countries in Africa (9), Latin America (11), Eastern Europe (8), Asia and the Middle East (4) how they judge their country’s current relationship to the US and China, and to tell us how they think it ought to be. In the paper we discuss not only the status quo of public attitudes toward these rivaling great powers, we also discuss how the potential for small power foreign policy change can be conceptualized. To that end, we develop a typology based on two dimensions: discrepancy (difference between current and desired relationship) and polarization (standard deviation of desired relationship). Subsequently, we discuss the four resulting types of small power public preferences, and present paradigmatic cases representative of each type, to corroborate our theorizations and to illustrate the suggested consequences for great power foreign policy.
    
    Authors: Bastian van der Neut (St. Andrews University) , Dennis Redeker (Bremen University (Germany))* , Ingmar Sturm (UCSB (USA))* , Fee-Sophie Cohausz (NCCU (Taiwan))*
- 241
  
  07 Roundtable / Ukrainian identity, regional diversity and wartime unity Sonata, Hyatt
  
  This round table will cover a range of issues about Ukraine’s identity, responses to the full scale invasion, human rights, unity and challenges during the war time, etc. It consists of researchers of different levels ranging from MA graduates to Professor whose research foci lie in regional and national identities, narratives and post-Soviet studies. Another distinguishing characteristic of this roundtable is that is consists of Ukrainians coming from different parts of Ukraine and thus can provide a more diverse and cohesive picture of the complexed Ukraine’s identity. The round table is chaired by Dr Natasha Kuhrt.
  
  Sponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group
  
  Chair: Natasha Kuhrt (King's College London)
  
  Participants: Anna Oliinyk (UCL) , Artur Nadiiev (University of Nottingham) , Svitlana Rostetska (University of Nottingham) , Bohdana Kurylo (Oxford Brookes University)
- 242
  
  07 Roundtable / Who thinks of everything? Reckoning with the value of racialised epistemologies in IR Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  Who tends to think of everything in two or more ways simultaneously? Who is a postmodernist virtually as a condition of his or her being?
  – Richard Delgado, Racial Realism – after we are gone
  
  Recent publications such as Zvobgo et al.’s ‘ (2023) Race and Racial Exclusion in Security Studies’ and Doharty et al.’s (2021) ‘The University went to ‘decolonise’ and all they brought back was lousy diversity double-speak!’ bring back the importance of the issue that is the structural violence towards scholars of colour who choose to uphold the legitimacy of alternative knowledge as part of the decolonising movement. This roundtable is on this topic of racialised epistemology and its value in showing IR a perspective advantage. Quoting pedagogical theorist Ladson-Billings (2000:262): this advantage speaks to the ways that not being positioned in the white centre allows scholars of colour a “wide-angle vision” that enables them to see better and transcend the normative thought boundaries that come with existing on the inside. In recent years, attention to debates over racialised knowledge and in particular the role of a solidarity in anti-racist consciousness has intensified amidst discussions of what decolonising International Relations (IR) means for the academy. While the focus of decolonising IR for many has popularised an academia focused on the topic of contextualising political knowledge within the colonial and imperial backdrops that form their foundation, there is an important continued concern within re-aligning the decolonising effort back to addressing the structural issues of the racist circumstances of POC academics persisting within the colonial and imperial environment of the professoriate. Participants in this roundtable will engage in this critical discussion of the importance of upholding racialised discourses in challenging an IR that continues to dehumanise and depersonalise its interlocutors.
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Chair: Amal Abu-Bakare (University of Liverppol)
  
  Participants: Jenna Marshall (King's College London) , Leila Mouhib (ULB) , John Narayan (KCL) , Jasmine Gani (University of St Andrews) , Olivia Rutazibwa (LSE)
- 10:30
  
  15 minute transition
- 10:30
  
  Refreshment break Hyatt Hotel
  
  Hyatt Hotel
- 243
  07 Panel / 'Whose climate justice: ecofeminist researchers want to know' Soprano, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Environment Working Group
  
  Convener: Charlotte Weatherill (Open University)
  
  Chair: Charlotte Weatherill (Open University)
  - Ecofeminist ‘Mothering’
    
    Ecofeminists have long grappled with, and been troubled by, the experience and concept of motherhood. Early ecofeminism celebrated women’s experience as mothers and caregivers, drawing on motherhood as a model for an ethics of ‘earthcare’ while others have interpreted arguments about motherhood as essentialist and limiting. More recently, motherhood has been linked to arguments about over-population with growing calls to eschew the family and abstain from birthing children. Put simply, motherhood has been a somewhat thorny issue for environmentalists which has meant that the everyday experiences of motherhood (in the form of the nuclear family or otherwise), have remained largely unexplored. In this paper, I return to thinking about ‘Ecofeminist Mothering’ to think through the different forms motherhood can take and the climate just possibilities that might arise within. Through an auto-biographical account of my own entrance into Mothering (and realisation that the promised village did not exist…) I argue that a society that takes seriously the role of care is a society with the capacity to transform the experience, and expand the concept of, motherhood in more equitable and environmentally conscious ways.
    
    Author: Joanna Flavell (Sheffield University)
  - Feminist decolonial degrowth: An ecofeminist-republican perspective on climate justice
    
    Climate breakdown is ‘unequivocally’ evidenced to be the result of human economic activities (IPCC, 2022: 33). More efforts have been dedicated to analysing the power dynamics of climate breakdown and the unequal distribution of negative impacts on specific groups, such as women, people of colour, and those facing financial deprivation. This article takes an ecofeminist-republican approach to argue for feminist decolonial degrowth as a necessary precondition for achieving socially just and ecologically sustainable futures. Firstly, from an ecofeminist perspective, climate breakdown, care depletion, and colonial injustice are inextricably linked and rooted in patriarchal and capitalist 'growth fetishism'. The care depletion, particularly but not exclusively, in the former colonies in the global South is a result of the overuse of material resources for the market economy. Secondly, from a republican perspective, degrowth is a transitional period, allowing plural, heterogeneous economies to coexist and evolve along their own unique development pathways, without dominating one another in postcolonial, post-growth politics. Therefore, degrowth is a feminist agenda, aiming to reallocate material resources and labour power from the market economy to the care economy. It is also a (postcolonial) republican concern, with the aim of incorporating the principle of ‘non-domination’ into the international political economy.
    
    Author: Jaeim Park (Queen's University Belfast)
  - A decolonial ecofeminist perspective on rewilding, land ownership and multispecies justice.
    
    Large scale rewilding is rapidly changing the rural landscapes of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, but with the highest concentration of land ownership in Europe, the power to change these landscape remains vastly unequal. An expanding carbon market driving up the price of land and plans for an under ambitious land reform (Scotland) bill, further cement the exclusion of place-based communities from the possibilities of land ownership and the power to rewild. Whether rewilding signals a hopeful opportunity to reorganise our socio-ecological worlds or ushers in new formations of multi-species exploitation and domination under the guise of ‘green solutions’ is highly contested. This paper will examine the question of land ownership shapes these ecological trajectories. Contested claims to land, new green land grabs and the regions histories as colonizer and colonized, make it a unique site to examine questions of power and land ownership in ambitions to restore and rewild ecosystems. I offer a decolonial ecofeminist perspective on the colonial and patriarchal power embedded in the rewilding of privately owned estates in the region.
    
    Author: Heather Urquhart (University of Manchester)
  - An intersectional ecofeminist exploration of food provisioning practices of Pakistani-heritage women in UK
    
    The ecofeminist perspective offers a unique lens through which to examine the intersection of cultural food practices and environmental sustainability. Cultural food practices are deeply intertwined with identity, heritage, and local food systems., However the incorporation of cultural food practices in mainstream environmental narratives of policy makers also presents challenges, such as acknowledging historical injustices and ensuring inclusivity. Ecofeminism posits that there are deep connections between the oppression of women and the degradation of the environment, and this perspective underscores the significance of cultural food practices in perpetuating or mitigating climate change. Understanding these dynamics is critical for developing effective policies that resonate with diverse populations and achieving climate justice.
    This paper offers a unique ecofeminist lens by recognizing and valuing cultural diversity, environmental narratives and policies can better reflect the needs and aspirations of diverse communities, ultimately enhancing their effectiveness and promoting just and equitable sustainable practices.
    
    Author: Zarina Ahmad (University of Manchester)
  - Towards socially just climate finance: lessons from the ground
    
    Climate finance instruments, such as national climate funds financed through the United Nations Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) financing mechanisms, have been gaining traction in recent years. While REDD+ mechanisms have demonstrated the ability to overcome some major political obstacles to earlier efforts to promote sustainable forest management, key questions regarding their effectiveness and social impacts on the ground remain, including concerns regarding gender equality across intersectional axes: diverse gender impacts of afforestation and reforestation projects need to be considered at every level and stage of implementation to avoid unequal distribution of costs and burdens.
    This paper analyses existing best practices and elaborates lessons learnt on gender considerations in climate finance through an intersectional ecofeminist lens. Based on projects and programmes funded by the Brazilian Amazon Fund/BNDES and building on recent fieldwork in the State of Pará in the Legal Amazon, as well as desk-based primary and secondary research, the paper draws out the connections between gender considerations at three levels of climate finance: the level of the national fund, the project carrier organisations, and, most importantly, the project participants on the ground. To work towards socially just climate finance, a gender transformative approach that is participatory, grounded in social justice, and explicitly seeks to redress gender inequalities needs to be adopted at all levels of climate finance.
    
    Authors: Sherilyn MacGregor (University of Manchester)* , Magdalena Svetlana Rodekirchen (University of Manchester)
- 244
  07 Panel / Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  Sponsor: Ethics and World Politics Working Group
  
  Convener: Toni Erskine (Australian National University)
  
  Chair: Cian O'Driscoll (ANU)
  
  Discussant: Luba Zatsepina (Liverpool John Moores University)
  - ‘Through a Glass, Darkly: Algorithmic War and the Dangers of (In)-Visibility, Anonymity, and Fragmentation’
    
    AI-enabled decision-support tools are likely an unavoidable part of states’ future resort-to-force decision-making, due to their superior capacity to absorb data and deliver outputs at speeds unimaginable for humans. Algorithmic reason promises more precise knowledge and more efficient decision-making. However, AI-enabled vision sustains both information and visual exposure and opacity. To this end, machine learning algorithms are often called black boxes even as they are in practice reconfiguring how decisions come to be at the intersection of humans and machines. While many cite greater algorithmic transparency as an urgent need, I argue that this overlooks the ways in which algorithmic reason conceals through practices of in-visibility, anonymity, and fragmentation. These practices already define US-driven war-making today, and with the addition of AI to all levels of war, technological authoritarianism presents a clear risk to democratic norms, which require multiplicity and struggle. In arguing for a re-centring of humans in war, we are confronted with an entrenched algorithmic reason which permeates not just war but all aspects of society.
    
    Author: Baggiarini Bianca (Australian National University)
  - ‘The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Nuclear Crisis Decision-Making: A Complement, Not a Substitute’
    
    Artificial intelligence (AI) — understood here broadly as technological systems that are capable of performing tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as understanding natural language, recognizing patterns, solving problems, and learning — introduces complex implications for diplomacy and trust-building in the context of nuclear crises. In this paper, we first identify the core differences between AI and human intelligence. We then consider what role AI might play in nuclear crisis decision-making. We conclude by identifying both limitations of AI and the ways in which human decision-making and AI may complement one another. In sum, we argue that AI's role in nuclear crises should be seen as a complementary tool rather than a substitute for human decision-making. While AI can enhance data analysis, provide insights into multiple motives, and offer unemotional perspectives, it is imperative that decision-makers maintain human oversight, seek to build interpersonal trust with their counterparts in adversary states, and navigate complex geopolitical dynamics.
    
    Author: Nicholas Wheeler (University of Birmingham)
  - ‘Before Algorithmic Armageddon: The Erosion of Norms of Restraint as a Neglected Risk When Resort-to-Force Decision Making is Abdicated to Intelligent Machines’
    
    Algorithms that rely on big data analytics and machine learning to make predictions and recommend possible courses of action will increasingly infiltrate state-level decision making on whether to wage war. The spectre of future iterations of these intelligent machines surpassing human capacities, and escaping human control, has recently received a surge in attention as an approaching existential threat. Yet, this future-focused fear obscures a grave and insidious challenge that is already here. A neglected danger that already-existing AI-enabled decision-support systems pose is that they change how we (as citizens, soldiers, and states) deliberate, how we act, and how we view ourselves as responsible agents. This has potentially profound ethical, political, and even geo-political implications – well before AI evolves to a point where some fear that it could initiate algorithmic Armageddon. I will argue that our reliance on AI-enabled and automated systems to make decisions on the resort to force threatens to create the perception that we have been displaced as the relevant decision makers and may therefore abdicate our responsibilities to intelligent machines. I will conclude by asking how these risks might, in turn, affect hard-won international norms of restraint – and how they can be mitigated.
    
    Author: Toni Erskine (Australian National University)
- 245
  07 Panel / China and India in the (Post-)Colonial Entanglements Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: YANG HAN (University of Oxford)
  
  Chair: Edward Keene (University of Oxford)
  
  Discussant: Andy Hanlun Li (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  - Crash points and the Game of Chicken: The Sino-British negotiations over Hong Kong
    
    This paper is an exploration of why the British conceded all control of Hong Kong’s post-1997 administration during the fifth round of Sino-British negotiations after months of resistance. One of the few ways in which International Relations scholarship has addressed the Hong Kong case using a theoretical framework is through treating the Sino-British negotiations as a contest of brinksmanship that can be analysed as a Game of Chicken. Following the logic of Chicken, the timing of British concession can be understood as the only logical response to avoiding an approaching crash point which British policymakers defined as a negotiating breakdown. On the surface, this application of Chicken is apt, but predicated on the British coming to perceive, at a particular time, a crash point dependent on a series of intangible assumptions, leaps of logic, and psychological expectations regarding the behaviour of Hong Kong’s population. This paper therefore addresses why British policymakers came to perceive a crash point at the point in time they did. In doing so, it also makes an important empirical contribution to study of the Hong Kong negotiations, utilising hitherto underused British archival sources declassified in 2013. By tracing the processes of British policymaking and negotiating strategy during the negotiations’ early stages, this paper elucidates and builds theory addressing the important but understudied issue of how crash points come to be perceived by actors in contests of brinksmanship. Through inductively considering how crash points generally come to be perceived during contests of brinksmanship, I propose a tripartite framework of preconditions which need to be met for actors to perceive a crash point under Game of Chicken logic. I then hypothesise how each of these preconditions can be met in empirical situations where the perceived crash is framed intangibly and based on assumptions, rather than tangible and straightforward cause-effect relationships. I further argue that it is the intangibility of a perceived crash point which opens possibilities for individual crash point ‘advocates’ and ‘detractors’ to use extreme framings and rhetorical tools such as hyperbole and embellishment for advocating or contesting the perception of a crash point. Through this generalisable analytical and interpretive framework, I was able to make sense of the Hong Kong case and identify a key explanatory variable for why the British came to perceive a crash point when they did.
    
    Author: Patrick (Pak Hei) Hao (University of Oxford)
  - A Liminal Space Between Empire and the Nation-State: China, the “Standard of Civilization,” and the League of Nations’ Public Health Work in the Interwar Years
    
    This paper examines the ways in which the politics of empire and an emerging nation-statist international order met in the site of the League of Nations’ technical cooperation work on
    public health in China in the interwar years. Most parts of Asia remained under colonial domination by Britain, France, and a rising, expansionist Japan. In this context, China, alongside Siam, occupied a liminal space between empire and the nation-state. China stood out as an independent national government with its diplomatic status recognized by membership in the League, but its legal status was still compromised by unequal treaty relations and the extraterritorial spaces which these legal arrangements generated. Under a largely colonial regional context in Asia, contestations over which of the multiple public health administrations in China could represent China in the League’s public health networks constituted a site where different visions of the “international” and their constitutive member units were negotiated.
    
    I argue that the League of Nations’ practices in this field were sites where international hierarchy was structured by a “standard of civilization” on self-governance capability and
    modern public administration systems in the image of Western, capitalist modern states. At the same time, they were also sites where actors contested the “standard” to negotiate their sovereignty, political authority, and status. I examine China as a significant case of this process.
    
    The paper contributes to historically-grounded International Relations theories on international change and decolonization, specifically challenging views of normative change and state formation as unilinear, teleological processes. It also contributes to a growing international history scholarship on early twentieth-century multilateral governance as a site where actors contested international hierarchy and the implications of such contentious politics on membership in international order, legitimate authority, and sovereignty.
    
    Author: Annie Hsu (University of Oxford)
  - Searching for a Rising India: India International Science Festival and the Postcolonial World Order
    
    Despite the massive scholarly attention on rising India, what it means for a country to rise continues to be a debated topic. A critical review of the previous scholarship on rising India reveals that rise is not merely increased material capabilities; rather, it is a process of constructing national identity and reversing the colonial, Orientalist dichotomy of ‘the advanced West versus the backward India’. The next question is where to find the postcolonial ‘nation self’ of rising India, India’s aspirations for status, and its visions of a reversed international hierarchy. This paper argues that India’s ‘rising power identities’, entangled with postcolonial identities, are often conveyed through cultural events organised by the post-1990 Indian diplomatic elites.
    
    This paper examines how India presented the image of ‘Vishwaguru’ (Teacher of the World) at the India International Science Festival, an official scientific cultural event launched by the Modi government in 2015. By highlighting the contribution of its traditional wisdom and science to the world, India not only rejects the colonial discourse of ‘India’s lack of reason’, but also envisions an international order where India occupies a critical position.
    
    Author: Song Tang (University of Oxford)
  - Why should Postcolonial International Relations Abandon the Black-White Dichotomy?: Chinese Practitioners’ Racialisation of Africa and the West in the 21st century
    
    Resonating with recent critiques of the “critical White-centrism”, this paper problematizes the non-White/White dichotomy in postcolonial IR scholarships. For both normative and analytical ends, the narratives of the non-White, postcolonial Other shall be heard, critically, examined, and its agency theorized. Examining Chinese practitioners’ memoirs in the 21st century on their services in sub-Saharan Africa, this paper studies the triangular - and often fluid - racialization of the Chinese Self, the Black Other, and the White Other. It pinpoints “the modernity zeal” as the central analytical concept in making sense of the racialization dynamics. The deeply entrenched desire for modernity, arising from colonial interactions with the West, heavily shape how Chinese agents contemplate and negotiate their own racialized identity against other racial categories without questioning further the principle of hierarchization itself. Therefore, this paper uncovers postcolonial agents may wield their agency to recreate a self-centric version of the global racial hierarchy.
    
    Author: Yang Han (University of Oxford)
- 246
  07 Panel / Democracy, Displacement and Diaspora in West Africa Exec 9, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Africa and International Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: AISG Working group
  
  Chair: Lesley Masters (Nottingham Trent University)
  - The State, Boko Haram and the ‘Bloody Civilian’: Vernacular Conceptions of Counterterrorism in Nigeria
    
    This paper interrogates vernacular narratives of counterterrorism within the Nigerian context through engaging with the various ways through which Nigerians construct their experiences of the state, Boko Haram, of (in)security and of counterterrorism through a four-month critical ethnography in Northern Nigeria. Rather than treating these as givens, the paper interrogates the emergence of the Nigerian state within the postcolonial context and how this gendered and racialized emergence informs how the state positions itself both globally and locally. Within vernacular discourses by Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) on counterterrorism, the civilian (them) is contrasted from the hardman (the army) and the humiliation of the latter by Boko Haram is viewed as a tragic ‘point of no return’, where civilians must ‘turn to God’ or ‘help themselves’ to achieve their own security. Tropes such as ‘fleeing soldier’, ‘begging soldier’, ‘disguising soldier’ and ‘crying soldier’ are prominent in these narratives which all depict military capitulation and humiliation. I argue that when the hypermasculine machismo of coercive counterterrorism flounders in the face of formidable Boko Haram resistance and violence, army officers and soldiers embrace local knowledges and practices. There is a hierarchy of responses that are not only localized but are also reflexive such as ‘going vernacular’ which requires not merely ‘knowing the terrain’ as military doctrines may require but more importantly, ‘knowing the code’ and ‘weaponizing positionality’ – the insider/outsider dynamic – where state agents seek their own survival and safety rather than abstractions of state survival and territorial integrity. I advance the concept of ‘vernacular nuggets’ which depicts local non-elite ways of managing threats and dangers to capture these local forms of knowledge and practices. People’s construction of insecurity and ultimately displacement from Northeast Nigeria then could be viewed as emerging within the complex vernacular constructions of safety, threats, danger, and the state.
    
    Author: Akinyemi Oyawale (University of Warwick)
  - International Farm Labor Migration and Sustainable Agri–Food Systems: The Case of Ghanaian Farm Labor in Italy’s Tomato Farm Sector
    
    There is an often-overlooked aspect of labour migration to Europe: the settlement patterns of African migrant farm labour in remote rural areas. Focusing on Ghanaian rural youth migrant farm labour, this study contests their categorization in academic and policy circles, as illegal, irregular, and unskilled workers.
    
    First, this Paper studies the correlation between the establishment of a liberalized global tomato agri–food sector and the emergence of international farm labour migrants originating from rural Middle Belt Ghana and employed in rural Southern Italy.
    
    Second, it interrogates the choice of rural Southern Italy as a migration destination, by examining the configuration of actors and roles in both rural origin and host areas, while drawing out the complex challenges actors present to the transnational governance of international farm labour migration across the Mediterranean into Europe.
    
    Third, it examines the often marginalized yet influential contributions of Ghanaian migrant farmworkers in the development of sustainable agri–food systems in the host and origin rural farming communities, in spite of their exclusion and precarity in Italy.
    
    Relying on primary data collected over 8–months in 2021/22 in Ghana and Italy, and with the support of relevant food systems and migration concepts, this Paper offers a comprehensive analysis of international rural–to–rural farm labour migration, aimed at broadening the scope of academic investigation of African migration to Europe, beyond refugee migration.
    
    Keywords: ∙ international migration ∙ farm labour ∙ rural ∙ tomato agriculture ∙ sustainable food system ∙ globalization ∙ Ghana ∙ Italy
    
    Author: Genevieve Odamtten
  - Emerging threats to Democracy in Africa: A Conceptual Framework towards Improving Civil-Military Relations in African Postcolonial States.
    
    There have recently been coups in Sudan, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad and Gabon. The increasing prevalence of coups threatens to reverse the democratic progress made across the continent in the past decades. The paper explores how to improve civil-military relations in African postcolonial states employing a conceptual framework utilising Rebecca Schiff’s Concordance theory of civil-military relations and Moses Khisa and Christopher Day’s concepts of regime proximity and social embeddedness. According to Rebecca Schiff, the nature of agreement among three partners; the military, the political elites and citizenry on four indicators: the social composition of the officer corps, the political decision-making process, the recruitment method and military style determines the character of civil-military relations in a country.
    
    The paper undertakes a contextual exploration of some African coup affected countries utilizing Rebecca Schiff’s theory of civil-military relations suggesting that civil-military relations in African countries could be improved by building consensus in accordance with the theory. Furthermore, drawing examples from the work of Moses Khisa and Christopher Day, the paper proposes that the concepts of regime proximity and social embeddedness could be useful approaches for achieving this needed consensus. The paper illustrates how employing conceptual and analytical tools of research provided in the sub-field of civil-miliary relations and international studies could help in the resolution of societal challenges such as problematic civil-military relations in Africa.
    
    KEYWORDS: Africa, civil-military relations, concordance theory, regime proximity, social embeddedness, postcolonial, liberal democratic, democracy.
    
    Author: Fatai Alli (University of Portsmouth)
  - Accounting for the Muted Voices of Internally Displaced Women in International Studies
    
    The literature exploring development NGOs and the solutions they provide to problems in locations where governments are unable to reach or are inadequately resourced to provide aid is replete. In Nigeria, there are about 500 NGOs registered under the EU/UN Spotlight Initiative project on ending violence against women and girls that provide services to internally displaced women experiencing gender-based violence (GBV). Whilst there is an acceptable reporting template detailing the type of services they provide to these women, what we know far less is whether the framing of the problems and the posited service solutions in these templates reflect the actual needs of the internally displaced women. This curiosity stems from the fact that, over the years, NGOs have presented themselves as saviours without any accountability structures to the people in whose stead they raise fund. This paper asks: To what extent does the framing of the problems and the posited solutions reflect the muted voices of the internally displaced women in Nigeria? In what ways do international studies continue to doubly marginalise the already muted voices in the research of internally displaced people in insurgency countries and other natural emergency-prone countries? This paper addresses this question using the solicited data from service reports within the framework of the EU/ UN Spotlight Initiative submitted by the partnering NGOs. It also employs extant data from international studies on this issue. It makes the case that marginalised, particularly internally displaced women and girls, can only lead in the conceptualization of their problems and the solutions they find acceptable if deliberate attempts and spaces are made for the inclusion of their voices in international organisation solution templates and, to an extent, in international studies.
    
    Author: Sixtus Onyekwere (University of Portsmouth)
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  07 Roundtable / Does the Method Fit? Exploring Diverse Methodologies of Research in South East Europe Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  Much has been said and written about the challenges hegemonic theoretical frameworks face when applied in ‘non-Western’ contexts. However, not much attention has been paid to the challenges hegemonic methodologies and methods encounter. This roundtable brings together a diverse group of emerging and advanced scholars of international relations whose ‘(non-)traditional’ research methodologies aim to unearth the ‘worlding’ potential of Southeast Europe. Ethnographic research on war tourism, poetry as an exploratory method, uncovering peace-seeking from below through interviews, and bottom-up (critical) discourse approaches to identity and memory building are just some of the ‘(non-)traditional’ methodologies and methods of international relations assembled under this roundtables’s auspices. Most of them were chosen to counter the hegemonic narratives and the top-down research practices that prevent a more comprehensive knowledge production of the region. However, are these methods and methodologies the perfect fit for Southeast Europe? This is the main question we want to address and discuss in our roundtable and therefore we invite papers tackling similar themes in a multitude of different methods to explore what method may and may not do for research in Southeast Europe.
  
  Sponsor: South East Europe Working Group
  
  Chair: Elena Stavrevska (University of Bristol)
  
  Participants: Ivor Sokolic (University of Hertfordshire) , Freya Cumberlidge , Ivan Nikolovski (Central European University) , Gemma Bird (University of Liverpool) , Mate Subašić (Manchester Metropolitan University)
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  07 Panel / Indo-Pacific Diplomacy: Challanges and Opportunities Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: ISMMEA Working group
  
  Chair: Simon Mabon (Lancaster University/SEPAD)
  - The Changing Dynamics of Japan-India Cooperation: A Case of ‘Rule-Based Order’ in Indo-Pacific
    
    Japan and India are the two oldest democracies in Asia. Since the inception of their diplomatic relations in 1952, the two countries have maintained a cordial relation. They remain aloof during the Cold War period due to their ideological differences. Thereafter, India follow the liberalization of its economy followed by the “Look East” policy has had positive impact in the bilateral relations. This was soon faded away due to India’s second Pokhran nuclear test in 1998 followed by Japanese economic sanction. However, the relations normalized soon when Mori visited India in 2000. The bilateral relations had further improved when the two countries signed the “global strategic partnership” during Koizumi’s visit in 2005. Since then, the two countries has been engaging in different aspects of strategic partnership to promote rule-based order that ensures a peaceful and stable Indo-Pacific. Thus, different scholars and statesman from both the countries started discussion on building a new architecture of ‘rule-based order’ in the Indo-Pacific. To that end, Japan and India has been engaging in bilateral and multilateral dialogue such as G4, Shangri-La Dialogue, Quad, etc. This paper will try to see how far the two countries are able to woo international community to push the idea of “rule-based order” in Indo-Pacific.
    
    Author: Naresh Subba (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
  - The Divisive Past and the Conflicted Other: How Chinese Netizens View Russia
    
    This study examines how Chinese netizens view Russia and how contested memories shape different perceptions. It categorizes four different perceptions of Russia by pro-Russian groups, “spiritually Soviets,” anti-Russian nationalists, and liberals on China’s social media, who have divergent interpretations of the past. This study contributes a distinct case to the literature on Chinese collective memory and facilitates an understanding of Sino-Russian relations at the social level. Theoretically, it contributes to the emerging field of memory studies and international relations by highlighting the complexity of the past and the instability between the past and the present. Scholars tend to regard the past as having a “clear” and stable effect on present-day international politics; however, this article finds that when a collective memory concerns multiple significant but symbolically and ideologically competing historical events, it can become a divisive force that creates confusion in the self-other relationship and motivates different social groups to resist and revise official narratives.
    
    Author: Yi Wang (University of Birmingham)
  - Rethinking South Asian Regional Cooperation
    
    The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was established in 1985 with the intention of promoting regional cooperation among its member countries, namely Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. SAARC's formation was not an easy one, and during its 40-year history, it has experienced many highs and lows in its attempts to foster closer ties among the nations of South Asia. Most notably, since 2016, no SAARC forums have been held, raising questions about the organization's future. Since its founding, the organisation has made some progress in advancing economic cooperation, disaster management, poverty alleviation, interpersonal relationships, and dialogue through its summits. However, over time, SAARC has also encountered numerous obstacles brought on by bilateral disputes, security concerns, erosion of the region's identity, a growth in right-wing populism, a failure to add and collaborate with new member states and the slow advancement of regional projects. Against this backdrop, this paper discusses an in-depth analysis of SAARC’s progress and provides a new perspective on how international organisations of this nature can both learn from each other but also fall prey to other region’s political and economic agendas at the detriment of maintaining prosperous relations with their own neighbours.
    
    Authors: Vishal Sharma (Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University/Deakin University) , Serena Hussain (Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University)
  - The dynamics of transnational interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan: An ontological security framework perspective
    
    Liminality is generally considered an ontologically insecure position for political actors. That explains why scholar suggests ways for liminal actors to escape liminality through actions in relation to the hegemonic actor or discourse. This paper argues the contrary. It contends that political actors can find ontological security within liminal situations if they interact and manage their liminality with other like-minded liminal actors because they can offer recognition and support to each other. Using the case of political party interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan in the post-handover years, this paper will show that living under the geographical and political proximity of a powerful China, political parties there would rather stay within the liminal space than be absorbed into China’s sovereign space. Political parties interacted with partners who shared ideology to gain recognition and support for their ontological security. However, the interactions were constantly challenged by the China factor which was exerting influence domestically and transnationally in the post-handover years. Thus, the paper further illustrates how political parties dynamically adjust their interactions to achieve ontological security. It will contribute to how ontological security can account for the dynamics of transnational interactions, which is often a critique of the framework.
    
    Author: Adrian Chiu (SOAS)
  - Coping with Triangular Geopolitical Competition of the US-China-India in South Asia: Explaining Bangladesh’s Strategic Navigation & Foreign Policy Choices in 21st Century
    
    Abstract:
    
    South Asia's geopolitical and geoeconomic significance have attracted far more attention from the US and China than before, turning the region into one of the theatres of the most dynamic power shifts in the 21st century. This paper analyses the sources of Bangladesh's foreign policy in the era of great power competition among the strategic triangle of the US-China-India. Bangladesh's remarkable economic growth in the twenty-first century, along with its important geostrategic location with its access to the Bay of Bengal and the question over democratic deficit, finds itself at the centre of great and regional power rivalry. This paper engages with the three main school of thoughts of International Relations (Realism, Liberalism & Constructivism) and their competing claims about small states' foreign policy behaviour and examines them in the context of Bangladesh. This paper departs from the traditional alignment and non-alignment (Balancing, Bandwagoning and Hedging) debate/framework which is common in small and middle power studies and adopts four levels of analysis (systemic/international level, regional level, domestic/unit level and individual/ idiosyncratic) in decoding Dhaka's geopolitical realities and foreign policy navigation. This paper provides an alternative means of understanding the geopolitics of small states by bridging International Relations and Foreign Policy Analysis. This qualitative study uses a multipronged data collection strategy: semi-structured (elite & expert) interviews, documents and secondary sources. This case study argues that domestic determinants and the perspective of political leaders/elites are important components besides structural factors for small states' foreign policy in the era of US-China competition.
    
    Keywords: Small States, Geopolitics, Foreign Policy. US-China Rivalry, Bangladesh
    
    Author: Raian Hossain (University of Nottingham)
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  07 Panel / Legacies of Rebellion: Wartime Dynamics and Postwar Political Consequences Exec 10, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism
  
  Conveners: Alex Waterman (German Institute for Global and Area Studies) , Philip A. Martin (George Mason University) , Tessa Devereaux Evans (Cornell University) , Gyda Sindre (University of York) , Victor Bouemar (Radboud University)
  
  Chair: Romain Malejacq (Radboud University)
  - The Impact of Insurgent Gender Governance on Women's Postwar Representation
    
    How do periods of conflict impact societal gender relations and to what extent do insurgents shape this process? Recent studies have demonstrated the complex gendered aftereffects of civil war, noting legacies of trauma as well as windows of opportunity for women’s political and social participation (Hughes & Tripp, 2015; Viterna, 2013). Yet rebel challenges to societal gender norms are often overlooked as a factor shaping post-conflict gender relations. Using an original dataset of 137 armed groups fighting between 1950 and 2019, I find that 40% of rebel groups challenge civilian gender norms in the territories they govern during wartime. I then combine this original data with in-depth qualitative case studies of Eritrea, South Sudan and Zimbabwe to examine the legacies of this process in the post-war period. Overall, I find that rebel groups subvert local gender norms as a means to destabilize entrenched local elites and solidify social dominance both during and in the aftermath of armed conflicts, contributing to a growing literature on the strategic instrumentalization of women’s empowerment (Arat, 2022; Berry and Lake 2021).
    
    Author: Tessa Devereaux Evans (Cornell University)
  - The Long Run Political Effects of Wartime Recruitment by Rebel Victors: Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire
    
    How does local wartime recruitment by winning rebel groups affect postwar political engagement among non-recruits in rebel-controlled territory? Building on existing theories of conflict and political participation, I argue that when armed groups recruit more intensively within occupied communities, non-combatants in these areas are likely to become more politically engaged in the postwar polity. The political effects of recruitment should be most powerful when the recruiting armed group goes on to hold power in the postwar state, because civilians exposed to past recruitment efforts by parties with current representation in the state will feel stronger entitlement to make claims on the postwar government. To illustrate this argument empirically, I draw on original survey evidence from Côte d'Ivoire, leveraging geographic variation in the intensity of wartime recruitment by both winning rebels and losing pro-government militias. The results confirm that more intensive wartime recruitment in localities controlled by winning rebels is associated with increased political participation in the postwar period, but not in areas controlled by pro-government militias. The findings illuminate how wartime processes shape postwar democracy and citizen-state relations in the aftermath of rebel victory.
    
    Author: Philip A. Martin (George Mason University)
  - Legacies of Rebel Governance and its Impact on Post-Civil War State-Building
    
    In many post-war contexts, former rebels play centre-stage in shaping the post-war political order, individually or as part of ruling coalitions. To date research has largely focused on the links between wartime rebel governance and the emergence of dominant ruling parties following rebel victories. Much less is known about how legacies of rebel governance impact on the governance behaviour of rebel groups that become competitive electoral parties and part of post-war ruling elites. In addressing this gap, this paper draws on unique comparative data collected across five post-war contexts in Asia and Southeast Europe where former rebels have joined electoral politics and moved into ruling positions either at national or sub-national level. The paper offers novel conceptualisation about the links between wartime rebel (governance) behaviour and their role in post-war state-building. By unpacking the mechanisms that link wartime behaviour and post-war governance practices, such as which legacies survive and which are abandoned in the wake of competitive electoral politics, the paper challenges often-heard, yet unfounded, assumptions about any linear continuities between wartime and peacetime governance.
    
    Author: Gyda Sindre (University of York)
  - From Victorious Rebellion to State Army: How Warfare Shapes Postwar Military Institutions
    
    How do different types of armed forces emerge after rebel victory in civil war? Once they capture the state, those who have been successfully “living by the gun” take control over military institutions. Yet, armed forces appear to be playing different parts in postwar societies. The civil war scholarship recently addressed the problem of postwar civil-military relations from the perspective of regime stability and war recurrence. However, the focus on the military as a source of (dis)order has obscured other aspects of civil-military relations that can have pervasive effects on recovering societies. Building on the scholarship on civil war, state formation, and civil-military relations, I argue that counterinsurgency operations exerted on rebels and rebel long-term goals are two critical factors that shape together the type of armed forces that emerge after rebel victory. Based on fieldwork in Kosovo and Ethiopia, I test causal pathways that account for the trajectories of the Kosovo Liberation Army to the Kosovo Security Forces and of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front to the Ethiopian National Defense Force.
    
    Author: Victor Bouemar (Radboud University)
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  07 Roundtable / Mothering, Motherhood and (Feminist) International Relations 2.0: An open roundtable conversation Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  This "open roundtable" continues the conversation begun at BISA 2023. Last year's roundtable focused on our personal experience of mothering and motherhood in a discipline and an HE sector often hostile to it. The attendance numbers, feedback received, and affective encounters experienced made it clear that there was a pressing need to create spaces where conversations about the intersection between our "home lives" and our "work lives" can be had.
  Rather than submit a full roundtable, this year we want to facilitate a generous and supportive conversation between ourselves as students, teachers, colleagues, and leaders in IR. We intend this roundtable to be a space where we can share our diverse experiences of the joys and pleasures – as well as the grief and frustrations – of motherhood, parenting, and caring. We welcome gentle, yet honest conversations about pregnancy and pregnancy loss, infertility and the inability to have children due to systemic barriers and institutionalised exclusions, mothering, parenting, IVF, adoption, fostering, step-parenting, co-parenting, queer families, and raising children with a variety of needs, as well as care and caring practices outside that for children.
  Prompted by Cynthia Enloe’s call to explore how “the personal is international” and Sara Motta’s to co-create “a politics (m)otherwise” through “care-full pedagogies” and practices that make space for (pluri)diverse, intersectional ways of being-knowing-doing the international, we ask participants to reflect on and, for our panel, to respond to the following:
  • How do our caring experiences frame the way we interact with international relations?
  • How do our caring experiences impact on how we teach, research, mentor, and lead IR?
  • What are the international dimensions of our own experiences of the blurring of “home” and “work” life?
  • How can IR better care for those who call it their disciplinary home?
  • What home(s) can we (un)make in IR to enable us to nurture and sustain alternative ways of being and working in, against, and outside the discipline and academy itself?
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Chair: Synne L. Dyvik (University of Sussex)
  
  Participants: Julia Welland (University of Warwick) , Laura Mills (University of St Andrews) , Synne L. Dyvik (University of Sussex) , Annika Bergman Rosamond (The University of Edinburgh)
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  07 Panel / New actors, spaces and methods of activism in world politics Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Non-Governmental Organisations Working Group
  
  Convener: NGO Group
  
  Chair: Patricia Shamai (University of Portsmouth)
  
  Discussant: Thomas Davies (City, University of London)
  - Protesting at the margins: intersectional justice, protest and crisis in Lebanon and Sri Lanka
    
    This paper will investigate how CSOs representing marginalised groups have responded to the intense economic and political crises that have enveloped Lebanon and Sri Lanka since 2019. While social protection responses have been broadly inadequate in both countries, migrant women and sexual and gender minorities have been amongst the worst affected groups and have been both marginalised by government and side-lined by protest movements. In both countries, this marginalisation is underpinned by long-standing legacies of economic and political inequalities left by long-running armed conflicts. Marginalised groups have mobilised in new ways in pursuit of social justice. This paper draws on comparative research conducted in Lebanon and Sri Lanka and has three main aims: (1) to explore how these crises have been experienced by some of the most marginalised groups in both societies (with a particular focus on migrant women and sexual and gender minorities), (2) to examine how these groups have responded in the context of a grossly inadequate social protection responses, and (3) to examine how marginalised groups have negotiated relations with wider protest movements.
    
    Author: Oliver Walton (University of Bath)
  - The “Milk Tea Alliance”: Transnational Civil Society and Digital Politics in Asia
    
    Asia has recently witnessed a rise in mass struggles for democracy, notably in Hong Kong, Thailand, and Myanmar. While the struggles were each triggered by domestic affairs, civil society actors behind them have found connections and formed a transnational network dubbed the Milk Tea Alliance (MTA). This paper explores the evolution and implications of the MTA by tracing the connections between civil society and activists across Hong Kong, Thailand, and Myanmar. Applying aspects of social movement theories and transnational civil society to interviews and online protest content, the paper argues that the MTA should be understood as both the latest episode of a longer historical lineage of transnational civil society networks in Asia and a novel development showing some distinct features. While the networks behind the MTA can be traced through long-standing transnational connections at the leadership and organisational levels, the MTA linkages have shifted to a more individual, public level partly due to the extensive use of social media. Exploring the dynamics of the MTA allows for contribution to the scholarship on transnational advocacy networks, which often focuses on NGOs as actors, as well as offers a richer account of one of the world’s most recent transnational movements.
    
    Author: Wichuta Teeratanabodee (University of Cambridge)
  - Substantiating the World Society: Local Community Actors and IR
    
    From terrorist acts, to migration flows, to sister cities, local community actors — institutions, individuals, and organizations — assert an increasingly active role in international relations. While the discipline acknowledges the relevance of non-state actors through perspectives related to postinternationalism and world society, the attention paid to local community actors is marginal. The paper argues that the increasing relevance of local community actors in IR is essential for understanding IR phenomena that transcend the traditional levels of analysis. To substantiate this claim, the paper maps IR-relevant actors in Fagaras, a small community in Southern Transylvania, Romania, and based on the empirical results reflects on the implications for the discipline. The paper shows how IR phenomena diversify, encompassing non-traditional IR actors, and highlights the need for more theorizing to understand the transformation of the international.
    
    Author: Stefan Cibian (The Făgăraș Research Institute)
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  07 Panel / Peace on Display: The Arts and Aesthetics of Peacebuilding Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: Lydia Cole (University of Sussex)
  
  Chair: Rachel Kerr (King's College London)
  - Statebuilding otherwise? Spatial and aesthetic community building after War
    
    This paper explores the emancipatory potential of spatial and aesthetic statebuilding in Kosovo. Focusing on ‘Manifesta’, a large international arts biennale, we offer three main contributions. First we theorise what is meant by emancipatory statebuilding through the lens of spatial and aesthetic approaches. Here we highlight the importance of critique, the everyday and materiality as being central to emancipatory work. Second, we offer a detailed account of Manifesta as statebuilding project. Third, we explore the ability of Manifesta, as large-scale international intervention, to practice an otherwise form of statebuilding through its reliance on aesthetic and spatial approaches. Ultimately, we find that Manifesta’s potential in this respect was undermined as local agency was marginalised, reproducing some of the dynamics of the international statebuilding project from the 2000s.
    
    Author: Henry Redwood (King's College London)
  - ‘Artful Struggles’ Exhibition and Curating Peace Through the Arts
    
    We co-organised the ‘Artful Struggles: Contemporary Art in Sri Lanka’ exhibition at Harrow Arts Centre (London) in July 2023, together with three Sri Lankan community organisations based in and around Harrow. In this paper, we will discuss the peacebuilding implication of the exhibition and its process. Through the exhibition, we explored how the visual arts helped promote – and now help sustain – a more hopeful, pluralistic, and just politics for the country. It did so by bringing together several Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim artists whose work tackles ongoing struggles for accountability, economic justice, religious understanding, and women’s rights. The process of organising the exhibition brought together Sinhalese and Tamil Sri Lankan diaspora arts groups (Agora and Vimbam) to work together for the first time, in-collaboration with the Movement for Peoples Struggle-Sri Lanka (UK) (a broad-based movement that had organized UK protests in solidarity with the 2022 protests in Sri Lanka).
    
    Authors: Lars Waldorf (University of Essex) , Nilanjana Premaratna (Newcastle University)
  - Peace on Display: Knowledge, Narrative and Affect at the Museum
    
    Sylvester’s (2009) call to study international relations where we least expect it - at the museum – has generated a range of pioneering Feminist IR interventions on the politics of war displays. This literature has generated important tools with which to explore the politics of museum displays but has tended to emphasise representations of war within militarised societies. While peacebuilding scholars have also sought to attend to peace displays, museums are an under-interrogated site of peacebuilding knowledge, an elision that maps onto the broader subjugation of peace knowledge in IR (Jackson 2018). This paper sets out to examine peace displays in two museums sites in the United Kingdom: The Imperial War Museum and The Peace Museum. Critically engaging with the objects, narratives and aesthetics of museum displays, the paper asks how and why peace is put on display. More broadly, it reflects on the impact of these displays on imaginaries of peace, peace-making and peacebuilding in the United Kingdom.
    
    Author: Lydia Cole (University of Sussex)
  - Graffiti as Method: Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Political Perception and Community Relations
    
    This article explores the methodological possibilities that graffiti offers to a spatio-temporal analysis of peace and conflict. Leveraging an original visual dataset of Belfast’s changing muralscape the analysis unpacks how the messages written and drawn on walls offer a lens into evolving local sentiments, politics, unity, and divisions. We suggest that the study of graffiti offers methodological innovation in understanding contested spaces as it provides unique insights into the ‘local’ in Belfast. Through the creation of the dataset and analysis of six geographical areas, containing 147 graffiti sets, and 680 individual pieces between 1998 and 2022, the article demonstrates an understanding of the way in which murals represent and are represented in a changing city. The dataset enhances an understanding of violence, avoidance, memorialisation and current social issues in conflict-contexts. More specifically, the Belfast data set demonstrates that despite the gradual move away from the depiction, or glorification, of violence, the majority of murals still have a tradition of otherness, forming part of the separate nation building processes amongst both Unionists and Nationalists communities. This study thus contributes unique perspectives into the 'local' dynamics of Belfast, paving the way for further research on graffiti as a lens for understanding complex societal phenomena.
    
    Author: Birte Vogel (University of Manchester)
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  07 Panel / Post-Brexit U.K. foreign policy, and “Global Britain” Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: Marianna Charountaki (University of Lincoln)
  
  Chair: Marianna Charountaki (University of Lincoln)
  - Out of Sight, out of Mind? How UK bilateralism with European capitals in times of Politicisation enables Europeanisation to continue
    
    While a lot of the scholarship has questioned the role of the UK in multilateral and mini-lateral venues, less attention has been devoted to the signature of 24 bilateral declarations between the UK and EU member states, from 2021 to 2023. Yet, bilateralism has been one of the preferred UK strategies to continue foreign policy coordination with EU member states post-Brexit. Questioning the intentionality of the UK in initiating and investing these declarations, we find that while there is a clear disengagement of the UK from EU structures that we qualify as one of the indicators of de-EUisation, we are also not witnessing a process of de-Europeanisation that would lead to a repudiation of EU fundamental norms, divergence from EU priorities and an end to social encounters between UK and EU officials. Instead, through a frame analysis of these declarations we demonstrate that bilateralism has enabled continued Europeanisation, in spite of a context of politicisation of UK-EU relations, even though to a lesser extent in comparison with the pre-Brexit situation. Closer relations with European capitals are thus enabling europeanisation to persist.
    
    Authors: Sarah Wolff (Leiden University)* , Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University) , Agathe Piquet (University of Louvain)*
  - Lessons behind “Global Britain” on post-Brexit’s trade policy: Finding British Exceptionalism between the dichotomy of globalisation and economic nationalism
    
    As the UK has regained its economic statecraft autonomy after departing from the EU, it is observed an outward-looking “Global Britain” approach is characterised in the post-Brexit trade policy discourse to forge deeper and closer international trade partnerships. Nonetheless, this globalist trade policy approach, rooted in the neoliberal economic philosophy, is considered at odds with the public’s demand for “taking back control” as expressed in the Brexit referendum. Such an irreconcilable phenomenon therefore yearns for a persuasive explanation from the study of foreign policy analysis.
    
    Since the inherent dichotomy between embracing globalisation and upholding economic nationalism, as illustrated in Rodrik’s globalisation paradox literature, has duly reflected the tension in the Brexit debate, this paper selects to place the investigation under this IPE theoretical framework to shed light on explaining this puzzling phenomenon.
    
    To unpack the social meanings behind “Global Britain” in post-Brexit trade policy discourse, role theory applied in international relations is selected as the analytical framework for conducting a discursive analysis within a constructivist perspective. The findings reveal three key pillars that underpin the notion of "Global Britain" as a national role conception, all tracing back to the ideology of British exceptionalism.
    
    Firstly, the “Global Britain” trade policy discourse stressed a pragmatic approach to economic globalisation unique to its historical background. This is later extended to its strong emphasis on indirect and non-economic benefits in the form of positive externalities, only enjoyed by embracing the global network at this critical stage of development. Most importantly, “Global Britain” is conveyed as a strategic cooperation with different actors across subject fields, in order to afford greater leverage when advancing its position in the global system. This paper is interested to know how the role of “Global Britain”, permeated through the intersubjective ideology of British exceptionalism, is exploited to manage and resolve the globalisation paradox. Insightful findings from this paper are expected to provide wider perspectives on the current globalisation debate in the IPE literature, as well as an expanded usage of role theory in future studies in foreign policy analysis.
    
    Author: Nok Ching Noreen Lui (University of Bath)
  - Tracing the elaboration of the UK’s post-Brexit foreign policy role through the narrative analysis of ‘Global Britain’ and the impact of domestic intra-elite role contestations
    
    Despite much research on the UK’s foreign policy after Brexit and the narrative of ‘Global Britain’, very few scholars examine how political actors, beyond foreign policy elites, negotiate and construct this narrative and its associated national role conceptions (NRCs). Indeed, most researchers rely only on official documents and speeches coming from the Government, which therefore tends to assume that there is a consensus among the political class on the UK’s foreign policy and the ‘Global Britain’ narrative. This ultimately leads to black boxing the state, while neglecting the internal process of elaborating the UK’s role on the world stage.
    I intend to fill this gap by examining the NRCs of both the Government and parliamentarians through a narrative analysis of official documents, speeches, parliamentary debates, and interviews to unveil the discursive processes shaping the ‘Global Britain’ narrative and its underlying roles. The central question is how role contestations among British parliamentarians, expressed through alternative/counter-narratives, alter the Government’s foreign policy role.
    Combining role theory and narrative analysis contributes to the methodological enrichment of role theory, while focusing on intra-elite role contestations allows to explain fluctuations and inconsistencies in a state’s foreign policy. Moreover, the value of this research is wider, as it reveals an ‘in the making’ process of constructing foreign policy and identity, emphasising the influence of the ‘Global Britain’ narrative on British decision-makers’ representations.
    
    Author: Camille Schmitz (University of Edinburgh)
  - Follow the Money: Global Britain and Post-Brexit Economic Interests
    
    Developed by the governments of May and Johnson, the Global Britain foreign policy represents an alternative to the European Union membership while helping manage the United Kingdom’s power decline. I argue that Global Britain focuses primarily on economic and trade engagement to maintain the country’s status in the international community while handling domestic contestation and crisis.
    This paper explores how economic interests have influenced foreign policy decision-making after the referendum. The focus is on the country’s economic positioning through the intersection of trade policies as a foreign policy instrument, primarily in the Indo-Pacific region. Building on the literature of ideas on foreign policy and role theory, this research contributes to fulfilling the gap concerning the influence of the domestic economic setting on post-Brexit foreign policymaking.
    The period between 2016 and 2023 is examined, developing a content analysis of foreign policy documents, government speeches and parliamentary interventions. I claim the economy was the main interest being considered in the debate on the future of the UK’s role in the world after leaving the EU. It is also argued that the post-Brexit Global Britain foreign policy was deeply shaped by the national economic interests and by the UK’s strategic positioning internationally.
    
    Author: Catarina M. Liberato (University of Kent)
  - The UK’s Integrated Reviews: Role conceptions, human protection and international order
    
    The UK’s 2021 Integrated Review of foreign policy details a variety of national role conceptions for a ‘Global Britain’. This includes acting as a ‘force for good in the world’ with a defence of human rights (HM Government, 2021, p.14). However, the publication of the 2023 Integrated Review Refresh presents a rethink of the UK’s role conceptions in response to an increasingly complex and unstable world. This Refresh no longer makes reference to the discourses of ‘Global Britain’ and a ‘force for good’, while there is a more limited focus on human rights. This paper uses role theory to identify these changes in the UK’s national role conceptions between the two Integrated Reviews and assesses what this means in the context of the UK’s foreign policy on human rights and human protection as part of its commitment to upholding a rules-based international order. It compares these national role conceptions with the role expectations that other actors have of the UK’s role in international relations and its approach to human rights and human protection. The paper therefore presents important theoretical and empirical contributions to role theory and analysis of human rights and human protection in the UK’s post-Brexit foreign policy.
    
    Author: Blake Lawrinson (University of Leeds)
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  07 Panel / Power & Governance in Digital Global Politics Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group
  
  Convener: ISET
  
  Chair: Eugenio Lilli (University College Dublin)
  - Decoding China's Cyberspace Norms: A Reception Analysis in the FOCAC Context
    
    This paper delves into the reception dynamics of China's cyberspace norms within the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). Drawing on insights from international fora like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the UN, the study investigates how stakeholders in the African context receive and interpret China's cyberspace norms. The paper contributes by providing an in-depth analysis of reception dynamics, evaluating the impacts on policies, and situating the study within a theoretical framework of norm diffusion and global governance. Utilising a process-tracing approach, the paper aims to offer a nuanced understanding of different Chinese actors' roles in shaping global cyberspace policies and shed light on the specific reception dynamics within the FOCAC framework.
    
    Author: Theo Westphal (University of Sheffield)
  - Leadership through statecraft: the UK as an ambitious cyber actor
    
    This paper analyses the role of cyber statecraft in the competitive reshaping of international order, specifically the case of the UK seeking global leadership in the cyber domain. The centrality of the international dimensions of cybersecurity is reflected in the UK’s ambition, articulated in the Integrated Review and subsequent National Cyber Strategy, to be a ‘responsible, democratic cyber power’. These high-level strategic documents note that contesting the future of cyberspace dovetails with the UK’s broader foreign policy challenges and opportunities. This paper argues that the UK needs to embrace ‘cyber statecraft’ in order to meets its international cybersecurity objectives. We problematize the concept of cyber statecraft, by tracing its genealogy and contrasting it with the more traditional (and generic) concept of statecraft. We explore how the concept is embedded (but not necessarily rendered explicit) in UK cyber strategy, proposing that we understand cyber statecraft as a strategic approach for securing the national interest in and through cyberspace, using all levers of national power and marshalling the private sector and civil society. This demands breaking institutional siloes within government and building bridges with these non-state actors in a ‘whole-of-society’ effort.
    
    Authors: Andre Barrinha (University of Bath) , Tim Stevens (King's College London)*
  - Exploring accessibility requirements for UK Armed Forces; Myth busting disability perceptions for Service Personnel in Defence Digital Services
    
    It is a known misconception that all military personnel are entirely fit and able-bodied. This social construct has influenced many services offered in Defence, which can put soldiers with accessibility needs to a disadvantage.
    
    When building digital services, software and platforms, these accessibility needs become even the more poignant as deployed personnel in the battlespace will necessitate circumstantial, temporary, and/or permanent adjustments to their access needs.
    
    This paper explores the new measures UK MOD has implemented to ensure that Services for the deployed user fairly accommodate its disability and access needs. It includes a breakdown of military disability in the UK and its effect on design for operating software and machinery.
    
    From designing for a neurodiverse audience, to analysing the paradox of oversimplification, Defence accessibility measures are now a robust benchmark to ensure no one is left behind.
    
    Author: Silvia Grant (UK MOD)
  - A journey to discover the possibilities of scaling research from the national to the international level.
    
    During interviews with individuals who experienced the digital surveillance technologies implemented to manage COVID-19 in South Korea (hereafter referred to as Korea) as part of my doctoral project, numerous interviewees expressed their perspectives on other countries, particularly those in the West. In this regard, one of the noteworthy discoveries was that most of the participants shared similar views on privacy, digital surveillance and ethical concerns, which are Koreans make minimal efforts to actively protect their privacy rights and ignore ethical issues when utilising digital technologies. In addition, they compared Korea with Western countries, which they believe have a well-established framework for protecting individual rights and privacy.
    With this in mind, it tracks the link between studies on national or local characteristics and international studies with the interview data. In order to understand the perspectives of the interviewees, it seems necessary to identify their comparative perceptions of Korea/Asian countries and Western countries based on the interview responses, where the perceptions/thoughts come from and which area needs to be understood in international studies. These trials suggest that we are now at a point in time where international research is essential even for research conducted at the national or local level. In the context of the use of digital surveillance technologies in Korea and in relation to ethical issues such as privacy or individual rights, the following questions are raised by the interview data collected: What kinds of comparative perspectives were found? Why do Koreans compare their country with other countries when it comes to the topic of study? What areas of international studies/theory need to be studied in order to understand these phenomena? By answering the research questions, the approaches would provide clues for multi-perspective studies and for finding more areas for international studies that are not obviously open to us.
    
    Author: Saebyoul Yun (University of Edinburgh)
  - (Re)structuring power in the cyberspace: policy and governance challenges to the production of state cybersecurity policies
    
    What policy design space do states have in cyberspace? The framework of conflicting and cooperative relationships between states and semi-state or non-state actors influences the range of opportunities and constraints on the agency of individual states concerning cybersecurity policies. Such policies also consider the logic driving the dynamics in different strategic environments and their possible interdependencies.
    This study aims to frame states' policymaking given the domestic and international context of existing power relations and, simultaneously, consider the same states' possibilities of conditioning that context through their policymaking.
    Furthermore, this study aims to develop an object-centred conceptual framework, focusing on the analysis of the physical, logical and content components of cyberspace. This approach is helpful for understanding which actors act in the governance of different objects and, thus, identifying the governance space of the single states.
    This paper is part of a broader project of my PhD dissertation. In this study, I mainly used conceptual and content analysis to develop the object-centred conceptual framework, and quantitative methods (especially linear regressions, logistic regressions, and multivariate analysis) to test it and to make case selection for subsequent qualitative analysis.
    
    Author: Mattia Sguazzini (University of Genova (Italy))
- 255
  07 Panel / Space Strategy, Surveillance, and Threats Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Astropolitics Working Group
  
  Convener: Bleddyn Bowen (University of Leicester)
  
  Chair: Tegan Harrison (Cardiff University)
  - Space Warfare in the Russian-Ukrainian War: Commercial Providers and Targeting Military Logistics
    
    The Russian invasion of Ukraine began with a cyber attack on the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence’s commercial satellite communications provider: ViaSat. The attack crippled the modems used by Ukrainian offices but left the ViaSat satellites functioning perfectly well. As Ukraine’s successful resistance and counterattack brought forward the possibility that the Zelensky government would survive, commercial provisions for the war effort were rolled out, not least with the provision of Starlink mobile broadband services to the Ukrainian Government and military. Since then, Starlink and the executive leadership of SpaceX have not avoided controversy in their apparent reticence on the use of Starlink by the Ukrainian military. Starlink itself has come under sustained electronic warfare – or radio jamming – attack from the Russians with mixed success. To much media hyperbole, this was a novel feature of the war which raised alarm for many in the space community at the militarisation of space systems and the targeting of privately owned satellites. Yet, the use of commercial space services in war are hardly new, and the targeting of commercial war assets are older still. Whilst Starlink has taken the headlines, other Western space companies have long provided services to Ukrainian state and society and may well be quietly supporting the logistics of the Ukrainian military today. This paper traces the use of commercial space systems in the Ukrainian War and places them in the larger context of the strategic thought and precedents of targeting commercial assets in warfare in space and at sea, to demonstrate the rush for supposed novelty in contemporary space security commentary that academic research must counter.
    
    Author: Bleddyn Bowen (University of Leicester)
  - The Smell of Low Earth Orbit: exploring sensorial knowledges of space surveillance.
    
    Contrary to popular imagination, the activity of space surveillance (SS) was a noisy, smelly, and, at times, dangerous endeavour. This paper examines emerging research that employs oral history to explore experiences of retired space track engineers from RAF Fylingdales.
    
    This research is rooted in the sensorial turn within social science and the humanities (St Pierre 2018). It sets out to elicit lived and sensory accounts that navigate the aural and olfactory worlds generated by historic space surveillance activities at RAF Fylingdales. These include shifting pitches in the roar of turbines in RAF Fylingdales power station, as radars demanded differing levels energy for tracking tasks. Or the acrid smells of mineral oil that enveloped the radars' power amplifiers.
    
    By capturing the nuanced sensory and social practices of space surveillance, this research moves beyond the textual and visual approaches that enclose space surveillance activities into black boxes (Squires and Jackman 2023, Ortega 2022). I argue this produces richer accounts of space histories that engage public participation and animate broader policy debates at regional, national and international levels.
    
    Author: Michael Mulvihill (Teesside University)
  - Space Operations and Surveillance: A Post-Phenomenological Exploration of 60 Years of RAF Fylingdales and the Evolving Role of AI Technologies in UK and US Space Commands
    
    On 17th September 1963, RAF Fylingdales became operational as the UK’s first and only Ballistic Missile Early Warning Station (BMEWS). RAF Fylingdales, the third part of the BMEWS program (now part of US Space Force Delta 4) was signed into existence in 1958 after the launch of Sputnik I, marking an ominous milestone in space operations' history.
    
    Sixty years on, questions of whether a war could begin or be decided in space remains pertinent. Prompted by events such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
    
    In this paper, I will draw upon Major General Kim Crider (Ret.), former US Space Force (USSF) Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, experience of the early days of Space Force. Framing the US retreat from Afghanistan on 31st August 2021 alongside investment in joint space operations in the US and the UK. I argue that from a post-phenomenological perspective, UK Space Command, US Space Command and USSF investments in people planning, threat assessment, which focus on the applications of AI technologies, augmented reality, forecasting, and skills development. Highlighting the dematerialising force of technology upon human practices of space operations and surveillance (Haraway 2004, Braidotti, 2019). While setting out innovative approaches to trace the generative lineage of 60 years investment in space infrastructure at RAF Fylingdales.
    
    Author: Chloe Barker (Newcastle University)
  - Space and the (Re)Construction of Future Threats: A Human-Centric Analysis
    
    With the escalation of great power politics and competition in the space domain, and the concomitant growth of corporate space industries, the potential risks of human expansion into space receive ever-greater attention within existential risk and future war analysis. By far the greatest concern is the potential for great power conflict in or over space, as plans for new space stations, lunar bases and commercial mining evoke historical analogies to colonial and geopolitical competition. At first glance this state-centric threat array seems logical, as access to space is limited to this handful of states and associated corporate partners. Yet this focus neglects the reality that all of humanity is potentially at risk from a range of space-based threats. This paper applies a new methodology, human-centric future threat analysis, to the space domain. The result is a radically different interpretation and prioritisation of space-based threats, focused on political and economic destabilisation in the Global South as a result of space-power activities (e.g., new equatorial infrastructure, space solar, asteroid mining, geo-engineering); new paradigms of coercion and repression thanks to space-based assets; and black sky events due to natural or human causes. The aim is not to replace state-centric analysis but to assist a more comprehensive understanding of the full range of future threats and existential risks in the space domain.
    
    Author: Jeni Mitchell (King's College London)
  - ASAT (Anti-Satellite) and Geopolitics of Outer Space
    
    Anti-satellite (henceforth ASAT) entails a spectrum of technologies– missiles, laser, energy waves, electromagnetic pulses, cyber strikes, and nano-satellites – targeted at satellites for disruption or destruction. The integration of satellites in deterrence architectures began with the ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) and early warning features at the advent of the Space Age, and has accelerated towards pervasive satellite-based targeting, communication, and navigation at multiple levels with the rise of networked warfare. Maturing of ancillary technologies, growth of missile defence and the ongoing power transition shape the development of ASAT. The ability to deny access or interfere with space assets has significant repercussions for deterrence, while the exponential growth of satellite-enabled dual-use functions and services in modern societies (ranging from navigation to banking) represent a critical vulnerability. These, combined with strategic competition is driving the proliferation of ASAT – beyond Russia and USA, rising powers China and India have demonstrated ASAT capabilities; many others undertake research and development. Emerging technological and political developments contest the bipolar Cold War-era arrangements regulating outer space while despite increasing salience, ASATs remain understudied in the context of the broader geopolitics of outer space. The paper investigates and situates this in context of the emerging global strategic developments.
    
    Author: Shounak Set (KCL)
- 256
  07 Panel / State-Formation, Colonisation, World Orders Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: HSIR Working group
  
  Chair: Pedro Dutra Salgado (University of Portsmouth)
  - Colonisation, not Consolidation: The Japanese Colonisation of the Ryukyu Kingdom 1872–1879 and Its International Origins
    
    Unlike Japanese colonial activities in Korea and Taiwan from the late nineteenth century onwards, the Japanese colonisation of the Ryukyu Kingdom (modern-day Okinawa) in the 1870s has oftentimes been dismissed by mainstream Japanese studies as merely an act of internal territorial consolidation. Against this, this paper firstly argues that the Meiji government’s activities in Ryukyu during this period were very much colonial by examining both the policies and practices of the ruling oligarchs as well as how the Ryukyuan reacted to them. Once the act has been established as a colonial one, the paper argues secondly that partly because of this mis-categorisation, the motives for why the Meiji government decided to colonise Ryukyu have been unsatisfactorily analysed. Specifically, scholarship has tended to focus on the internal socio-political processes within mainland Japan and, consequently, neglected the undeniable importance of the international context that Japan was experiencing at the time: the intrusion of various Western nations in East Asia. As such, the paper lastly uses Leon Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development to incorporate these international dynamics into explanations of why the Meiji sought to colonise Ryukyu during this period.
    
    Author: Huu Phu Gia Nguyen (University of Sussex)
  - The lasting legacy of Latin American independence: Retracing the challenges and contributions of developing states to global governance
    
    This paper aims to address regional contributions to global governance by exploring the case of Latin America. We believe that this region offers a particularly insightful case study on, at least, three accounts. First, the process of decolonisation in Latin America took place relatively early compared to other regions, such as Africa and Asia. This means that, by the time the institutions of the contemporary liberal international order came into being, most states in Latin America had already had over a century-long history as sovereign, modern states with full membership in the international community. Second, the process through which the former colonies in Latin America became sovereign states evolved through what we denominate a triple-war path: first, independence wars; then, civil wars; and finally, border wars and disputes with neighbours. This triple-war path, we argue, is key to understanding the region’s strong attachment to the principles of territoriality, non-interference, and Westphalian sovereignty. Third, by the end of World War II, the Americas became the first region in the world to establish not one but two multilateral organisations for regional governance: the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (1947) and the Organisation of American States (1948). From then on, there has been a myriad of multilateral initiatives in the region, which means that the space for Latin America to potentially make substantial contributions to global governance through multilateral regional governance has been significant. Nonetheless, the success, relevance, and survival rate of these Hemispheric, regional, and subregional schemes have varied greatly. By tracing the long-term evolution of regional governance in Latin America and the different regional contributions to the contemporary international order, we seek to shed light on the co-constitutive dynamics of regional and global governance mechanisms, and reclaim the key role that developing states played in shaping our present international order.
    
    Key words
    
    Regional Governance – Global Governance – Liberal International Order – State Making - Latin America
    
    Authors: Carolina Zaccato (University of St Andrews) , Andrea Oelsner (Universidad de San Andrés (UdeSA), Argentina)*
  - Social Conflict and Polity-Formation in the 15th Struggle over Baltic Supremacy
    
    My paper traces the crises, class relations and geopolitical pressures that gave rise to the Scandinavian personal union, the Kalmar union, around the turn of the 15th century by utilising Geopolitical Marxism to integrate the so-called levels of analysis theoretically. The process was co-constituted by the recently integrated Baltic order, especially pressure from its leading power, the Hanseatic League, the mid-14th century Black Death, Swedish intra-ruling class conflict and general kingdom-specific class conflicts. The formation of the Scandinavian personal union showcases the contours of dynastic sovereignty, as the region-wide integration of geopolitical power in one monarch flowed from marriage and inheritance policies of the Scandinavian royal houses. This problematises accounts that see the formation of the kingdoms as national processes tied to proto-nations. Rulers of the Kalmar Union waged continuous wars on the Hansa, and their geopolitics were central in the subsequent breaking of the League’s Baltic supremacy, but these efforts in geopolitical accumulation also heightened its own social conflicts that were ultimately central to its demise. This double disintegration decreased the quasi-centralised control over the development of the Baltic and opened up space for the development of a new kind of political community, the territorialising dynastic state. Russian state-formation under Muscovy, for example, relied on this space.
    
    Author: Lauri von Pfaler (University of Helsinki)
  - A Brotherhood of Nations: Imagining the Nation-Based Order during the Springtime of Nations
    
    Much like nations, the nation-based order and the domestic and international hierarchies it produces are imagined. Benedict Anderson and the scholarship in Historical International Relations have frequently approached nationalism and nations as a horizontal division of the world. By contrast, this contribution delves into the imagined hierarchies within and between nations during the 1848 Springtime of Nations. Through an examination of fraternal images employed in a variety of textual and visual sources, I explore how the European national imaginary of 1848 was translated into the nation-based order and its corresponding domestic and international hierarchies. The collapse of the 1848 Revolutions led to a crisis in the national imaginary. The revolutionary fraternity was appropriated under an alienated version by dynastic regimes and opposed by socialists advocating for the international brotherhood of workers. The Springtime of Nations, with its successes and failures, was a pivotal chapter in creating, shaping, legitimising, and challenging the nascent nation-based order.
    
    Author: Arthur Duhé (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3)
  - International Politics as Double Exclusion: the Geopolitics of Transatlantic Slavery
    
    A growing critical scholarship rethinks the origins of international politics through distinctions articulated through the notions of sovereignty and the nation-state, understanding those as social relations. International politics is then conceived as a limited realm formed by the ontological exclusions that delineate modern political thought: the domestic as outside the international, and the private sphere or the uncivilised as outside politics altogether. However, by taking the rise of modern political thought as its point of origin, this literature reproduces the notion of modernity as a historical rupture. Drawing from the literatures on racial capitalism and historical sociology, this paper argues that grounding this double exclusion on concrete social practices and historically specific actors allows us to reconstruct the novelty of the modern international order while also highlighting how it draws on logics of exclusion that precede it. The study of Transatlantic slavery in the early modern period mobilises a rich historiographical literature that details the social and geopolitical practices shaping the context in which modern political thought itself rises, and in which the double exclusion it posits is constituted. By tracing a social history of the international as a double exclusion, the article provides an account of how its reproduction continues to rely on premodern foundations.
    
    Authors: Gustavo Bezerra (CEBRI/UFF)* , Pedro Salgado (University of Portsmouth)
- 257
  07 Panel / Teaching and Learning in International Studies Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Learning and Teaching Working Group
  
  Convener: Ilan Baron (Durham University)
  
  Chair: Ilan Baron (Durham University)
  - #GlobalChallenges: Social Media, Pedagogy and International Studies,
    
    This research paper offers some preliminary research findings from a project that investigates how social media can be brought into the Politics and International Studies classroom to improve teaching on the politics of global challenges. The paper presents data from a series of focus groups across three HEIs (University of Leeds, University of Gloucestershire, Queen Mary University of London). These focus groups explored how students use social media to learn about global challenges and how they think this could be captured and explored in their formal teaching. These student groups used participatory research methods to establish the students as co-creators of knowledge. The project aims to set out ways to develop critical digital literacies in the International Studies classroom and to consider how incorporating social media in our teaching can help us achieve open critical pedagogies. This work was funded by the Teaching and Learning Small Grant
    
    Authors: Andreas Papamichail (Queen Mary University of London) , Louise Pears (University of Leeds) , Madeleine Le Bourdon (University of Leeds) , Natalie Jester (University of Gloucestershire)
  - Teaching Geopolitics in an Age of Conflict and Neoliberalism
    
    The study of geopolitics has broadened substantially over the last 4 decades. What are now referred to as Orthodox approaches have been subjected to sustained critique leading to the emergence of Critical Geopolitics as a particular program of research and inquiry. This paper aims to explore pedagogical practices for teaching geopolitics to undergraduate students in a social context shaped by new and changing conflict around the world, calls for decolonisation, and neoliberal institutionalism amongst British universities. What should a critically informed curriculum look like? What role should student interest play in course design? What should criticality look like in a new age of conflict dominated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s impunity in Gaza? Is this any different to teaching geopolitics during the ‘West’s’ War on Terror? What are the most effective ways to foster the key tenets of geopolitical analysis amongst undergraduate students?
    
    Author: Benjamin Coulson (University of Edinburgh)
  - Decolonizing the pedagogy of peace
    
    Academics, practitioners and institutions involved in conflict resolution simultaneously emanate and absorb knowledge. Scholars of Peace and conflict studies like myself have been considered part of the ‘peace industry’, especially in global south spaces. This foucauldian discourse analysis is grounded in a participatory observation of 6 university spheres for knowledge production and an ethnographic exploration of 5 others during a 5-month teaching tour in Europe, the Balkans, Central and East Asia. If builds on my observations as I was striving to decolonize my thinking and my teaching content and practice, in acute awareness of my positionality as a white Eastern European young woman scholar.
    This paper explores the dialogue between non-haegemonic pedagogies as revealed through this teaching tour. To do so, it engages the concept of ‘negative space’, which allows a neoliberal fragmentation of educational activities to coexist with a post-colonial critique of current conflict spaces, such as the Balkans, Cambodia, or Israel/Palestine. Like the stated purpose of the peace industry, the goal of peace activities is fulfilled when they become useless, i.e. because peace has been achieved. Mainstream pedagogies of peace try to construct the absence of war. However these observations are circumscribed to a critical understanding of pedagogy, which necessarily involves a decolonial and feminist sensibility.
    
    Author: Ariadna Petri
  - Student-led module design in the social sciences
    
    The paper builds on a student-staff co-creation project to develop the module “PPE: Interdisciplinary Topics” which discusses the Politics, Philosophy, and Economics of food from the global to the local level, weaving together insights from all three disciplines in each teaching session. Thus, while it heavily draws on themes in International Political Economy, it also weaves in other aspects of politics, philosophy, and economics.
    Curriculum design is often owned by academic staff and student feedback relegated to module evaluations. Yet, genuine engagement must embed student voices in all aspects of modular design. In this project, students drove all major module design decisions: weekly topics, readings, guest speakers, and assessments. The resulting module combines various activities considered good practice in the pedagogical literature, such as research-led learning and skills scaffolding, all emerging organically from a student-led project. In post-project interviews, students reflected on the project and offered broader insights into interdisciplinary study and student-staff relations. Overall, the paper encourages further projects of this kind and offers recommendations for student-led module design in social science modules.
    
    Author: Laura Gelhaus (University of Warwick)
  - Free labour and lack of accountability in the Decolonial university - a critical approach
    
    In recent years, with the neoliberal university’s emphasis on ‘decolonising’ and ‘student experience’, there has been a push for 'inclusive education' in the UK (Morina, 2016). The concept of inclusive education is increasingly perceived as a critical approach towards pedagogical practices that subscribes to the idea of education as a liberatory practice (Freire, 1973; hooks, 1994; 2003) and is conflated with initiatives seeking to decolonise the university. The practice of 'inclusive education' has been increasingly co-opted to fit in with neo-liberal and capitalist structures present within higher education. In many contexts, the 'decolonial project' is still constrained by pre-existing norms and approaches which apply a colonial-capitalist lens to decolonising higher education. Therefore, the overall impact of these decolonial projects is highly debated, raising important questions about their effectiveness (Akhtar, 2022; Gopal, 2021). However, noting the ever-increasing list of such projects and our own participation and complicity, it becomes important to recognise the issues within such initiatives and co-create practices that contribute to the objectives of decolonising to some extent.
    We employ a decolonial methodology and use our positionality as academics involved in different decolonising projects at four UK universities as a standpoint to examine such initiatives and the differentiated roles played by members. The theoretical and methodological approach for this paper includes a review of the literature focusing on the nexus between labour and identity within the neoliberal university which is then used to raise questions of accountability in spaces claiming to be progressive and radical. The theoretical analysis will then be substantiated with subjective experiences in working with EDI & BME committees, various groups decolonising politics, decolonial reading clubs, decolonising the curriculum, pedagogies for social justice and organising inclusive education workshops. Through this work, we question and challenge the deployment of decolonising initiatives which simultaneously provide credibility to contemporary Higher Education and subvert anti-capitalist thought within neoliberal universities. The overarching goal is to critically appraise the tensions and potentials of harm caused by lack of accountability in existing decolonial practices within neo-liberal universities. Furthermore, this paper brings into question the notion of authenticity of labour and who can provide it within said projects.
    
    Authors: Annapurna Menon (University of Sheffield) , Arshita Nandan (University of Kent) , Jo Krishnakumar (SOAS)*
- 258
  07 Panel / The role of institutional actors towards refugee policies Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Convener: IPMRD Working group
  
  Chair: Ece Ozlem Atikcan (University of Warwick)
  - When ‘The Centre’ meets ‘The Margins’: the EU’s management of ‘irregular migration flows’ in Ethiopia
    
    Ever since the coming and going of migrant crises at Europe’s borders, the EU and its member states have sought to control international migration flows. Yet whereas initiatives to stymie large inflows of migrants at Europe’s outer borders continue to attract widespread attention, the EU’s own efforts to manage the root causes of ‘irregular migration’ in Europe’s frontiers remain underexplored. One example of how the EU, aiming to tackle ‘the drivers of irregular migration’ from Africa, has tried to contain Europe’s African borderlands can be found in the shape of the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa.
    
    The aim of this paper is to examine the workings of the EUTFA from the view of one of its main target countries: Ethiopia. Building upon both recent field research in Addis Ababa and archival research in Sweden, I will survey the consonances and dissonances between ‘the margins’ and ‘the centre’ as regards to EU-funded migration management efforts. Focusing on concepts such as ‘root causes’, ‘crisis’, ‘irregularity’, and ‘control’, the goal is to not only look at current mitigation practices but to also link them to a broader historical and spatial context. Doing so will not only tell us more about the EU’s external migration policies towards the African continent as such but will also help us better understand the imperial backdrop from which they have emerged.
    
    Author: Floris van Doorn (University of Helsinki)
  - Bridging WHO’s Networks of Care Approach with Ecological Model of Health in Understanding Refugee Women’s Access to Maternal Care
    
    This paper will investigate refugee women’s access to maternal care in Türkiye which requires a multi-layered policy approach to refugees’ right to health. WHO’s Networks of Care Approach (NOC) takes a holistic approach to improve and facilitate a high level of maternal and perinatal care through an implementation of person-centred care with interconnected and collaborative networks of private and public healthcare facilities. An effective NOC becomes crucial for vulnerable populations such as refugee women and their access to maternal care in the host countries. The intersectionality adds another layer of complexity to the refugee women’s access to health care with their legal status, gender and culture becoming determinants of this fundamental right. The ecological model (Thurston and Vissadjee, 2005) offers an illustration of the complexities of interactions between maternal care, its determinants and outcomes. It allows us to analyse the interactions of networks through three stages: (1) micro-level (refugees, their interactions) (2) Meso-level (healthcare clinics, centres, community-level issues on health etc.) and (3) macro-level (state policies and international agencies’ regulations). According to the UNHCR, refugees with little means cannot return to their origin countries, thus, the governments ought to (re)design their policies in order to create pathways for integration. The first step for integration is to grant them fundamental rights including the right to health in the host countries. This research focuses on studying refugee women which entails an analysis of their access to maternal care with addressing the complexities due to their legal status. Thus, an effective healthcare provision can be possible for refugee women through bridging NOC and the ecological model in terms of illustrating the collaboration of state, non-state and private networks that facilitate healthcare for all women who need maternal care including refugee women. This paper will present preliminary findings from a literature review, official document analysis and fieldwork data in order to illustrate the healthcare networks in Türkiye in providing maternal care for refugee women.
    
    Author: Sureyya Sonmez Efe (University of Lincoln)
  - Framing ‘refugee flows’ in the United Nations: Mapping actor coalitions and policy frames
    
    Recent decades witnessed an increasing politicisation of refugee flows, with a growing debate on the role of international law and protection of refugees on the one hand and increasing trends of securitisation and externalisation of migration management on the other. Although there is growing scholarship on the topic, existing research is mostly focused on the European Union (EU) and its reaction to refugee flows, lacking a global perspective. Moreover, the current literature is mostly qualitative and often limited to brief periods. In a long-term and global investigation of this phenomenon, we ask: How do governments present the issue of refugee flows in a global arena such as the United Nations (UN)? More importantly, do they change their policy proposals as a function of where the refugees are originating from? Focusing on the annual sessions of the United Nations General Assembly, we focus on the long-term evolution (2000-2020) of the global debate on refugee flows. This is a critical period as it also involves the negotiation of Global Compact on Refugees. Our analysis is based on Discourse Network Analysis (DNA), a mixed-methods technique that combines qualitative content analysis with quantitative social network analysis. We use DNA to analyse 1630 speeches from the UN General Assembly that discuss the issue at hand over time. Our results show that the actor networks and proposed policies vary depending on the geographical location of the refugees. These findings have important implications for the relationship between the Global North and South.
    
    Authors: Ece Ozlem Atikcan (University of Warwick) , Tim Henrichsen* , Sofie Roehrig (University of Warwick & TU Dresden)*
  - Transformation of Global Refugee Governance through Transorganizational Partnerships
    
    The current polycentric world, consisting of diverse actors with authorities, necessitates reforms of existing governance architectures, which cannot solve or alleviate complex global issues. This study thus addresses a question: who initiates the transformation of global governance architectures and how? Here the author shows that a "boundary unit" within an international organization (IO), which bridges between the IO and outside actors, builds a "transorganizational partnership" to improve the effectiveness of governance architectures. While existing literature tends to assume IOs as "unitary" actors, this study argues that IOs are "collective" actors and that a boundary unit within the IOs can independently cooperate with other actors through incorporating their opinions and getting feedback to the IO, though its Headquarters does not care about or is opposed to it. To illustrate this mechanism, I address the role of regional bureaus or offices of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as boundary units, which cause changes of refugee governance by inputting and feedbacking local voices to the Office. These boundary units have promoted the change in the UNHCR’s mandate into a humanitarian agency, through taking local needs via local/grassroots NGOs as organizational agendas.
    
    Author: Sho Akahoshi (Kobe University)
- 259
  07 Panel / Thinking the Future of War: Epistemology, Innovation, and Revolutions Room 103, Library
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Emil Archambault (University of Durham)
  
  Chair: Emil Archambault (University of Durham)
  
  Discussant: Tom Watts (Royal Holloway University)
  - Robot Wars
    
    Many security studies scholars have been beguiled by the rise of lethal autonomous weapons. They extrapolate from the rapid proliferation of remote uncrewed aerial systems in the last two decades to argue that in the very near future swarms of autonomous drones will dominate the battlefield. This paper questions their presumptions. It draws an analogy with the strategic bombing debates in the 1920s and 1930s, to argue that proponents of drone swarms are guilty of technological determinism. They project the future on the basis of a narrow consideration of the possible technical capabilities of drone swarms, without considering the wider political and operational context.
    
    Author: Anthony King (University of Exeter)
  - Prophesying War : Giulio Douhet, Air Power, and World War I
    
    This paper interrogates how predictions concerning the future of war are produced discursively and epistemologically through the case of Giulio Douhet’s advocacy for strategic bombing in the aftermath of World War I. Douhet, now recognised as a “prophet” of air power, affirmed the implacable, “mathematical” logic of strategic bombing through a radical rejection of the empirical evidence of air warfare in World War I, simultaneously as he used the example of trench warfare to demonstrate the inevitable failure of ground offensives. Through an analysis of Douhet’s advocacy for strategic air power, this presentation therefore asks how empirical evidence for future theorising of war is produced, which empirical bases can lead to future-oriented policy making, and how contemporary war is shaped and shaped by knowledge of the future of war.
    
    Author: Emil Archambault (University of Durham)
  - Sacrament in/of War: Battlefield Miracles and Political Authority in the Afghan Jihad.
    
    The study aims to understand the relationship between miracles and political authority in Islam with a focus on battlefield miracles in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It particularly explores how battlefield miracles contribute to legitimization, recruitment, and combat performances. I argue that battlefield miracles represent an alternate authority structure that generates legitimacy and were consequential in the mobilization of a nascent political community. The focus of traditional IR has been state-centric warfare wherein the power to render war legitimate and hereby cause mobilization rests with the state. Traditional IR misses these ‘non-secular’ phenomena that can contribute to explaining war, conflict, combatant motivations, and authorities of legitimization. As Barkawi says, to decolonize war, we need to realize we have been excluding ‘Actors and modes of force projection organized differently than the post-Napoleonic European concert of nations’ (2016). The proposed study is also an endeavor to decolonize the concept of war.
    
    Author: Hammaad Mehraj Syed (South Asian University)
  - The changing possibilities for drone use and use in the wake of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
    
    The hundreds (perhaps thousands) of videos on YouTube capturing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war that has followed feature a variety of weaponry, but attention has often been place on the drones in these videos. Using Bramsen and Austin’s (2022) approach to video data analysis, this paper analyses a sample of YouTube videos of Ukrainian and Russian drone use since Russia’s invasion, in contrast with previous, well documented, narratives around drone use to posit a changing role of both the drone and its military user in relation to both military thought, and media portrayals. This article argues that the image of the Ukrainian drone operator in particular allows for the possibility of drones to be portrayed as liberatory devices, pushing future thinking about war away from regulation of automation and artificial intelligence, and towards a permissive environment when it comes technological advancement and war.
    
    Author: Bibi Imre-Millei (Lund University)
  - The Future of (Non)Remote Warfare Scholarship: Comparing US Visions of Great Power War in the Indo-Pacific
    
    According to its detractors, remote warfare scholarship is not only based on a caricatured understanding of contemporary political violence but has been largely inattentive to conceptual issues. Responding to these criticisms, this paper examines how far the analytical assumptions which guided the emergence of remote warfare scholarship during the 2010s travel beyond the Trump administration’s (re)prioritisation of great power competition as the focus of American foreign policy. Through the use of the method of a structured focused comparison, it compares existing conceptualisations of remote warfare against three visions of a future great power war against China: (1) the AirSea Battle doctrine developed by the US Air Force and Navy; (2) the Force Design 2030 concept proposed by the US Marine Corps; and (3) the Offset-X Strategy proposed by the Special Competitive Studies Project. It argues that, whilst the design and envisioned use of “remote warfare” technologies in these visions of future war are characterised by certain continuities, they differ in the understanding that war will no longer be as “remote”, as radically asymmetrical, as geopolitically peripheral, and as low intensity as existing remote warfare scholarship suggests. A future great power war in the Indo-Pacific should consequently not be classified as a case of “remote warfare” – an intuitive but timely empirical contribution which helps address the concept’s currently fuzzy boundaries of contrast. This paper concludes by drawing from International Practice Theories to propose reframing the study of remote warfare as a conceptual “trading-zone” organised around the study of the production of multiple forms of distance and intimacy in war rather than as a distinct category of war.
    
    Author: Tom Watts (Royal Holloway University)
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  07 Roundtable / Unseeing Genocide: Academic Responsibilities and Complicities Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  What, as academics, do we see, and what do we choose to 'unsee'? Who can choose to 'unsee' a genocide unfolding, and who cannot? How does unseeing, and its companion, silence, implicate us in war-crimes and atrocities that are happening far away? Does choosing to see and 'speak up' about genocide blur the supposed boundaries of an intellectual life and 'activism'? Are there exceptional times when that supposed boundary must be crossed, out of moral and indeed academic responsibility? Or is the boundary a false one anyway? The disparity in academic responses to catastrophic world events that shake the edifice of International Relations exposes a) the divergence in motives that drive people to enter academia in the first place; b) the divergence in political strategies; and c) the unevenness in career implications. But, as this roundtable considers in light of events in Gaza, such disparity is not without consequence - silences, pretences of innocence, contrived aloofness, juxtaposed with speaking up, affects academia, affects discourse, and affects politics.
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Chair: Jasmine Gani (University of St Andrews)
  
  Participants: Shikha Dilawri (LSE) , Catherine Charrett (University of Westminister) , Olivia Rutazibwa (LSE) , Jasmine Gani (University of St Andrews) , Heba Youssef (University of Brighton)
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  07 Panel / Wars on terror Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Convener: CST Working group
  
  Chair: Sophie Haspeslagh (King's College London)
  - Vernacularising P/CVE in the Southern Philippines: The Resistance of the South
    
    The Preventing/Countering Violent Extremism agenda has grown in relevance since 2014 and has been vernacularised in local communities through various programs. Critical questions need to be raised when reflecting on the trajectory of the vernacularisation of the P/CVE agenda, especially concerning how women's engagement is framed in discourses, how women are engaged in practice, and which women are involved. In this paper, I explore whose security informs the P/CVE agenda by investigating what the national level PCVE agenda means for women in Southern Philippines. Specifically, I examine how the P/CVE agenda affects women's material conditions and political agency. This study is based on fieldwork interviews conducted with over 40 participants, including policymakers, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), and Grassroots Women Organisation (GWOs) in the Southern Philippines.
    
    Author: Queenie Pearl Tomaro (School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University)
  - The pre-criminal and Islamophobic logic of Italian counterterrorism: deportation, counter-radicalization strategies, and lack of citizenship reform
    
    Differently from most Western countries, Italy has been spared by recent waves of jihadist terrorism, whereas far-right terrorism has not disappeared. Yet, Italian lawmakers have issued new counterterrorism policies that risk to disproportionately target Muslim minorities and portray them as security threat for Italian citizens’ way of life. This paper aims to contribute to current debates in Critical Terrorism Studies about the nexus between counterterrorism and Islamophobia. It does so through an empirical focus on the Italian case study, that has caught little scholarly attention. I argue that the rhetoric and policies on counterterrorism embraced by the Italian Cabinets are based on a pre-criminal logic that transforms Muslims in suspect categories.
    The first section reviews the pertinent literature on counterterrorism and Islamophobia and explains that the concept of pre-crime helps to unpack recent counterterrorism measures issued against jihadist terrorism. The second section explains that the pre-criminal logic emerges in two aspects: the prioritization of administrative deportation to prevent terrorism (reinforced by the Law 43-2015 – and the development of counter-radicalization and de-radicalization strategies) so far premised on the assumption that Islam is preyed by a process of ideological radicalization. The third section claims that the reform of citizenship (that in Italy is based on the principle of ius sanguinis) has been impacted by the pre-criminal logic of counterterrorism, since easing the access to citizenship would impede the deportation of foreign suspects
    
    Author: Ugo Gaudino (London School of Economics)
  - Rendered Abject: Unveiling the politics of abjection within terrorist lists throughout the Global War on Terror
    
    This paper explores the impact of terrorist lists within the context of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) through the critical lens of abjection theory. The core argument presented here is that the GWOT was underpinned and legitimised by a politics of abjection, in which the introduction and implementation of an assortment of terrorist lists played a key role in this occurring. Through drawing upon abjection theory to analyse the various terrorist lists which emerged after 9/11, this paper illustrates how they were crucial in constructing and rendering Muslim civilians and non-state combatants as abject beings.
    
    This paper begins by analytically framing the immediate surge of terrorist lists post-9/11 as a reflexive, abject response, which constructed Muslims as the ‘abject other’ to justify their securitisation and policing. The paper then explores how terrorist lists facilitated the construction of abject spaces, notably Guantanamo Bay, where the suspension of conventional legal rights alongside the obfuscation of political status would strip those detained of their subjectivity. Finally, this paper demonstrates how consequentially, terrorist lists legitimised the dehumanisation of suspected terrorists and enabled the indefinite continuation of the GWOT by transforming it into a perpetual conflict against the abject other.
    
    Author: Owen Hanley (King's College London)
  - Juridico-Political Conditions of State Violence: Turkey’s Military Actions Post-2015
    
    Democracy and violence are generally considered incompatible, while violence is integral to many democracies. The trench operations effectively ending the resolution process between the Turkish state and the PKK, carried out through the cooperation between civil and military state authorities in Turkey, are an example of state violence legitimised (and legalised) in a democratic context without a declared emergency or war. During the operations, the distinction between war and peace lost clarity. The line separating the measures taken by security professionals who were part of military operations to clear the country of enemies in war from the crimes they commit while violating civilian inhabitants’ human rights became blurry. By using the case of trench operations, I intend to explore the juridico-political processes in which military operations within the national territory (and north Syria) could be carried out and legitimised in a parliamentary democracy and how political gains may change the government’s security agenda, leading to military operations. Through examining the case, I argue that violence and democracy may be co-constitutive when a security-oriented discourse and actions of state authorities dominate domestic politics. For, violence is legitimised through democratically formed institutions or framed as a response to an existential threat.
    
    Author: Burcu Turkoglu-Payne (Bilkent University)
  - The transnational terrorism threat imaginary: Tackling the counter-terrorism Ban Opticon in Portugal and France
    
    In an increasingly interconnected world, the challenge of counter-terrorism policies has gained prominence on the agendas of nations worldwide. France and Portugal, as members of the European Union, share the same counter-terrorism policies and security practices while having different historical, cultural, and political contexts. Drawing on the securitisation theory, we aim to examine the importance of inter-related securitisation processes and practices on each other, most notably the impact of French securitisation processes on the Portuguese securitisation practices. We argue that the French terrorism securitisation process has impacted the normalisation of security practices as an appropriate response to be adopted by Portugal. This cross-loading can be attributed to the French uploader counter-terrorism norm status in European counter-terrorism policy and the military support during the Portuguese decolonisation. Methodologically, this paper follows a multimethod approach understood as conventional qualitative methods vis-à-vis interpretivism and constructivism because of its social backing in the securitisation theory. This methodological approach also facilitated the securitising actor’s profiling by using a counterfactual analysis between securitising actors in Portugal and France. Comparing collected data from Portugal and France also permitted identifying the convergences in those countries’ counter-terrorism policies and practices.
    
    Authors: Carlos Morgado Braz (Universidade Europeia) , Raquel Silva (University of Coimbra)*
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  07 Panel / Whose news, whose history? Critically interrogating media, information and international relations Exec 5, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: Precious Chatterje-Doody (Open University)
  
  Chair: Sharad Joshi (Middlebury Institute of International Studies)
  - Perceptions of threat: the news media and disordered information as a security issue
    
    This paper presents a thematic analysis of findings from UK and EU news outlets, civil society and policymakers, about the extent and nature of any perceived threat from disordered information and responses to it. It argues that social and mainstream ‘news’ outlets can be both a conduit, and target, of disordered information, and that this presents a security issue on two fronts: first, it contributes to a global decline in press freedom and wider liberal democracy. Second, the ability to conduit disordered information through news and target it at journalism enables perpetrators to both manage narratives about their wider foreign policy – and use information as a foreign policy tool per se. Hence, disinformation, misinformation and malinformation can be presented as ‘factual’ news, and journalism can be discursively undermined with disordered information produced through covert surveillance, SLAPP prosecutions, cyberactivity, falsehoods and the exploitation of existing social cleavages such as gender, race and sexuality. This enables states to manage the discourse around wider foreign policies to maintain an element of plausible deniability, whilst simultaneously using liberal tools of freedom of expression and the rule of law to infiltrate the news eco-systems of other states. Such conduiting and targeting may soon be enabled further by advances in cyber-activity and artificial intelligence capability. Hence, there is a need for understanding how news outlets, civil society and policymakers respectively perceive the threat – and what their response may be.
    
    Author: Natalie Martin (University of Nottingham)
  - Religious institutions as information actors: Identity, emotions and war
    
    In any protracted conflict, both sides attempt to disseminate narratives of the war, its origins and likely resolution that accord with their own foreign policy priorities, employing all means and social capital at their disposal in order to do so. Under-researched in this wider context is the role played by religious organisations to propagate or resist wartime (dis)information and historical revisionism. Building on diverse literatures from different global contexts, this paper examines the types of informational roles taken on by religious organisations in a variety of neo-authoritarian regimes worldwide. It goes on to conceptualise the role of religious institutions as information actors in their own right, and presents a case study of the ways in which religious actors have engaged with matters of historic, political and cultural contestation during Russia’s war on Ukraine. The case demonstrates that despite the often lengthy intertwinement of religion and geopolitics, religious organisations’ information activities are not merely secondary to their associated state. Rather, there is evidence of a wide range of moral, institutional and religious logics that impact on religious organisations’ function as information actors, which speak to their significant role in the propagation and resistance of (dis)information in wartime.
    
    Author: Precious Chatterje-Doody (Open University)
  - The Emergence of Roles in British Foreign Policy: How the UK Interprets Russian Disinformation
    
    Disinformation has become closely associated with threats from Russia in British foreign policy (FP). But this has not always been the case, with the UK-Russia relationship being recast from “pragmatic partnership” to “strategic competition”. At the same time the UK has developed a set of FP roles, such as faithful ally, to help conceptualise how the UK counters Russian disinformation. So how has Russian disinformation emerged within elements of British FP behaviour towards Russia? This research takes a role theoretical approach to unpack how British beliefs about Russian disinformation interact with British FP role conceptions. Using an interpretive interactionist and narrative approach, it reveals how the British state narrates its beliefs about Russian disinformation as a “narrow social context”, and how this context shapes narrations of British FP roles. This research presents three core discussions. First, disinformation shapes FP by altering how actors conceptualise their own and others FP roles. Second, disinformation is important for the UK as it centres and adapts existing British FP roles, such as defender of the faith and faithful ally. Finally, role theory provides insight into how states interact within narrow social contexts through a process of role emergence as actors develop new meanings to their FP roles.
    
    Author: Sean Garrett (University of Bath)
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  07 Conference event / Book launch reception for The Duty to Secure: From Just to Mandatory Securitization (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Rita Floyd. Sponsored by the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) & the Department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS), University of Birmingham Justham, Symphony Hall
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  07 Conference event / Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group AGM Stuart Hall, The Exchange
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  07 / European Security Working Group AGM Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
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  07 Conference event / Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group AGM Mary Sturge, The Exchange
- 12:15
  
  Lunch Symphony Hall and Hyatt
  
  Symphony Hall and Hyatt
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  07 Conference event / South East Europe Working Group AGM Dhani Prem, The Exchange
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  07 Panel / (Re)Narrating the ‘International’: Telling stories from feminist and decolonial perspectives Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: Niharika Pandit (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Chair: Tomás Ojeda Güemes
  
  Discussant: Tomás Ojeda Güemes
  - Telling stateless stories otherwise
    
    This paper aims to address two main questions: First, how does attending to the life-worlds and political struggles of subaltern stateless groups allow us to cultivate a different understanding of the ‘international’ in ways that challenge methodological nationalism and dominant state-centric paradigms and statist stories? And second, how to take seriously the language of worldmaking, political imaginaries, and epistemic authority that informs subaltern struggles of non-Eurocentric contexts in ways that refuse local/global binaries and the coloniality of knowledge production? I answer these two questions by drawing on my PhD research on statelessness and state violence in Kuwait specifically, and in the Arabian Peninsula more broadly.
    
    Through its ethnographic and historical storytelling, the paper provides a context of authoritarian power, political dissent, and collective practices of resistance that make visible the necessity of conceptualizing the ‘international’ in relational ways that are attentive to the historical, political and geographical contexts within which international relations theory is produced. This necessity emerges out of an insistence of engaging with subaltern struggles in their specific and located sites of articulation.
    
    Author: Nour Almazidi (LSE)
  - Gatekeeping & Fencebuilding: Stories at/on the Border
    
    My research considers how discourses on migrant masculinities are constructed within anti-migrant politics. Central, is how discourses on migrant masculinities are imbricated with racial logics and histories of Empire and how these logics reaffirm practices of exclusion.
    
    When applying for PhD funding, I was given a list of locations where my research would be deemed ‘legitimate’ within the funding parameters, all located in the Global South. As I started the research, I felt a deep discomfort with my research and I could see the logics I was ‘analysing within humanitarian sites’ being echoed within the UK context. As the pandemic continued and I was unable to travel, I was allowed to shift to situate my research within my own work, organising and relationships within the migrant right’s sector in London
    
    In this paper, I reflect on how colonial logics within academia shape and define what kind of stories are allowed to be told about borders. I consider how whiteness shapes who can research borders and where, and how this shapes the knowledges produced about bordering and borderwork. Overall, resisting borders requires us to go beyond the inter/national and thus I argue feminist research has to tell stories about borders differently.
    
    Author: Lizzie Hobbs (London School of Economics)
  - When the personal becomes international: exploring the affective, embodied and political dimensions of knowledge production about Russia’s war in Ukraine from the position of a Ukrainian scholar
    
    “The personal is theoretical. Theory itself is often assumed to be abstract: something is more theoretical the more abstract it is, the more it is abstracted from everyday life. To abstract is to drag away, detach, pull away, or divert. We might then have to drag theory back, to bring theory back to life.” (Ahmed, 2017:11).
    
    In this piece, I reflect on my own embodied experience, and that of my feminist colleagues, of producing knowledge about the armed invasion of Ukraine, our home country, while also being directly affected by it on many levels. In 2022, many Ukrainian feminists activists, placed at the intersection of academia, activism and our personal positionalities, found ourselves in dialogues with feminist security scholars and activists about the nature of the war in Ukraine, its implications for women’s rights and gender freedoms, and the validity of claims to arm Ukraine’s self-defence efforts. Solidarities spanning across geographies, institutions and positionalities, were both challenged and (re)invented. Voices from the region of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) started claiming the right to their epistemic authority, highlighting hierarchies of knowledge production within and beyond Europe.
    
    Following Ahmed’s proposal to “bring theory back to life”, I argue that in this case, the “international” (matters of global security) have become very personal, or perhaps what became apparent is that they always were. What does seeing the international through the lens of personal do, when it comes to knowledge production, and policy making in the fields of security, peace and the feminist struggle? How does acknowledgement and integration of our positionalities in the process affect our solidarity-building? What can we learn from this about challenges and opportunities for global solidarities in the feminist struggle?
    
    Author: Oksana Potapova (LSE)
  - Stories beyond ‘liberal’ militarisation: Understanding coloniality as the constitutive logic of occupation
    
    In my paper, I challenge head on a dominant story about militarisation that has been told in conventional theorising, even in liberal feminist work, as a benign and subtle process. Thinking with Kashmir’s occupation offers a different story – that we need to conceptualise occupation, and the form of state enforced militarisation in this Global South context as a condition of contemporary postcoloniality. Critical feminist work on militarisation largely from Global North geographies conceives militarisation as an everyday process that structures gendered, social, spatial and affective relations. However, there is an urgent need to read it in concert with conceptualisations of coloniality if we are to understand the nature of military occupation in Kashmir, its underlying gendered and racialised logics and sustained effects on Kashmiris and their life-worlds. Drawing on ethnographic and archival work in Kashmir, this paper presents conceptual rethinking of militarisation as a feminist ethical imperative, pushing us to think through location as a reflexive praxis – from where knowledge is produced, what geopolitical contexts and by whom – as crucial to identifying and resisting the ongoing processes of militarisation and how they are embedded in the logics of coloniality. Overall, I ask what different stories can be told about militarisation from a marginal Global South geography when it is engaged with as an epistemic site beyond its empirical circumstance.
    
    Author: Niharika Pandit (Queen Mary University of London)
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  07 Panel / Culture wars and international relations: Contesting moral authority in global order Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Conveners: chenchen zhang , Liam Stanley (University of Sheffield)
  
  Chair: Xavier Mathieu (University of Sheffield)
  
  Discussant: Xavier Mathieu (University of Sheffield)
  - “Feels Good Man”: Techno-Affective Politics of the Face
    
    “Feels Good Man”: Techno-Affective Politics of the Face
    
    Authors: Uygar Baspehlivan (University of Bristol) , Elisabeth Moerking (University of Bristol)
  - Small boats in the UK’s ‘culture war’ on migration
    
    The first Hansard-recorded reference to ‘small boats’ in the House of Commons was made in an 1822 debate on ‘Piracy in the West Indies’. Liverpool merchants complained of attacks by pirates who ‘were all either Spaniards or Portuguese’ and whom the merchant, MP and enslaver Joseph Marryat characterised as ‘enemies of the human race’ (Hansard, 1822). Over the next two centuries, ‘small boats’ garnered occasional parliamentary remarks – usually fewer than 10 in a year – mostly in relation to naval and fisheries issues. But in recent years there has been an explosion in references to small boats in parliamentary debates, including 103 in 2021, 233 in 2022, and 375 (at time of writing) in 2023. There has been a corresponding preponderance of ‘small boats’-themed news media headlines, and even a government initiative promoted as ‘small boats week’. Concrete policy responses to the so-called ‘small boats crisis’ have included the 2022 UK and Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership, and the Illegal Migration Act 2023. A distinctive political discourse on small boats has emerged, again casting their passengers as an existential threat, if not to humanity then to national identity and security. Tracing and analysing this discourse, this paper shows how UK politicians and media outlets increasingly rely upon – and offer ‘culture war’ framings of – international migration, as a means of parsing the ‘polycrisis’ (Tooze, 2022) without resorting to progressive political-economic transformation. The paper also shows how the small boats discourse and its Australian and European antecedents are embedded in a ‘global libidinal economy’ (Kapoor et al., 2023) of racist migration policy and practice. Elite white nationalist political projects fight ‘culture wars’ on migration to protect or restore civilisational fantasy narratives of ‘the West’ and to stave off its ‘great variety of morbid symptoms’ (Gramsci, 1971: 276).
    
    Author: Ben Whitham (SOAS, University of London)
  - Remaking the West? The war on woke, Sinoscepticism, and the new red scare
    
    What is the future of “The West”? One’s answer to this question will likely depend on one’s understanding of that category: (i) As a seemingly essentialist form of civilisation; (ii) as a historical transatlantic bloc that reached its zenith with NATO; or (iii) as an identity that is contested through the rhetoric of “The West”. Rejecting the first approach as unrigorous, but synthesising and developing the latter two, this paper presents an exploratory study into the remaking of the West. It focusses on two areas: (1) The Anglospheric “war on woke”, a form of reactionary politics against certain kinds of contemporary social justice politics; and (2) “Sinoscepticism”, a catch-all term for the political mobilisation against the (prospective) power of China. These seemingly detached issues are connected together by the so-called defenders of “Western civilisation” as the two major threats facing the West — and occasionally explicitly brought together — thereby representing a new kind of "red scare". Drawing on a span of illustrative examples, ranging from social media memes and basketball, to AUKUS and “Asian NATO” (i.e. the Quad), this paper contributes to debates on the meaning of the West and the future of international liberal order.
    
    Author: Liam Stanley (University of Sheffield)
  - Race, gender, and Occidentalism in global reactionary discourses
    
    This paper seeks to contribute to a global understanding of reactionary discursive formations at the current historical conjuncture, which coalesce around self-victimizing articulations of racial nationalism and a rejection of social justice struggles, often delegitimated as “elitist” (in Western core contexts) or “Western” (in the Easts and Souths). I suggest that global whiteness, masculinism, and Occidentalist imaginations are key mechanisms through which reactionary discourse is produced within locally specific political projects and employed to negotiate the relationship between domestic politics and international orders. The first part of the paper illuminates the global and civilizational imaginaries integral to reactionary discourses across geopolitical divides and regime types. I note in particular the emergence of renewed and gendered East/West binaries that reaffirm the superiority of a particular idea of “the West” and lament its alleged “feminization” and unwillingness to “defend its own values”. I then scrutinize the workings of global racial entanglements, masculinism, and gendered East/West binaries in Chinese anti-baizuo discourse, encompassing both techno-nationalist communities on social media and self-styled “Trumpist” intellectuals critical of the Chinese regime. While they both reproduce the far right metanarrative about the “Western civilization”, imagined to be racially pure and socio-politically masculine in the past, being threatened by ethnocultural diversity and an emasculating political culture, they incorporate these representations within different ideological constellations and positionings in relation to global whiteness and liberal hegemony. The article contributes to the growing literature elucidating that reactionary counter-movements to liberal orders emerge within rather than against liberal and neoliberal structures.
    
    Author: Chenchen Zhang (Durham University)
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  07 Panel / Diasporas’ mobilisation, political participation and activism Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Convener: IPMRD Working group
  
  Chair: Darcy Leigh (University of Sussex)
  - The Comparative Analysis of Turkish Migrants’ Ideological Position and Voting Behavior in terms of Elections in Turkey and the UK
    
    Studies in the literature on international migration tend to analyze the political behavior of immigrants. Along with this analysis, some of them focused on voting behaviors after gaining citizenship or participating in elections, especially in countries where immigrants went. Therefore, the political behavior of immigrants towards their own country is also worth examining in the literature.
    
    The topic of this study is the comparative analysis of Turkish migrants’ ideological position and voting behavior in terms of elections in Turkey and the UK’. The main reason for choosing this research topic is that there are very few studies based on detailed field research on the analysis of voting behavior of citizens living abroad who are described as "expat" in the literature. At the same time, which is relatively small in number, these studies only focus, to analyse the voting behavior over Turkey elections or UK elections.
    
    As will be examined in detail in this study, studies especially about Turkish migrants in Europe deal with the political behavior of these immigrants in a single focus or try to explain the political behavior of immigrants with the perspective of sociology of immigration, rather than making analyzes on voting behavior. The main objective of this study is to fill the gap in the literature on this subject by making a comparative analysis of the voting behavior of Turkish immigrants living abroad, through the example of the United Kingdom.
    
    Author: Caglar Ezikoglu (University of Birmingham)
  - UN Mediations and Peace Settlement Preferences in Cyprus and the Cypriot Transnational Diaspora
    
    This article explores how preferences for peace settlements differ between populations living in conflict zones and those living abroad in the diaspora. We introduce the concept of ‘diaspora home dilemmas’ in United Nations-led peace negotiations and present the first conjoint survey experiment to compare public preferences across two deeply divided communities in Cyprus and their overseas diasporas. In our design, we draw on a rich set of proposals and precedents set by the UN Security Council for Cyprus. These reflect shared international norms and practices on otherwise contentious issues such as ethnic federalism, power-sharing and the right of return for victims of displacement as well as citizen engagement in peace settlements. Results show public endorsement of UN proposals but also areas of potential improvement. Moreover, the views of the Cypriot diasporas are either comparable to kin island communities (‘mirroring home community views’) or in some respects they are more favourable to a negotiated peace settlement. Furthermore, diaspora members are more likely to consider returning/re-immigrating back to Cyprus if there is a negotiated agreement suggesting that the latter could be critical stakeholders in the Cypriot reunification and peace implementation process.
    
    Authors: Işık Kuşçu Bonnenfant (METU)* , Laura Sudulich (Essex)* , Neophytos Loizides (University of Warwick)* , Raluca Popp (University of Kent) , Edward Morgan-Jones (University of Kent)
  - Diasporas at #War: The online battle of the Armenian and Azerbaijani diasporas to narrate Karabakh war
    
    As fighting broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan in September 2020, a parallel intensive war erupted on social media. Pro-Armenian and pro-Azerbaijani users shared information about the conflict, paid tribute to soldiers, amplified news, targeted international media, and pushed out hashtags like #StopAzerbaijaniAggression or #StopArmenianOccupation. These actions sought to mobilize international public opinion and influence policy. The 2020 Karabakh war was fought not just on the physical battlefield, but online, internationally and in different languages.
    
    How do diasporas fight online during armed conflict in their homeland? I explore this question through interviews with over 100 diaspora Armenians and Azerbaijanis living in 10 nations around the world. I question their motivations for activism; strategies and methods of promoting the Armenian or Azerbaijani narrative; vision of the opponent; and perceived outcomes of their efforts. The interviews cover the period of the 2020 war itself and the following escalations until the end of 2023.
    
    Besides investigating this case of diaspora mobilization, the study offers broader conclusions about social media and participatory warfare, and about the changing roles of diasporas in IR. I demonstrate how social media enables participatory war that is transnational, monologic, empowering and retaliatory, involving individual and networked tactics, and culturally and politically transformative. The online narrative war has new tactics, takes targets algorithms, and delivers new types of casualties. Diasporas, traditionally seen as international agents of lobbying, public diplomacy, and material assistance, become important and decentralized actors in global conflict infopolitics.
    
    Author: Dmitry Chernobrov (University of Sheffield)
  - Homeland and Diasporic Political Engagement: The Case of Greece
    
    Historically, the Greek homeland perceived and approached Greek diasporas as sources of philanthropic funding, remittances and lobbying on matters of Greek national foreign policy interest. The economic crisis and the recent wave of migration have added new meanings and dimensions to the homeland- diaspora nexus. The significance of the momentum for the redefinition of the interaction model between homeland and diaspora lies within several reasons, such as the economic crisis and the new significant wave of migration, and the changing global context of state-diasporas engagement in terms of connectivity and communication beyond the strictly speaking state policies. Considering the above, this paper aims to unpack the modes of diasporic political engagement, by focusing on the ways and the reasons behind the diverse intensity of interaction in different times. By doing so, it will also shed light on the impact of crises on the stance of the homeland towards the Greek diaspora, and mobilisation of the diaspora and network building in a highly transnational and globalised world.
    
    Author: Foteini Kalantzi
  - Jewish International Relations: A diasporist perspective
    
    Jews have been largely overlooked in IR. When they appear, Jews are addressed as victims of the Holocaust, bearers of traumatic memory and/or Israeli settler colonizers. Connecting these stories, Jews seemed defined by victimhood and statehood: the holocaust is central and its legacy is trauma; today, Jews outside of Israel are ‘in diaspora’ from that state. In its analysis of Jewish diasporist activism, this paper argues against projecting modern concepts of religion, race, nation and state onto Jewish history, instead exploring diasporist Jewish political agency on its own terms. Diasporist Jews do not orient themselves towards nation-statehood or to ‘private sphere’ religiosity. Instead, they centre the many forms of Jewish community that pre-date and/or challenge religion, race, nationhood and statehood (and respond to the ways these were constructed, in part, through antisemitism). Nor do diasporist Jews define Jewish diaspora vis-à-vis the Israeli state: Jewish diaspora precedes that state and its homelands are multiple, including Eastern Europe and the MENA region. The paper further shows that, for diasporist Jews, memories of the Holocaust are grounds for shared struggle with non-Jews against fascism and genocide. Overall, then, the paper undermines a vision of Jewish international politics as defined by victimhood and/or statehood.
    
    Authors: Howie Rechavia-Taylor (LSE)* , Darcy Leigh (University of Sussex)
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  07 Panel / Emerging Patterns in Digital Norms and Culture Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group
  
  Convener: ISET
  
  Chair: Ciaran Gillespie (University of Surrey)
  - TikTok as a Propaganda Platform: Affordances, Limitations, and the Realities of Narrative Control in a Contested Environment
    
    How dangerous is TikTok as a propaganda platform? As a social media company with extensive ties to China, and access to billions of global users, there have been widespread concern that malicious state and non-state actors could abuse TikTok, to manipulate public opinion in the West. Yet, ostensibly, there has been little to no empirical research, about the effects that such influence operations might have, on users' attitudes and behaviour.
    
    In this paper, I present the findings from a two-wave survey experiment (n=432), where I simulate the effects of a high-dosage Russian and Chinese influence operation, and measure their impact on the attitudes of American TikTok users.
    
    There are three key findings:
    
    1) Malicious foreign influence operations do not appear to be widespread on TikTok, at the moment; pro-Russian and pro-Chinese content make up less than 1% and 0.9% of median users' feeds, respectively.
    
    2) Under high-dosage experimental conditions, Russian and Chinese propaganda are capable of producing small persuasion effects amongst its audience (Cohen's d=0.053-0.150). However, these effects do not persist for more than a week, which suggests that they may have limited ability to affect behaviour in the long term.
    
    3) Finally, malicious foreign influence operations' effects appear to be heavily contingent upon the absence of relevant prior attitudes. This means that propaganda and disinformation produced by minor actors, may be substantially more potent, by virtue of audiences' relative ignorance of the countries and issues involved.
    
    The findings of this study have particular importance, for the ongoing debate about the threat that TikTok poses to national security. Additionally, they contribute to the literature on combating fake news and disinformation, by highlighting the role of prior attitudes, in conferring resistance against hostile persuasion.
    
    Author: Chris W. Cai (University of Oxford)
  - Opportunities for political engagement in online multiplayer role-playing games
    
    Democracy today confronts numerous challenges, including the influence of digital technologies, evolving social and political pluralism, and declining political engagement. This research explores unconventional avenues to address these issues, focusing on Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) Online as a unique space for fostering political engagement. This interdisciplinary project ventures into rarely explored territories within international studies, engaging with groups overlooked by scholars to propose novel opportunities for political engagement, challenging its conventional definitions. Amid global public distrust in traditional political institutions, the study employs mixed methods—digital ethnography, surveys, and interviews—to examine political processes in this non-traditional context. Addressing critical questions about who is engaged and where, the project takes research to a site which lifts barriers facing traditional engagement. By scrutinising explicit and implicit political processes in GTA V Online, the research contributes to broader discussions on evolving modes of engagement, offering insights to support democracies in the contemporary world.
    
    Author: Emma Brewis (University of Leeds)
  - Exploring Normative Agency of African States in UN Cybernorms Processes
    
    This paper investigates the normative agency exerted by African states in the development of international cybernorms through an analysis of South Africa, Kenya, and Mauritius’ engagement in UN forums. Adopting a Global IR perspective, it applies Finnemore and Sikkink’s norm life cycle model and Acharya’s norm circulation concept to assess how African actors navigate across norm emergence, diffusion, and internalization stages. The study utilizes a qualitative methodology involving videos of UN cybernorms processes, document analysis and expert interviews to elucidate evolutions in the selected countries’ positioning and insider perspectives. Although varied interests exist on the continent, collective African dynamics in grappling with shared cyber vulnerabilities are examined. The paper unpacks whether African states act as norm takers, promoters, or shapers at different junctures. Findings will address a significant gap in constructivist literature’s predominant focus on Western normative agency. This paper ultimately aims to enrich theoretical and empirical understanding of the Global South’s evolving role in shaping international cybernorms.
    
    Author: Ndidi Olibamoyo (University Of Bath)
  - Legislating Cyberspace and navigating Digital Human Rights in Pakistan
    
    Pakistan being at very early stage of developing a consolidated cyber policy faces a serious challenge of how to navigate the exiting conundrum of protecting of digital human rights and implementing a national-security centric cyber policy. The cyber policy of Pakistan, in its very juvenile shape and form, is titled towards the securitization and ignores human rights and digital human rights of its citizens. This paper, by analysing three legislative pieces pertaining to cyberspace in Pakistan and an only existing cyber strategy of 2021, aims to analyse the condition of digital human rights in Pakistan by contextualising them within the nation-security centric cyber policy of the state. The research deploys a pentagon model of analysis to develop a comprehensive understanding of cyber legislations and cyber strategy, and their impacts on digital human rights. The five main components of this pentagon model include; cyber control(s), cyber policies, responsibilities, cyber culture and classification. The analysis is subsequently provided in three sections corresponding with all five components of the pentagon model; positioning cyber-architecture under the umbrella of national-security, digital human rights; absence of privacy and security protocols in existing cyber legislation, and can there be a secure digital future with ambiguous cyber legislation? The research aims to provide policy recommendations based on the findings developed through analysis to bridge the gap between national security centric cyber policy and protection of digital human rights.
    
    Author: Ramsha Ashraf (Northeastern University London)
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  07 Panel / Emotions and collective identification Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Emotions in Politics and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: EPIR Working group
  
  Chair: Anne-Marie Houde (University of Oxford)
  - Heimat as affective bordering: White innocence, nostalgia, and nationalist belonging in Germany
    
    This talk deconstructs Heimat as a site of affective bordering – a practice of border-making that reinstalls national and racial hierarchies through the mobilisation and unequal distribution of affect. Long used primarily by the far right, over the last years the recuperation of Heimat as an emotional anchor for national belonging and nostalgic attachment has moved to the centre of political debate in Germany – not least through the renaming of the Interior Ministry to the Ministry of Interior and Heimat in 2018. Tracing the fascists and colonial histories of the concept, I illustrate how Heimat continues to operate as a site of affective bordering that recements white heteronormative constructions of nationhood. The renewed attachment to Heimat is produced in conjunction with reproductive anxieties expressed in Great Replacement conspiracies that allege the planned replacement of white Germans with racialized migrants. The talk calls for closer attention in international studies to how practices of bordering operate through the reproduction of warm feelings of national belonging and white innocence arguing for the abolition of Heimat, and related conceptions of home and homeland, as sites of affective bordering.
    
    Author: Billy Holzberg (King's College London)
  - Ongoing Issue or Closed History: Emotional Cycles and the Abduction Issue in Japan and North Korea
    
    The abduction issue has long been a point of contention between Japan and North Korea, with distinct interpretations characterizing each nation’s stance. While Japan views it as an unresolved violation of human rights, North Korea considers it a closed chapter of history. By conceptualizing and employing the framework of emotional cycles, I map out distinct phases in Japan's emotional trajectory: from the Trigger Phase, set off by revelations or events related to the abductions, to the Amplification Phase characterized by intensified public sentiment and diplomatic activity. The Consolidation Phase witnesses the solidification of emotions and perceptions, succeeded by the Transition/Transformation Phase that signals a potential sentiment shift. Lastly, the Recurrence Phase sees a resurgence of past emotions due to new triggers. This cyclical pattern keeps the issue alive in Japan's collective consciousness, emphasizing it as an ongoing concern. Conversely, North Korea's more linear emotional journey positions the issue as a concluded historical event. This exploration underscores the pivotal role of emotional cycles in crafting national narratives and determining policy directions, hinting at the profound influence the intricate dance of emotions and events wields over diplomatic interactions and public narratives.
    
    Author: Phuong Anh Nguyen (University of St Andrews)
  - Melodramatic Nations and Serious States: The War on Terror
    
    The War on Terror was driven by the desire for sovereignty and morality. The U.S. wanted to impose its sovereign desires on the world and imagine itself as a legitimate and moral actor. The U.S. began the war as a victim-hero fighting evil terrorists, convinced that it will be succeed. As the War on Terror continued and evil terrorists seemed difficult to defeat, the U.S. adopted different ways to understand the war. While President Bush’s discourse was melodramatic, President Obama’s tenure marked a shift into seriousness, where the U.S. imagines itself as the rational-hero of geopolitics, seeing the world as it is, and acting out of necessity and responsibility. These performances of seriousness and the policies it engenders feeds into feelings of victimization in Pakistan, which is both an ally and an object of U.S. sovereignty. Pakistan’s seriousness frustrates the U.S. as it feels itself a victim of double-games and deceit. My paper explores the politics of melodrama and seriousness as it unfolds between two nation-states, where both Pakistan and the U.S. imagine themselves as victim-heroes and rational-heroes of geopolitics. I explore the tension between sovereign and moral desires, discourses that rehabilitate these desires, and the relational nature of affective dispositions.
    
    Author: Shah Zeb Chaudhary (Northwestern University)
  - Ingroup and Intergroup Effects of Djokovic's Exclusion from 2022 Australia Open
    
    Athletes can shape attitudes of a wider society, invoke national pride or reduce prejudice toward outgroups. But, we have limited understanding of the impact of adversity of sporting icons and of how it manifests in post-conflict societies. Drawing on theories of ethnic identity salience and contact hypothesis, we investigate the effects of Novak Djokovic's exclusion from the 2022 Australia Open tennis tournament after cancellation of his visa on the salience of ethnic identity among Serbs and on their willingness for contact with Croats, the former adversary from the Serb-Croat conflict (1991-1995). Reports of Djokovic's ordeal featured prominently unconditional support he received from his Croatian coach and friend Goran Ivanisevic who was by his side. Drawing on original data from a nationally representative survey in Serbia and using an "unexpected event during survey design," we compare Serbian respondents' ethnic identification and willingness for inter-group contact before and after Djokovic's visa cancellation. Coupled with quantitative text analysis of the Serbian press reporting of the incident, our findings demonstrate that an athlete's setback abroad strengthens ingroup members' ethnic identification, and point to ineffectiveness of vicarious intergroup contact. The study calls for better understanding of conditions for sporting stars' peace-promoting impact in post-conflict societies.
    
    Authors: Sanja Vico (Exeter)* , Tolga Sinmazdemir (SOAS)* , Lanabi La Lova (LSE) , Denisa Kostovicova (London School of Economics and Political Science)
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  07 Panel / International politics of African statebuilding Exec 5, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Africa and International Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: AISG Working group
  
  Chair: Jonathan Fisher (University of Birmingham)
  - Rethinking the declining state of democracy: A social constructionist thematic analysis of perceptions towards African and western international relations on the state of democracy in Nigeria
    
    Democracy represents one of the most formidable forms of government designed to promote citizens’ participation and choices in elections. However, in Africa, recent development suggests a declining state of confidence in democratic governance. Drawing on a social constructionist thematic analytical lens, the paper analysed Nigeria’s recent elections in 2023 to understand public perceptions and attitudes towards democracy and the electoral processes. Data was drawn from newspaper sources and government reports, including openly available data on social media handles of major news outlets in the country. The study finds that there was a perceived sense that democracy appears to have failed and denotes the problematisation of international bodies both within the African continent and beyond reluctance to intervene in the electoral processes or call out the irregularities in the elections, which appears to be marred by corruption, lack of transparency and voters’ subjugation. The study recommends the need to reignite citizen trust in democratic processes through early intervention to instil confidence in democracy and dispel the quest for military rule and takeover.
    
    Authors: Mieyebi Lawrence Ike (Southern New Hampshire University)* , Tarela Juliet Ike (Teesside University) , Evangelyn Ebi Ayobi (National Open University)*
  - Legacies of Rebellion: Explaining Polar Cases of Post-Conflict State Formation at the Horn of Africa
    
    How does war make states? This paper explains variation in post-conflict state formation. It develops an analytical framework integrating theories of state formation and research on rebel governance and civil war to answer its research question: how does the legacy of violent conflict and armed movements impact post-war state-making?
    
    States are crucial for domestic and international stability, yet their emergence is still poorly understood particularly beyond Europe. IR scholarship has primarily debated the potential of international state-building to stabilize states in (post-)conflict settings. What this debate has however neglected is that statehood usually does not emerge from international intervention but from domestic processes. To fill this gap, this paper examines post-conflict state formation from an inside-out perspective by starting the analysis from victorious armed movements engaged in civil wars. Both in Somaliland and Eritrea rebels have achieved major victories defeating the previous powerholders and establishing new states. Despite these similarities, state formation developed along polarly opposed pathways corresponding each to one of the main camps in state formation research. Eritrea approximates an ideal-typical bellicist pathway of state formation: the former rebels became the state and imposed it coercively on Eritrean territory. Today the military administration still prevails over civilian structures. Somaliland, in turn, represents a cooperative pathway of state formation. After the rebel’s victory, traditional authorities and the emerging political elites took the lead and state-building occurred through a series of major clan conferences. I argue that the legacies of rebellion account for these opposed pathways of state formation. The dynamics of the preceding civil wars and the rebel’s organizational characteristics, particularly their economic mode of reproduction and ideological orientation, have had a lasting impact on post-conflict state formation and shape the reality of statehood to this day.
    
    Author: Johannes Jüde (University of Edinburgh)
  - Alternative hierarchies? The consequences of a development intervention on elite co-optation and rural social structure in Ethiopia
    
    It is widely argued that incumbent regimes in Africa use foreign aid as a source of patronage to co-opt strategic elites and prolong their rule. But what are the effects on regime social control when development interventions distribute their resources outside of state systems? There are studies tracking the effects of so-called ‘bypass aid’ on government effectiveness and legitimacy, but its consequences for elite formation and co-optation are less well understood.
    This paper seeks to address this gap by reviewing the consequences of a rural development intervention in Ethiopia in the 1990s and early 2000s on rural social structure and elite co-optation. I find that the intervention – the Merhabete Integrated Rural Development Project implemented by Menschen für Menschen, a German-Austrian NGO – had a significant impact on social structure in the district of implementation. The intervention’s resource streams and employment opportunities shifted hierarchies in the district, empowering rural elites vis a vis the regime and undermining its ability to co-opt them. Ten years after the intervention closed, this shift in hierarchies still had legacies affecting regime social control in the district.
    
    Author: Justin Williams (University of Birmingham)
  - The relationship between decolonisation and post-colonial insecurity in Lusophone Africa
    
    This research project examines the relationship between the late decolonisation process triggered by the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal and the domestic insecurity experienced in the now-former Portuguese African colonial territories. I employ a comparative approach, looking at the conditions informing different outcomes in every country within Lusophone Africa: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and S. Tomé e Príncipe. I argue that the existing historiography of the cases favours explanations based on predatory behaviour (greed) by the new elites in the colonies, to the detriment of explanations looking at the insecurity experienced by those agents. Importantly, this research suggests that the outcome of post-colonial violence in post-colonial Lusophone Africa has varied in accordance with the experience of extreme insecurity rather than with the presence of greedy actors and the effect of state capacity. Furthermore, the dynamics through which state capacity and insecurity impact the outcome of post-colonial violence are further related to the quality of attempts at political settlements, the barriers to the mobilisation of violence and the role of the former colonial power in assisting the transition.
    
    Author: Daniel Rio Tinto (Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV))
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  07 Panel / Media discourses on Security and Threat Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Convener: CST Working group
  
  Chair: Anna Meier (University of Nottingham)
  - ‘Islamic State’ in Chinese State News Media: Reporting Terrorism within a Communist Regime
    
    This thesis explores the unique representation of the ‘Islamic State’ in Chinese state-controlled media, contrasting the prevailing focus on Western media portrayals within existing scholarship. It acknowledges that news media in different regions generate distinct representations of terrorism, influenced by their respective media systems and ideological positions. This study specifically addresses the gap in understanding how the ‘Islamic State’ is depicted in the Chinese media landscape, governed by a communist regime.
    The Chinese government perceives the ‘Islamic State’ as a threat to the country’s internal security and stability, particularly in northwestern regions such as Xinjiang. This perception is further complicated by the potential impact on China’s ambitious ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative. Given the extensive state control over China’s news media, encompassing both structure and ideological orientation, this research posits that the representation of the 'Islamic State' in Chinese media is distinctly different from Western depictions, reflective of the unique role of news in a communist context.
    This study employs an instrumental approach to discourse analysis to investigate how the 'Islamic State' is portrayed in key state media outlets, namely Xinhua News Agency and CCTV.com. It combines corpus-based critical discourse analysis for textual content and visual discourse analysis for imagery, aiming to elucidate the social ideologies underlying these representations. The analysis spans the period from the declaration of the Caliphate in 2014 to the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019, tracking the evolution of the 'Islamic State' portrayal.
    Three central questions guide this research: 1) How has the representation of the 'Islamic State' in Chinese state media evolved from 2014 to 2019? 2) What discursive strategies are employed by these media to shape the narrative around the 'Islamic State'? 3) To what extent do these portrayals align with China's national interests and policy goals, both domestically and internationally?
    By examining both verbal and visual elements, this study aims to uncover the intricate ways in which Chinese state media navigates and constructs the narrative of terrorism, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of media representation in a communist regime.
    
    Author: Qiang Zhang (University of Sheffield)
  - (Re)Imagining the Caliphate – Exploring the Interplay between Media and Political (Self)Representations of the Islamic State
    
    In recent years there has been a proliferation of research into the Islamic State group; from scrutiny of its communications strategy, to analyses of media and political constructions of the threat. This paper offers an interdisciplinary contribution to the literature, and the wider media-state-terrorism relationship more generally, by investigating the interplay between the group’s self-representations and their re-imagination by Western politicians and media. It seeks to investigate which frames are produced by each group, and how they interact and coordinate with one another across space and time. The paper combines scholarship on “framing” (Entman 2004) and “dialogical networks” (Leudar & Nekvapil 2022), and shows how each actor is connected interactively, thematically, and argumentatively, with terrorists and politicians largely adopting the same framing strategies. Despite mobilising the same frames, however, the paper also shows how they are transformed into “reverse mirror images of one another”, with each group attempting to systematically invert the meaning of each other’s frames in line with their social and religious identities (after Toltz et al 2021). In so doing, the paper will generate much-needed empirical and conceptual insight into the various shifts, transformations and interactions that take place between terrorists, politicians, and journalists in today’s evolving and multi-layered communications environment.
    
    Author: Jared Ahmad (University of Sheffield)
  - Cosmic Horror, White Supremacy, and the Dark Enlightenment: The Reception and Utilisation of H.P. Lovecraft within the Contemporary Far Right
    
    H.P. Lovecraft stands as among the most widely recognised figures of pulp fiction and the sub-genre of ‘weird fiction’. Over the last decade, though, Lovecraft’s oeuvre has been at the forefront of a reckoning as readers, writers, and scholars alike increasingly confront the author’s profoundly racist beliefs and depictions. Notwithstanding the veracity of such criticism, discussion on the matter has been predominantly focused on questions about how one ought to appraise Lovecraft’s legacy and the degree to which the image of Lovecraft the rabid racist can be disentangled from the contents of his tales. However, there are important issues stemming from Lovecraft’s racism that remain curiously understudied, namely the response to the above accusations against Lovecraft among the far right, the divergent interpretations that such factions hold regarding Lovecraft’s racial beliefs and philosophical commitments, and how these manifest in both the ideological tracts of far-right extremists and their online spaces. As I argue, there are three broad contexts wherein such actors reference Lovecraft, what I dub as ‘white supremacist’, ‘accelerationist’, and ‘anti-woke’ narratives. The Lovecraftian case serves in microcosm as an example of the manner by which extremists act to create a canon of far-right literature and thus a veritable tradition extolling notions of white supremacy, traditional values, and ideological sustenance from which to draw.
    
    Author: Kye Allen (University of Oxford)
- 275
  07 Panel / Negotiating and renegotiating political worlds Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group
  
  Convener: CRIPT Working group
  
  Chair: Anthony Lang (University of St Andrews)
  - How Does `Changing Attitudes' Disarm Thucydides' Trap? Demonstrating Ontological Security's Third Image Potential
    
    It was the fear Athen's rise instilled in Sparta, Graham Allison claims, that made war inevitable [All15]. Sparta could have avoided war, Allison finds empirically, had she changed her attitudes. But how do changing attitudes resolve fear? Ontological Security Studies (OSS) and Ancient Greek dictionaries - documenting that `phobos' used to denote both fear and doubt - can provide Allison with a theoretical foundation.
    
    OSS hold that actors seek physical and ontological security. Following Anthony Giddens [Gid84], OSS assume actors who are certain that they know what the world is like to be ontologically secure. To maintain certainty, philosophers of science have stressed, agents alter their knowledge only as a last resort [Kuh62]. Because knowledge enters the context it analyses [Gid91], knowledge-informed actions can corroborate it. It is unsurprising, therefore, that incumbent powers prefer taking action to changing their attitudes/knowledge, when confronting instilled doubt.
    
    This makes war indeed seem inevitable. Faced with war or the threat thereof, epistemologists pondered solutions. Projecting the epistemological thought presented onto OSS scholarship allows the identification of (1) specific sets of attitudes to be changed to facilitate systemic change without a war and (2) general assumptions to be abandoned to prevent future emergences of Thucydides' Trap.
    
    Author: Ernesto Kettner (University of Münster)
  - A realist framework for democratic peace
    
    This paper presents a realist framework for democratic peace that, firstly, explains why liberal democracies remain warlike, and, secondly, offers a tentative answer to the question of democratic peace that does not exclude wars against illiberal states. Liberal democracies are warlike because foreign policy remains undemocratic among even the most consolidated democracies. This problem of democratic deficit in foreign policy was a concern to Hans Morgenthau in the Vietnam war. A concern that has largely been neglected in IR disciplinary history. While Morgenthau outlined but did not design the institutions that would democratise US foreign policy, political scientists made progress on this question since his death. Experiments with deliberative polls show that a democratic foreign policy in the manner that Morgenthau envisaged can contribute to peace. This paper therefore draws attention to a link between two sets of scholarship that currently do not engage each other: IR scholarship on democratic peace and political science scholarship on democratic innovations. The link it presents is worth exploring, as it holds a promise for a superior theory of democratic peace than has hitherto been offered by liberal scholars in IR.
    
    Author: Haro Karkour (Cardiff University)
  - Cruelty at the Border: Judith Shklar and the ethics of admissions debate
    
    Debate over whether or not we should have ‘open’ or ‘closed’ borders continues today, although often falls back into the same patterns and arguments that have been made repeatedly before. The political significance and importance of the border, especially for all those who interact with it, emphasise the extent to which it is a vital question we need to tackle. An international border system that is fair, ethical, and works for everyone is necessary. Given the somewhat static and deadlocked nature of the ethics of admissions debate, there is need for fresh theoretical perspectives.
    
    As such, I draw on the work of Judith Shklar, particularly in relation to cruelty and injustice, alongside current research in Critical Border Studies, to make a new normative intervention in this debate. Firstly, I argue that the international border system as it works today is cruel in a variety of ways. Secondly, I use Shklar’s concept of the need to put cruelty first in order to argue that there is a need toshift towards ‘open’ borders given the cruelty that the current restrictive border regime inflicts globally. Following this, I briefly offer a couple of thoughts on how we should conceptualise ‘open’, cruelty-free borders.
    
    Author: David Anderson (University of St Andrews)
  - Arguing and Bargaining in International Forums: The Need for a New Approach
    
    Most of the literature examining forum-based social interactions considers arguing and bargaining as the main modes of communication used by negotiating parties, and authors have often claimed that arguing interactions can be distinguished from bargaining ones on the basis of the presence/absence of some validation mechanisms. Starting from this assumption, authors have tried to study real-world international negotiations and to distinguish arguing from bargaining empirically. These attempts, however, have encountered several paralyzing methodological hindrances. This paper claims that the current differentiation between arguing and bargaining is built on erroneous assumptions and on a certain degree of undertheorization of bargaining types of forum interaction. The position advanced in this paper is that both arguing and bargaining types of interaction rely on similar validation mechanisms. Furthermore, the study shows that this erroneous distinction is the reason why authors have hitherto been unable to isolate and distinguish arguing from bargaining while looking at real-world international negotiations. The final goal of this paper is to challenge the current definitions of arguing and bargaining, and to provide the first step of a long-term research project aiming at the reconceptualization of these two types of interaction.
    
    Author: Marco Genovesi (Nottingham Trent University)
  - Diagnosing the Anatomy of Worldmaking through the History of International Political Thought of Post-colonial Indonesia
    
    Adom Getachew’s thought-provoking Worldmaking After Empire has reinvigorated the vocabulary of “worldmaking” in scholarly discussion of post-colonial international politics. Yet, the term is potentially reductive, and threatens to occlude the variegated means of reimagining and pursuing emancipatory changes to the international order. This paper attempts to explore the anatomy of anticolonial worldmaking through the history of international political thought of post-colonial Indonesia. Owing to its hosting of the 1955 Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung and its role as a key progenitor of the Non-Aligned Movement, Indonesia under founding father Sukarno is often perfunctorily recognised as a post-colonial pacesetter. Yet, scholarship has rarely seriously integrated the Indonesian experience into its overarching body of theorising. This has been detrimental to analyses of post-colonial worldmaking, as recounting key episodes of the Indonesian leadership’s post-Bandung international activity reveals valences of worldmaking in a rich fashion: along destructive/constructive axes, and allowing for a specification of its forms within three categories - performative; discursive; and organisational. The paper concludes by reinscribing post-colonial Indonesia’s worldmaking ventures into our post-colonial imagination in order to invoke critical commentary on contemporary formations like the BRICS, which some commentators have interpreted as inheriting the mantle of post-colonial projects.
    
    Author: Quah Say Jye (University of Cambridge)
- 276
  
  07 Roundtable / Never Again? Unpacking the German Discourse on Palestine Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  In the wake of the 2023 genocide in Gaza, compulsory Zionism, to use Umayyah Cable's terms, has reached authoritarian proportions throughout the country. Antisemitism is primarily construed of as a problem imported through non-European migrants, and anti-Zionist Jews are persona non grata in most German institutions. Whilst all western countries are experiencing a form of censorship around Palestine speech, in Germany this has reached unparalleled proportions and uncondiitonal support for Israel is a staple of both the German left and the German right.
  
  What is happening? Is there a future for an anti-Zionist left in Germany? Is there a future for a diverse Jewish community in Germany that is allowed to hold different opinions on Israel? Ought scholars outside Germany boycott German academia in solidarity with Palestine? What can the German case tell us about Israel, Palestine, and questions around solidarity more generally? This roundtable will gather a group of experts on Germany and its relationship to both its Nazi past and to the State of Israel in order to look at this question, and unpack the contemporary German discourse on Palestine.
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Chair: Sharri Plonski (Queen Mary University of London)
  
  Participants: Howie Rechavia-Taylor (LSE) , TBC , TBC , Hanna Al-Taher (TU Dresden)
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  07 Panel / New directions for the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda Soprano, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: Laura McLeod (University of Manchester)
  
  Chair: Annika Bergman Rosamond (The University of Edinburgh)
  - Engaging Women, Peace, and Security in Defence: The Once and Future Role of the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives
    
    The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has underscored the relevance of Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and a gender perspective to defence and deterrence. From the targeted use of sexual and gender-based violence, to the highly gendered disinformation campaign Russia is waging more broadly, to the impact on different communities within and beyond Ukraine. This gendered reality is reflected in the update to NATO’s Strategic Concept (2022), which for the first time refers to Women, Peace, and Security. Yet, there are challenges to translating a gender perspective into defence and the military. Drawing upon a roundtable discussion with three former Chairs of the NATO Committee on Gender Perspectives (NCGP), this paper analyses the role of the NCGP today, and in historical context, in supporting the Alliance’s WPS work. It foregrounds the role of the Committee since senior military women first started organising at NATO in the 1960s, its formal recognition in the 1970s, to its contemporary role in providing crucial recommendations to the Military Committee on the relevance of a gender perspective to defence as well as facilitating the sharing of best practice amongst allies in a changed and changing security context.
    
    Authors: Matthew Hurley (Sheffield Hallam University) , Katharine Wright (Newcastle University)*
  - Transformative Resourcing: Duplication, Overlap and Complementarity between the Women Peace and Security and Youth Peace and Security Agendas
    
    International peacebuilding efforts are increasingly focused on the pursuit of inclusive practices to enable good governance for sustainable peace. Despite this, the UN Secretary General has noted that an absence of dedicated and accessible funding for inclusive peace initiatives remains one of the key challenges impacting the meaningful realisation of peace (2020). Responsive, sustained, and transparent resourcing of youth and women led peacebuilding initiatives is critical for ensuring that Member States simultaneously fulfil their obligations to these inclusive Agendas. However, as demonstrated in this paper, the current hyper competitive funding landscape creates an environment which obscures complementarity, nurturing duplication and overlap. This in turn creates cycles of exclusion for both women and youth, particularly those in rural and remote areas. Drawing on examples from international donor programs, this paper highlights the importance of reconceptualising notions of political will for the pursuit of more inclusive governance structures across the donor landscape. It argues that by applying a transformative governance lens to the interactions between donors, women, and youth peacebuilders we can better understand the funding conditions necessary to fulfil both inclusive agendas. Without attention to transforming the funding landscape donors will continue to reinforce problematic competition cycles that threaten substantive peace.
    
    Author: Caitlin Mollica (University of Newcastle)
  - Between contested narratives and transformative actions: digitalization discourse and practice in the Women, Peace and Security agenda
    
    In recent years, the issue of “digitalization” has slowly made its way into the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. While none of the ten resolutions on WPS explicitly mention digitalization, the new realities shaped by digital technologies have increasingly entered the discourse and practice around the agenda. In this paper, we set out to provide a better understanding of how digitalization is conceptualized and implemented within the WPS agenda. We trace the relationship between digitalization and WPS through a three-tier analysis of discourse, policy and practice. We find that the overall pattern in how states speak about digitalization within the WPS agenda indicates that they have moved from a more instrumentalist perception of technology as a tool to support one-off initiatives related to WPS to a more holistic view of it as an integral part of the broader environment in which the WPS agenda is implemented. Yet, the story revealed through an analysis of WPS policy and practice is more complex: it suggests that transformative intentions are often not operationalized, resulting in a piecemeal and ad hoc implementation of the WPS-digitalization nexus. Further, we find that while States lead on shaping the discourse around the WPS-digitalization nexus, the implementation is primarily driven by civil society actors, who act both within and outside of WPS policy frameworks. Finally, we demonstrate that rather than being a linear process, the incorporation of digitalization into the WPS framework occurs through diverse and at times contrasting pathways – reflecting a broader trend in the WPS agenda evolution.
    
    Authors: Outi Donovan (Griffith University)* , Agnieszka Fal-Dutra Santos (Graduate Institute)
  - Fluid indicators: Gendering leaky militarised bodies within the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.
    
    The 2023-27 UK National Action Plan for implementing Women Peace and Security (WPS) includes a commitment to “enhance the day-to-day experience of women in the Armed Forces through the implementation of policies and initiatives to tackle women’s health and wellbeing issues (such as urination, menstruation, breastfeeding and menopause)” as a means to increasing women’s participation in the UK peace and security sector. This is a surprising and perhaps unexpected inclusion of feminised body fluids within a military institutional context. This paper explores how bodily fluids have been conceptualised within the context of WPS, and how the UK NAP came to include bodily fluids. We ask what this means for how we can understand leaky militarised bodies, and the ways in which they are leaking. We note the reality that leaky bodies arise from gendered differences, where in fact all bodies are leaky but in different ways. This challenges the UK conceptualistion of sexed differences, where sex, biology and gender are continually fudged by military institutions and policies. This fudging, we argue, means despite the apparent innovation of gazing at (women’s) bodily fluids, we still do not escape institutionalised ambitions for WPS to be bound and constrained to gender parity.
    
    Authors: Jennifer Hobbs (University of Leicester)* , Georgina Holmes (The Open University)* , Laura McLeod (University of Manchester)
- 278
  
  07 Roundtable / Pedagogical Approaches to Global Health Exec 6, ICC
  
  The COVID-19 pandemic created a surge of interest in students on issues at the nexus of health and international studies. This surge created a significant challenge for faculty members in terms of how to teach global health topics to students who may or may not have a formal background in the area but whose personal experiences had exposed them to the lived realities of global health. A challenge that continues as new students enroll in our programs from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. In addressing this challenge, students need to be given access to ideas and materials that assists their learning relative to their understanding of the topics. In turn, faculty members need to develop and successfully deploy teaching strategies that engages highly learning-diverse student populations. This roundtable brings together an international set of teachers from the UK, Europe, and Asia; all of whom are active in teaching global health courses in international studies programmes. The roundtable discussion will focus on the creation and implementation of innovative teaching methodologies in our courses. Although these methodologies will focus on global health topics, the underlying pedagogical approaches and innovations will be of interest to colleagues in other fields of international studies.
  
  Sponsor: Learning and Teaching Working Group
  
  Chair: Nicholas Thomas (City University of Hong Kong)
  
  Participants: Stefan Elbe (University of Sussex) , Nicholas Thomas (City University of Hong Kong) , Catherine Lo (University College Maastricht) , Jana Fey (University of Sussex) , Renu Singh (Durham University) , Simon Rushton (University of Sheffield)
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  07 Panel / Professional Military Education in the United Kingdom Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: Patrick Finnegan (University of Lincoln)
  
  Chair: Patrick Finnegan (University of Lincoln)
  
  Discussant: Patrick Finnegan (University of Lincoln)
  - Modernising Naval Professional Military Education...again? The second Fisher/Selborne project
    
    The Royal Navy is currently undergoing a substantial modernization project focused on its training and education systems to better prepare its personnel for service in the modern operating environment. Interestingly, this is the second such shift that has taken place within the modern British Navy. This paper will discuss the current motivation driving the modernisation of Naval Professional Military Education and how much of this (if any) is a continuation of the initial modernization led by Admiral Fisher at the turn of the nineteenth century. Within this discussion, we will focus on how the Navy is adapting its practices to meet its current needs. Importantly, this will facilitate a conversation about the different models of academic provision available to the British military more broadly and how they influence the relationship between academia and defence.
    
    Authors: Patrick Finnegan (University of Lincoln, University of St Andrews)* , Jane Harrold (Britannia Royal Naval College)
  - The development and implementation of a modern teaching and learning strategy for effective delivery of international studies at Britannia Royal Naval College
    
    As well as teaching Royal Naval students, Britannia Royal Naval college, Dartmouth, has delivered training to members of the current Royal family, and delivery of both training and education to Commonwealth and various other International naval young officers from around the world. Whilst undertaking their studies in Dartmouth, RN and international students may undertake a range of accredited and unaccredited education and training options.
    
    Staff and students frequently encounter common issues in the delivery of these educational packages to our diverse international student population. Specific issues include: how do staff go about encouraging students to maintain their motivation whilst undertaking challenging academic courses? How able are we to provide up-to-date externally accredited programmes of study incorporating Phase 1 and Phase 2 training-related components, necessary for naval progression? What meaningful CPD opportunities exist for our own staff, to develop their pedagogy within and outside of the college?
    
    Author: Chris Lavers (Britannia Royal Naval College)
  - Digital Skills and Professional Military Education in the Royal Air Force
    
    Professional Military Education in the Royal Air Force is currently facing a reduction in the time students can engage with content and a simultaneous operational demand on their time. This has lead to an increased reliance on digital innovation and pedagogy approaches within the current academic partnership between the Royal Air Force and their academic partners. While this situation is challenging, it has provided opportunities for innovation within the Professional Military Education domain that could offer positive lessens for other institutions.
    Specifically, this presentation will focus on digital learning in the Professional Military Education context and how we can do pedagogy, build skills, and teach critical thinking online
    
    Author: Harry Richards (University of Portsmouth)
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  07 Roundtable / Publishing as a PhD Scholar: Dos and Don'ts Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  Publishing as a PhD Scholar: Dos and Don'ts
  
  Sponsor: Review of International Studies
  
  Chair: Richard Devetak (University of Queensland)
  
  Participants: Assala Khettache (Aberystwyth University) , Lauren Rogers , Marcus Nicolson (Glasgow Caledonian University) , Burcu Turkoglu-Payne (Bilkent University)
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  07 Panel / Regional cooperation and shifting power dynamics in Eurasia Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group
  
  Convener: Artur Nadiiev (University of Nottingham)
  
  Chair: Jessie Hamill-Stewart (University of Bristol)
  
  Discussant: Artur Nadiiev (University of Nottingham)
  - Coloniality and Modernity: Russia and the Muslim World
    
    Walter Mignolo argues that coloniality is the darker side of Western modernity. This theoretical insight will be applied to Russia’s historic relations with the Muslim world. Tsarist Russia was similar to other European powers who colonised Muslim communities in the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia. However, Russia’s coloniality had distinctive features. Unlike other European powers, Russia has significant Muslim communities within the Russian Federation (such as the Tatars and the Muslim peoples of the North Caucasus) as well as those who were a longstanding constituent part of the Soviet Union (Central Asia). Russia has also changed the nature of its state – from a Russian imperial state to the Soviet Union to the post-Soviet Russia. Throughout these historic shifts, there has been a consistent claim that Russia/the Soviet Union brought secular modernity, inter-religious toleration, and national liberation. How these claims of modernity mesh with the ‘darker side’ of coloniality will be assessed and what the challenge of decolonization in this context entails.
    
    Author: Roland Dannreuther (University of Westminster)
  - The Sino-Russian relations in the 1990s: Endless Rapprochement?
    
    The proposed paper is part of a larger research project dealing with developments in Sino-Russian relations during the 1990s. This is an important area of enquiry, because the development of relations between China and Russia during the first decade of the post-Soviet era remains distinctly understudied. This decade built the foundations of what is today described as the ‘highest level in history’ of relations between both states. As such, arguably, a solid understanding of how relations developed during the 1990s is important for an informed assessment of the state and trajectory of contemporary China-Russia relations. Analytically, the paper focuses on the concept of ‘rapprochement’ in Sino-Russian relations. This concept regularly has been referred to in the analytical literature since the Cold War, but it is rarely defined or analysed systematically. How useful is the concept of ‘rapprochement’ for understanding developments in Sino-Russia relations? How should ‘rapprochement’ be defined and how can it be measured? Have China and Russia reached ‘rapprochement’ during the 1990s or subsequently, or is this still an ongoing process?
    
    Key words: China, Russia, Sino-Russian relations, rapprochement, bilateral relations;
    
    Author: Hanjing Wang (University of Nottingham)
  - Fortifying or forfeiting sovereignty? Russia’s integration with post-Soviet de facto states as an unintended consequence of parent states’ economic counter-secessionist measures
    
    Much attention has been paid to how Russia's patronage over breakaway regions in Eurasia serves as a legitimation tool (benefitting de facto states) and destabilisation mechanism (damaging parent states). This study problematises the existing dominant focus on the clientelistic relationship between patron and de facto states and emphasises the role of parent states’ economic strategies in changing the political calculus for patron and de facto states. How do parent states’ economic policies affect the pace and nature of Russia’s patronage over post-Soviet de facto states? Using process tracing, document analysis, and semi-structured interviews, this article examines the (timing of the) steps taken by Russia to prop up the self-proclaimed Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) (or Transnistria) and Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR/LNR) – through social assistance, energy subsidies and cryptoassets – and gradually integrate them into its federal economic and financial system between 2014 and 2022. While highlighting important differences between the two cases, this study finds that Ukraine and Moldova’s counter-secessionist policies such as economic blockades, predicated on the assumption that trade restrictions and financial operational constraints would quell separatist aspirations, restore sovereignty and facilitate reintegration, have backfired. Moscow and de facto leaders exploited the breakaway regions’ resulting isolation to mobilise local grievances and, ultimately, justify and advance systematic integration with the Russian Federation as a mechanism of subversion. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine exacerbated existing differences, with Russia plundering and fully absorbing the already deeply isolated DNR/LNR and the PMR further reorienting towards the EU’s market out of necessity while continuing to brandish the rhetoric of Eurasian integration.
    
    Author: Jaroslava Barbieri (University of Birmingham)
  - Ruxit Revisited: Unravelling Russia's Dissociation from the Pan-European Security Order
    
    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 marked the culmination of Russia's dissociation from the project of institutionalized pan-European security, and from the global liberal order more generally. Processes of dissociation – defined as the intentional distancing from the core rules and norms of institutions – occur rather often, and might even become a dominant feature of world politics as deglobalization proceeds. However, this phenomenon has rarely been tackled in academic research. What has been overlooked in the scholarly debate are the specific forms and underlying causes of dissociations from multilateral arrangements. Delving into the controversial history of Russia’s drifting away from the European security regime complex after the end of the Cold War, – referred to as 'Ruxit' – this paper demonstrates why Russia’s leadership felt so estranged from the order which creation it actively endorsed. To answer this question, the study draws on the literature of institutional crises and more than 40 personal interviews with Russian politicians and diplomats as well as authoritative Russian and Western scholars of Russian foreign policy. The author concludes that Russian opposition towards transatlantic institutions hardened as they proved structurally unresponsive to the changing post-Cold War dynamic in Russian-Western relations. Had these institutions been more accommodating towards them, Moscow is likely to have remained within the bounds of a reformed European security regime complex.
    
    Author: Mikhail Polianskii (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF))
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  07 Panel / Relational Approaches to Civil War: From Inter-Rebel Cooperation to Ex-Combatant Reintegration Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism
  
  Convener: Anastasia Shesterinina (The University of York)
  
  Chair: Anastasia Shesterinina (The University of York)
  - Living to Fight Each Other Another Day: Armed Group Relationships in Multiparty Civil Wars
    
    Multiparty civil wars are of crucial concern for academics and policy makers alike. The dynamic interaction between more than two conflict actors remains undertheorized, although the existence of multiple groups in a single war is a frequent phenomenon that influences conflict dynamics in fundamental ways. Using primary and secondary data on insurgent groups in Syria, Angola, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Iraq, and the Philippines, I develop a new theoretical approach to study cooperative and conflictive interactions between armed groups in multiparty civil wars, which go far beyond infighting and fragile military alliances. The paper develops this argument by starting from the most basic factors that influence dynamics between armed groups: First, where does cooperation take place? Second, for which purposes do groups cooperate? These two basic dimensions yield a conceptual typology of armed group relationships that distinguishes four ideal types. The four types emerge from three basic conditions: shared overarching conflict goals, ideological proximity, and shared local objectives. Based on different combinations of these conditions across groups and conflicts, I answer the crucial question of why relationships between armed groups look so different within civil wars but can be surprisingly similar across civil wars. Above all, I explain why some armed groups cooperate to an impressive degree and continue to do so despite sometimes very violent internal conflicts, while others barely get along.
    
    Author: Regine Schwab (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt)
  - United We Stand, Divided We Fall: Why Some Rebel Groups’ Alliances Last Longer Than Others
    
    Why do some rebel groups’ alliances last longer than others? The increasing number of multiparty civil wars showed a growing number of rebel groups’ alliances spanning from simple military cooperation to institutionalised coalitions. While existing scholarship on rebel groups’ alliances focuses on why and with whom insurgent organisations form coalitions, why rebel alliances last longer than others is still understudied. I argue that alliances that develop power-sharing agreements and institutions last longer than simple military forms of cooperation. In this respect, the former are related to political goals, while the latter to instrumental goals. Moreover, contrary to interstate alliances, rebel groups have fewer constraints in defecting from the alliances. Against this backdrop, external shocks might push coalition members to defect from their alliances. In this respect, I argue that inclusive and balanced power-sharing agreements can resist external shocks. To test the argument, I use the most similar system design, comparing the case of the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian Democratic Forces in the Syrian conflict.
    
    Author: Edoardo Corradi (University of Genoa)
  - Action, Inaction, or Somewhere in Between? UN Peacekeepers and War Criminals
    
    How can we explain the varying ways in which UN peacekeepers respond to the presence of alleged war criminals in their mission areas? While public messaging by the UN has generally been clear on its commitment to principles of (criminal) accountability for atrocity crimes, its response in practice has often been more ambivalent. The realities of working in complex conflict zones with frequently shifting alliances, governments that are often as predatory as the armed groups they are fighting, and the challenges of peacemaking, all mean that it is difficult to be clear and consistent in avoiding association with human rights abusers and refusing to acquiesce in impunity. This paper seeks to explain the varying approaches that UN peacekeepers take towards alleged war criminals in their mission areas. It will test expectations derived from critical theorization on spoilers and labelling theories, which investigates the interaction between the categories being applied to armed groups accused of war crimes, and those doing the categorizing. As such, the paper looks at how the way that particular armed groups are labelled and categorized (‘recalcitrant’, ‘total spoiler’, ‘compliant armed group’, ‘criminal’, etc.) has an impact on the approach of UN peacekeepers towards alleged war criminals, but also how these categories are produced and may change over time. It will analyze this in the context of two case studies on the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): MONUC’s approach towards the Lord’s Resistance Army and MONUC/MONUSCO’s interactions with Bosco Ntaganda of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).
    
    Author: Tom Buitelaar (European University Institute)
  - Rebel Victory: A Research Agenda
    
    Civil war is a process of intense socio-political change. In instances of rebel victory, this process produces new political orders where former rebels occupy the seat of state power. Even though specific characteristics of postwar political orders have been the subject of vibrant scholarships, such as research on postwar stability, democratization, and authoritarianism, few attempts have been made to offer a comprehensive analytical framework that accounts for variation in the exercise of state power by rebel victors. In this paper, we identify the factors that explain the way power is wielded under rebel state rule. We argue that rebels’ exercise of power after victory is a function of legacies of civil war and legacies of the prior state. Within the context of a prewar political order, what takes place during the war generates opportunities and constraints for the different actors of an internal war. When rebels reach state power, prewar and wartime legacies interact to shape rebel victors’ use of state power. We build on four case studies that illustrate four different trajectories of rebel exercise of state power and pave the way for future research projects on rebel victory.
    
    Authors: Romain Malejacq (Radboud University) , Kai Thaler (University of California, Santa Barbara)* , Victor Bouemar (Radboud University)
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  07 Roundtable / Rethinking stabilisation and responding to transnational threats Room 103, Library
  Within policy circles, the conduct of stabilisation is evolving in light of Western withdrawal from and reflection on Afghanistan, as well as evolving dynamics surrounding the war in Ukraine. Geopolitical competition and polarisation are deepening, and there have been significant changes in the nature of violent conflict, along with a greater willingness of some global and regional powers to use military force to further their political interests. Western governments have long been working to stem threats from serious organised crime, terrorism, corruption, illicit finance, drugs trafficking and war economies as part of efforts to promote stability overseas and strengthen their own national security. Recently, however, a primary focus on insurgency, terrorism and violent extremism in stabilisation operations may be giving way to questions over how to respond to illicit finance, corruption, organised crime and disinformation, and their effects on stability in contexts where violence is increasing below the threshold of war. How potential responses to this wider range of transnational threats in stabilisation might contribute to reducing violence, (restoration of) security and peaceful political deal-making is not yet well understood.
  
  This roundtable offers an opportunity for exploring key issues under consideration within the policy and research communities working on stabilisation and related themes, in particular in relation to 'transnational threats' - with speakers and participants from policy, practice and research backgrounds with experience and expertise in a diverse range of geographic contexts as well as across a number of threat types.
  
  Key questions for panellists will include:
  
  How are 'transnational threats' evolving in relevant contexts today?
  
  What risks do these pose for stability, national security, human security and human rights?
  
  How are different actors working to address instability challenges related to transnational threats?
  
  What are we learning about their successes and failures?
  
  How can tackling transnational threats contribute to peaceful political deal-making?
  
  How can we better understand the costs associated with trying to tackle transnational threats in stabilisation contexts, including assessing potential tensions and trade-offs?
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Chair: Heather Marquette (University of Birmingham)
  
  Participants: Sarah Fares (Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime) , Emily Winterbotham (RUSI) , Larry Attree (Rethinking Security) , David Lewis (University of Exeter) , Aoife McCullough (London School of Economics) , Alexander Kolding Borum (European University Institute)
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  07 Panel / Status, Social Closure and Stratification in International Society Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: Marina Duque (University College London)
  
  Chair: Edward Keene
  - Do we still live in a great power world?
    
    There is a widespread assumption in international relations theory that the pre-eminent status group in the international order is a club of ‘great powers’. This belief underpins numerous theories about ‘status disequilibrium’ and the struggle for recognition among rising and falling powers. It depends on the premise that international order is stratified by a ‘grading of powers’, where status follows the distribution of material capability among actors. I ask whether that is an inevitable feature of all international orders. I begin by noting that most scholarship on the history of the great power system sees it as having had a distinct point of origin, although there are different views about when that was. That suggests that the existence of a high-ranking status-group of great powers cannot be taken for granted as an ahistorical phenomenon. Drawing on a conceptual framework of alternative modes of international social stratification, I ask which best approximates to contemporary world order, and I argue that difficulties in defining who is, or is not, a great power, suggest that the grading of powers is no longer the principal mode of stratification in contemporary world politics.
    
    Author: Edward Keene (University of Oxford)
  - Backlash Design: Historical Antecedents and the Origins of the League of Nations’ Institutional Design
    
    This paper explores the historical origins of the League of Nations' institutional design, which separated the membership into a great power-dominated council and a largely deliberative assembly. Neo-Weberian theories of social closure suggest that powerful states will institute ways of entrenching their privileged position. While these theories are well-placed to account for the emergence and consolidation of “legalized hierarchies” in international affairs, they cannot explain the specific arrangement that states chose to implement. Our study historicizes social closure research, showing how historical antecedents conditioned the negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference. More specifically, it demonstrates that the Anglo-American drafters of the League designed the organization in view of their experience with Latin American participation at The Second Hague Conference. The separation of the membership into council and assembly was a deliberate response against the participation of smaller states in international governance. Backlash design explains the institutional choice in 1919 and the tense compromise between great power privilege and inclusive multilateralism that continues to vex international politics to this day.
    
    Authors: Carsten-Andreas Schulz (University of Cambridge) , Tom Long (University of Warwick)*
  - Do Nuclear Weapons Confer Status?
    
    Highly destructive and relatively scarce, nuclear weapons seem like the quintessential status symbol. However, the relationship between nuclear weapons and status recognition remains relatively unexplored. In this chapter, I argue that state attributes matter for status recognition because of their symbolic value, which depends on the social context, rather than because of their intrinsic properties. High-status states typically act like standard-setters, shaping the criteria for status recognition in the international system; and as gatekeepers, shaping recognition decisions. Since the great powers colluded to stigmatize nuclear weapons in the 1960s and 1970s, I do not expect nuclearization to improve a country's standing. Using network analysis and the synthetic control method, I examine how nuclearization impacts the diplomatic recognition a country receives. My analysis shows that nuclearization had either a negative impact or no impact on the international recognition received by the countries that acquired nuclear weapons since 1970. Neither did nuclearization evoke recognition from the great powers more specifically during this period. In the eyes of the international community, the typical profile of a nuclearizing state nowadays seems to be that of a deviant—rather than exemplary—state.
    
    Author: Marina Duque (University College London)
  - The Production and Performance of Status: Behind the Scenes of an International Summit
    
    This paper examines how international summits are produced as status symbols, arguing that a host’s successful management of the event maintains summitry as a high-status practice, while hosting itself serves as a means to acquire status, owing to the complexity and risk involved. Drawing on elements of practice and performance theories, it articulates how and why status symbols can be understood as performative practices, reworking how Veblen is predominantly used in IR, shifting from a focus on conspicuous consumption to conspicuous performance, while adopting a more expansive conceptualisation of status symbols, as one finds in Goffman. Exploring the manipulability of summitry as a status symbol, the paper draws on an ethnography of the 2018 Charlevoix G7 summit, offering a ‘behind the scenes’ look at how a host produces a summit’s constitutive ‘showpiece moments’, zeroing-in on three key elements: a host’s scenario handbook, command centre, and media centre.
    
    Author: Tristen Naylor (University of Cambridge)
- 285
  07 Panel / The political economy of green energy transitions in an age of crises Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: Stanley Wilshire (University of Manchester)
  
  Chair: Matthew Paterson (University of Manchester)
  
  Discussant: Lukas Slothuus (University of Sussex)
  - The contradictions of decarbonising steel
    
    Steel, has a contradictory relationship to the climate catastrophe: it is both a key contributor to global warming, accounting for 7-9% of global carbon emissions, and a crucial material for decarbonisation, with steel constituting 80% of the components that make up wind turbines (Kim et al, 2022). Most attention has been paid to the technical difficulties of decarbonising this ‘hard to abate’ industry, such as the challenges of fitting steel mills with carbon capture technology or replacing basic oxygen and blast furnaces with hydrogen-based direct reduced iron and electric arc furnaces. There has been less focus on the International Political Economy of steel decarbonisation, particularly the question of how to muster an estimated $8-11 billion in extra annual investment in an industry wracked by cut-throat competition, overproduction, low capacity utilisation, and narrow profit margins (Mission Possible Partnership, 2022; OECD, 2023). This paper will situate the technical elements of the steel decarbonisation challenge within the historical dynamics of capital accumulation within the sector by tracing how current initiatives to green the production of steel – from China’s muscular industrial strategy to the EU’s blended finance projects – must navigate an industry that is mired in its latest cycle of overcapacity, crisis, and restructuring.
    
    Author: Jack Copley (University of Durham)
  - Destroying incumbent corporate power and pursuing just transitions: the troubling case of the UK coal phaseout
    
    The UK has produced one of the most fully realised energy transitions to date, with coal going from 70% to 2% of its electricity supply since 1990. The ability to produce this transition, with the knock-on effect of the particularly deep cuts in CO2 emissions in relative terms, was produced by the destruction of the incumbent power of the coal industry during the 1980s. While this was clearly a class project to destroy the power of the coal mining union, the NUM, it nevertheless also destroyed the power of any industrial actors defending coal. Later decisions to undermine coal – in the privatisation of electricity, in the design of the Climate Change Act, in the carbon price floor in the Emissions Trading Scheme, or in the final coal phaseout decision, were all made possible by this destruction of incumbent power. This raises the difficult dilemma for those pursuing just transitions – how might it be possible to challenge and undermine corporate power defending fossil fuels without destroying the livelihoods of workers and the communities that depend on them, when one of the only full transitions we know about was produced by the exact opposite.
    
    Author: Matthew Paterson (University of Manchester)
  - The Contradictions and Crisis of British Electricity Decarbonisation
    
    Between 2010 and 2022 the UK built 44.2 GW of renewable energy capacity, such that renewables now account for 41.5% of electricity generation (BEIS 2023). This transformation is puzzling for two reasons. In general, renewable energy has suffered from profitability problems compared to fossil fuel investments, making renewables relatively unattractive for private companies. Secondly, the British energy system has been heavily privatised, and companies have robust incentives to maximise their returns from existing assets rather than to invest in new technologies. How then has the British state worked to make renewable energy technologies into attractive investments? What have the socio-economic and socio-ecological implications of these strategies been? Should we ultimately understand this energy transition as emblematic of effective climate policy? I engage with these questions in two parts. Firstly, I critically examine the transformation of British electricity policy from the Climate Change Act in 2008 to the adoption of a net zero target in 2019. Secondly, I focus on how British electricity policy has entered a phase of crisis since 2022, as the governments new climate and energy policy programmes seem unable to deliver the UK’s climate targets under pressure from tightening carbon budgets, supply chain disruptions, inflation and rising interest rates.
    
    Author: Stanley Wilshire (University of Manchester)
  - Uneven Development of State Capacity for Governing Green Transitions: The Case of Denmark
    
    Governments around the world have developed national strategies for pursuing systemic reductions in carbon emissions. While some important research has explored the institutional, political economic, and normative factors that shape the matrix of initiatives that governments adopt, relatively little attention has been paid to what influences how governments organise internally to implement them – and with what consequences. The Danish government’s green transition objectives have been met with widespread acclaim internationally and within comparative indexes. Using public sector spending and employment data and interviews with 20 key informants, this paper explores how the Danish green transition bureaucracy has developed since the enactment of the 2020 Climate Act. It shows that bureaucratic state capacity for governing the green transition can be characterised by its unevenness across policy areas. It demonstrates this unevenness through a within-case comparison of three policy implementation areas that differ on the basis of implementation risks and economic interest convergence: CCS, PtX, and agricultural reform. It finds that the structural objectives of economic actors within the state produces unevenness of state capacity in green transition governance. The paper suggests that understanding the green transition implementation requires an account of how bureaucracies are shaped by their wider political economic context.
    
    Author: Rosie Collington (University College London)
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  07 Panel / War and the Earth Exec 9, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Conveners: Henry Redwood (King's College London) , Mark Griffiths (Newcastle University)
  
  Chair: Mark Griffiths (Newcastle University)
  - Concrete Impacts: Blast Walls, Wartime Emissions, and the US Occupation of Iraq
    
    Militaries around the world are a major source of carbon emissions, yet very little is known about their carbon footprint. Reliable data around military resource use and environmental damage is highly variable. Researchers are dependent upon military transparency, the context of military operations, and broader emissions reporting requirements between countries. While studies are beginning to emerge on global militaries and their carbon footprints, less work has focused on wartime emissions. In this paper, we examine one sliver of the hidden carbon emissions of late-modern warfare by focusing on the use of concrete ‘blast walls’ by U.S. forces in Baghdad over a five-year period (2003-2008). This study uses a Life Cycle Assessment to study one the world’s largest military carbon footprints of concrete, an infrastructural weapon in late-modern urban counterinsurgencies. Moving beyond dominant discourses on climate-security and ‘greening,’ we present one of the first studies to expose direct and indirect emissions resulting from combat.
    
    Author: Oliver Belcher (Durham University)
  - Historicizing Ecological Martial Violence
    
    Whilst an attention to war from the perspective of the Earth can direct us to the 'new', the 'accelerated', and the 'technologically advanced', this paper takes a historical view on war's ecological, climatic, and epidemiological effects, situating ecological martial violence within the establishment/maintenance of the colonial world system and coloniality. The paper is empirically grounded in extensive archival work on the 19th century activities of the British Army's Royal Corps of Engineers, and Army Service Corps (later amalgamated into the Royal Logistics Corps). It considers how the ecological martial violence of British military engineering and logistics was central to entwined projects of empire, conquest, colonial capitalism and the establishment of the colonial world system. Take, for instance, the Royal Engineers role in the founding of British Columbia in Canada, which involved the establishment of both literal and figurative infrastructures for extraction (minerals, timber, fossil fuels, agriculture, fisheries) through road building, surveying, and mapping. Or take the Army Service Corps' role in the South African/Boer War, in which aspects of the military doctrine of 'savage warfare' produced a denuded landscape unable to support human life. This war of logistics and resources was bound within global infrastructural circulations of colonial extraction, which saw - for instance - thousands of cattle farmed in South America shipped alive to South Africa to feed British forces. I consider how these histories inform our understanding of contemporary ecological martial violence, drawing on examples from the British Army's more recent engineering and logistical activities in Afghanistan.
    
    Author: Joanna Tidy (University of Sheffield)
  - War by Biodegradable Means? Towards a Political Ecology of Green Militarism
    
    Along the logic of less fuel, more fight – decarbonising defence to reduce emissions but not missions – military sectors across Europe and North America are presenting military practice as a driver of climate action and centring the arms industry as a guarantor of sustainable development. Yet the trend towards greening is paralleled by a recent historical upsurge in military spending, weapons production and the re-centralisation of military security in national security doctrines. Military sectors are both deepening their fossil fuel lock-in and increasing their reliance on mineral extraction to join the green energy transition – ever-intensifying war and militarism’s dependence on extractivism. Addressing this paradox, the folding of ecological action into military interests and praxis is being met with myriad forms of refusal, contestation and resistance. In this paper I capture the ongoing militarisation of ecological and social (eco-social) crises through the concept of green militarism. I interrogate the consequences of green militarism for eco-social justice and foreground its disruption by resistance movements tackling militarism, extractivism, colonialism and criminalisation as joint harms. Developing a political ecology of green militarism, I ask: which interests and relations are served by the militarisation of eco-social crises, and who/what comes to harm as a result?
    
    Author: Nico Edwards (University of Sussex)
  - AUKUS and Deterrence-by-Resilience: Whose Deterrence?
    
    Responding to strategic competition with China, the US has focused efforts on building minilateral vehicles of willing partners in the Pacific region, as part of its integrated deterrence strategy. At the sharpest end of US minilateralism is AUKUS, a security pact between Washington, Canberra and London. Although never officially articulated, it is widely understood that the objective at the heart of AUKUS is to contain China’s perceived expansionism. There is an implicit contribution to deterrence with China conceived as the adversary seeking to take unwanted actions. Amid a threat environment as dispersed, complex and maritime-centric as the Pacific, the AUKUS partners are developing not only classic deterrence focused on denial and punishment, but resilience strategies that emphasise proactively preparing for and adapting to risk. This requires the securing of supply chains, especially for critical minerals and strategic technologies. However, a careful analysis of US efforts to strengthen AUKUS supply chains (e.g., its critical minerals agreements, the Atlantic Declaration, and Australia and Britain’s designation as ‘domestic sources’ in the Defense Production Acts) reveals this is largely being driven by US protectionism, to shore up domestic industries like electronic vehicles. This begs the question, whose deterrence are US minilateral vehicles designed for?
    
    Author: Sarah Tzinieris (King's College London)
- 287
  07 Panel / Whose Nuclear Governance? New(er) Trends of Interpretive Scholarship in Understanding Nuclear Governance II (Agency Dimensions) Exec 10, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Interpretivism in International Relations Working Group
  
  Conveners: Stephan Engelkamp (King's College London) , Aniruddha Saha (University of Oxford)
  
  Chair: Aniruddha Saha (University of Oxford)
  - Nuclear Deterrence in Disguise? Condemnation of the Ukraine War and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons
    
    This paper critically examines discourse about nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine war. Drawing on scholarship that recognizes the influence of deterrence practices in the Russian-Ukraine conflict, it investigates parallel sites where deterrence messaging is reinforced. It primarily investigates political discourse and diplomatic narratives, including narratives that do not explicitly contain nuclear references. Using a feminist poststructuralist lens, I examine how discourses that condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reinforce deterrence signalling and the nuclear status quo. I expand on existing understandings of nuclear deterrence as a rationalistic framework based on military capacities and relations. Feminist poststructuralist theory can illustrate how nuclear deterrence signalling works through an emotional language about “nuclear responsibility.” The paper investigates whether this parallel discourse about responsible nuclear possessors operates as deterrence in disguise. Deterrence may not simply be about material capabilities, but rests upon supporting discourses that reinforce dominant knowledge about weapons, nuclear possessors, and global norms about nuclear responsibility that contribute to existing nuclear power dynamics in international relations.
    
    Author: Carolina Pantoliano Panico (University of Auckland)
  - “The World Could No Longer Remain Complacent:” The Construction of the Humanitarian Initiative and Resistance to the Nuclear Order
    
    The emergence of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has stirred considerable controversy, often viewed as a reclamation of agency and resistance to an unjust nuclear order. This paper analyses how the construction of the Humanitarian Initiative, the coalition of civil society and nonnuclear weapon states that drove the emergence of the TPNW, produced resistance to the normative and structural status quo of the nuclear order, more specifically, to hegemonic nuclearism. Drawing on Social Movements Theory, the paper argues that resistance gained salience and actors were mobilised for collective action as the Humanitarian Initiative (re-)negotiated (entrenched) meanings about the nuclear order. Using discourse analysis, the paper argues that three processes facilitated resistance: the creation of a collective identity, demarcation from other actors, and the construction of a scope for collective action. Through identification, the Humanitarian Initiative created a resonance chamber for normative debates enabling shifts in interpretive frames. Drawing boundaries led to greater distinctiveness between the initiative and other actors, thereby fostering “antagonistic” interactions. Constructing a sense of urgency, necessity and possibility altered the initiative’s situational analysis and provided a source for mobilisation. These processes aligned the Humanitarian Initiative’s positions, creating a conducive context for mobilisation.
    
    Author: Jana Baldus (Peace Research Institute Frankfurt)
  - Europe’s (Un)Challenged Nuclear Narratives - Introducing A Critical Feminist Perspective
    
    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raises a plethora of questions regarding the (nuclear) European security architecture. Considering Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons and its attempt to undermine the current nuclear order, the importance of the nuclear aspect to the war is evident. We therefore ask what impact does Russia’s war against Ukraine have on EU perceptions of nuclear security? Hence, we seek to determine the extent to which Russia’s challenge to the nuclear taboo is met with the presence or absence of “traditional” narratives on nuclear weapons. Adopting a poststructuralist and critical feminist lens, we conduct a critical discourse analysis of EU-level official discourse. Doing so, this paper’s aim is threefold: we trace traditional nuclear narratives, reflect on the absence of (alternative) nuclear narratives, and seek to explain the silencing of the latter. The EU represents a particularly interesting discursive arena as it combines multiple nuclear perspectives (nuclear, non-nuclear and nuclear host states) and has presented itself as pursuing to actively shape international nuclear order (e.g., in the Iran nuclear deal). Our analysis begins shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine and extends until the end of 2023. As the war is ongoing, we acknowledge our limitation of only being able to analyse how the EU’s discourse has evolved so far. First findings indicate that the narrative of security through deterrence is strengthened, keeping the dominance of gendered, traditional nuclear narratives unchallenged.
    
    Authors: Sandra Bandemer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)* , Lena Wittenfeld (University of Bielefeld)
  - Worldviews, Mindsets, and Trust: A Cognitive Framework for Why Countries Establish Non-Nuclear or Deterrence-Based Security Orders
    
    Why and how do states establish non-nuclear or deterrence-based orders? This paper addresses this question by delving into the dynamics influencing state decisions to accept or reject nuclear deterrence, with a focus on the Global South. We explore how a trust mindset can ground stable non-nuclear weapons security orders, in contrast with a distrust mindset prevailing in deterrence-based security orders. The concept of trust is understood as a “leap of faith” in an environment “where betrayal is always a possibility.” This “leap of faith” is both cognitive-driven and context-dependent. To assess both features, we developed a three-level analytical framework, examining contextual, cognitive, and operative elements of security orders. To apply our model, we analyse developments in Latin America and South Asia from the 1960s to the early 2000s, highlighting their distinct paths in rejecting and adopting nuclear deterrence. Methodologically, we combine historical analysis, process tracing, document research, and interviews. In the concluding section, we offer a comparative analysis of both regions and suggest avenues for future research.
    
    Authors: Leonardo Bandarra (Institute of Political Science, University of Duisburg-Essen) , Carmen Wunderlich (Institute of Political Science, University of Duisburg-Essen)
- 14:45
  
  15 minute transition
- 14:45
  
  Refreshment break Hyatt Hotel
  
  Hyatt Hotel
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  07 Roundtable / Academic freedom in the teaching, learning and research of Politics and IR Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  Cancel culture has had a chilling effect on Universities the world over. Students and Universities alike suffer from a loss of viewpoint diversity. Students are no longer taught the greatest range of possible viewpoints and often (e.g., in essay feedback) castigated for controversial views by politics teaching staff. Universities, in turn, are at risk of losing credibility. Instead of being in John Tomasi’s words ‘gardens of knowledge’, they are rendered bastions of groupthink.
  
  Academics too suffer the effects of academic unfreedom. Many self-censor afraid to lose a job that pays for a mortgage and dependants. International relations scholars are concerned with the state of academic freedom nationally and internationally, and the interaction between them. International relations scholars or students may conduct archival or field work in other countries or find their research or teaching on other countries may also become subject to external interference.
  
  In this roundtable we explore how these issues have affected teaching, learning and research in International Relations and Politics. A major aim of this roundtable is to bring greater prominence to how to tackle academic unfreedom to the IR community. This is considered necessary because IR scholars are underrepresented in a range of action groups, including the LSE’s academic freedom network and the Committee on Academic Freedom. The roundtable brings together a range of individuals active on academic freedom as well as students of IR/Security Studies. How has cancel culture affected you in your teaching, learning and research? What, if any, coping mechanisms/strategies have you developed? How, if at all, should your University position itself on conflicts (Gaza, Ukraine etc)? These are just some of the questions the roundtable will address.
  
  Sponsor: Learning and Teaching Working Group
  
  Chair: Jonathan Pettifer (University of Birmingham)
  
  Participants: Brendan Simms (University of Cambridge) , Chris Brown (LSE) , Vanessa Pupavac (University of Nottingham) , Daniel Rogers (University of Birmingham) , Edward Howell (University of Oxford) , Rita Floyd (University of Birmingham)
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  07 Panel / Contesting Empire in the Contemporary Global Order Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: CPD Working group
  
  Chair: Sharri Plonski (Queen Mary University of London)
  - Teaching international relations with(in) racial capitalism: experience from the classroom
    
    This presentation offers an analysis of the concept of racial capitalism (Robinson 1983; Bhattacharyya 2018) as an epistemic and pedagogical tool that can contribute to the development of an anti-racist space inside the international relations classroom. It is based on an autoethnographic approach (Reed-Danahay 1997; Roz Camangian, Philoxene and Omotoso Stovall 2023), and reports on a course experiment conducted during Spring 2023 and Fall 2024, around a podcast project by a group of students on an introductory course in international relations in a Belgian university.
    The research examines the pedagogical and heuristic relevance of teaching racial capitalism approaches, coupled with post-colonial and decolonial approaches, in international relations courses. In a context where the university itself is an institution embedded in the structures of racial capitalism (Gerrard, Sriprakash & Rudolph 2022), it links the importance of teaching these concepts with the necessary evolution in teaching practices themselves in order to promote an anti-racist climate in the classroom and to enable students to understand the power relations of racial capitalism and to experience the importance of experiential and subaltern knowledge in challenging these power relations (bell hooks 1994).
    
    Author: Leila Mouhib (ULB)
  - Challenging Transformation: Reparative Justice in the former Metropoles of Colonialism
    
    As part of my doctoral research project that analyses the role of reparative justice for struggles in former metropoles of colonialism, this paper seeks to critically engage with both liberal and anti-colonial understandings of historical justice in international studies. Transitional Justice, formed in the heyday of global justice and human rights as an almost universal tool of conflict transformation, is now evolving into a possible analytical tool for postcolonial justice in the Global North. I argue that while the evolution of this current “transformative turn” fosters e.g., Young’s influential model of forward-looking social connectivity, long-lasting campaigns of anti-colonial movements seek justice through more backward-looking lenses of liability. In my case study, the reparations movement in the UK, this poses questions about power of knowledge production in political decision making. Based on data collected during fieldwork in April, May and October 2023 in London and Bristol, this paper seeks to emphasise activists’ views on reparations after colonialism and enslavement. As an interpretative reflection on the multifaceted range of data, from interviews and observations to archival documents, but also on the process of provincializing my own initial biases, this paper aims to encourage discussion of the complex ambiguities of historical justice in face of global crises and hegemonies of knowledge in international studies.
    
    Author: Laura Kotzur (Freie Universität Berlin)
  - Not in our name: An Ontological Security Interpretation of Non-Alignment in the Ukrainian war.
    
    The stance of a significant group of postcolonial states in the so-called Global South on the Russian invasion of Ukraine have diverged from, and in some cases directly antagonised, the positions taken by the United States and the European Union. I contend in this paper that these disparities are partially underpinned by the long-standing affiliation of some of these states with a particular notion of non-alignment that has been re-signified in the context of the conflict in Ukraine. I claim that this affiliation with non-alignment has over the years provided postcolonial states with a sense of common purpose and ontological security. This was done through a set of institutionalised practices and narratives anchored on principles such as autonomy, anti-Western colonialism and equality that provided them with a sense of identity and in-group belonging in the unstable context of the Cold War conflict and beyond. The central claim therefore is that these states’ positions are not necessarily related to developments in the war itself, and the undeniable fact of Russia’s aggression and clear violation of international law. Instead, they are rooted in a longstanding sense of ontological (in)security and historical resentment towards the exclusions and hierarchies of the Western-led international order.
    
    Author: Marco Vieira (University of Birmingham)
  - British Foreign Relations Through a Decolonial Lens: Towards a New Research Agenda
    
    The decolonial turn in International Relations scholarship constitutes a major development in the field, one whose insights can be usefully applied to research on British foreign relations. Decolonial work in academia often involves the critique and attempted unmaking of colonial legacies in existing, mainstream scholarship and epistemologies. But equally, this mode of critique also implies a positive approach for generating new empirical analysis. Analysing the UK’s role in the world through a decolonial lens, for example, can open up fruitful new terrain for critical scholars in IR.
    
    This paper makes the case for a new, decolonial research agenda on British foreign relations. Such scholarship would situate the UK’s current foreign relations squarely within the historical legacy of the British empire. It would explore the ways in which the colonial legacy has helped to structure Britain’s current position in the world system, in political-economic terms, and also shaped the dominant ideology and subjectivities around British foreign policy. Rather than centreing Whitehall decisionmakers, their interests and their priorities, it would centre the impact that the exertion of British power has on the peoples of the Global South. This paper will demonstrate what such scholarship might look like through the worked example of UK relations with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Monarchies, particularly with regard to the war in Yemen.
    
    Author: David Wearing (University of Sussex)
- 290
  
  07 Roundtable / Critical Studies on Terrorism Special Issue Roundtable: Abolition, Decoloniality, and Criticality: Can Critical Terrorism Studies remain “critical”? Soprano, Hyatt
  
  This roundtable brings together the co-editors and contributors of a forthcoming Special Issue in Critical Studies on Terrorism entitled Abolition, Decoloniality, and Criticality: Can Critical Terrorism Studies remain “critical”?. This special issue interrogates what it means to be ‘critical’ when we study ‘terrorism’ in the modern-colonial world. Amidst a current decolonial turn, interrogating how we study ‘terrorism’, a concept deeply embedded and entrenched in racial, gendered, and colonial structures, becomes all the more important and urgent. Whilst the field of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) has spearheaded the critical study of terrorism, recent scholarship in both ‘critical’ as well as more orthodox approaches to ‘Terrorism Studies’ continues to perpetuate some of the same harmful biases and tropes that CTS originally sought to challenge and do away with. Discussing the challenges and possibilities of abolitionist, decolonial, and postcolonial approaches, as well as the overarching question of ‘criticality’ in CTS, the question of ‘where does CTS go next?’ is central to this project. This roundtable would bring together some of the contributors to the Special Issue who lead a major intervention in response to this central question, and to the values and priorities we believe should be at the heart of a truly ‘critical’ study of terrorism that contests global sites of power and knowledge production.
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Chair: Rabea Khan (Liverpool John Moores University)
  
  Participants: Anna Meier (University of Nottingham) , Rabea Khan (Liverpool John Moores University) , Amal Abu-Bakare (University of Liverppol) , Hannah Wright (Queen Mary University of London) , Laura Sjoberg (Royal Holloway, University of London) , Kodili Chukwuma (Durham University)
- 291
  07 Panel / Digital Geopolitics: Rising Powers and International Institutions Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: International Studies and Emerging Technologies Working Group
  
  Convener: ISET
  
  Chair: Ciaran Gillespie (University of Surrey)
  - What does China want
    
    In the last few years, the intensifying great power rivalry between the United States and China has arguably become a structural feature in international relations. Encompassing both economic and security issues, the Sino-American competition has recently turned its attention to the technological realm. China has demonstrated it can rapidly advance its ability to both manufacture and develop cutting-edge technologies, from artificial intelligence to information and communication technologies. China’s rise as a tech superpower has alerted many countries across the globe, especially US allies, prompting fears over Beijing’s true long-term ambitions on the international stage. Yet, despite much speculation, the drivers and goals of China’s rising technological prowess have not been systematically investigated: this paper seeks to fill in the gap and examine why China intends to become a tech superpower. Framed through the lenses of grand strategy with an emphasis on the role of strategic ideas, this paper aims to assess the objectives behind China’s technological ambitions and argues that for Beijing technology represents simultaneously a status-seeking, a security-seeking, and an influence-seeking instrument of power.
    
    Author: Ludovica Meacci (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
  - Private rules and public obligations: geopolitics and data sovereignty in the semiconductor industry
    
    The purpose of this paper is to explore an area that has so far received little attention in the data sovereignty debate, namely the impact of the EU’s digital sovereignty agenda upon private rules and processes for data sharing in the context of the semiconductor supply chain. Many providers of semiconductor related facilities such as lithography have very complex supply chains that involve the transfer of sensitive commercial data, which may also be stored on cloud services. While much of the data sovereignty literature has focused upon the GDPR and the transfer of data that contains personal information about EU citizens, the consideration of commercial data has predominantly been considered in terms of intellectual property rights and trade secrecy. However, with the digital sovereignty agenda has come an EU concern over how data is transferred, processed, and stored in the context of concerns over the role of actors such as the US and China in cyberspace. This article will consider the changes brought about by the EU’s Data Act and cloud service regulation, in order to consider how systems such as the EU Cloud Certification Scheme are impacting upon the private sector actors operating within the context of the EU’s digital sovereignty agenda.
    
    Authors: Ben Farrand (Newcastle University) , Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University)
  - Unpacking China’s roles in the governance of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapon systems
    
    The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) and its integration into autonomous weapon systems (AWS) underscores a compelling necessity for the international community to establish collective regulations and principles governing this emerging issue. Despite this imperative, China has adopted a reluctant stance, refraining from assuming a leadership role as a norm entrepreneur to advocate for new norms and rules in this domain. China’s hesitancy is particularly puzzling, given its status as a technologically advanced state in AI, its active contestation of liberal principles and Western normative leadership in global governance, and its self-designation as a responsible great power.
    
    This research aims to explore why and how China displays hesitancy in formulating new norms and rules for the international regulation of AWS. The analysis focuses on the influence of domestic-international interactions on China’s hesitant stance towards global norm-making on AWS. Although recent studies acknowledge that China’s position on international principles is shaped by various domestic actors, they primarily concentrate on these actors’ practices within the domestic sphere but do not examine their interactions with foreign actors in transnational realms. To address this issue and deepen the understanding of the formulation of China’s reluctance in norm entrepreneurship, this paper examines the practices and interactions between key Chinese actors and their foreign counterparts at the domestic, regional, and international levels. The study draws on elite interviews and content analysis of Chinese and English language documents.
    
    Author: Qiaochu Zhang (University of Manchester)
  - Policy Diffusion and Cyber Governance: A Comparative Look at the EU's GDPR and China's PIPL
    
    The global debate on cyber governance largely hinges upon the distinctions made between the multi-stakeholder model supported by the U.S. and its allies and the multilateral approach favoured by China and Russia (Cai 2018). While there is significant research on the clear differences between these two models, less is known about conceptual points of overlap between them when they are put into practice and why these similarities exist. In this way, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and China’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) offer a novel opportunity for understanding the intersections of and diversions between different approaches to cyber governance, as the two laws share many similarities, despite also having key differences. As such, this research utilises a policy diffusion framework and learnings from Shipan and Volden’s (2008) ideas on the four mechanisms of policy diffusion to compare the EU’s GDPR and China’s PIPL. It looks at patterns between ideas about personal information protection between the EU and China and considers at what point(s) governments intervene in order to protect personal and sensitive data.
    
    Author: Sarah Jeu (University of Nottingham)
- 292
  07 Panel / Everyday Security: Countering Radicalisation in Ordinary Spaces Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Critical Studies on Terrorism Working Group
  
  Convener: Carl Gibson (University of Nottingham)
  
  Chair: Carl Gibson (University of Nottingham)
  
  Discussant: Carl Gibson (University of Nottingham)
  - Between Orthodoxy and Criticality: Mapping UK Terrorism Studies Educators' Paradigmatic Perspectives
    
    Since its inception in the early 1970s, the field of Terrorism Studies has been largely shaped by orthodox perspectives. Until 2007, scholarly discussions on this phenomenon were primarily confined to two peer-reviewed journals, namely Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and Terrorism and Political Violence. While significant advancements have been made, the substantial resources invested in Orthodox Terrorism Studies (OTS) have failed to address all existing gaps in the field. In this context, a paradigmatic shift occurred with the emergence of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS). This alternative approach challenged various aspects of OTS, including its methodological and analytical limitations. Furthermore, CTS criticised OTS for its overemphasis on non-state terrorism, which often aligned with the agendas of nation-states, while neglecting the issue of state terrorism. Such criticisms led to the establishment of the peer-reviewed journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism. The clash between OTS and CTS has manifested not only in research but also in everyday spaces, such as classrooms. This paper aims to analyse the syllabuses developed by UK-based Terrorism Studies educators to assess whether the OTS-CTS dichotomy is reflected in their teaching approaches.
    
    Authors: João Raphael da Silva (UWE Bristol) , Raquel Silva (ISCTE-IUL)
  - Everyday Experiences of Counter-radicalisation at the Periphery
    
    The 2015 introduction of a key strand of Britain’s counter-radicalisation strategy (the Prevent Duty) imposed responsibilities on a range of public sector workers across the United Kingdom. In response, a burgeoning literature has emerged to consider the impact this has on a range of sectors including healthcare, education and social work. Within this literature, a series of concerns about the creation of new sites of surveillance and the chilling of speech were shared, based on both conceptual reflections of the policy and fieldwork with those impacted. Yet, the existing literature has largely focused on Prevent in urban settings, with little attention paid to everyday experiences of Prevent in more remote, rural and island communities where concerns about extremism or terrorism may be less pronounced. This paper draws on fieldwork about the Prevent Duty in the Scottish Highlands and Islands to reflect on a range of experiences of Prevent Delivery, examining the extent to which vast responsibilities fall on individual actors due to the smaller footprint of the state in these areas, and the impact that low case numbers has on day-to-day engagement and feelings of preparedness. The paper concludes by reflecting on frontline views of Prevent and the appropriateness of the existing Prevent Duty in these settings.
    
    Author: Nick Brooke (University of St Andrews)
  - “Vernacular vulnerability” and the Prevent duty in UK Higher Education
    
    The UK Government defines vulnerability to radicalisation as, ‘the process by which a person comes to support terrorism and extremist ideologies associated with terrorist groups’ (Home Office, 2021). Given this relationship between radicalisation and terrorism the UK Government views disrupting this process as vital for national security and in 2015 passed legislation designed to enhance the national capacity to pre-emptively identify people vulnerable to radicalisation by co-opting frontline public sector workers in fields such as health and education. This new public sector responsibility (‘the Prevent duty’) has seen an unprecedented monitoring of citizen’s behaviours based on a relationship between vulnerability, radicalisation and terrorism that is far from concrete. Despite uncertainties and unknowns, the Prevent duty is presented as a clear and actionable framework designed to support frontline workers identify vulnerability and report cases of concern. In the context of a tension between what is known/unknown about vulnerability to radicalisation and the existent legal requirements this paper adopts a vernacular approach to present findings from focus groups and interviews with university students and staff about their comprehension, experiences and evaluations of vulnerability and Prevent. In so doing we approach these insights as valuable (but oft neglected) instances of “everyday” security knowledge and argue that these insights are even more valuable in the context of a duty that directly co opts these populations as counter-radicalisation practitioners and subjects. Our paper argues that inextricable conceptual dilemmas, operational impracticalities, and concerns combine to leave the duty ambiguous and ineffective in UK Higher Education.
    
    Author: Andrew Whiting (Royal Holloway)
  - Enactors of the State: The everyday coproduction of security in the prevention of radicalisation
    
    Since 2001, studies of (counter)terrorism and (counter)radicalisation have burgeoned. However, at times, these literatures have reduced the agency of ordinary citizens, imagining them as ‘actors of the state’ and ‘petty sovereigns’. By integrating vernacular security approaches with allied research in Education, we develop a novel ontological conceptualisation of ordinary citizens as ‘enactors of the state’, engaged in the everyday coproduction of security. The article presents the findings of a survey, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observations, conducted in Manchester’s Further Education sector, following the 2017 Arena attack. We capture the security enactments of ninety-five elites, professionals, teachers, and students. Our data reveals the complex interactions and assemblages at the heart of security’s everyday coproduction. Contra extant analyses, we show how this creative dynamic operates through citizens’ variegated imbrications with state policy, complex relationalities, and subtle nuances in everyday enactment.
    
    Authors: Natalie Higham-James (University of York) , Jack Holland (University of Leeds)
- 293
  
  07 Roundtable / Foreign Policy Analysis Challenges in South America: Links and gaps between theory and practice Boardroom, The Exchange
  
  Political dynamics in South America are complex and imply constant polarization and extreme shifts. In this context, teaching, learning, and making foreign policy decisions show the need of wider tools to address multilevel challenges. There is an increasing number of IR graduates that access leading political positions. However, there is not a strong relation between academia and governments yet, in a region where other actors such as military forces or even the private sector have more influence in foreign policy decision making. Additionally, the analytical tools themselves, being based mostly in cases from the Global North, seem far from the local reality, which make urgent the proliferation of analysis from local perspectives.
  This roundtable aims to discuss the situation of Foreign Policy Analysis in the region and to what extent there is a real link between theory and practice, as well as the possible ways of overcoming the existing gaps, which in turn make FPA contributions to decision making effective and relevant.
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Chair: Raul Salgado Espinoza
  
  Participants: Raul Salgado Espinoza , Daniela Barreiro (FLACSO Ecuador) , Natalia Encalada (Universidad Internacional del Ecuador) , Participant to be confirmed
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  07 Panel / Gendered approaches to peacebuilding policy and practice Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: PKPBG Working group
  
  Chair: Georgina Holmes (The Open University)
  - Barriers to Prevention: Understanding Peacekeeper Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
    
    Peacekeeper sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) is rife throughout peacekeeping operations (PKOs). The neo-liberal world order positions what Audre Lorde (1980) refers to as the ‘mythical norm’ as the standard to which others are to meet. Typically, the set standard is white, young, heterosexual, and financially secure men (Lorde 1980). Peacekeeping actively reinforces the mythical norm by placing male peacekeepers in positions of power over local women and girls during PKOs, perpetuating a patriarchal hierarchy of protector/protected (Gunnarsson 2015; Jennings 2019).
    The current way that peacekeeping works is failing to protect women. In order to fully understand why SEA continues and begin to look to future prevention, we must understand the broad spectrum of how, where, and when SEA occurs. My paper examines the limitations of peacekeeping practices and proposes a feminist postcolonial theoretical framework using the continuum of violence to understand interconnected nature of peacekeeper SEA, helping to improve prevention and end abuse.
    
    Sources
    
    Gunnarsson, H. 2015. Accountability of the UN and Peacekeepers: A Focus Study on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. SOAS Law Journal. 2(1), pp.207–229.
    Jennings, K.M. 2019. Conditional Protection? Sex, Gender, and Discourse in UN Peacekeeping. International Studies Quarterly. 63, pp.30–42.
    Lorde, A. 1980. Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference. Talk delivered at Amherst College.
    
    Author: Emily Gee (University of Leeds)
  - Rethinking Legitimate Expertise in Peace Governance: what fields and feminists might offer
    
    Increasing global attention to the value and necessity of including youth in responding to violence and building peace has been formalised through the establishment of the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda since 2015. For youth, a constituency that has long been characterised as apathetic at best, and dangerous at worst, claims to the benefit of including their voices have been often ignored. Centering youth as knowledge bearers, as having expertise about their own lives and contexts, poses a challenge to institutions that are often slow to recognise new sites of expertise and to change practices.
    
    This paper conceptualises the notion of ‘expertise’ critically to ask which practices are allowed to be expertise, and whose expertise is seen as legitimate on YPS. To do this, I draw on in-depth interviews and more than 250 hours of participant observation with youth and adult advocates working on the YPS agenda to develop a notion of a ‘youth-oriented peacebuilding field’. This uses Bourdieu’s notions of field and habitus, and locates this work within the extensive existing feminist scholarship on what it means to pay attention to constituencies that are marginalised or excluded in global politics. A relational account, drawn from both feminist and Bourdieusian approaches, enables me to see not only what is seen as expertise, but how this comes to be. Revealing the tensions in the field as a site of struggle makes visible new relationships and new possibilities for global peace governance more broadly.
    
    Author: Helen Berents (Griffith University)
  - Critical Feminist Intervention in International Peace studies : A case of Sri Lanka
    
    The global understanding of Peace has evolved beyond mere violence cessation to include progressive development, reconciliation, and rehabilitation. However, the determination of whose voice defines Peace remains unexplored, particularly in the Global South, exemplified in Sri Lanka. This research critically evaluates post-war Peace representation.
    The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), rooted in Left-revolutionary politics, initially sought a separate land for Sri Lanka's oppressed Tamil minority. Evolving into an ethno-nationalist-centralized movement, the LTTE employed violence for Tamil liberation. Responding, Sri Lanka's government adopted a militant approach, supported internationally, aiming to militarily eliminate the LTTE and sustain Peace through extensive development policies.
    Focusing on this, the research addresses why liberal peace agents overlook the Peace perspective of former LTTE combatants. Two research questions explore former combatants' perceptions of Liberal Peacebuilding's social reality in Sri Lanka and their post-civil war political consciousness for Peace.
    The theoretical foundation rests on Sheila Rowbotham's feminist scholarship, extending insights into power dynamics with new dimensions of ethnicity and state-assigned identity.
    Grounded in qualitative data, the research collected empirical data from 15 former LTTE combatants in London, using semi-structured interviews and ethnomethodology. Political event participation, including the 'Mullivaikkla' commemoration and 'Gota-Go-Home' event in 2022, deepened understanding of dissent against the former President's policies.
    In conclusion, this research asserts inter-sectionalities of ethnicity, gender, class, and state-assigned identity play a crucial role in shaping, representing, and recognizing political consciousness of Peace. International studies rarely focus on these inter-sectionalities, especially new dimensions of ethnicity and state-assigned identity.
    
    Author: Aruni Samarakoon (University of Hull)
  - Queering WPS: Critical Views and Reflections from UN Peacekeepers and UN Gender Advisors
    
    The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda is underpinned by a suite of United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR), which each frame the UN goal of gendering peace and security as a conflation with the rights and wellbeing of women and girls. As a result of this, WPS is based on a binary and heteronormative understanding of gender – omitting diverse sexual orientations and gender identities (diverse SOGIE) from UN Peace Support Operations (PSOs). Critiques of WPS from a queer perspective suggest this is problematic in relation to realising a gender-just peace.
    
    This paper presents research on the effects of the current WPS approach to understanding gender in PSOs through interviews with UN Peacekeepers and UN Gender Advisors operating within the Irish Defence Forces (IDF). The paper sheds light on (1) how WPS is conceptualised and operationalised by UN stakeholders from the IDF, and (2) whether diverse SOGIE inclusion is ever a part of WPS policy when translated into the field. The results underpin the queer critique that diverse SOGIE voices are marginalised in current WPS approaches, while opening up space to consider how a more inclusive approach to gendering peace can be realised.
    
    Author: Alexandra Richardson (Trinity College Dublin, University of Ireland)
  - Navigating the Intersections: Indigenous Women, Conflict, and Environmental Security in Central India within the WPS Agenda
    
    This article investigates the critical intersection of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda with environmental concerns in Central India, focusing on the experiences of indigenous women in states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Odisha. Against the backdrop of limited academic and policy attention, this research scrutinizes the complexities arising from the confluence of patriarchal societal norms, state-sponsored environmental exploitation, and the resultant impact on women’s security.
    In India, despite accolades for contributions to UN peacekeeping missions, the absence of a National Action Plan (NAP) for WPS and a failure to integrate WPS goals into national policies underscore a crucial gap. The study sheds light on how governmental categorization of conflict areas as 'disturbed' amplifies challenges faced by women and sidelines mainstream women's groups from engagement in conflict zones. Facing arrests, assaults, and prolonged detentions, women in these conflict-affected regions confront disproportionate hardships.
    Moreover, the article delineates the intricacies of women-led resistance against environmental degradation, particularly in the context of the contentious mining activities in Chhattisgarh. The adverse impacts of mining, such as displacement, unemployment, and health concerns, disproportionately affect indigenous women, further exacerbated by state-sponsored coercion and violence.
    The article underscores India's conflicting climate commitments and coal-centric policies, resulting in suppression of dissent and repression against Adivasi activists.
    
    Author: Bulbul Prakash (University of Manchester)
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  07 Conference event / Meet the editors - Speed networking session Sonata, Hyatt
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  07 Panel / New Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century International Order Exec 6, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: Edward Keene (University of Oxford)
  
  Chair: Carsten-Andreas Schulz (University of Cambridge)
  - Imperial Expansion and Global Order in the Nineteenth Century Pacific
    
    How do international systems expand and change? And why did the imperial system of the nineteenth century achieve near-global reach by the end of the century? By looking at the specific case of imperial expansion in the Pacific Ocean, this paper seeks to shed light on at least part of this puzzle. Through an investigation of the colonization of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi and of the Samoan Islands, I argue that systemic expansion was in large part driven by networks of actors who were often only indirect agents of empire. While groups of missionaries, planters, and speculators were drawing empire into the Pacific, local actors did their best to forestall, exploit, or adapt to the presence of empire in the region, through a host of reforms and innovative practices. These two dynamics – of privately-driven colonization and of local adaptation or innovation – were central to shaping both the regional order of the Asia-Pacific and the globalizing international system of the mid to late nineteenth century. They also shed light on the broader workings of international systems, historically and otherwise.
    
    Author: Jeppe Mulich (City University of London)
  - Crisis Ordering: Sovereignty and Hierarchy at the International Sanitary Conferences
    
    How do crisis responses by international organisations (IOs) affect global order? Many scholars agree that IOs not only perceive but also construct crises—from financial collapse to hurricanes, armed insurrection to pandemics—in order to formulate adequate responses and interventions. Determining or claiming which problem underlies a given crisis, and which solution is available to address it, has consequences for IO action capacity and legitimacy. How this affects the structure of global order is less clear. In this article I conceptualise the latter as crisis ordering. A practice-tracing study of the International Sanitary Conferences (ISCs), predecessors of the World Health Organisation, shows how crisis ordering passes through three stages: construction, capture, and configuration. Based on archival research, I show these at work during two formative ISCs—in 1866 and 1892—at which cholera was constructed as an “Oriental threat” to Europe. A crisis ordering lens reveals that health governance was not merely responsive as a functional bargain; nor simply reflective of broader conditions of global order at the time. Foregrounding the roles of the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Egypt I show that instead it was productive of new vectors of hierarchy: sanitary competence rankings; uneven distributions of blame and burden; and a geography of containment zones. Crisis ordering, in sum, is a key mechanism through which crisis responses leave identifiable traces in the sediment of global order, and captures what happens when crisis constructions are sustained over the long term.
    
    Author: Jan Eijking (University of Oxford)
  - Mapping the Interpolity System of the Nineteenth Century, 1815-1914
    
    This paper attempts to bring together IR theory, global history and relational sociology to develop a new way of conceptualising international order in the nineteenth century. It starts by looking at how IR theorists have empirically conceptualised the ‘international system’ in this period, particularly in the Correlates of War project and the International System(s) Datasets. They suffer from problems involved in how to define the system’s boundary, and how to classify different kinds of system member, because they rely on a notion of the system’s members as territorially sovereign states, which offers a distorted picture of a world where international relations were not exclusively organised around this principle. Instead, borrowing a term from global historians such as Lauren Benton, I argue that we should think of the nineteenth-century world in terms of an ‘interpolity system’. To begin mapping an outline of this system, I look at global patterns of treaty-making activity throughout the period, and use these to develop a series of conjectures about regional and chronological variations in the nineteenth-century interpolity system. I conclude by asking how the concept of an ‘interpolity system’ might be extended both backwards and forwards in time.
    
    Author: Edward Keene (University of Oxford)
  - Sovereignty, Statehood and Membership of International Organisations in the 19th Century
    
    In the 20th century membership of intergovernmental organisations (IOs), in particular the United Nations, became a widely accepted proxy for sovereign statehood. One of the defining characteristics of IOs today is that they have sovereign states as members, therefore its members must be sovereign states. Yet historically this relationship between statehood and IO membership is far from straightforward. 19th century IOs routinely admitted colonies and so-called semi-sovereign states to full membership alongside sovereign states. This paper seeks to map the extent of this phenomenon up to WW2 based on a new (partial) dataset. Which IOs admitted non-sovereign members? Who were these non-sovereign members? The paper adds to recent literature which demonstrates that the international order in the 19th century was far more complex than portrayed by the simplistic IR narrative of European expansion. A number of polities both inside and outside Europe were allowed to take part in international negotiations, regardless of their formal sovereign status, indicating a more inclusive international order than previously assumed.
    
    Author: Ellen Ravndal (University of Stavanger)
  - Practicing Law, Governing Difference: Multi-Centric Legal Orders in the Indian Subcontinent
    
    The immediate decades prior to 1858 present a peculiar liminal period in South Asia during which the Mughal Empire, East India Company (EIC), and British Crown coexisted in a hybridised international order. Against this backdrop, this paper utilises the emerging colonial courtrooms as a microcosm to discern how law was deployed to create institutional patterns for mediating change within the regional order. Since the determination of legal codes and jurisdictional boundaries were matters inextricably connected to who constitutes the rightful sovereign, competing visions of law emerged as the primary battleground between these three distinct actors. I argue that within such jurisdictional contestations, an emerging professional class of native vakeels (lawyers) were instrumental in navigating the resultant legal labyrinth, eclectically relying on legal arguments based on Hindu, Muslim, and English common law; Burkean notions of “ancient constitution”; and law of nations to embed strategic interpretations of the rights of conquered populations. The seemingly quotidian preoccupations of the native litigant regarding transfer of deeds, quarrels about inheritance, and forging of promissory notes threw open and intensified broader nineteenth-century contestations around the nature and legitimacy of (corporate) sovereign actors in the international system.
    
    Author: Shreya Bhattacharya (SOAS)
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  07 Panel / Re-Thinking Global IR amid wars, political violence and inofficious narrative Exec 5, ICC
  
  Sponsor: International Studies of the Mediterranean, Middle East & Asia Working Group
  
  Convener: ISMMEA Working group
  
  Chair: Kasia Houghton (University of St Andrews)
  - Between Rounds of Violence: The Sustainability of Infrastructure Projects in the Gaza Strip
    
    The Gaza Strip has been under siege for 16 years. The siege, imposed by Israel and Egypt, has led to the deterioration of many aspects of life for the Gazans. In addition, Israel has launched 3 major rounds of conflict between 2008 to 2021, and a massive onslaught in 2023 in response to the HAMAS attack of 7.10.2023. what was characteristic of these aggressions was the heavy toll exerted on civilian infrastructure.
    The presentation will look at the efforts to hurdles facing the development of infrastructure projects in the Gaza strip. It will argue that despite international efforts at building these major projects with the aspiration of serving the citizens of the strip, their exposure to repeated rounds of violence renders their development a zero-sum game and discourages further investment. The presentation will focus on the inherent unsustainability of the current model and consider future designs that will incorporate developmental planning in the day-after scenario with options for a more sustainable project design.
    
    Author: Saad Aldin Halawani (Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations - Coventry University)
  - From enemies to allies: France24 discourse on the nahdawi role in Saied’s self-coup
    
    The nahdawi role in Tunisian society, since the Thawra, has been of international relevance. In media discourses, it was constructed by connecting it to traditionalism, terrorism and corruption. France24’s (F24) coverage of the 2014 Tunisian elections displayed an opposition between Ennahda, whose Political Islam ideology was constructed as a threat to women, the revolution and the region, and Nidaa Tounes, a secularist party portrayed as a “Westernized” resistance towards the former. Considering the post-Thawra period, the fear of the nahdawi political Islam was noticeable in F24’s narratives. This tendency and the weight of internal politics led to a change in Ennahda’s discourses, moving its ideology from Political Islam to Muslim Democracy. In recent years, the rise of Kaïs Saïed and his self-coup led commentators to a strategic discursive alliance with Ennahda, the main objector of the president. Through French Discourse Analysis and a constructivist approach, the proposed paper discusses the ways in which the media, represented here by F24, elaborates its engagement towards Political Islam. Selecting relevant news from the period of Saïed’s self-coup, the article aims to discuss how cultural ignorance, Islamophobia and national interests combine to display a self-interested media discourse around nahdawi Political Islam.
    
    Author: Leonardo Pagano Landucci (Universidade Estadual Paulista)
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  07 Panel / Reframing global political phenomenon Exec 10, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Contemporary Research on International Political Theory Working Group
  
  Convener: CRIPT Working group
  
  Chair: Felix Roesch (University of Sussex)
  - Comparative Political Theory and International Relations: An agenda for partnership
    
    The relationship between theory and international relations (IR) remains a tumultuous one due to the theoretical-practical divide between theory and IR. The challenges to integrating theory in IR are exacerbated when dimensions such as coloniality, eurocentrism, and methodological monism enter the debate. Political theory addresses some of the challenges through methodologies like comparative political theory (CPT), creolization, and de-parochialization in political practice. These methodologies enjoy widespread support in post-colonial scholarship and Global IR scholarship welcoming the decolonial/pluralistic turn in IR. Through this essay, I explore the potential of CPT for IR theory and opportunities for partnership and collaboration between the two. I argue that CPT and its potential for IR scholarship remain underutilized because of the general aversion of IR to theory and the applicational value of CPT to IR. The CPT methodology enriches the IR canon by pluralizing the IR theory and creolizing IR practice.
    
    Authors: Seerat Arora (Jindal Global University)* , Nikhil Goyal (University of Toronto)
  - Civilizationism in Asia: A survey of ideas
    
    Where once the idea of “civilization” had been widely critiqued and dismissed, scholars of International Relations have increasingly taken the concept seriously not least because of political actors’ explicit references in contemporary politics. This paper contributes to these discussions by surveying the extant conceptions of civilization in the Asia-Pacific/Indo-Pacific region(s). The emergence of civilizationism is rooted in the universalization of liberal order as a standard of modernity since the 19th century. This has enabled the ideational hegemony of Western, self-proclaimed liberal states, from the context of imperial colonization to contemporary norms of liberal international order. Competing notions of “civilization” developed and adapted under these conditions, such as (but not limited to): the Japanese call to “Leave Asia and enter Europe” in the late 19th century; the emergence and resurgence of anti-secular and anti-colonial Hindutva ideology; or the (re-)deployment of Tianxia (“all under heaven”) in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In surveying non-Western understandings of “civilization” this paper has three aims: the first is to demonstrate the development of civlizationsim historically. The second objective is to critically assess the understanding of statehood developed in these civilizationist ideologies. More broadly, the paper clarifies the diversity of ideas within the broad umbrella of civilizationism.
    
    Author: Karin Narita (University of Sheffield)
  - Theorizing Populism in International Relations: A Classical Realist Perspective
    
    This paper explores the theoretical challenges posed by the rise of populism for International Relations (IR), employing a classical realist framework. While there is a rapidly growing IR literature on populism, this scholarship has so far shun IR theories and instead relied on theories of populism in its analyses of the role and effects of populism in world politics. Drawing on Hans Morgenthau’s international thought, we argue that his concept of the political can provide important insights into the domestic and international causes of populism and enable us to formulate a normative critique of the political potentials and dangers inherent in populism. Informed by an effort to recognize the centrality of power and antagonism in politics, while avoiding the Schmittian conclusion that enmity and violence are the essence of the political, Morgenthau understands politics as interest defined in power and postulates that openness and indeterminacy are the very essence of politics that must be defended. Against this backdrop, we discuss how populism is a reaction to depoliticization processes in foreign policy and world politics, ranging from technologization and scientification to the hegemonization of neoliberal ideology, and evaluate to what extent populism is suitable for re-politicizing politics and preserving it as an open and critical space of public political debate.
    
    Authors: Felix Roesch (University of Sussex) , Thorsten Wojczewski (Coventry University)
  - Thinking Dystopia: An Insight on the Ukrainian War
    
    This paper will introduce and employ a new analytical tool that draws from dystopian thought and the dystopian tradition to explore the connections that may be found between President Putin’s propaganda regarding the Ukraine war, Hannah Arendt’s conception of ‘perpetual-motion mania’, and the Orwellian tactics employed by Nineteen Eighty-Four’s totalitarian regime. These links between Arendt’s theory, Putin’s words, and the Party’s actions will be simultaneously observed, drawing focus to the dystopian reality that envelopes the Russian president. The main objective of this paper is to present how the dystopian tradition, paired with political theory, can be used to interpret, analyse, and explore contemporary political and social phenomena. Thus, this paper will first introduce the analytical tool, Critical Dystopianism, which emerged from my PhD thesis. The centrality of power, drawing form both Foucauldian and Gramscian conceptions, will be emphasised, followed by a brief exploration of further dystopian themes (technology, ecology, hope, etc). Following, I will employ Critical Dystopianism to conduct the analysis, drawing from Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, Orwell’s dystopia, and Putin’s speeches given in the early days of the ‘special military operation’. By utilising this dystopian tool of analysis, I argue that we can assess and critique the Russian propaganda from a different perspective, utilising the dystopian tradition.
    
    Author: Aristidis Victor Agoglossakis Foley (University of St Andrews)
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  07 Panel / Regional governance and responsibility for refugee protection in Latin America, Africa and Europe Exec 9, ICC
  
  Sponsor: International Politics of Migration, Refugees and Diaspora Working Group
  
  Convener: Pia Riggirozzi (University of Southampton)
  
  Chair: Pia Riggirozzi (University of Southampton)
  
  Discussant: Patricia Nabuco Martuscelli (University of Sheffield)
  - Migration Policy Preferences and Forms of Trust in Contexts of Limited State Capacity
    
    How important is political trust for migration policy preferences in contexts of large-scale displacement and limited state capacity? Evidence from the US and Europe suggests people holding greater political trust support more open policies because they believe their governments can manage any implied costs. Yet political trust may not moderate preferences in countries with limited state capacity. Here, interpersonal trust in migrants and refugees may matter more as citizens circumvent formal institutions in forming preferences. Employing conjoint experiments in Colombia and Peru--low-capacity and low-trust countries that experienced large migration shocks in the context of Venezuelan forced displacement--we show that these forms of trust moderate multidimensional policy preferences differently. While greater political trust is associated with less-restrictive preferences on migrants' employment rights and numerical limits, greater interpersonal trust is associated with more open preferences across \textit{all} domains--including geographic restrictions, access to healthcare, family reunification, and protection periods. Our findings contribute novel evidence of boundary conditions for the roles of different forms of trust in shaping migration policy preferences, notably the limited importance of political trust and its partial substitution by interpersonal trust in countries with low state capacity.
    
    Author: William Allen (University of Oxford)
  - Regional migration governance and shared responsibility for women and girls on the move in Latin America
    
    Latin America faces one of the largest mass migrations worldwide; by the end of 2022 more than 8 million refugees and migrants have left Venezuela, 84% of whom fled to the Latin American region. In Central America, the number of asylum-seekers and refugees travelling northwards, particularly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, grew rapidly to almost 60% since 2016, due to a combination of gang violence, poverty, and the increasing impact of droughts on farmers forced thousands. Half of the displaced are women and girls.
    
    Regional frameworks have been important means to put migrants’ rights on the national agenda across Latin America. Yet, despite the rhetoric, these policies have not been fully implemented on the ground, and the safeguarding of the rights of migrants has profound limitations. In situations of unprecedented mass migration in the region we ask, what is the role of regional organisations in providing leadership for the protection of displaced women and girls? Specifically, how - if at all - have regional organisations developed a gender-responsive approach to migration and cooperation for migration and border governance?
    
    The paper looks at regional governance infrastructure is complex, including organisations such as the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) and the Central American Integration System (SICA) and argues that in contexts of mass displacement, regional normative frameworks have been institutionally anaemic and implemented unevenly or seemingly arbitrarily across the region. For this reason, migration governance has failed in allocating responsibility and forms of protection as a shared responsibility for women and girls on the move. Ultimately, the paper shows a clear gap between what regional governance can do, and how policy is actually translated into national laws and practice, particularly in relation to mainstreaming gender considerations into those laws and practices. But it also offers a case for gender-responsive regional governance of migration in Latin America.
    
    Authors: Natalia Cintra (University of Southampton)* , Pia Riggirozzi (University of Southampton)
  - The Gendered 'Instinct' in Humanitarian Work in Greece: How Humanitarians Employ the ‘Gender Neutral’ Cover of Vulnerability
    
    Greece is an entry point into EUrope for asylum seekers and migrants. Humanitarian organisations provide essential support to people. With continued arrivals and a lack of resources, vulnerability has emerged as an important organiser. Vulnerability criteria have been established to distinguish people based on, for instance, sexual orientation. Feminist scholars have emphasised that vulnerability is often associated with women (Fineman, 2008) and that gendered understandings of women are prominent in humanitarian work (Johnson, 2011). In Greece, some have observed that gendered notions of vulnerability are important and that the needs of refugee, asylum-seeking, and migrant men can be ignored (Freedman, 2019). Yet, there is no in-depth investigation of humanitarians' gendered conceptions in Greece, how these understandings drive the implementation of vulnerability, and how single men are understood. Drawing on 38 interviews with humanitarians and male asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants, I unveil how gendered vulnerability conceptions, specifically of women’s ‘inherent’ vulnerability and men’s lack of need for services, structure humanitarians’ daily work, rationale, and decision-making in complex ways, and the impact of this on single men. Ultimately, I argue, the vulnerability system provides an ostensible gender-neutral cover to humanitarian decision-making that is, in practice, gendered. In doing so, I add to scholarship problematising humanitarian logics and decision-making while centring single men’s experiences, which have been side-lined in research and humanitarian work.
    
    Author: Meena Masood (Queen Mary, University of London)
  - The geographies of refugee protection in Latin America: spaces, politics and actors
    
    This presentation explores the geographies of refugee protection in Latin America during the last decade by focusing on the spaces, the politics and actors - as well as the intersection between them - that have shaped responses to forced migration in the region. The exodus of more than seven million Venezuelans has led to significant changes in migration flows and immigration policies in Latin America. But this is not the only mobility across the region and not the only factor that determines the shifting governance of refugee protection. By focusing on the geographies of forced migration, through a regional lens, the presentation unpacks the framing of “multiple crises” that has characterised the responses to it. It does so by linking the spaces where both mobility and governance are taking place, as well as the politics around them, and the negotiation, tensions and agreements that have emerged between key actors. This exercise not only maps emerging patterns of regional forced migration governance, but it also interrogates to what extent the architecture of refugee protection is changing ahead of Cartagena +40
    
    Author: Marcia Vera Espinoza (Queen Margaret University)
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  07 Panel / Sea change: Ocean politics, management and security Benjamin Zephaniah, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Environment Working Group
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: Alexandre Rocha (Escola de Guerra Naval/Universidade Federal Fluminense)
  - How Does A River (Discourse) Change Course? Alternative Futures for the Brahmaputra
    
    The paper argues that the dominant framing of the Brahmaputra as a national security issue has led to a highly centralising narrative that has remained fixated on the strategic geopolitical notion of the river. This has shut out valuable dialogic space and compounded the risk of a misalignment of interests between India’s federal and the local governments on key questions of benefit sharing, risk allocation and trade- offs. One of the gravest consequences of a unidimensional view of the Brahmaputra has been that it has invisibilised a range of critical issues and actors, resulting in a missing river agenda. The paper examines to what extent emerging communities of practice in the borderlands can produce imaginative counterpoints to desecuritise the Brahmaputra.
    
    Author: Nimmi Kurian
  - Climate Change and Maritime Security: Can the Quad withstand the Storm?
    
    Maritime security is one of the most vulnerable domains of security in the context of climate change especially for countries with long coastal boundaries. The Quad namely, India, Japan, Australia, and the US, share varied concerns of impending climate change-induced maritime security challenges. Climate change can derail the collective goals for which the Quad was established, - securing a free, open, prosperous, and inclusive Indo-Pacific region. As a threat-multiplier to existing maritime security challenges, climate change can catalyse intensified competition for resources and control over sea lanes, and increase maritime violence and conflict. Recognising this is critical for the Quad to secure their collective strategic and economic interests in the Indo-Pacific region.
    
    The proposed paper is designed to analyse the maritime security dilemmas that emerge for the Quad and the policy choices to deal with them. To that end, the paper asks what new maritime security challenges does climate change pose for the Quad in the Indo-Pacific region and how do the existing maritime security mechanisms of the Quad stand to address these new challenges. The paper further probes for areas of cooperation the Quad can forge to secure their shared maritime security interests and explores what challenges may stand in the way to achieving these goals. The paper is based on an ongoing project and will use two main research tools - systematic literature review and analysis, and interviews of experts/policymakers across the region.
    
    Keywords: Climate Change, Maritime Security, Quad, Environmental Security
    
    Author: Robert Mizo (University of Delhi)
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  07 Panel / Securing the Institution, Securing the State: Militarised Ontological Security and Strategic Narratives Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Conveners: Veronica Barfucci (University of Warwick) , Miklas Fahrenwaldt (University of Edinburgh)
  
  Chair: Max Warrack (University of Warwick)
  - Soldierly Ontological Anxiety and the Breakdown of Institutional Narratives about the US-Japan Alliance in the Military Anime “GATE”
    
    The United States, as Japan’s most important ally and military protector, have long been interested in facilitating Japanese rearmament and deepening military cooperation through the US-Japan alliance. In this context, the US, the Japanese government and the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) have embraced a strategic narrative of American and Japanese forces working as equal friends and partners to protect democracy and freedom in East Asia. This harmonic narrative is, however, not as entrenched as military and political leadership on both sides of the pacific would like it to be. In fact, looking at depictions of the US in the Japanese military anime series “GATE”, I argue that ontological anxiety about Japan’s status vis-à-vis the US is pervasive among JSDF personnel, producing dissenting narratives about the nature of the alliance. GATE, written by a former JSDF officer and one of the most popular pieces of media in the JSDF, instead shows American politicians and as rivals and bullies who cynically invoke the language of friendship for their own gain. I therefore aim to highlight the deeply contested nature and shaky foundation of US-Japan alliance narratives and demonstrate how popular culture can be an outlet for “venting” ontological anxiety simmering beneath the surface, thus also showing its potential for gaining insights into narrative resistance at various levels.
    
    Author: Miklas Fahrenwaldt (University of Edinburgh)
  - Seeking Ontological Security through Overseas Military Deployment: Status and (Self)-Esteem in the Japan Self-Defense Forces
    
    This paper draws on ontological security literature to discuss the role of the military in providing for a state’s sense of status and (self)-esteem. It focuses on the case of Japan and the overseas security deployment of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF). Deploying the military overseas has historically represented a paradox for the Japanese government. Until the 1990s, due to the association with Japanese imperialism and militarism, the military was a marker of shame. However, in the current security environment, the ability to deploy the military overseas marks a state’s status as a grown-up member of the international community. Therefore, the Japanese government sees it as necessary to be accepted as a peer in the international system. In this paper, I explore the implications of this paradox by linking it to an ontological security framework, which looks at how actors seek to stabilise their identity and narrative to secure their sense of being. I critically analyse how Japan’s participation in overseas security operations is presented to domestic and international audiences, arguing that such communication is illustrative of the Japanese conservatives’ desire to (re)claim (self)-esteem through the ‘normalisation’ narrative. By so doing, I argue that portraying the military as a reliable institution that can be deployed overseas, and that is trusted and respected by the international community, allows Japanese conservatives to redefine what it means to be Japanese in the international system.
    
    Author: Veronica Barfucci (University of Warwick)
  - Evaluating tensions around inclusion and "operational effectiveness": ontological security, gendered military narratives, and the British Armed Forces
    
    Feminist critiques indicate largely that the military is an irredeemable space when it comes to the integration of women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and other diverse bodies. Embodied through practices of militarised masculinities, exclusivity, and various forms of psychological and physical violence, it is widely argued that the values which appear to be inherent to the institution are prohibitive to the full, whole, and safe integration of these communities. This contrasts with the language used within the defence sector which preaches integration and inclusion as essential to “operational effectiveness” (Ministry of Defence, 2018). How can integration and inclusion simultaneously contribute to and detract from operational effectiveness, and if that challenge exists, how does the British Armed Forces navigate it? An ontological reading of integration and exclusion reaffirms and strengthens the argument that the British Armed Forces (and other military institutions) faces ontological insecurity by having to implement changes related to social cohesion but at the same time, the ontological security literature tells us that change is possible under certain. By applying an ontological security lens to the British Armed Forces, this paper will identify these tensions and propose ways in which they might be addressed in future research.
    
    Author: Tara Zammit (King's College London)
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  07 Panel / The EU and its Southern Border: Security and Migration Dhani Prem, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: European Security Working Group
  
  Convener: ESWG Working group
  
  Chair: Lorenzo Cladi (University of Plymouth)
  - The EU response to migration from the Middle East and North Africa: Charting the waters between security and legitimacy.
    
    The EU response to the continuing Mediterranean migration crisis has over several years changed from Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)-orchestrated civilian crisis management to a securitisation approach under the Union’s Area of Freedom Security and Justice (AFSJ). This has coincided with Commission efforts to reform the Dublin system and to achieve a comprehensive migration and asylum policy founded upon equitable burden sharing. The paper adopts an identity-based theoretical framework, focusing on how the Union sees itself and is seen by others. It furthermore explores issues of legitimacy and accountability concerning EU efforts to secure its external borders. Although EU border securitisation has been extensively examined, there is limited research exploring the different understandings and practices of securitisation of migration among different EU institutions.
    
    Authors: Baris Celik (University of Sheffield)* , Simon Sweeney (University of York) , Neil Winn (University of Leeds)*
  - From the ‘laboratory’ to the ‘arena’: CSDP, the Wagner Group and the EU’s geopolitical reckoning in Africa
    
    Since the 2000s the EU has used Africa as a ‘laboratory’ to develop its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and build its profile as a security actor; half of all CSDP missions have been deployed on the continent. However, the failure of these missions to stabilise African conflicts, accusations of French neocolonialism and the increasing appeal of Russian security assistance has raised fundamental questions about the legitimacy and effectiveness of the CSDP model. The EU has struggled to respond to these challenges. Through interviews with EU staff, document analysis and fieldwork in Mali, this paper explores how the EU’s positioning of Africa as a depoliticised testing ground – with limited regard for the effectiveness of these tests – has had counterproductive effects on the EU’s own long-term influence. It has left the EU unable to fathom why its geopolitical rivals enjoy genuine popularity in Africa or to respond strategically. Using a postcolonial decentering framework, I argue that the EU’s instrumentalisation of Africa as a ‘laboratory’ is symptomatic of a colonial mindset which overlooks African agency. This mindset has been deliberately exploited by Russia, which can draw on the USSR’s historic support for postcolonial independence movements to increase its appeal.
    
    Author: Katherine Pye (LSE)
  - “Nous ne les laisserons pas passer”. Anti-Muslim narratives in French security discourse
    
    This paper examines the evolution of French counterterrorism narratives, emphasising the disproportionate impact of France's approach to terrorism on specific social groups. The global security landscape has witnessed a profound transformation shaped by the concepts of radicalisation and violent extremism, which have become central to security programs worldwide, resulting in the globalisation of anti-radicalisation measures. Despite initial resistance, France aligned itself with the international discourse on radicalisation in 2014, following the lead of numerous EU countries. This alignment allowed the French government to legitimise stringent control over youth, ethnic, and religious minorities, framing policing measures within the context of the global war on terror. Through an analysis of the evolution of French counterterrorism legislation and national Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) plans, this paper highlights how French anti-radicalisation measures exacerbate existing religious, ethnic, and class divisions.
    
    Author: Fabrizio Cuccu (Dublin City University)
  - The EU’s integrated approach to external border management in the Sahel
    
    How does the EU's integrated approach to external border management influence its interactions with local actors? As the EU's dominant framework for crisis management, the integrated approach has received little scholarly attention in the context of migration control. This paper investigates this using Mali and Niger as case studies, states that are increasingly securitised by the EU due to their limited statehood and 'irregular' migration patterns that bring illegal migrants and refugees towards Europe. The EU's primary pragmatic goal in the region of migration control relies on local actors, as it must build the capacity of local state border agents to secure its own borders in turn. However, the integrated approach framework fundamentally undermines this through its fixation on operational streamlining that ignores local security realities. Through analysis of its case studies in the Sahel, the paper argues that the integrated approach framework is used to avoid ontological engagement with complex local realities. The projection of the EU's border anxiety onto local systems of governance (re)produces a top-down prescriptive approach to crisis management in which local people have no agency or ownership.
    
    Author: Thom Vigor (University of Kent)
  - Pipe dreams: the politics of European – North African hydrogen development
    
    Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, European countries aim to lessen their dependence on gas and are turning to northern Africa for green hydrogen imports. This paper explores how Europe has changed its engagement with its neighborhood in the face of energy security pressures, and the impacts on relationships between Europe and northern Africa. We examine countries with major hydrogen potential and a growing number of projects for export to Europe: Morocco, Mauritania, and Algeria. Using a combination of desktop research and interviews with local and international actors, we explore the changes and continuities in regional and international relations. First results indicate that Europe’s regulatory power influences hydrogen developments in other countries, and that EU member states are increasingly engaged in energy diplomacy for imports. The goals of northern African states and their SOEs – specifically, autonomy and regional soft power – also play into hydrogen developments. While technical aspects are important, the development of hydrogen infrastructures is shaped by regional politics, in particular the conflicts around the Western Sahara. Although at an early stage, hydrogen developments appear to reinforce existing power structures, both within and between countries.
    
    Authors: Silvia Weko (FAU Erlangen) , Rainer Quitzow*
- 303
  07 Panel / The Social Foundations of Global Finance: Engagements with the Work of Timothy J. Sinclair Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: Chris Clarke (University of Warwick)
  
  Chair: Ben Clift (University of Warwick)
  - Social Foundations of Academic Knowledge Production
    
    This paper takes it inspiration from Tim Sinclair’s analysis of rating agencies as “embedded knowledge networks” to analyze changes in the social foundations of higher education and and their implications for hegemonic knowledge production. The argument is simple: while the US continues to lead in production and distribution of mediated and/or academic knowledge, including knowledge about international affairs, its once unparalleled ability to control hegemonic narratives about itself and its role in international politics has been eroded. The loss of control over the global imaginary is less due to the rise of alternative centers of knowledge or image production (“counter-narratives”) and more to the contradictory influences of America’s own economic master’s tools – globalization, financialization, technology – which have also, as per Sinclair, so dramatically transformed the banking sector. In other words, the appeal of America’s narrative is being diluted by the very strategies that make the continuation of its structural dominance possible. And this loss of grand narratives has consequences for IPE also - in American IR and IPE big picture theories and approaches have all but vanished; instead - causal inference, public opinion research, new behavioralism, experimental models – all conducive to big data and replication – have become the norm.
    
    Author: Aida Hozic (University of Florida)
  - Managing Multiple Audiences: The Importance of Legitimacy to Bond Index Providers and the Politics of Bond Indexing
    
    Index providers have multiple audiences that have contradictory views of them and their indices. Despite their many differences, active managers, passive managers and those who use indices for market data believe indices represent ‘the market’. But the success of index providers has meant that, through those who track their indices, index providers change markets they are seen as impartially measuring. This undermines the unifier to their legitimacy for their multiple audiences. The work of Timothy Sinclair is deployed to examine how audience perception impacts how index providers exercise authority over their infrastructure. Firstly, in a conceptual manner, to develop understanding of the relationship between private epistemic authority and infrastructures. Secondly, using Sinclair’s notions of constitutive rules, to explain what unifies the multiple audiences of bond index providers. Lastly, how these constitutive rules affects the shape of bond market infrastructure produced by bond index providers. It is argued that the legitimacy of bond index providers stems from producing bond market infrastructure that their multiple audiences agree is ‘the market’. Therefore, whilst index providers do exercise power over how their audience interacts with bond markets, their audience also influences what is considered bond index market infrastructure and the politics embedded within it.
    
    Author: Dan Wood (University of Warwick)
  - The Political Economy of Credit Rating Agencies: American Short-termist Universalism, Europe’s Acquiescence, and East Asia’s Resistance
    
    Sinclair’s pioneering works have inspired many studies on credit rating agencies (CRAs). This paper draws on his argument on social foundations and market-centred approaches and discusses key agendas for American and local CRAs. The big three CRAs have not only played a critical role in global financialization and financial governance but also contributed to the Asian and global financial crises. First, we explain what transformed the American CRAs from conservative financial gatekeepers to short-term profit maximisers disseminating short-termist universalism, by highlighting financial and technological innovations (e.g. securitization and algorithmization). The American CRAs’ short-termism and financial crises have led to different reactions in Europe and East Asia. Europe has long acquiesced to the American credit rating system, despite sporadic criticism. In the early 2010s, the project of a Europe-wide CRA to defend European sovereign credit ratings failed because of the robust triopoly of the American agencies and the new key role played by the European Central Bank. In contrast, Japan, South Korea, and China established local CRAs to counter the American CRAs because East Asian elites viewed the risks of market failure as larger than those of government failure, prioritised socio-political stability, and wanted to restrict the influence of American CRAs.
    
    Author: Fumihito Gotoh (University of Sheffield)
  - Credit Rating Agencies and The Idea of History: the role of synchronic and diachronic mental frameworks in the work of Timothy J. Sinclair
    
    Timothy Sinclair’s work on credit rating agencies (CRAs) and the problem of creditworthiness was shaped by a long but uneven engagement with the idea of history as a mode of thought. Although occluded in much of his early work, it eventually became more prominent as a critical albeit largely unheralded feature of his thinking about global governance and especially CRAs. But by the publication of his final book, To the Brink of Destruction, one form of the idea of history – as a mental framework – had assumed a central role in his explanation for why American CRAs had so easily facilitated the conditions which produced the global financial crisis of 2008/09. In this sense the idea of history should be considered an important feature of Sinclair’s ‘social foundations’ approach to creditworthiness. His use of the idea of history is not without complications, however, most critically in relation to the application of the distinction between the synchronic and diachronic aspects of historical structures, and especially whether this distinction can be applied to institutions. In this paper I consider these tensions in light of the heuristic value of Sinclair’s use of the idea of history as a critical tool of investigation. I pay particular attention to its place in his broader theoretical framework, including how it helps to frame his understanding of institutional agency. I also ask whether his application of the synchronic/diachronic distinction provides suitable grounds for his conclusions about the authority of CRAs in the construction of creditworthiness. My conclusion is that Sinclair’s appropriation of the idea of history as a mode of thought, notwithstanding the challenges of his own unique formulation, places him firmly in the tradition of critical political economy and its efforts to advance our understanding of how the global political economy operates.
    
    Author: Randall Germain (Carleton University)
  - The Politics of Credit Rating: Future Directions
    
    While Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) have long demonstrated their resilience in the face of global financial crises and scandals, their role in global finance remains subject to change in light of new developments. This paper analyzes the future of the politics of credit rating, considering three key dimensions that will modify the authority of CRAs in financial markets: First, new players such as China, the BRICS, and the G20 are reshaping power dynamics in global economic governance. This raises questions about the prospects for emerging rating agencies to challenge the established US oligopoly. Second, the growing prominence of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) rating agencies has the potential to disrupt the traditional rating agency landscape, particularly as ESG factors gain significance in investment decision-making. Third, the ascendancy of index providers and asset managers as influential capital gatekeepers in the era of passive investment implies a multipolar and fragmented authority structure within financial markets. Competitive pressures, both from within and outside the rating industry, are expected to challenge the enduring dominance of the traditional rating oligopoly. As CRAs continue to provide authoritative assessments of bond issuers’ creditworthiness, thus fulfilling a constitutive function, their epistemic authority is poised to endure in the context of disintermediated financial markets.
    
    Author: Giulia Mennillo (Academy for Political Education,Tutzing)
- 304
  07 Panel / The continuum of gendered violence – everydayness, trauma and insecurity Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: GIRWG Working group
  
  Chair: Annika Bergman Rosamond (The University of Edinburgh)
  
  Discussant: Annika Bergman Rosamond (The University of Edinburgh)
  - Exploring Incel and Intimate Partner Violence Side-by-Side: Implications for Comparative Work on Gendered Violence
    
    This paper presents preliminary findings of the project “Exploring Incel and Intimate Partner Violence side-by-side: Theorising Patriarchy For Comparative Work on Gendered Violence.”
    
    The goal of this project is two-fold: first, it questions the distinction made between various manifestations of gendered violence and how they are studied in distinct silos of knowledge (re)production; second, it takes a case study approach to thematically compare the discourse of male perpetrators involved in two forms of gendered violence: incel violence and intimate partner violence.
    
    This paper highlights the key themes interpreted from the data. These themes encompass aspects such as beauty and appearance; sex and love; monogamy and infidelity; victimhood and despair. In doing so, this paper sheds light on the gendered norms and expectations prevalent among incels and perpetrators of intimate partner violence, and delves into the underlying rationales and justifications of these gendered norms. Finally, the paper suggests some potential implications for policy and practice. By critically examining the intricate dynamics of these two forms of gendered violence, the research aims to contribute to a better understanding of patriarchal structures at play in day-to-day violence against women.
    
    Keywords: gendered violence; violence against women; incels; intimate partner violence; domestic abuse; patriarchy
    
    Author: Anne Peterscheck (University of St Andrews)
  - Gendering extremism: radicalisation as masculinity project
    
    Feminist scholars have long critiqued the neglect of gender in International Relations and security studies, including theories of terrorism, extremism and radicalisation. In recent years, however, events have forced both scholars and policy-makers to reassess. The travel of young women from across continents to join so-called Islamic State, alongside the emergence of the misogynist Incel or ‘involuntary celibate’ movement, and the mobilisation of anti-feminist rhetoric by the far right and Islamist groups alike have drawn attention to the significance of gender in understanding terrorism and extremism. This paper responds to calls for the gendering of theory on radicalisation and extremism, proposing that radicalisation constitutes a masculinity project. Based on field research with both anti-Islam radical right activists, and actors associated with Anjem Choudary’s banned Islamist group al-Muhajiroun the chapter: outlines the importance of gender and masculinities to the in- and out-group differentiation which precedes extreme activism; explores the diverse masculinities constituting the reference points for extreme cultures; and documents how groups mobilise these into the cultural norms enabling group activism. As such, the chapter provides analysis of the diverse hegemonic masculinities adopted by both extreme women and men.
    
    Author: Elizabeth Pearson (Royal Holloway, University of London)
  - Trauma Time and Non-Linear Tracking of Gender-Based Violence
    
    Traumatic events, such as war and structural violence, can initiate a form of 'trauma time' that challenges linear homogeneous time. This paper engages with the concept of 'trauma time' proposed by Jenny Edkins, which inviting us to explore the potential benefits of non-linear analysis of entangled phenomena. I examine the unique insights offered by non-linear tracking analysis into the dynamics of Gender-Based Violence (GBV). This paper aims to unpack the complex relationship between time, trauma, and memory. Additionally, I illustrate how non-linear tracking provides alternative insights into GBV by examining the contexts of the UK/Scotland and Afghanistan. Contemporary discourses about transgender rights issues in the UK/Scotland reveal hidden connections with historical violence against women in the British Empire. The discussions on Afghan women are linked to multiple dimensions of imperial legacies. Both revolve around the question of saving 'women,' which brings about contestation and affective resonances from the past. By disrupting linear narratives, the way social actors encircle trauma unveils the multifaceted politics of gender-based violence. Non-linear tracking helps us analyse these dynamics, with a focus on how past trauma bleeds into the present and future.
    
    Author: Chaeyoung Yong (University of St Andrews)
  - Diaspora organizations, modern slavery, human trafficking and labour exploitation: capacity building for resilience
    
    Current literature on modern slavery and human trafficking emphasizes the need for community-based approaches to address the causes of this transnational phenomena and build resilience (e.g. Gardner et al, 2020). A key role in this process is played by diaspora community organizations, as active transnational partners in diaspora diplomacy (Brinkerhoff 2019; Dolea, 2022; Ho & McConnell 2017): they are the interface between migrants and authorities in both home and host countries. This paper aims to bring together these two lines of research by exploring how diaspora organizations deal with this phenomenon and how they perceive their role. We focus on the Romanian community in the UK, one of the most impacted communities by a range of forms of abuse on the spectrum of modern slavery (NRM, 2022). We draw on insights from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 20 leaders of Romanian community organizations in the UK, most of which have only recently formalised their status. This topic is important not only because Romania is one of the top countries of origin for victims of trafficking in the EU from within the EU (US Department of State, 2022), but also because there has been a constant withdrawal of the state and cuts to local councils' budgets, thus creating a space that such organisations have started already to fill. Findings indicate aspects of victims’ typology (the spectrum of vulnerability), the key issue of trust and the implications of the Romanian cultural norms and customs in establishing relationships with local and national authorities. We conclude with a typology of actions for intervention and support for survivors and potential victims of modern slavery and the need for professionalization and training amongst Romanian diaspora organizations.
    
    Authors: Oana Burcu (University of Nottingham)* , Alina E Dolea (Bournemouth University)
- 305
  07 Panel / The political economy of domestic jurisdictions Justham, Symphony Hall
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Convener: IPEG Working group
  
  Chair: James Scott (King's College London)
  - Alibaba in South-East Asia: A Case of Chinese Capitalism in the World System
    
    How can we comprehend China's outbound capital in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) within the context of China's ascent and global (re)integration? While some argue that it stems from a top-down grand strategy of a rising power with hegemonic aspirations, others see it as market-driven commercial behavior by economic actors. To overcome the limitations in most studies that tend to approach the BRI with a binary perspective, this paper emphasizes the interwoven and juxtaposed relationship between the state and capital within China. Using Alibaba in Southeast Asia as a case study, this paper explores how China's outbound capital, especially that of non-state internet capitalist conglomerates, engages with a multitude of social forces to integrate fragmented interests from both the "top" and "bottom" in building the BRI. Drawing from official documents and interviews, this paper embeds Alibaba's business development trajectory within the broader context of Chinese political economy and the evolution of global capitalism. This paper demonstrates that Alibaba's growth is jointly nurtured by state support and its engagement with different units of transnational capital. While the state - under the territorial logic - has imposed crackdowns on Alibaba to limit its borderless expansion in China, Alibaba's global expansion, marking its transition from a domestically governed internet giant to a transnational capitalist, has been tacitly accepted by the state. This acceptance enables Alibaba’s global expansion driven by capitalist logic.
    
    Author: Feiyang Xu (University of Manchester)
  - New Constitutionalism in Post-Invasion Iraq
    
    Iraq’s integration into the global capitalist market has involved a complicated history of multiple unsuccessful attempts at neoliberalizing the economy, including, most notoriously, dismantling the interventionist Ba’athist state through the 2003 US-led intervention. The invasion paved the way for the creation of a neoliberal security state, which was founded on a complete rewriting of the constitution. This neoliberal restructuring took place from April 2003 to June 2004 under the auspices of the Anglo-American occupation’s Coalition of Provisional Authority (CPA). During these 14 months, CPA applied “Shock Therapy,” which included 100 legally binding administrative orders implemented without democratic consent, forming the foundations of Iraq’s new governance structure, economy, and criminal justice system. Among the 100 orders, the first three are of the utmost importance because they laid the groundwork to undo the previous framework of political and economic governance and ushered in the superimposition of a new constitutional legal framework to guide macroeconomic, microeconomic, and social policy in line with neoliberalism. Drawing from political economy and state theory, I analyze these three orders and argue that the CPA followed the script for new constitutionalism of disciplinary neoliberalism by implementing laws that outlasted the CPA and the occupation itself, ultimately facilitating Iraq’s integration into the world market. I investigate how new constitutionalism in Iraq ultimately failed because of the emergence of various classes, social movements, and insurgencies that rose to resist the intensification of dispossession and exploitation. In making these arguments, I contribute to ongoing conversations on authoritarian neoliberalism and capitalist development and statehood.
    
    Author: Shehnoor Khurram (York University)
  - Bidenomics as a Passive Revolution- Revitalising American Hegemony?
    
    The 2008 Global Financial Crisis sparked a crisis in the global economy which shows little sign of abating. The confluence of stagnating growth, overaccumulation of investment, growing inequality and stalling social mobility, crisis of democracy and populism has been framed by some as a Gramscian organic crisis; a situation where the old neoliberal world is dying, and the new cannot be born. Gramsci was certainly aware that such crises have no easy solutions, but he also pointed to the importance of ‘passive revolution’ as a strategy by dominant social forces try to resolve organic crises, reforming hegemonic projects from above and offering concessions to the subordinate classes to re-secure hegemony. Accordingly, this paper examines the most prominent attempt at a passive revolution since 2008: the return of industrial policy in the US aimed at accelerating decarbonisation and sustaining American supremacy in cutting edge technology – what has been referred to as ‘Bidenomics.’ Applying the lens of passive revolution, it examines the new coalition of social forces behind Bidenomics and its proposed model of accumulation, as well as analysing the extent to which it offers the necessary concessions to re-secure consent. The paper concludes by considering whether Bidenomics represents a model for resolving the global crisis of the neoliberal world order.
    
    Author: Tom Chodor (Monash University)
- 306
  07 Panel / Troubling the domestic and the international in South East Europe Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: South East Europe Working Group
  
  Convener: SEEWG Working group
  
  Chair: Lydia Cole (University of Sussex)
  - What Makes Revisionist States? Historical Revisionism and Ontological Security in the Western Balkans
    
    While historical revisionism is commonly used to justify offensive foreign policies, little scholarly attention in International Relations is paid to its scope, development, and importance in the Western Balkans where state-sponsored revisionism of the histories of the 1990s is widespread. To advance the knowledge of revisionism in International Relations, this paper investigates how historical revisionism, particularly atrocity crimes denial, has emerged, developed, and grown in states’ domestic and foreign policy practices in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The paper maps out the use of historical revisionism by governments in these three countries during post-conflict reckonings with the past between 2004 and 2022 to establish the endogenous and extraneous factors influencing the rise of such revisionist behaviours. In particular, the paper investigates how international normative commitments placed upon these countries after conflict, such as the obligations concerning cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, have influenced and transformed historical revisionism. Drawing conclusions about these three cases, the paper seeks to contribute to scholarly understanding of what enables revisionist states in international society and provide new empirical insights on the links between revisionism, status, and the international normative order in International Relations.
    
    Author: Maja Davidovic (Cardiff University)
  - The Collapse of Economic Voting Behaviour in Turkish Politics
    
    The role of free elections is crucial for the democratic countries in terms of the political science literature. The first general elections of the Republic of Turkey were held in 1935, and the early Republican period witnessed a one-party state in Turkish politics. Studies on voting behavior have begun in the Turkish political science literature with the transition to the multi-party system in Turkey from 1946.
    
    The general elections that took place between 1980 and 2023 are examined and the economic voting behavior is explored in this study in terms of political developments in Turkish politics periodically.For the voters phenomena such as increasing feelings of nationalism, the transformation of the perception of foreign powers into a political tool by the government, and the pursuit of polarisation politics by making the opposition enemies, push the importance of the economic crisis for the voters towards the back of the list. It is obvious that the economic voting model was an important determinant on the Turkish voters in the elections until 2008. However, ideological factors, strong leadership analysis or other indicators replaced the economic voting model in Turkey with the serious political changes and developments after 2008. The study focuses towards this hypothesis and both qualitative and quantitative data are used together to prove the main arguments of this research. In this context, this study aims to make an important contribution by filling the gap in the literature on economic voting in Turkish politics.
    
    Author: Caglar Ezikoglu (University of Birmingham)
  - Peace as normal life: Post-Yugoslav peace imaginings
    
    This paper focuses on the conceptualisation of peace as normal life (normalan život), rooted in post-Yugoslav post-socialist lived experiences. In most general terms, while the concept has not been theorised much, it has been commonly used among people in the conflict-affected post-Yugoslav space to describe life that is not excessive, but in which the basic needs are met. It denotes life as it used to be (Jansen, 2015) and life as it should be. In this paper, we engage with the notion, unpack its core components and explore the possibility it opens to doing and imagining peace differently and in plural. Specifically, by looking at most of the times overlooked voices, Serbian former combatants and victims of state-sponsored/state-tolerated violence in Sandžak and rural women in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we outline what they expected peace to be and how they imagine it now. We problematise whether their conceptions of peace as “return to normality/return to normal life” represent attempts towards decolonisation of peace imaginaries. Equally importantly, by drawing on lived experiences of Albanians in Macedonia, we also question who gets to imagine peace as “normal life” and whether different imaginings of peace can exist alongside one another.
    
    Authors: Sladjana Lazic (University of Innsbruck)* , Elena Stavrevska (University of Bristol)
  - Symbolic power of authoritarian leaders in the Western Balkans: How Vucic builds his muscles
    
    This paper will look into symbolic power as important feature of hybrid regimes in South-East Europe, observed through contemporary Serbian-Turkish relations. The term ‘symbolic power’ is used to refer to the power that is deployed by the domestic elites by leveraging foreign hard and soft power. This type of power is very performative and focuses on the discursive level. It is usually exercised during official visits of foreign leaders when development projects are initiated, or new facilities opened, or on any occasion when discursive power projection is possible and practical. Symbolic power reinforces flattering narratives about the ruling regime and, as such, aims to garner popularity, public approval, or prestige from foreign partners. This power has a strong quality of conversion, whereby foreign resources of power are converted into benefits for domestic leadership.
    Empirically, the paper will scrutinise the contemporary Serbian-Turkish relations, from the perspective of bilateral economic relations and Turkish state tools of soft power, focusing on the Turkish Agency for Cooperation and Coordination (TIKA). By examining different strands of Turkish money into Serbia, namely donations and investments, and comparing them with the ways the ruling regime managed and reacted to them, the goal is to juxtapose the symbolic and material facets of power. The study will provide insights into the foreign direct investments and the assistance projects, coupled with the media follow-ups on such occasions. The understanding of how the authoritarian leader wields symbolic power will be complemented with observations from interviews with key actors.
    One of the main purposes of symbolic power is to help enshrine the recipient country’s legitimacy, since foreign leaders often serve as ‘external validators’ . This is why looking at the manifestations of symbolic power is so crucial in understanding regime motivations and regime type.
    
    Author: Sabina Pacariz (King's College London)
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  07 Panel / Whose state? State conflict and security provision in and beyond Europe Room 103, Library
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Conveners: Nicholas Barker (University of Birmingham) , George Kyris (University of Birmingham)
  
  Chair: George Kyris (University of Birmingham)
  - The Geopolitics of Europe’s Protracted Conflicts: Contested Territories, Contested Orders
    
    This paper assesses the geopolitics of Europe’s protracted secessionist conflicts and how they shape and are being shaped by changing international and regional security orders. I argue there is a need to understand both the ‘unfinished business’ and the ‘new realities’ of these long-running conflicts and that international responses – or non-responses – to these conflicts are crucial in the formation of an emerging European security order. I first identify the analytical problems that must be addressed to inform better (or avoid worse) policy and political responses to protracted conflicts which I put in the context of the unfinished business of the wars of the 1990s and new realities that emerged since Kosovo’s UDI and the Russia-Georgia War (2008) and the Russia-Ukraine conflict (since 2014). Second, I discuss the policy and political problems presented by protracted conflicts arising from the limited number of poor and contested options decisionmakers have to choose from (such as recognition, forced reincorporation and so on). Third, to try and ameliorate these analytical and policy/political problems, I elaborate on the ‘new realities’ as a way to identify which factors should be included in analyses that can inform political choices about protracted conflicts and the emerging new European security order; specifically, the interdependencies and connections between local conflicts in regional conflict complexes; second order effects of protracted conflicts such as innovations in warfare and the presence of foreign fighters; and the precedents being set by attempts at (or neglect of) conflict management and resolution.
    
    Author: Nicholas Barker (University of Birmingham)
  - The impact of war on sub-ethnic groups: the case of Megrelians in Georgia
    
    The aim of this presentation is to shed light on the impact of the armed conflicts on the identity of sub-ethnic groups in the case of the Megrelians. The Megrelians are a sub-ethnic group of Georgians who inhabit the West Georgian region of Samegrelo and the separatist region of Gali in Abkhazia. The presentation is based on field research conducted in Georgia in October 2022. Our research has shown that Megrelians most often consider themselves as a community of people sharing mainly language, but also a common history, culture and regional identity. The internal perception of the demarcation of Megrelian versus Georgian is not in an ethnic sense, but rather only in a regional sense. And the two identities are thus complementary and overlapping rather than mutually exclusive. The efforts to separate the Megrelians from the Georgians are perceived as an old Russian approach of divide and rule. This perception of a strong sense of belonging to the wider Georgian family and, conversely, an awareness of external interference from Russia have been greatly amplified by the wars of the 1990s and the current war in Ukraine.
    
    Author: Tomas Hoch (University of Ostrava)
  - For things to remain the same, everything must change: assessing the UK’s transformed role in the Russian sanction negotiations before and after Brexit
    
    For things to remain the same, everything must change: assessing the UK’s transformed role in the Russian sanction negotiations before and after Brexit
    
    Author: Marianna Lovato (Vrije Universiteit)
  - Adapting to survive: Brexit, war in Ukraine and Gaza, and Euro-British intelligence sharing
    
    Adapting to survive: Brexit, war in Ukraine and Gaza, and Euro-British intelligence sharing
    
    Author: Lucia Frigo (Royal Holloway, University of London)
  - From Minsk Agreements to Moscow’s Aggression: Explaining the failure of Russia’s de-sovereignisation strategy in Ukraine
    
    From Minsk Agreements to Moscow’s Aggression: Explaining the failure of Russia’s de-sovereignisation strategy in Ukraine
    
    Author: Jaroslava Barbieri (University of Birmingham)
- 308
  07 Panel / Whose futures: the role of fiction in re/imagining climate politics Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: Environment Working Group
  
  Convener: Charlotte Weatherill (Open University)
  
  Chair: Carl Death (University of Manchester)
  - Islanding as reimagining: how oceanic fiction challenges dominant narratives of climate doom
    
    Fiction by European artists has long romanticised and sexualised the islands and people of the Pacific, the colonial gaze coding islanders as “exotic, malleable and, most of all, dispensible” (T. K. Teaiwa 1994). This romanticisation is reproduced in climate narratives of the ‘sinking island paradise’, where islanders become the perfect charismatic victims of rising seas (Weatherill 2022). Against and despite these narratives, Pacific authors / scholars / poets have created their own fictions and narratives, of survival and resistance.
    This paper argues that locating Oceanic counternarratives in fiction and poetry as well as activism and scholarship reflects the power of storytelling in politics. Starting from the argument that climate politics is all based upon imaginaries of future worlds, I argue that looking beyond the stories being told in the centres of colonial power is of fundamental importance for challenging the dominant narratives of climate doom and sacrifice.
    
    Author: Charlotte Weatherill (Open University)
  - Queer eco-heroes in African climate fiction
    
    Contrary to stereotypes of “African culture” as homophobic, many examples of African climate fiction feature queer, cyborg, heroes and heroines who challenge dominant models of eco-activism. This paper discusses the portrayal of radical feminist, queer and cyborg characters in stories like It Doesn’t Have to be This Way (Mackay, 2022), Noor (Okorafor, 2021), Spider the Artist (Okorafor, 2011), and Mara and Dann (Lessing, 1999, 2006). These transgressive characters are some of the most powerful contributions of Africanfuturist climate fiction, but they also raise broader questions about the role of fiction in climate politics. In particular, I focus on the dynamics of White anxiety and Black utopianism, and debates about role of novels in perpetuating liberal individualism. First, how do these stories reproduce and challenge Whiteness in climate politics? Do they represent an anxious, fragile, pessimistic, White liberalism (Mitchell and Chaudhury, 2020)? Second, to what degree to they contribute to Black utopian re-imaginings of ‘the meaning and significance of being (human)’ (Jackson, 2020: 1)? Third, do such stories over-individualise narratives of political agency? As Ghosh (2016: 127) has suggested, ‘[j]ust as novels have come to be seen as narratives of identity, so too has politics become, for many, a search for personal authenticity, a journey of self-discovery’, and he argues that Anthropocene politics demand much more imaginative posthuman renderings of agency. Following Wynter in asking ‘[h]ow do we be, in Fanonian terms, hybridly human?’ (Wynter and McKittrick, 2015: 45), in this paper I explore the degree to which these stories offer fantastic, futuristic ways of being Otherwise.
    
    Author: Carl Death (University of Manchester)
  - Disrupting anthropocentric fantasies of authority and control: Climate change adaptation in the work of Jeff VanderMeer
    
    As the world passes a tipping point and changes to the climate become inevitable and adaptation strategies have become the dominant policy framework, we contend that adaptation narratives (re)produce an anthropocentrism that fetishizes human agency. While we have inflicted damage upon the climate, adaptation narratives tell us, it is still within our power to effect some level of control over a (changing) environment. To critically engage with this continuing fascination and fetishization of human agency, we turn to Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy and the novel Borne as a resource for thinking through human-nature relationships. Reading VanderMeer’s work and its horror through the register of the uncanny, we plot anthropocentric anxieties that nature may begin to forcibly adapt us to it. In doing so, this paper illustrates how science fiction (and popular culture more broadly) help make sense of contemporary environmental politics by disturbing anthropocentric illusions of power and control.
    
    Authors: Jennifer Hobbs (University of Leicester) , Jana Fey (University of Sussex)
  - Ecopolitical imaginaries for transition: the role of climate fiction
    
    The idea of ‘transition’ to a post-carbon future is ubiquitous in ecological politics today. It is an all-encompassing notion that describes and evaluates our present moment and connects it to the future (Fressoz 2022). It is at the core of policies and plans to decarbonise economies and societies before the effects of climate change become irreversible for everyone on the planet (IPCC 2018). However, the universalising claims that support the idea of transition as a common vision for humanity need to be interrogated more closely. This paper argues that fiction as a form of speculative knowledge can have a crucial role in this process and shows how climate novels can help us to think through what the realisation of a post-carbon transition entails, what it leaves out, and what kind of conflicts it could exacerbate. To achieve this, the paper proceeds in two steps. First, it theorises the term ecopolitical imaginary to account for the way imaginaries contribute to provisioning more sustainable, just, and desirable futures and the political process required to achieve these futures (Hatzisavvidou 2023). Second, the paper draws on Robinson’s (2020) The Ministry for the Future as an exemplar of speculative knowledge that can help to visualise the disagreements, stakes, and trade-offs that transition politics entails. By dissecting the ways that the novel makes present key opportunities and challenges for envisioning ecopolitical imaginaries, while omitting others, the paper concludes by discussing the possibilities for a decolonial transition and fictions role in envisioning it.
    
    Authors: Benoit Dillet (University of Bath)* , Sophia Hatzisavvidou (University of Bath)
- 16:30
  
  15 minute transition
- 309
  07 Panel / Aesthetic Refusal, Aesthetics of Refusal, Refusal of Aesthetics Soprano, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Post-Structural Politics Working Group
  
  Conveners: Sara Wong (LSE) , Uygar Baspehlivan (University of Bristol)
  
  Chair: Uygar Baspehlivan (University of Bristol)
  - Humans of Late Cannibalism: The Memetic Politics of Eating the Rich
    
    Humans of Late Cannibalism: The Memetic Politics of Eating the Rich
    
    Author: Uygar Baspehlivan (University of Bristol)
  - Elemental poetics of the urban
    
    This paper experiments with forms of reading/writing the city through its elemental poetics. It attempts to ask what an elemental political ecology of city might feel or look like. Drawing on several independent films of the Middle East and North Africa such as The Dam (Al-Sadd, Sudan, 2022), Taste of Cement (Lebanon, 2017), The Last Days of the City (Egypt, 2016), the paper traces how these renditions employ the elemental geographies (earth, water, fire, air, dust, cement…etc.) of the urban in approaching their city as aesthetic subjects amongst revolutionary flux. Through developing the notion of the “elemental poetics of the urban”, my aim is two-fold: first, I want to reflect on the material, affective, and aesthetic entanglements that make up the city as an aesthetic subject admits a revolution. Second, I want to approach the city through its elemental geographies (Englemann and McCormack 2021) to probe its political ecologies. My suggestion here is that these poetics disinvest from foregrounding a resisting subject (or what might we expect a resistant subject to look like) without giving up on the city as a revolutionary geography.
    
    Author: Aya Nassar (University of Warwick)
  - Dark IR: The Possibility of Political Praxis after Refusal
    
    More and more, contemporary critical IR literature invokes refusal as a mode of resistance to the structures of power of a seemingly all-encompassing world. Under labels such as Dark IR, scholars are increasingly exposing how emancipatory positionalities reproduce the deterministic teleological prospect of the future as the mechanism through which the residue of modernity endlessly perpetuates a present of exclusions, dispossession and violence. Against the assumption that an engagement with this world is given by default, this paper asks what kind of thinking and praxis can be enabled outside this suffocating web of totality. With the goal of addressing this question, the paper draws on the aesthetics of darkness as a tool to desediment the Judaeo-Christian En-light-ened pillars of a redemptive horizon and thus reimagine refusal as an enabler of alternative views on the link between political subjectivity and world(un)making. Inspired by the works of Claire Colebrook and Densie Ferreira da Silva, amongst others, this paper seeks to explore the contributions that Dark IR and the politics of refusal can make to topical disciplinary debates about the Anthropocene, the end of the world and relational ontologies, pluriversal cosmologies, etc. The dissection of the tension between ontologically refusing the all-engulfing world and unearthing political praxis without slipping back into its luring emancipatory dreams configures what is at stake in the present text.
    
    Author: Ignasi Torrent (University of Hertfordshire)
  - Curation as method: aesthetic practice & epistemic refusal
    
    This paper begins to formulate what refusal to prevailing approaches to knowledge production in the academy might look like through the aesthetic and collaborative practice of curation. Creative production as method is still widely underexplored in the social sciences. In IR specifically, some scholarship has sought to rectify this, using film-making, novel writing and poetry as affective and creative processes to generate new insights into world politics. In extending this approach to leveraging creative production as a form of knowledge production, rather than knowledge dissemination, I consider the insights and limitations of utilising curation as method in theorising about the international. Throughout, I draw on an (anticolonial) surrealist approach which problemmatises the distinction between aesthetics and politics. In this paper, I reflect on auto-ethnographic observations of stepping into the role of the curator, through the curation of a contemporary art exhibition. Reflecting on this epistemological approach, I argue that curation can act as a new form of knowledge production for IR that is practice-based, embodied and collaborative. Here, I consider the extent to which this new way of knowing world politics can be conceived of as a form of epistemic refusal.
    
    Author: Sara Wong (London School of Economics)
  - “Perhaps this occupation will create… a nucleus of a new world in the heart of fossil-nuclear capitalism”: Political Possibility and Refusal in the Hambach Forest Occupation
    
    This paper joins newer approaches to IR in questioning the relational frameworks that predominantly subtend critical perspectives, which emphasise the generative capacities of being-in-relation as the locus of political activity. Instead, newer approaches challenge us to attend to a politics of non-relation in forms of refusal and withdrawal, with an emphasis on critique and negation. With that in mind, the paper focusses on the occupation of Hambach Forest by a small group of anarchists as a site of radical refusal. The paper argues that it’s at once a refusal of the nearby lignite mine, set to be extended into and destroy the remaining forest; a refusal of capital’s fossil-fuelled global economy; and a refusal of the subjectivities constituted by capital that demand our complicity. Reading the occupation by bringing together Barad’s conceptualisation of the ‘void’ (2017) and Rancière’s account of politics as both a practice of aesthetic disruption and one that names a ‘wrong’ (1999), the paper demonstrates that building the infrastructures of refusal (homes, barricades, communal spaces) with and through the trees simultaneously makes the nucleus of a new world legible, one that could be just. Therefore, the paper concludes that refusal is necessary to make radical alternatives possible.
    
    Author: Ben Bowsher (Newcastle University)
- 310
  07 Panel / Security, Applied History and Foreign Policy Fortissimo, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Foreign Policy Working Group
  
  Convener: Jamie Barrow Gaskarth (The Open University)
  
  Chair: Jamie Barrow Gaskarth (The Open University)
  - Myth Diplomacy: How Ukraine Have Actioned Memory Diplomacy Through Myth
    
    Built on a discourse analysis of speeches made to foreign audiences by the Ukrainian President, Minister of Defence, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, this paper examines i) how Ukraine has used myth as a diplomatic tool following the Russian invasion in 2022, and ii) how myth can be used as a means of actioning memory diplomacy. It argues that following the invasion, Ukrainian leaders have engaged in memory diplomacy to build support for their war effort by framing their situation in the myths of target states. Such myths include the WW2 Churchill myth for the UK and the Cold War Reagan myth for the US. From that, this paper offers new insights into Ukraine’s diplomatic strategy following Russia’s invasion and contributes to understandings of myth and foreign policy. It does this by connecting the concept of myth with the concept of memory diplomacy by demonstrating how myths, or ‘myth diplomacy’, can be used to action memory diplomacy.
    
    Authors: Thomas Eason (Aston University) , Artur Nadiiev (University of Nottingham)
  - Lacking a Clear Target: Britain and NATO institutional reform after the end of the Cold War
    
    After 1991, there occurred a significant effort to reform the institutional design of NATO for a new era. British Foreign Office and Defence officials played an important role in shaping this agenda, as newly available archival evidence shows. However, this effort largely failed. Utilising new and underused sources from the inside of NATO structures, this paper argues that British officials, alongside allied representatives, squared off against an institutionally powerful NATO Headquarters structure and lost. This internal conflict, largely carried out between the years 1991 and 1993, had significant impacts both on the direction of NATO and the relationship of its allies to its permanent staff structures. This argument, as part of broader research by the author, widens the aperture on the study of NATO’s history by taking a fuller account of the initiative and entrepreneurship displayed by NATO, rather than allied, staffs. It has implications for considering reform of NATO in the 21st century.
    
    Author: Davis Ellison (King's College, London)
  - From China Question to China Problem: Constructing British Visions of a Rising China,1899-1922
    
    The idea of a “rising China” is often associated with familiar episodes like ‘Nixon goes to China’, Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Four Modernizations’, or China’s seismic financial stabilisation measures during the 2008 Financial Crisis. For many Western observers prior to the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China remained a disordered backwater, plagued in the first half of the twentieth century by nationalism, imperialism, communism, warlordism, anti-foreign agitation, weak governance, and perpetual war. No one viewed China in this light more than observers in Britain. Particularly as Britain was one of the principal architects of China’s ‘century of humiliation’. But it was also in the early twentieth century that another, less popular, view of China began to take shape in Britain: of a country going through a period of painful transition in its inevitable return to world power.
    Existing scholarship has made important in-roads into the intellectual history that underpins ideas of Asia in this period. Yet many of these accounts reinforce the more mainstream views of China as a backward country or as an arena for the intrigues of great powers. But for some in Britain – in just over twenty years – China was beginning to be taken seriously as a great power-in-waiting.
    This paper seeks to explore the intellectual construction of British ideas of a rising China in the early twentieth century. Starting with the China Question of the 1890s and ending with the Washington Conference and the publishing of Bertrand Russell’s China Problem, this account examines the strategic, political, economic, and moral case for China’s return to great power status. To do this, it will rely on contemporary publications about China drawn from periodicals, travel writings, and lectures. It will also utilise correspondence and papers from important politicians, officials, journalists, and intellectuals particularly associated with this view. It is hoped that this paper will simultaneously enrich our understanding of early twentieth century British perceptions of China and help to historically ground later Western accounts of a rising China.
    
    Author: Oliver Yule-Smith (King's College, London)
- 311
  07 Panel / Contestations of sovereignty and democracy: History, legitimacy, volatility Dolce, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: BISA
  
  Convener: Nick Caddick (Anglia Ruskin University)
  
  Chair: George Kyris (University of Birmingham)
  - Researching ‘from below’ in Turkey: qualitative research on authoritarian legitimacy
    
    Legitimacy is loosely defined as ‘the right to rule’ and, in democracies, this right stems from elections and people’s participation in formal and informal political institutions. Many autocracies, however, are able to rule within a democratic framework of elections and other minimally functioning democratic institutions. Recent literature is attempting to study autocracies as a standalone phenomenon, rather than one that develops through democratic backsliding; in this process, it is important to investigate how legitimacy is created and maintained.
    With the majority of literature exploring legitimacy from a normative perspective, the very few empirical studies have relied on quantitative data; my work offers the opportunity to study legitimacy ‘from the bottom up,’ situating people in the centre of the research process and recognising their agency. In the specific socio-political context I conducted my research, people discussed their legitimacy beliefs and who they consider a legitimate ruler, thus shedding light on why autocratic governments enjoy a degree of legitimacy. My paper focuses on the methodology I used in collecting data for my PhD project, consisting of elite interviews and short-term ethnography.
    
    Author: Evelyn Strongylakou (University of Warwick)
  - Contesting regional sovereignty from below: the puzzle of illegal and unofficial referendums
    
    Since 1990, there has been a marked increase in the frequency of independence and regional sovereignty referendums around the world. Direct democracy of this type is often, although perhaps problematically, touted as an effective way to resolve contentious issues of national, regional, or territorial sovereignty. But what about polities that have no legal right or feasible route to holding a binding referendum on these issues? In these cases, the organising of unofficial or illegal referendums is a surprisingly common tactic that is increasingly employed by protest groups, social movements, or regional political parties to raise awareness, mobilise supporters, and pressure central governments into granting concessions. Despite their increasing frequency, the effect of these specific forms of protest democracy remains empirically poorly understood.
    
    This paper addresses the puzzle of why unofficial sovereignty referendums seem to be growing in popularity by examining how effective they are as protest and mobilisation events. To do this, I use Interrupted Time Series (ITS) modelling to compare the empirical effect on national issue salience of the recent unofficial referendums in Catalonia, Veneto, and Lombardy to the effect of the ‘official’ Scottish independence referendum, and to the salience of other regional sovereignty movements where no such referendum has occurred. The findings of this paper suggest that unofficial referendums can be an effective way to accentuate the national salience of regional sovereignty in the short-term and, in some cases, in the medium to long-term. Any medium to long-term elevation in issue salience, however, appears to be dependent on several factors. I outline some of the most plausible factors behind medium to long-term saliency increases and conclude by proposing useful avenues for future research into both referendum effects and the tactics of regional sovereignty movements.
    
    Author: Louis Stockwell (University of Warwick)
  - Saffron Ethnocracy: Conceptualising Ethnocracy in India, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka
    
    Myanmar’s political system during the 2010 to 2021 period shares much in common with the political systems of neighbouring India and nearby Sri Lanka and so this paper identifies all three as ethnocratic, arguing these polities represent a variation of ethnocracy which leans authoritarian and is specifically Islamophobic. The paper builds on discourse about the nature of ethnocracy to introduce the label “Saffron Ethnocracy” which is used to identify the specific Islamophobic variation of ethnocracy observable in India, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. The saffron label recognises the common use of saffron clothing as identity markers by Hindus and Buddhists, the dominant religious groups in each country. While all three South Asian countries were certainly procedural democracies during the period studied, majoritarianism strongly impacted their political systems, affecting citizenship laws and practices, contributing to assertions about civilisational uniqueness of dominant groups, empowering religio-political institutions of the dominant groups, dramatically curtailing freedom of expression, and severely undermining the standing of minorities, particularly Muslim populations.
    
    Authors: Rudabeh Shahid (Oberlin College)* , Ronan Lee (Loughborough University)
  - Expansions, Contractions and Liminalities of International Relations and the History of Sovereignty
    
    Historical treatments of sovereignty tend to concentrate on its ‘conceptual history’ and less attention has been paid to how conditions associated to sovereignty, like territorial control or diplomatic recognition, change within a unit and over time (Kyris 2022). This dynamism of sovereignty becomes apparent in critical junctures whereby we see a significant change in the extent of one’s diplomatic recognition of statehood. Aside from dynamic, the study of state recognition also shows that sovereignty often remains partial, with statehood claimants like Palestine, Kosovo or the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic enjoying a certain degree of, but still not universal, recognition. These instances of partial and dynamic sovereignty also suggest that the borders of the community of states and of international relations are not as rigid or clear-cut as they might look at first glance.
    
    This paper, then, explores a set of such critical events to investigate what were the processes, and the important actors and their activity within them, through which changes in recognition and sovereignty were produced. I draw data from secondary and original sources and use historical analysis to explore these questions in three such historical moments: the 2001 collective recognition of Timor Leste as an independent state through its entry to the UN, and oppositely, the collective de-recognition of the Republic of China (RoC) in Taiwan through its expulsion from the UN in 1971; and, finally, Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence, which was partially recognised.
    
    In this way, a history first, theory then approach seeks to foreground the context (Green 2022) within which these changes took place and, then, generalise from rather than to the particular (Gaddis, 1996) about the ways in which recognition, the membership of the international community of states, and, therefore, international relations change. This allows us to unpack the historicisity of sovereignty and a better conceptualisation (De Carvalho et al. 2021) of its dynamic character. This conceptualisation is a timely contribution to historical treatments of sovereignty, including important recent interventions (Costa Lopez et al. 2018), that concentrate more on changes in the concept of sovereignty, rather than empirical manifestations related to it. More broadly, this study draws our attention to instances in which recognition was taken away (e.g. RoC) or was withheld (e.g. Kosovo), and, consequently, to moments of contraction of international relations or areas of liminality.
    
    Author: George Kyris (University of Birmingham)
- 312
  07 Panel / Europe and Global Security Room 101, Library
  
  Sponsor: European Security Working Group
  
  Convener: ESWG Working group
  
  Chair: Lorenzo Cladi (University of Plymouth)
  - Secularism and Securitisation: A Mutually Compatible Relationship.
    
    Post 9/11, the Islamophobic discourse led to the securitization of Islam globally. I argue that this aforementioned phenomenon was possible not only because of the fear of violence by a section of the Muslim population, but rather there are certain values and assumptions inherent to secularism that make securitization of Islam relatively easy. I also argue that Islam emerges as a counter-hegemonic force to the ideals of Western secularism. Secularism “takes the Euro-American definition of religion and its separation from politics as the starting point for Social scientific inquiry” (Hurd, 2011). Consequently, it sees any “politics with reference to religion” as the “ultimate threat to order, security, and civility” (Petito & Hatzopoulus, 2003). Hence, Secularism is not neutral and treats religion as violent, irrational, and pre-modern (Wilson, 2019). Rather than seeing secularism as neutral, it needs to be seen as a product of European enlightenment values and subsequently contextualized. It is this interrelationship between secularism and securitization that I seek to address.
    
    Author: Hammaad Mehraj Syed (South Asian University)
  - Opening the Black Box of EU Digital Sovereignty: A Systematic Review of the Development of a Concept
    
    This study is the first to provide a systematic review of the academic literature on European Union (EU) digital sovereignty and identifies the trends that have emerged in recent EU policy documents. The study presents a qualitative literature review of academic articles that discuss the concept of EU digital sovereignty, complemented with a systematic quantitative review of academic articles and policy documents using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling. The objectives are to (1) identify the role played by the concept of digital sovereignty in different disciplinary fields; (2) highlight recent trends in the study and practice of digital sovereignty; (3) identify the key themes and trends relating to digital sovereignty in the policy documents published by the EU institutions; and (4) identify how this systematic review can help us inform the future digital sovereignty research agenda. Through integrating the qualitative and quantitative results, we identify the current EU digital sovereignty research as largely driven by policy initiatives, and that EU policy documents are marked by a certain inconsistent usage of the term digital sovereignty, along with unexpected thematic linkages between issues such as technology control and green energy policies. By unpacking the relations between the different themes in digital sovereignty and their evolution over time, we identify limitations in the current academic research in this field, as well as a number of avenues for future researchers to consider in studying this subject.
    
    Authors: Aleksei Turobov (Northumbria University) , Ben Farrand (Newcastle University) , Helena Farrand Carrapico (Northumbria University)
  - Constructing the 'China Technological Threat' in the European Perspective: A Case Study of Huawei's Involvement in 5G Infrastructure Development
    
    This research examines the construction of the 'China Technological Threat' narrative in Europe, focusing on Huawei's involvement in 5G infrastructure development. Employing a poststructuralist approach, the study explores the interplay between discourses on Chinese technological advancements and European security concerns. It aims to move beyond positivist perspectives, questioning assumptions and exploring the discursive construction of China as a Western rival.
    The central research questions are: How do discourses on China's technological advancements and European security concerns intersect, and what are the implications for the perception of China as a threat? The study will analyze policy documents, media reports, and scholarly literature to understand this discourse.
    Significantly, the research addresses a gap in understanding the discursive processes shaping perceptions of China’s technological rise. It aims to contribute insights into the interplay between technology, security, and international relations, particularly examining the intricate relationship between technological advancements and European security concerns.
    The case study of Huawei’s role in 5G development in Europe since 2018 serves as a focal point. The research will utilize a qualitative methodology, employing Hansen's poststructuralist intertextual model to analyze diverse narratives and representations of China in European discourse. This approach helps to understand the mutual constitution of the European Self and the Chinese Other in discourse, challenging the binary nature of securitization theory.
    
    Author: Xuechun Tian (King's College London)
  - Perceptions of threat: the news media and disordered information as a security issue
    
    This paper presents a thematic analysis of findings from three stakeholders each in the UK and the EU – news outlets, civil society and policymakers - about the extent and nature of any perceived threat from disordered information and responses to it. It draws on a conceptual framework arguing that ‘news’ – social and mainstream outlets - can be both a conduit, and target, of disordered information as a means of gaining strategic advantage. Hence, disinformation, misinformation and malinformation can be presented as ‘factual’ news, and journalism can be discursively undermined with disordered information produced through covert surveillance, SLAPP prosecutions, cyberactivity, falsehoods and the exploitation of existing social cleavages such as gender, race and sexuality. It enables states to manage the wider foreign policy discourse to maintain plausible deniability, however implausible this is. It also enables states to infiltrate other news eco-systems using their liberal tools of freedom of expression and the rule of law. Such conduiting and targeting is further enabled by cyber and AI advances. Hence there is a need for understanding how the threat is perceived by stakeholders – and what their response may be.
    
    Author: Natalie Martin (University of Nottingham)
- 313
  07 Panel / Everyday action in times of economic change: historical lessons for contemporary international trends Concerto, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: International Political Economy Working Group
  
  Conveners: Oksana Levkovych (London School of Economics and Political Science) , Jessica Eastland-Underwood (University of Warwick)
  
  Chair: James A. Morrison (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  - Everyday Perceptions of Economic Inequality During Periods of International Economic Turbulence: Evidence from the British Interwar Years
    
    How do periods of international economic turbulence influence everyday agents’ perception of economic inequality? Addressing this question by focusing on everyday life in the UK during the years leading up to the Great Depression and the suspension of the interwar gold standard, I present evidence from multiple British archives such as the People’s History Museum and the Modern Records Centre and argue that the economic instability in the international system translated to experiences of increasing economic polarisation among everyday agents in the UK. While unemployment and wages were problematised in rather concrete terms, discussions on economic inequality were often tied to broader ideational questions about how contemporary arrangements functioned and the direction the society was heading – or should be heading. At the same time, everyday agents clearly distanced themselves to (international) financiers, indicating early tensions between the international financial system and everyday experiences. Exploring these tendencies, I advance a more qualitative approach to the study of inequality that situates economic polarisation in the broader social, historical, and international context and highlights the mutually dependent relationship between the international sphere and the everyday.
    
    Keywords: Everyday IPE, inequality, instability, economic crisis, perceptions, experiences
    
    Author: Kasper Arabi (University of Warwick)
  - The “siren song” of Smoot-Hawley: Metaphor and masculinity in US trade policy, 1981-2021
    
    Can something as dry as trade policy ever be seductive? Ever since US President Reagan argued that the United States must learn from the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff and never again succumb to the “siren song of protectionism,” pro-free trade US presidents and policymakers have consistently framed tariffs as a “temptation” to be avoided. By contrast, President Trump bashed FTAs by arguing that they had resulted in the economic “rape” of the country. To explain the surprising use of these lurid sexual metaphors in a field as technical as international trade, I examine the ways in which masculinity and historical metaphor operate in trade speeches from the beginning of the 1981-2021. Through a close reading of presidential speeches on trade, I explore two dominant images of masculinity that emerge: one of the disciplined and chaste man determined to stay the course of trade liberalization and another of the authoritative father figure dedicated to protecting the (feminized) nation from threatening outsiders. I situate these findings within the literatures on the “libidinal economy,” gender and international politics, and more mainstream IPE work on the sources of trade policy preferences and suggest that exploring the role that masculinity and gender play in trade debates can enrich existing literatures on the subject.
    
    Author: Edward Knudsen (University of Oxford)
  - Forestalling hegemonic decline: Walter Runciman, trade protectionism and Britain’s search for systemic openness
    
    Hegemonic stability theorists have argued that the interwar collapse of the international liberal trade regime was due to Britain’s loss of economic hegemony and hence its turn to protection resulting in systemic “closure”. This paper shows that when the British policymakers adopted both general tariff and imperial preference in 1932, they did it for precisely the opposite reason, namely, to negotiate removal of tariff barriers with both allies and rivals and incentivise “re-opening” of the international trade for domestic welfare creation and greater systemic stability. This strategy was developed and implemented by Walter Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade (1931-1937), who used Keynes’s idea of a 10 per cent revenue tariff to reduce the scope of protection that was introduced. He then applied this low tariff to negotiating bilateral agreements that lowered protection reciprocally, following Cobden’s approach to commercial liberalisation in Anglo-French Treaty of 1860. Crucially, he was able to pursue trade re-opening under a fully protectionist mandate of the Conservative-dominated National Government at the lowest point in international trade relations. Using the empirical evidence from the local policy archives, this paper places individual agency at the heart of the structural and systemic--level analyses offering a novel interpretation of this crucial IPE case. By analysing structural change as engendering active human agency, it highlights the contingency involved in the economic policymaking and corrects analytical assumptions of structural theories that continue to dominate the field of international political economy.
    
    Author: Oksana Levkovych (London School of Economics and Political Science)
  - The pandemic, ‘the economy’ and race: how economic histories mobilised American anti-lockdown and Black Lives Matter protesters
    
    In April 2020, thousands of Americans protested to ‘Reopen the Economy’ at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just six weeks later, millions more Americans protested following the murder of George Floyd. In both movements, ‘the economy’ was used to make arguments – although each group understood ‘the economy’ in different ways. How did Americans give meaning to the perennially essential topic of ‘the economy’ in the midst of a global health crisis? To examine this, I conducted a rhetorical political analysis of social media posts of key local and national groups in both protests from April-June 2020. I found that competing histories were often invoked to legitimise arguments. I followed-up these findings with in-person interviews from the relevant ideological communities, asking about ‘the economy’ in American history. I found even more specific narratives used to give meaning to ‘the economy’, including the origins of the Federal Reserve and the emergence of tipping culture and loitering laws. I contend that economic historical narrations from everyday actors in a crisis not only reveal more complex meanings assigned to economic ideas, but are also indicative of the important role of epistemic authority in understanding the hidden default of whiteness in economic language.
    
    Author: Jessica Eastland-Underwood (University of Warwick)
- 314
  07 Panel / Feminist Foreign Policy: Labelling, Narratives and Performativity Jane How, Symphony Hall
  
  Sponsor: Gendering International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: GIRWG Working group
  
  Chair: Laura Sjoberg (Royal Holloway, University of London)
  - Gender Mainstreaming in the EU's Green Deal
    
    Could the implementation of EU’s Green Deal, with its focus on a new economic model premised on sustainability and well-being, constitute a moment where feminist understandings of the gendered impacts of economic policy make enter into EU policy discourses? Using interpretive policy analysis approaches (Yanow 2000; Griggs and Howarth 2023) this paper analyses the contestation processes involved in the formulation of EU’s green deal policies, to ask what ‘gender knowledge’ (Cavaghan 2017; Caglar 2010) has successfully entered into the EU’s ‘new’ and ‘greener’ economic model.
    
    Existing feminist analyses of the EU’s economic mode have highlighted how the EU’s existing economic model creates gender inequalities, apportioning disproportionate burdens and disadvantages on some actors, namely women and people of colour whilst simultaneously maintaining a ‘strategic silence’ (Bakker 1994) about these outcomes. These analyses consistently drawn on an expanded concept of the economy which identifies the social reproductive sphere as the foundation of the productive economy, premised on a reproductive subsidy extracted from women and people of colour (Heintz 2019; Nelson 2006; Mies 2014; Cavaghan and O’Dwyer 2018; Cavaghan and Elomaki 2022; Rai, Hoskyns, and Thomas 2014). Findings include the consistent erasure of women as economic citizens in EU economic policy (Cavaghan and O’Dwyer 2018) and the systematic misrepresentation of the reproductive economy as an economic drain rather than an economic foundation (Cavaghan and Elomaki 2022). However, the feminist political economy (FPE) frameworks used to date analyse EU economic policy, elide some of the most important economic relationships which the Green Deal rhetorically claims to alter – namely the role of nature and our reliance upon it. They have also consistently restricted discussion of gendered impacts to those felt within the EU’s borders.
    To fill this lacuna this paper draws on Ecofeminist political economy frameworks. These have highlighted the gendered and racialized power relations that have hitherto maintained ecologically unjust and unsustainable economic practices creating wealth in Global North countries (Abazeri 2022; Battacharyya 2018; Brand 2022; Fraser 2021; Andreucci and Zografos 2022; Salleh 2020; MacGregor 2021). These generate a new set of research questions regarding the EU’s economic model. How are relationships between humans and nature (explicitly or implicitly) presented in the EU’s Green Deal? What is the role of gendered assumptions or images in the legitimation of these relationships? Have gendered social reproductive subsidies and colonial extraction been problematised or maintained (Cavaghan and Elomaki 2022; Bhambra and Holmwood 2018; Hansen and Jonsson 2018) in any of the EU’s Green Deal initiatives? Whose well-being is included in the EU’s new greener concepts of justice or welfare? Findings sheds light on the gendered implications of the EU’s Green Deal, whilst expanding FPE perspectives on the EU’s economic model, to include 1) the relationships between the EU’s economy and the natural environment, and 2) the EU’s gender constitutive impacts beyond its borders.
    
    Author: Rosalind Cavaghan (Flax Foundation/University of Edinburgh)
  - Historical responsibility narratives and coloniality in German Feminist Foreign Policy
    
    All Global North states pursuing a feminist foreign policy (FFP) are former colonial powers or actively participated in the colonial system and perpetuated its ideology. However, there remains a deafening silence around colonial legacies in FFPs (Ansorg et al. 2021) — with one exception: the German FFP guidelines are the first and, to date, only FFP document to mention colonial histories and legacies. We ask how does German FFP address this issue and with what consequences? We offer a discourse-theoretical analysis (Doty 1993) of the FFP guidelines and other policy documents and set this against previous foreign policy commitments to addressing colonial history. We find that within its FFP, Germany’s colonial past is framed as part of cultural and societal foreign policy and in relation to responsibility and reflexivity, while externalizing the reflexive work to former colonies. We argue that, first, colonialism remains invisible in relation to other policy issues including ‘hard’ security and the doing of foreign policy itself. Thus, FFP glosses over how colonial structures persist and are inherent to German foreign policy today. Second, we suggest that references to colonial histories with a feminist veneer become part of a performative power within the ‘do’s and ‘don’ts’ of Global North FFPs, rather than prioritizing matters of social justice.
    
    Authors: Madita Standke-Erdmann (King's College London) , Karoline Färber (King’s College London)
  - What’s in a name—The politics of labelling of Feminist Foreign Policies
    
    While countries of the postcolonial Global South are increasingly adopting Feminist Foreign Policies (FFP), recent scholarship (Haastrup 2020) also shows that the FFP label might not be the only indicator of having ‘feminist’ foreign policies. Situated within these debates, this paper examines whether the adoption of postcolonial feminist principles can be identified within the foreign policy of India—a Global South, postcolonial nation that doesn’t espouse an FFP. Specifically, the paper investigates whether there are postcolonial feminist ideas at work in India’s foreign policy articulations in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Through a Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (Lazar 2014) of India’s statements within the UNSC during its tenure in 2021-22, the paper argues that India’s UNSC foreign policy has postcolonial and feminist underpinnings that work separately, but not together. While the former plays out in terms of being critical of Western nations or calling for Global South solidarity, the latter is an essentialist and reductionist understanding of feminism, in line with feminist security studies’ critique on the portrayal of women’s victimhood in discourses of conflict. The paper also argues that in the context of India, such framings of women are informed by ontological insecurities, and postcolonial and masculine anxieties. From this criticism, room for a more transformative postcolonial feminist approach to Indian FP can be imagined.
    
    Author: Neha Tetali (Trinity College Dublin)
  - Gendering Foreign Policy Making: Feminist Foreign Policy Networks in Mexico and Germany
    
    This research project aims to investigate, broadly speaking, what has driven the official adoption of a feminist foreign policy in Germany and Mexico. Starting from a gendering process of the Foreign Policy Analysis discipline and developments in the Feminist IR academic debate, it wants to mainly use a Feminist Institutionalism (FI) framework as a bridge between the two disciplines to give more space to the agency of critical and less-traditional actors, who, rephrasing the work of Achilleos-Sars, do not reflect the mainstream idea that the political landscape in the Foreign Affairs sphere is defined by competing masculinities and by the agency of only male political and military leaders.
    
    The concept of ‘feminist foreign policy networks’ is inspired by the works of feminist institutionalists on formal and informal institutions, on feminist triangles, strategic partnerships, triangles of empowerment and velvet triangles, and it is used to investigate ‘the rise, embeddedness, and continuity of, as well as resistance, to pro-gender norms in foreign policy and similar contexts’ (as put by True and Aggestam, 2020). In particular, the analysis wants to be threefold:
    It wants to investigate the gendered formal and informal norms, rules, and practices produced and reproduced in German and Mexican FP institutions.
    It wants to analyze the creation of the feminist foreign policy networks and identify the critical (feminist and non-feminist) actors involved in the work of the networks.
    The strategies used by these latter to engender the FP domain will be analyzed, in combination with the resistance these actors faced in the process.
    A critical and intersectional perspective will be used for the last part of the research to analyze the more prominent critical actors and voices in the FFP network in both national contexts.
    
    During BISA2024 (if given the opportunity), the preliminary findings on the German case will be presented after three months of fieldwork in Berlin between January and April.
    
    Author: Isabel Hernandez Pepe (Scuola Normale Superiore)
- 315
  07 Panel / Gendering the Military, Militarising Gender: Military Representations in Pop Culture and Social Media Room 102, Library
  
  Sponsor: Critical Military Studies Working Group
  
  Conveners: Veronica Barfucci (University of Warwick) , Max Warrack (University of Warwick)
  
  Chair: Miklas Fahrenwaldt (University of Edinburgh)
  - 'When ancient beauty meets modern army!': Military, gender and nation in Chinese state media
    
    Since 2000, the Chinese state has used online media to embark on a newly styled propaganda campaign about the People’s Liberation Army both domestically and internationally. While training, deployment and sacrifice, all of which have long characterized military-themed propaganda in the PRC, remains prominent, this new media approach also features a more ‘down-to-earth’ picture of military life. This includes countless short videos and images of (mostly male) soldiers visiting their family, marrying their civilian brides at border stations, and riding horses bare-chested through the snow. Increasingly, we also see female military personnel, often celebrated for both their ‘looks and skills’ and described in terms of ‘girl power’. As part of broader efforts to attract new recruits and promote military service, this new media strategy raises important questions about the intersection of gender, nation and military in Chinese state media. Taking a feminist critical military studies approach, this paper examines how gendered subjectivities and symbols are mobilized across these visual and textual discourses. Paying particular attention to how these discourses enacts a new national hypermasculinity, femonationalism, and ‘family values’, it considers the ways in which idea of nation are performed by the Chinese state and its institutions through gender and sexuality in the era of consolidating authoritarian rule under Xi Jinping. In doing so, it examines the various convergences between the everyday normalisation, celebration and entrenchment of the militarised nation and the production of hegemonic gender norms in contemporary China.
    
    Author: Séagh Kehoe (University of Westminster)
  - Instagramming the infantry: re-inscribing hegemonic military masculinity in the contemporary era
    
    Almost ten years ago, Jane Parpart and Marysia Zalewski suggested that we should be Rethinking the Man Question in international relations. More specifically, there has been much written about the relationship between gender and the military in recent years and of particular interest are works questioning the dominance of hegemonic military masculinity in contemporary times: to what extent is this central to modern armed forces? How has the integration of women impacted gender practices in the military? What is the role of LGBT personnel? This presentation considers the relationship between militaries and gender in the context of social media, where the British military is comparatively under-investigated. We ask to what extent the British Army constructs itself in hegemonically masculine terms on Instagram, a platform centring images. We focus on 1) the main, official account (https://www.instagram.com/britisharmy/) and 2) the account of the Army LGBT Network (https://www.instagram.com/british_army_lgbt/). Preliminary analysis suggests that the main account is much more hegemonically masculine than we might assume given recent rethinking of military masculinity. In contrast, the LGBT Network account positions the British Army as progressive, subverting representations of the institution as monolithically, hegemonically masculine.
    
    Author: Natalie Jester (University of Gloucestershire)
  - Gender-hybridity and Rehabilitating Military Violence: JSDF ‘Beautiful Fighting Girls’
    
    Typically, gendered militarist narratives do not tolerate gender hybridity. Historically, there has been a strict separation between masculine and feminine roles: men protecting, women being protected/enabling their protection by supporting ‘their men’. This strict separation has even largely survived the inclusion of women into various militaries as war fighters: the women’s gender identity being recalibrated away from the feminine into the hypermasculine to mark them as exceptional women who proved the gendered militarist rule. However, there is a hybrid-gendered trope ubiquitous in Japanese popular culture, that features in modern gendered militarist narratives: the ‘beautiful fighting girls’ (sentō bishōjo). They are beautiful, young (sometimes infantile), immature, playful, and highly adept at, and prone to, ultraviolence. These characters trivialise and sexualise ultraviolence, and when female Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) personnel occupy these roles, they trivialise and sexualise military violence. In the context of Japan’s post-war ‘culture of antimilitarism’, JSDF ‘beautiful fighting girls’ in manga and anime present a pathway for military violence to be rehabilitated, helping cultivate a new societal consensus to support its post-Cold War security normalisation; and to re-establish a traditional gendered militarist narrative in Japan.
    
    Author: Max Warrack (University of Warwick)
  - Gendering the Military on Social Media: Redefining Masculinity, Femininity, and Ontological Security
    
    This paper draws on feminist ontological security and military studies to discuss the implications of gendered representation of the military on government social media. It focuses on the Instagram and Twitter accounts of the Japan Ministry of Defense (MOD), and the representation of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) therein. In MOD’s traditional campaigns, female personnel are overrepresented, infantilised, and sexualised, aiming to make the military look ‘cuter’ and acceptable, displacing militarism with kawaii representations. On social media, female personnel are instead under-represented, but they are portrayed as professional. Still, they never engage in violent activities, and they often smile reassuringly. This contrasts with a representation of male personnel as focused and armed soldiers. In this paper, I argue that the non-fictional nature of social media allows for both redefining and reproducing gendered military representations. By applying an ontological security framework, I argue that this gendered representation of ‘masculine’ strength and ‘feminine’ benevolence is part of the government’s effort to normalise the JSDF. This is particularly effective on social media, whose affective and unexceptional features enable vicarious identification with the everyday lives of military personnel. Therefore, I argue that social media can make militarism more desirable through personal identification with the military.
    
    Author: Veronica Barfucci (University of Warwick)
  - “We are finally visible (on Facebook)” - Negotiation and Compromise in Thai Military Women’s Online Self-Representation
    
    Drawing inspiration from Enloe’s feminist curiosity and my service time in the Royal Thai Air Force, this paper discusses military women’s self-representation on social media. More broadly, it is argued that Thai military women continue to face marginalisation and misogyny in the workplace, while media representation of military women remains evidently underrepresented and gendered. With the proliferation of social media platforms, military women have opportunities to self-represent their military selves and identities. The paper suggests that military women compromise their individuality in order to “integrate” in the military (online) community, which mirrors traditional military transition. This compromise also includes women managing their femininity, for example, sharing photos with less makeup, yet looking "beautiful enough”, or accepting online misogynistic comments from male colleagues. It further sheds light on women’s attempts to negotiate with the military for recognition, relevance, and visibility. Nevertheless, both compromise and negotiation validate the militarization of women's lives and the impact of military masculinity on (military) women; both of which transcend into the military digital culture.
    
    Author: Chanapang Pongpiboonkiat (University of Leeds)
- 316
  07 Panel / Historicising geopolitics: Revisiting the discipline of Global IR Drawing Room, Hyatt
  
  Sponsor: Historical Sociology and International Relations Working Group
  
  Convener: HSIR Working group
  
  Chair: Ann Bajo (University of Portsmouth)
  - Fenchurch Street Goes Global: The Role of Private Expertise in Shaping International Shipping Standards
    
    Freeboard regulations are an uncontested standard of maritime transport, establishing benchmarks for the loading of ships to ensure their safety. These rules first originated in Lloyd’s Register (LR), the classification society, in the 1830s, before being translated in national legislation in the UK in the 1870s, and finally into international legislation in the 1930s. This paper examines the process by which load lines came to be governed, and specifically the role of Lloyd’s Register, in the imagination and implementation of the load line regime. Through its global network of offices and surveyors, LR was able not only to shape shipping industrial practice on the ground but also to leverage public forums of regulation internationally; in exploring these dynamics, this paper seeks to shed new light on scholarship on geographies and relations of expertise and rule-making in pre-WWII global governance.
    
    Authors: Alex Gould (King's College London) , Anna Finiguerra (QMUL)
  - Auslandwissenschaft: The German Science of IR, 1871-1945
    
    As our approach to the historical sociology of International Relations becomes increasingly introspective, the legacies of imperialism that shape our discipline are being recentred and reconsidered. Critical discussions about the role of British imperialism in the development of IR are well underway.
    However, there remains a relative silence surrounding the role of German discourses of empire, science and the international, despite the fact that these coexisted with their British counterparts and in many cases overlapped.
    
    By tracing the emergence of distinctly German discourses of 'scientific' IR from the Mitteleuropa of the liberal imperialists to Nazi visions of a new global order, this paper will contribute to a wider discussion about the role of German discourses of imperialism and order in the historical sociology of IR. Though these have been largely overlooked by orthodox IR historians and theorists alike, it will argue that they constitute a core component of the foundations on which post-1945 IR was built.
    
    In tracing this arc through the interconnected eras of the Kaiserreich, Weimar Republic, and Third Reich, it will seek to identify a key strand of IR's historical emergence and recentre German discourses of science and IR in the wider historical sociology of the discipline.
    
    Author: Jude Rowley (Lancaster University)
  - Negotiating Morocco: Francisco Franco's Spain, Ontological Security, and Imperial Identity
    
    Why did Francisco Franco attempt to expand the Spanish protectorate in Morocco (1912-1956) despite Spain’s fragile economic and military conditions right after the Spanish Civil War (1936-39)? This paper examines the negotiations and processes surrounding the expansion of the Spanish protectorate in Morocco by Francisco Franco using the ontological security approach. Following the political upheaval of the civil war, Franco engaged in intense negotiations with Germany and Italy to extend the Spanish protectorate in Morocco into the French-dominated sphere of influence, aiming to uphold Spain’s imperial identity. In exchange for aligning with Germany in the war, Franco sought economic support and, above all, insisted on the occupation of Morocco. However, at this juncture, Hitler could not overlook France's position, resulting in a deadlock in the negotiations. While these attempts may be challenging to explain solely in terms of Spain's physical and material interests, this paper claims that Franco's pursuit of restoring Spain’s imperial identity should be understood in terms of ontological security, and this attempt aims to contribute the ontological security literature by closely engaging with the history of empires.
    
    Author: Sujin Heo (American University)
  - How (not) to decolonize the discipline of IR: Insights from India
    
    There has been a visible recent interest in decolonizing the discipline of International Relations. Scholars have engaged with concepts that have hitherto been considered out of the domain of IR. The efforts have been variously received/appreciated/extended. The present paper looks at the problems/omissions inherent in such an exercises emanating from India at four levels: (a) translation practices where indigenous terms end up seeking convergence with existing Eurocentric concepts, or are mistranslated; (b) romanticizing the past to the extent of ignoring/overlooking negative elements; (c) hegemonizing majoritarian ideas at the cost of subsuming or marginalizing alternate narrative; and (d) effort to replace Eurocentrism with different variants of ethnocentrism.
    
    While the problems of Eurocentrism have been debated much in the past few decades and decolonial theories do provide a possible way out, it is pertinent to address the problems identified above. The paper seeks to engage with marginalized alternate narratives. Rooted in critical theoretical tradition, it explores ideas/concepts that carry emancipatory intent. It focusses specifically on the concept of Dharma rooted in the Hindu civilization in relation to the problems/challenges identified above. The paper concludes by locating the possibility of decolonizing with a focus on vernacularization and pluriversality.
    
    Author: Abhishek Choudhary (University of Delhi)
- 317
  07 Panel / Military Humanitarianism: Reimagining the Nexus Between Aid Operations and Armed Forces Stuart Hall, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: British International History Working Group
  
  Convener: Margot Tudor (City, University of London)
  
  Chair: Margot Tudor (City, University of London)
  
  Discussant: Patrick Vernon (King's College London)
  - “Repressive developmentalism” in Ethiopia during the Cold War: NGOs and the continuity of colonial counterinsurgency practices on the African continent
    
    In 1984, the Ethiopian government launched a resettlement programme that transferred thousands of people from the drought-afflicted north to the supposedly more fertile south of the country. Promoted as a famine relief measure, this was in fact a counterinsurgency strategy that aimed to drain civilian populations from northern regions so as to deprive Tigrayan and Eritrean rebel groups of their support bases. The French medical relief NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) took an outspoken stance on the policy, reflecting its distinctly rights-based approach to ‘speaking out’, yet most other international NGOs, including Oxfam, refused to support MSF’s campaign. Instead, the British NGO’s management decided not to publicly confirm the forced nature of population transfers. As a case study, the forced resettlement programme in Ethiopia provides ample insight into the evolution of the humanitarian-military nexus. The policy was a classic example of what Miguel Bandeira Jeronimo calls ‘repressive developmentalism’, reflecting a cross-contamination of developmentalist and securitarian objectives. Indeed, when the Ethiopian government attempted enlist the tacit support of humanitarian NGOs in resettlement in 1984, it drew on a rich heritage of European military practice and humanitarian collusion. For this reason, it is fruitful to examine Oxfam and MSF’s reactions to resettlement in the context of British and French experiences of decolonisation. In particular, the opposing manner in which French and British publics engaged with the co-optation of humanitarianism in colonial repression in 1950s Algeria and Kenya directly conditioned how the NGOs later responded to resettlement. In the ongoing work of uncovering the deep genealogy for post-Cold War ‘humanitarian interventions’, this paper provides new insight beyond statist narratives that challenges us to place nongovernmental actors at the forefront of analyses.
    
    Author: Maria Cullen (HCRI, University of Manchester)
  - Israeli Counterinsurgency and Humanitarian Governance in Colonised Palestine
    
    This paper examines the intersection between counterinsurgency and humanitarian governance through the case of Israeli settler colonialism in Palestine. It zooms in on a branch of the Israeli military called Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). COGAT is the military-civilian administration that rules over both non-citizen Palestinians throughout the 1967 occupied territories and Israeli settlers residing in Area C of the West Bank. Since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, it has increasingly coordinated the provision of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians with a collection of international governments, donors, UN agencies, and NGOs. As a non-combat branch that remains active in times of war, COGAT has become a crucial player in Israeli counterinsurgency campaigns that focus on pacifying the civilian population. Along with tracing the historical emergence of this branch that was created shortly after the 1967 Six Day War, the paper draws on forty interviews with former COGAT officials, Israeli military veterans and humanitarian workers in Israel/Palestine to make two primary contributions. First, it is argued that COGAT has adopted humanitarian methods of population control to advance its counterinsurgency predicated on confining natives inside settler colonial enclaves. Second, Israeli military coordination with international and local actors has enabled a form of indirect rule, whereby COGAT outsources the humanitarian governance of Palestinians to players ostensibly external to its system.
    
    Author: Pietro Stefanini (University of Edinburgh)
  - Born in war(s): UNRRA and the US military in China, 1944-1947
    
    This paper examines to what extent and in which ways UNRRA in China (1944-1947) drew strengthen from the US military presence in Asia. The rise of the US military empire during the Second World War was accompanied by the expansion of international humanitarian sphere: China received the largest amount of aid UNRRA sent to any single recipient country. Military and humanitarian agencies worked toward the same goal of making long-term peace, and in effect, the UNRRA China Office absorbed a crucial cadre of WWII veterans. However, these two histories have so far been studied in parallel lines. We need to bring humanitarianism into the history of war in Asia in mid-twentieth century. This paper presents UNRRA’s capacity – and its limits – of exploiting the US military presence in terms of resources, expertise, information, and power, not merely in a period when the military was in control of everything to ensure an Allied victory, but also in one of demobilization and one when US General George Marshall undertook the peace-making mission of mediating between the two Chinese civil-war parties. Focusing on the field work rather than high-profile politics, it also highlights the smooth, though not always successful, transformation of individual war veterans into humanitarians, at a time when military experience was deemed evidence as being reliable and efficient. Combining institutional and individual perspectives, this paper argues that UNRRA in China readily relied on the US military to such an extent that imperilled its own legitimacy as a multi-lateral humanitarian organization.
    
    Author: Jiayi Tao (University of Vienna)
- 318
  07 Panel / New Paradigms from the Global South Room 103, Library
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: CPD Working group
  
  Chair: TBC
  - Coloniality and interstate/national order: Latin America between global polycentricity and local epistemic-political dependency
    
    Mainstream International Relations theories and Western media picture the current global order as being still Western(ized) (e.g., bipolarity) or moving into political disorder, a reality of the non-Western world according to Western knowledge. Decolonial thought, instead, shows a reorientation of the interstate/national order in the twenty-first century towards polycentricity. Currently, a polycentric world order means the end of Westernization (1500-2000) as a monocentric interstate/national order and the emergence of various Asian-led de-Westernization projects, as well as the re-Westernizing response to them. Latin American states, although being as much part of the non-Western world as important de-Westernizing countries (e.g., China), have an unstable relationship with de-Westernization, remaining mostly attached to re-Westernization. Why? Our theoretical claim is that epistemic-political dependency causes this tendency. To ground this argument, we show that: (1) such dependency results from the deepest interference of the West in the non-West through the historic and ongoing dismantlement of the knowledge and knowledge-making principles in parts of the latter region; (2) epistemic-political dependency is, thereby, the strongest fortress of re-Westernization, notoriously so in Latin America; and (3) in contrast, the civilizations of firmly de-Westernizing Asian countries have experienced (re-)Westernization more superficially, being inferiorized but not epistemically dismantled by Western actors.
    
    Authors: Walter Mignolo (Duke University)* , Fábio Santino Bussmann (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro)
  - The West Politics of Aggression, Imperialism and the Global South
    
    This paper surveys the political, moral, and legal aspects of the concept of aggression and its implications for the Global South. It argues that the European powers employed a natural-law-based universal ideal differently among themselves establishing a pluralist international society for themselves but used that same ideal to impose an unjust extra-European order upon non-Europeans. It argues that while the post-WWI criminalization of aggression under the new rules of collective security enabled the victorious European imperialists to punish the alleged aggressors against European nations, these rules also allowed them to keep colonies legitimizing their own colonial aggression against non-Europeans and their readmission into the global order on less favourable terms. It analyses the victorious Western powers’ resistance to a legally binding definition of aggression and insistence on a merely moral obligation to jointly defend states against aggression that allows them to continue to play realpolitik rendering ineffective legalist efforts to counter aggression. It examines post-WWII US-led Western powers’ employment of universal morality to justify aggressive wars to continue their imperial practices in new forms. It highlights the continuation of Western double standards to play politics of aggression evident from their response to Russian aggression against Ukraine and justifications of their own aggressive wars against non-Europeans.
    
    Author: Muhammad Ashfaq (University of St Andrews)
  - From Third World to Global South: Unresolved Dilemmas
    
    Underlying contemporary international relations is an inherent tension. Core terms have fundamentally changed, but we challenge the notion that their change reflects a changing reality. We examine the terms ‘Global South’ and ‘Third World’, tracing their genealogies to understand the dynamics they reflect and are designed to reflect. We find that the move to Global South reflects a fundamental developmental and neoliberal turn in international relations theory. While Third World as a term may harbour negative colloquial connotations in much of the West, including associations with underdevelopment, or have orientalising connotations related to ‘civilisation’, this is only half the story. The abandonment of Third World as a term also jettisons associations of pragmatism that underlie Third Worldism, as well as the connotations of international solidarity and broader political project inherent in and invoked by the ‘Third World’ terminology. This change is more apt to reflect Western political sensibilities than it is the death of the aspirations behind Third Worldism.
    
    Authors: Nikhil Goyal (University of Toronto) , Liam Wood (University of Toronto)* , Yuxuan Liu (University of Toronto)*
  - The Israeli-Palestinian Best Case Scenario: Perpetual Peacebuilding
    
    This paper employs a critical realist framework to contextualize the 2023 Gaza War as a continuation of the colonial violence confronting the Palestinians since the beginning of the Zionist migration to Palestine. Such continuities are highlighted by employing Frantz Fanon's critique of decolonial processes and of the expectation of non-violence from the indigenous population. The ongoing policies of reducing, eliminating or displacing the Palestinian identities, bodies and narratives since 1948 inform the concept of an ongoing Nakba, an enduring form of ethnic cleansing which renders the 7th October Hamas attack unsurprising. The settler-colonial framework serves as the theoretical anchor, guiding this exploration of power dynamics, historical narratives, and the perpetuation of structural inequalities.
    
    Drawing from digital ethnography of the 2023 war on Gaza and eight years of fieldwork in Israel/Palestine, the paper examines the intersections of historical narratives, power structures, and the reproduction of violence. By integrating Fanon's perspectives on the psychological impact of colonialism, the analysis seeks to uncover the underlying mechanisms that sustain and reproduce violence in the region. By scrutinizing the histories foundational to our discipline and non-dominant discourses in our scholarship, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on whose inter-national conflicts and historiografies we are cultivating and how we can illuminate marginal discourses to understand global crises.
    
    Author: Ariadna Petri (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
- 319
  07 Panel / New Technologies and Future War Room 105, Library
  
  Sponsor: War Studies Working Group
  
  Convener: WSWG Working group
  
  Chair: James Patton Rogers (Cornell University)
  - AI, Data, War: The Rise of the Military Tech Complex
    
    It is widely believed that the world is on the brink of another military revolution. AI is about to transform the character of warfare, as gunpowder, tanks, aircraft, and the atomic bomb have in previous eras. Today, states are actively seeking to harness the power of AI for military advantage. China, for instance, has announced its intention to become the world leader in AI by 2030. Its “New General AI Plan” proclaimed that: “AI is a strategic technology that will lead the future.” Similarly, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared: “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become ruler of the world.” In response to the challenge posed by China and Russia, the United States has committed to a “third offset” strategy. It will invest heavily in AI, autonomy, and robotics to sustain its advantage in defense. In light of these dramatic developments, this paper analyses the impact of new technologies on war and the rise of the Military Tech Complex.
    
    Author: Tony King (University of Exeter)
  - Banalizing extraordinariness: how the defence and security sector pursues legitimacy
    
    How does the military and other actors in the defence and security sector (e.g., arms manufacturers, law enforcement agencies) pursue legitimacy? Drawing mainly on observations conducted in four arms exhibitions (DSEI 2015 and 2017; LAAD 2019 and 2023) and secondary literature, this article argues that the military and others in the sector represent themselves as hybrids possessing extraordinariness and ordinariness as part of a quest for legitimate authority. They perform extraordinariness when emphasising their firepower and advanced technology, mission of protecting the nation and people, and ‘high’ moral standards. Yet, as extraordinariness can make them appear distant or too violent, they seek to make the sector ‘accessible’ by banalizing weapons, diffusing military values in society and the rest of the state, creating an illusion of proximity with society, and normalizing state-industry symbiosis. I call this process the banalization of extraordinariness. Arms fairs reveal such strategies and discourses, and are hubs for their diffusion, contributing to foster the sector’s cohesion, identity, and normative power.
    
    Author: Rodrigo Fracalossi de Moraes (University of Oxford)
  - Imagining a low-carbon warfare theory of victory
    
    In recent years, Western militaries have acknowledged a requirement to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels due to climate change and the global energy transition. However, transitioning to what we term 'low-carbon' warfare creates challenges, affecting everything from where, when, with what and for what ends military forces are deployed. Anticipating this paradigm shift in military operations, UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) officials and armed forces personnel have already started to outline a new theory of victory, aiming to reduce operational reliance on fossil fuels while leveraging emerging green technology for operational advantage. Building on recent scholarship on socio-technical transitions and military innovation, and using data from interviews and focus groups with UK MOD officials and armed forces personnel, this paper examines the socio-technical imaginaries that are underpinning the emerging 'theory of victory'. Moreover, we assess the MOD's approach to low-carbon warfare, as well as the operational challenges and opportunities that defence officials expect to face as the world decarbonises.
    
    Authors: Tamiris Santos (Loughborough University) , Duncan Depledge (Loughborough University)
  - Intelligence Analysis, Emotions, and the Future with AI
    
    The role emotions play in the analysis of intelligence has often been overlooked by the scholarly literature. Yet the emotions of both analysts and their adversaries have been a significant contributing factor in numerous intelligence ‘failures’ around the world. Using historical case studies such as the Yom Kippur War, the Vietnam War, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, this paper creates a new exploration of the role emotions have played in the inability to accurately analyse intelligence. The selected case studies demonstrate that the emotions of analysts have often inhibited their abilities to estimate intelligence correctly, or that the emotions of their adversaries have been disregarded and difficult to judge, leading to a lack of strategic empathy and an inability to evaluate intentions. The paper subsequently seeks to provide policy proposals on how to overcome these issues. Increased Humint collection, hiring analysts with area-specific expertise, and cognitive training are some of the methods that agencies could adopt. Yet increased AI-driven analysis, praised for its dispassionate algorithmic scrutiny of adversaries’ actions, may be the key to circumventing the obstacles of emotions in the future of intelligence.
    
    Author: Ronan Mainprize (University of Warwick)
  - The Second Drone Age: Defining War in the 2020s
    
    Drones, once deemed by the U.S. and its allies as a panacea to the perils of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), are now among the greatest threats to state security in the 2020s. While the ‘First Drone Age’ was defined by the American and Western-allied monopoly over the use of Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) drones, the Second Drone Age has marked the proliferation of remote-controlled, automated, and increasingly autonomous systems to both state and non-state actors. This paper provides an analysis of the Second Drone Age by highlighting the diverse array of actors, strategies, tactics, and technologies that have led to competition for command of the air above cities and battlefields alike.
    
    Author: James Patton Rogers (Cornell University)
- 320
  07 Panel / Perspectives on conflict management and stabilisation Exec 1, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Working Group
  
  Convener: PKPBG Working group
  
  Chair: David Curran (Coventry University)
  - Unraveling the Enigma: Explaining Success and Failure of State-Building Interventions in Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraq
    
    Liberal international state-building has been a key approach to peace-building since the Cold War. However, these interventions have often fallen short of their objectives, with major failures seen in large-scale operations like in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite this, US assistance in the emergence of Iraqi Kurdistan stands out as a successful example. While Iraq descended into chaos after the US withdrawal, Iraqi Kurdistan remained stable against challenges from Daesh. This raises the question: why was limited US state-building in Iraqi Kurdistan more successful than the second-largest state-building attempt in US history in Iraq?
    To answer this question, I bridge the state formation – international state-building divide in research and draw on classical theories of state formation – bellicose and cooperative theories - to better understand the potential and pitfalls of external state-building interventions. While the USA failed at building a social coalition for state-building in Iraq, they managed to achieve this in Iraqi Kurdistan. I argue that the different types of incentives that external state-builders could offer to domestic actors, and the different modes of indirect governance structuring the relationship between interveners and domestic actors, explain why state-building in Iraq failed but succeeded in Iraqi Kurdistan.
    
    Author: Johannes Jüde (University of Edinburgh)
  - The Rise and Fall of “Stabilisation” in the Overlap with Counter-terrorism, Counterinsurgency and Statebuilding: a (unsuccessful) case of Afghanistan
    
    From the beginning of 21st century, “stabilisation” has been one of the buzzwords much heard in security policy. The term is often associated with problems of fragile states, such as civil wars, political instability and social unrest, but its definition and implication remained unclear. What is “stabilization” after all? What “stabilisation” has brought in security policymaking and its implications? To scrutinize these questions, this paper focuses on the case of Afghanistan during the last two decades. The reasons are two-fold. First, the concept of “stabilisation” mostly evolved in Afghanistan in the context of War on Terror since 2001 with a close relation to counterterrorism, counterinsurgency and statebuilding. Second, the pursuit of “stabilization” has reached a turning point in 2021 with the fall of Afghan government and the resurgence of Taliban regime. By tracing the rise and fall of “stabilization” in Afghanistan, therefore, we can expect to find a clue to understand the essence of “stabilization.” For this purpose, my paper will examine changing discourses appeared in stabilization-related policies papers, especially issued by the United States and Britain. Hypothetically, the paper will conclude that policymakers kept the term “stabilization” undefined (probably)on purpose to maximize leeway for counterterrorism operations.
    
    Author: Hiromi Fujishige (Aoyama Gakuin University)
  - Partnerships in the Midst of Robust Peacekeeping
    
    The UN has undertaken missions that are more robust than ever before, particularly in Mali (MINUSMA), DRC (MONUSCO), CAR (MINUSCA), and Haiti (MINUSTAH), following years of calls for greater peacekeeping capabilities. The push for robustness has led to peacekeepers being given greater military capabilities and equipment that allow for greater force generation in the field to protect civilians from imminent harm. Simultaneously, the protection of civilians and wider peacebuilding activities have seen the UN deploy alongside and collaborate with many external actors. The partnerships needed for a peacekeeping mission to be deployed and achieve its mandate are diverse and multifaceted. For instance, the UN Security Council must work with potential troop contributing countries and the host state. UN peacekeepers then work alongside other UN programmes and agencies, NGOs and civil society, and the host state in the implementation of their mandate. How then have robust peacekeeping practices impacted the relationships between the UN and its partners? The project first maps the trend of robustness by examining the increasingly capabilities of peacekeepers and the drivers of militarisation. Then the project unpacks the complex relationships by conducting semi-structured interviews with participants ranging from UN personnel across various departments, agencies and programmes, member state permanent missions, military personnel from troop contributing countries, and those working alongside peacekeepers in the field such as NGOs. The interviews unpack the evolution of partnerships amidst robust peacekeeping practices and allow the project to suggest how peace operations can ensure positive working relationships with their partners.
    
    Author: Alexander Gilder (University of Reading)
  - Challenging Conflict Management Categories: A Complexity Theory Perspective
    
    How does complexity theory problematise the current understanding of conflict management practices by different actors? Complexity theory, which originated in physical and biological sciences, has hitherto been used in critical peacebuilding literature as a way to explain the limited transformative power of Western interveners (Bargués et al., 2023). However, in affirming that ‘peace is a process constituted by its entanglements with further processes’ (Torrent, 2023:73) which takes place in a (dis)order where challenges are interrelated and human and non-human entities come into being through relations, it provides a useful tool to problematise rigid categorical boundaries. In line with this school of thought, in the peacebuilding milieu, no actor can reasonably determine a priori the results, goals, and consequences of its engagement, and their action will be necessarily subjected to the same ‘actual reality’. Thus, we argue that international efforts are seldomly alternatives and more often built in a cumulative, complementary or parallel way, as dynamics on the ground flatten differences and face practitioners with a similar set of circumstances which are addressed by drawing on the same (pragmatic) toolbox. In a descriptive fashion, I will prove this point by reconstructing international engagement in three paradigmatic cases of connivance between actors and conflict management initiatives during the last two decades: the CAR, Mali, and Somalia. I will make sense of international efforts succession, integration and duplication using the interpretative framework provided by complexity theories. The study problematizes current understandings of conflict management practices and calls for a more realist (i.e., close to reality) stance
    
    Author: Giulio Levorato (University of Genoa)
  - The UN Group of Experts for the DRC: Implications for stabilization and adaptation of MONUSCO's mandate
    
    Following the worsening of tensions and the threat of a new escalation of violence, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1533 (2004) which establishes a sanctions regime in the DR Congo and a Group of Experts to advise the committee.The present research conducts a comprehensive analysis of the integration of reports generated by the United Nations Group of Experts for the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 2011 and 2022.
    
    Special attention will be given to understanding how the recommendations and findings of the Group of Experts contribute to shaping the resolutions concerning MONUSCO's objectives and operational strategies. Furthermore, the study delves into the perceptible transformations in the Mission's overarching goals, particularly exploring the nuanced evolution during the transition period from the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) to MONUSCO, commencing in 2010.
    
    By examining the interplay between the Group of Experts' reports and the subsequent resolutions through a documental analisys, this article elucidates the multifaceted impact on MONUSCO's mandate, providing insights into the Mission's adaptive strategies and the broader discourse surrounding stabilization efforts in the region.
    
    Author: Guilherme Dias (Roskilde Universitet)
- 321
  07 Panel / Revisiting the postcolonial critiques of IR Exec 9, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  
  Convener: CPD Working group
  
  Chair: Niharika Pandit (Queen Mary University of London)
  - From Palestine to Ukraine: a postcolonial critique of the neorealist strategy of offshore balancing
    
    This article presents a postcolonial critique of the neo-realist strategy of offshore balancing. It argues that offshore balancing is an inconsistent imperial strategy that allows regional hegemons to pursue policies of imperialism, by presenting them as ‘rational’ states merely seeking survival. To interrogate this assumption, the article draws on Edward Said’s contrapuntal reading of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In contrast to Walt and Mearsheimer who assume that Israel is a ‘rational’ state whose goal is ‘survival’, Said’s reading takes seriously the enduring imperial past in Israel’s reality as a settler colonial state. The events in Ukraine showed that Said’s reading is relevant beyond Palestine. The failure to take Russian imperialism seriously repeated the problem that Said raised with Palestine: it presented the aggressor as a ‘great power’ with legitimate security concerns. The article concludes that this inconsistency is present throughout Walt and Mearsheimer’s works and undermines the strategy’s usefulness to policymakers.
    
    Author: Haro Karkour (Cardiff University)
  - Transcending dichotomy in postcolonial critiques of International Relations theories: Revisiting intellectual whiteness through Chinese scholars’ writings on sub-Saharan Africa
    
    Examining global IR knowledge production outside the Anglophone academia, this article revisits critiques of intellectual whiteness to transcend the non-White/White (non-West/West) dichotomy in current postcolonial critiques of IR theories. The article reviews Hobson and Sabaratnam’s critiques of intellectual whiteness in IR knowledge production, proposing their common pillars as dichotomy, linearity, and nihilism, then proposes the epistemology of whiteness beyond binary oppositions as the logic of existence (how do different subjects of world politics and history exist?), the logic of development (who drive global development and in what ways?), and the logic of recognition (how should we conceptualize racism outside colonial contexts?). It postulates that, under the heavy influence of a modernity worldview, whiteness as a racialized mindset can be taken up by thinkers or writings that intentionally resist Eurocentric version of intellectual whiteness in their scholarships. Empirically, it applies the logic-trio to examine articles regarding Africa and Sino-African relations on core Chinese academic journals by highly influential IR scholars. This article reveals a return of an unproblematic acceptance and internalized appreciation of modernity as the endgame of history among Chinese intellectuals, significantly shaping their answers to these questions.
    
    Author: Yang Han (University of Oxford)
  - Whose Politics for Whose life? From Politics of Empathy to Politics of Liberation
    
    While one plane safely evacuated 162 pets from Afghanistan during the collapse of the Republic and the Taliban takeover, another ascending plane witnessed the tragic sight of Afghan people desperately seeking refuge, dropping from its wings meters above the ground. These events underscored historical moments that, once again, highlight how some lives are deemed more valuable than others. This article contends, whether viewed through Agamben's ontological lenses or Foucault's genealogy, that the Western conceptualization of human life holds significance only within certain geographic locations and for specific populations, while excluding others.
    The concepts of Biopolitics or thanatopolitics, which concern the value placed on life, seem to be applicable solely to the Western hemisphere, whereas the global south is perceived through the lens of necropolitics, rooted in a colonial memory. Although the terms 'human' and 'rights' may sound universal, their application differs significantly between the Global South and Global North. This article sheds light on the shortcomings of the politics of empathy and, heeding Hannah Arendt's warnings, delves into the politics of liberation.
    The argument posits that even the discourse on dehumanization is not aimed at the Global South but serves the purpose of eliciting emotional responses from the Global North, shaping perceptions of their actions as either good or bad.
    
    Author: Anil Yildirim (University of Exeter)
  - Diagnosing the Anatomy of Worldmaking through the History of International Political Thought of Post-colonial Indonesia
    
    Adom Getachew’s thought-provoking Worldmaking After Empire has reinvigorated the vocabulary of “worldmaking” in scholarly discussion of post-colonial international politics. Yet, the term is potentially reductive, and threatens to occlude the variegated means of reimagining and pursuing emancipatory changes to the international order. This paper attempts to explore the anatomy of anticolonial worldmaking through the history of international political thought of post-colonial Indonesia. Owing to its hosting of the 1955 Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung and its role as a key progenitor of the Non-Aligned Movement, Indonesia under founding father Sukarno is often perfunctorily recognised as a post-colonial pacesetter. Yet, scholarship has rarely seriously integrated the Indonesian experience into its overarching body of theorising. This has been detrimental to analyses of post-colonial worldmaking, as recounting key episodes of the Indonesian leadership’s post-Bandung international activity reveals valences of worldmaking in a rich fashion: along destructive/constructive axes, and allowing for a specification of its forms within three categories - performative; discursive; and organisational. The paper concludes by reinscribing post-colonial Indonesia’s worldmaking ventures into our post-colonial imagination in order to invoke critical commentary on contemporary formations like the BRICS, which some commentators have interpreted as inheriting the mantle of post-colonial projects.
    
    Author: Quah Say Jye (University of Cambridge)
- 322
  07 Panel / Understanding Violent Movements Exec 10, ICC
  
  Sponsor: Political Violence, Conflict and Transnational Activism
  
  Convener: Ces Moore (University of Birmingham)
  
  Chair: Una McGahern (Newcastle University)
  - Replacing the Standard Bearer: Theorizing Leadership Transition in Insurgencies
    
    The transition from one leader to the next represents a critical moment in the life cycle of insurgencies: It is a period of heightened uncertainty and vulnerability when roles and relationships are in flux. However, remarkably little scholarly attention has been paid to understanding this process. Building our case around the insurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus, we address this gap by developing a typology of key tasks that new leaders must perform in order to navigate the transition period. We argue that, within insurgencies that are weakly institutionalized, leadership can most usefully be conceived of as a negotiated relationship in which both leaders and followers have agency. Successful performance of these tasks helps ensure the maintenance of this relationship and, through this, movement continuity. Therefore, this paper contributes to both the empirical literature on insurgency and our understanding of leadership and transition within rebel movements.
    
    Authors: Mark Youngman (University of Portsmouth)* , Ces Moore (University of Birmingham)
  - Militant Loyalties: Familial Attachments and Emotional Pulls
    
    This paper explores how familial loyalties impact the loyalty of non-state militants to their organisation at different stages of engagement. Drawing on original empirical research into the experiences of Kurdish fighters in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, this paper argues that family members can have a powerful emotional influence on individuals, affecting party loyalty either positively or negatively. My findings demonstrate that familial attachments can affect a militant’s loyalties at each stage of involvement, from pre-engagement to recruitment, engagement and disengagement. This paper progresses our understanding of the concept of loyalty and how it operates in the context of non-state armed groups – a concept that has been largely overlooked by International Relations scholarship (Poulsen, 2020). It also contributes to the emerging body of research that considers the role of emotions in political violence and civil war.
    
    Author: James Hewitt (University of St Andrews)
  - The different wartime and post-wartime trajectories of tribal networks in Salahaldin the peripheral areas of Salahaldin province in Iraq
    
    This paper (PhD thesis chapter) attempts to explain what creates and shapes the diverging trajectories of tribal networks (kinship networks) in wartime and post-wartime phases. Facing imminent threats of attacks from a rivalling tribe or a statal armed actor or a non-state armed groups, tribal networks are forced to make choices to protect themselves. My theory predicts two pathways for communal protection, either self-mobilisation against threats through tribal group’s tapping into resources, state, and non (para)-state support through pre-wartime advantageous access to patrons and allies, or delegating protection in which a tribal group finds itself lacking access to resources, state, and non-state actors and lacking pre-wartime access to allied political networks. Early tribal network access to state institutions or a security actors establishes path-dependence that often has far-reaching implications for a tribe’s ability to self-mobilise itself. Pre-wartime tribal access to powerful political or security actors creates preferential (or selective) mobilisation by the incumbent, which is a policy choice that often leaves other tribal networks disadvantaged, thus fuelling pre-wartime inter-communal cleavages. To test this hypothesis, I gathered qualitative data (interviews) from multiple localities in Salahaldin province in central Iraq during the summer of 2023 and combined them with archival research to explain how different tribal networks in the province reacted differently to the rise and advance of the ‘Islamic State’ group (‘ISIS’) and during the counterinsurgency in 2014-2015.
    
    Author: Tamer Badawi (University of Kent)
  - Local Elites in Regime Transitions: Cooperation and Contestation
    
    The role and relevance of local elites within political systems has been an emerging phenomenon of focus. Works on local authoritarianism have highlighted how local elites can consolidate their local position and subvert the national processes of democracy to ensure their own positions. The warlords literature has highlighted how local elites have worked with a variety of national and international actors to maintain their positions of authority during conflict. However, there remains a paucity of studies that consider the role of local elites within periods of regime transition. Regime transitions seek to reimagine the structures of the political system and as such they threaten the position, authority, and legitimacy of local elites. This is particularly stark in post-conflict regime transitions where national authorities seek to consolidate their own authority and where local elite authority is often established in opposition to the state. As such, it is this papers contention that to survive, local elites seek to shape the trajectories of transition through decisions to cooperate or contest the nationally led regime transition processes.
    
    Author: Anna Plunkett (King's College London)
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  07 Panel / ‘Making friends and influencing people’: a Russian toolbox for managing others on the international stage Mary Sturge, The Exchange
  
  Sponsor: Russian and Eurasian Security Working Group
  
  Convener: Victoria Hudson (King's College London)
  
  Chair: Natalie Martin (University of Nottingham)
  - Anonymous discussions on Russia-Ukraine War Online: A Quantitative Analysis of Russian comments in YouTube
    
    Abstract: This study analyses Russian-language comments posted on YouTube videos about the war in Ukraine by using text mining methods. The analysis results suggest the possibility to influence what individuals think and believe during the war by changing the context in digital public space.
    
    Data and Methods: The analysis subject is Russian comments posted on the 10 most-viewed YouTube videos collected by searching videos for “украина (Ukraine)” and “война (war)” and filtering the results by highest view count.
    
    Results (Co-occurrence Analysis): Figure 1 “Human” and “Life” related words are displayed such as 'human', 'family', 'Christ' or 'time'. At the same frequency “Country and Place Name” related words are displayed such as 'USA', 'Kiev', 'West' or 'Poland'.
    
    Results (LDA analysis): Figure 2 shows “Military and War” related words are given low polarity scores and classified as negative such as 'strike/attack', 'submarine' and 'ballistic missile' in comments regarding USA. In comments regarding Germany, Figure 3 shows “Nazi” related words are given low polarity scores and classified as negative such as 'nazi', 'Stepan Bandera' and 'Hitler'. In comments regarding China, Figure 4 shows “Economy and bilateral” related words are given high polarity scores and classified as positive such as 'corporation', 'locomotive' and 'intimate'.
    
    Conclusion: It turns out Russian users tend to associate themselves with "connections between people" or "faith in God" when referring to the war in Ukraine, but the users display a more aggressive attitude toward USA by mentioning specific names of strategic missiles or military weapons. The analysis results suggest the possibility to influence what individuals think and believe during the war by changing the context in digital public space.
    
    Author: Akira Sano (University of Tsukuba)
  - Bolstering Autocracy? The role of post-Soviet regional Organisations.
    
    In recent years there has been a growing literature centred around authoritarian promotion, where some autocracies promote ideas for use by other autocracies. However, there is a better framework to understand the interaction between autocracies. This is the concept of authoritarian bolstering. While the nuances between authoritarian promotion and bolstering are not always clear, promotion involves the idea of promoting something to someone – whereas bolstering is about offering support. Autocracies have not reached the stage of the promotion of autocratisation – at least not to the same level of democratic promotion. Rather these regimes bolster one another. This paper analyses the role of post-Soviet regional organisations in bolstering autocracies in the region. These organisations serve as ‘learning rooms’ for sharing best practices and offer economic and electoral observation support. All of which increases opportunities for autocratic survival. The paper develops the notion of authoritarian bolstering. It offers an in-depth case study of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) intervention in Kazakhstan as a case of authoritarian bolstering.
    
    Author: Stephen Hall (University of Bath)
  - 1973 and 2003 Energy Crises and the War in Ukraine
    
    The paper argues that in order to understand why Russia was able to use energy as a weapon against the European states that aided Ukraine, whilst it was also - to a degree - able to withstand the impact of the sanctions and to finance the war in Ukraine, we have to analyze the responses of key actors in the wake of the 1973 and 2003 energy crises. In other words, we must look at the crucial structural shifts which occurred, and that Russia used to its advantage in more recent times. The 1973 crises triggered a reorientation of Western European consumers away from Middle Eastern energy resources towards Soviet and, later on, Russian gas and oil, effectively creating real vulnerabilities that Russia could exploit. The post-2003 period, which was characterized by a whole series of shocks that began manifesting themselves during the time of the invasion of Iraq, brought about the advent of the shale revolution but also led to a backlash by the Russians and the Saudis and resulted in the formation of OPEC+ (i.e., a greater control over the oil prices). Those two elements, a) leverage gained against critical Western gas consumers and b) the alliance of convenience with another major oil producer, created a situation in which Russia could use energy as a weapon- to a limited degree - whilst managing the adverse effect of sanctions.
    
    Author: Wojciech Ostrowski (University of Westminster; School of Social Sciences; Senior Lecturer in International Relations)
  - The Russian Way of Regime Change: Assessing the 2022 Offensive in Historical Context
    
    Many analyses of Russia’s 2022 offensive in Ukraine locate the causes for failure in the tactical ineptitude displayed by the Russian military, its operational dispersion across four mutually unsupported lines of attack, and the resistance of the Ukrainian state and military. These explanations overlook the Kremlin’s approaches to states it regards as clients, and the choice to accept a “color revolution,” sponsor a frozen conflict, support a beleaguered ally, or impose regime change. This paper argues that perceiving a position of strength relative to Ukraine and disregarding Western warnings, the Kremlin used a regime change model that had proven successful in the Soviet era. Comparative historical analysis places the 2022 offensive in the context of Soviet efforts to control regimes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan, and suggests that efforts to achieve a ceasefire may find the Kremlin responsive to solutions reminiscent of the Cold War.
    
    Author: Joel Iams (King's College London)
  - Russia’s Policy in Syria: a thorny road with a clear goal
    
    The article engages with the subject of Russia’s policy in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011, approaching it from realistic perspective. It is based on field data collection in Syria in 2018 – 2020 by the author. Research explores Russia’s original rationale for involvement in Syria and how it changed under the influence of external circumstances and developments on the ground. It discusses the range of tools employed, including deployment of the state and non-state security actors, application of diplomatic, economic and soft-power means, and the extent to which Russia relied on the human capital built in Syria in the previous era. The paper examines, how Russia’s policy related to the recipient government and its protagonists in Syria, and how it defined itself vis-à-vis other international actors. It also sheds light on the significance of Syria for Russia’s domestic security and the way Russian security actors addressed this challenge. The paper argues that the key concepts and tools applied in Syria, considered by Moscow as successful, formed pillars of its foreign operations in other unstable parts of the world.
    
    Author: Anna Matveeva (Kings College London)

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