Volume 101, Issue 2, March 2025

The rises and falls of great powers have underpinned the prevailing discourses about sources of war and order. Looking at claims that a rising China poses a threat, this article demonstrates the need for greater conceptual clarity and systematic evidence about the designation of rising states and their assumed revisionism.

In Putin's Russia, state-sponsored patriotic youth groups encourage children and young people to participate in hero-making activities that emphasize the forging of close bonds with war veterans. Are Russian children being raised to expect to participate in and support wars?

Are informal intergovernmental organizations (IIGOs) legitimate forums to address global governance issues? This article develops a framework of six legitimacy criteria to assess the impact of 94 IIGOS, demonstrating the legitimizing effect of high levels of institutionalization.

Non-state actors' participation in global governance continues to be contested, although the participatory norm is generally accepted. The secretariat of the UNFCCC, the central institution in global climate governance, provides a rich case-study for this aspect of international organization legitimation.

China's rise over the past four decades has vastly enhanced its global influence. Seeking to shed light on the implications for the international order, this article examines China's engagement with the multidimensional international human rights framework as enshrined in global treaties.

Is the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm dead? Critics of R2P have focused on its lack of influence upon recent humanitarian crises. Exploring the false assumptions embodied in the R2P project, the article considers its future within the humanitarian norm landscape.

By highlighting the concept of ‘politics of attention’, this article shows how China's domestic political system has shaped the transformation of its role in global health governance, focusing on the evolution of this role during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Examining Colombia's parallel peace talks with two main guerrilla groups, this article shifts the study of peace negotiations from external variables to the internal dynamics. It then highlights the transformative power of negotiation spaces on the relationship between the parties involved.

Joint activities between international NGOs and Chinese actors are a growing phenomenon across the world. This study analyses more than 130 such activities and reveals the factors behind their proliferation, with insights from interviews with key stakeholders.

In-depth fieldwork focusing on the training of rangers in Uganda's Murchison Falls National Park reveals the extent to which militarized conservation has become an ingrained practice, reflecting the Ugandan government's extension of military logics into a wide range of civilian sectors.

Fuelled by moral indignation and triggered by the discourse of western non-state actors, emotional assertiveness has emerged as a key practice within Chinese coercive diplomacy in recent years. Two recent case-studies are examined in depth to illustrate the drivers of this phenomenon.

Peacekeeping and humanitarian sectors have taken significant steps to address sexual exploitation and abuse, but accountability remains elusive. UN governance efforts since 2003 point to the need for a context-sensitive and integrative approach that can counter the existing structural bias and maximalist feminist claims.

How can pragmatism inform UK foreign policy? If philosophical pragmatism is separated from realism, it has the potential to promote progressive change. ‘Progressive Pragmatism’ can then help the UK navigate the war in Ukraine and the contemporary challenges of global governance.

Is the Wagner Group a new phenomenon? Observing the group's relationship with the Russian state through the lens of ‘regime enmeshment’ exposes the group's existence as a continuation of practices of outsourcing security. This has implications for other contexts where the private military industry plays a role.

The EU's policy towards Iran has fallen out of alignment with the bloc's perceived need to embrace its geopolitical responsibilities. The incoming EU administration must foster a cohesive geopolitical approach that will enable it to engage effectively with a determined, revisionist Iran.

American success in the field of militarized AI has met with considerable admiration in China, as revealed by studies of Chinese-language scholarly materials. This policy paper explores how perceptions of the US as a benchmark and role model in AI have influenced China's strategic ambitions.

Responding to the debate as to whether climate change should be framed as a security threat or a development issue, this policy paper elaborates on the potential for a ‘peace continuum’ approach, which integrates human and ecological concerns within security governance.