This article explores surrealism as an overlooked critical resource for International Relations theory (IR) and argues that surrealism’s legacy for international theorizing lies in its capacity to provoke radical reimaginings of the political status quo and to offer engagements with catastrophes that are not grounded in end time. Tracing the movement’s intellectual genealogy beyond its artistic origins, this article draws on key surrealist texts, particularly those of its founder, André Breton (1896–1966), to emphasise surrealism’s value as a sophisticated intellectual response to the horrors of the early and mid-twentieth century: nationalism, industrial warfare, rationalism, imperialism, and totalitarianism. The article offers two main contributions. First, its historico-political reading of surrealism enables a reinterpretation of the long-standing debate between realism and utopianism in IR. Highlighting important intersections between surrealism and international theory – most notably classical realism – it shows that the surrealist stress on the imagination as a radical, transformative force offers a stark reminder to contemporary IR theory of the necessity of utopian thinking. Second, the article claims that the surrealist foregrounding of myths opens imaginative pathways for confronting the Anthropocene, providing a crucial counterpoint to contemporary IR scholarship that predominantly frames planetary challenges through narratives of imminent collapse.

This article examines the democratic potential of global network governance. It critiques conventional legitimacy frameworks that focus on the institutional qualities of governance networks for evading deeper ethical questions about how to deal with diversity as a fundamental condition of global life. Drawing on contestation theory, English School pluralism, and radical democratic theory, I argue that democratic network governance thrives by embracing diverse norm interpretations and fostering agonistic engagement among its members. I illustrate how this idea can guide a critical analysis of global governance networks through a case study of humanitarian governance in Southeast Asia. I assess to what extent diverse humanitarian actors have been able to assert and practise their own interpretations of humanitarian norms, how they relate to the fact that others advance competing understandings, and whether the boundaries for legitimate norm enactments are drawn on legitimate grounds. By highlighting the ethical significance of these dynamics from a pluralist standpoint, the study offers a novel way of thinking about democracy in a world that is characterised by complex policy problems, diffuse authority, and vocal demands for recognition by an increasingly diverse array of actors.

Speaking after the addition of The Forth Bridge on UNESCO’s World Heritage List (WHL), a Scottish minister described it as an ‘honour that shows this is a great industrial treasure not just to the city, to Scotland or the United Kingdom, but the entire world.’ A few years later, the delegation of Indonesia took the floor after the inscription of Ombilin Coal mines. Dubbed Indonesia’s first industrial world heritage site, the mines had been owned by the Dutch East Indies government. Thus, the delegation had to describe the industrial heritage as a colonial imposition before noting that the area became ‘modern and integrated.’ If both Scotland and Indonesia received international recognition as modern, industrial subjects, they got there differently. In apprehending that difference, this article extends social-structural theories of international recognition. Approaching these structures as providing uneven recognition possibilities, I develop three modes of recognition pursuits that mediate the challenges of such uneven terrain. I probe the traction of these modes by analyzing speeches state delegations deliver after placing their sites on the WHL. This framework and analysis extend our understanding of international recognition pursuits by pointing to the hold of symbolic structures, and their transformation under creative state engagements.

The existing literature offers contrasting views on the causes and effects of non-aggression pacts. Some scholars contend that these agreements impose audience costs that prevent an ongoing rivalry from escalating to war. Others claim that states use non-aggression pacts to signal to others that their rivalry is over and that their future relations will be peaceful. Scholars disagree as to the impact non-aggression pacts have on violent conflict. I demonstrate that various definitional and coding issues beset the literature, resulting in the incorporation of many agreements that should not be considered as non-aggression pacts. I then make a threefold argument about non-aggression pacts. First, non-aggression pacts came into being in the 1920s amid emerging norms proscribing interstate warfare. Second, they saw frequent use in interstate Europe. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union used them to manipulate those norms so as to make themselves appear more acceptable despite their revisionism. Finally, many friendship treaties, which have been miscast as non-aggression pacts, are a separate type of agreement that became common among those post-colonial states that acquired independence during and immediately after the Cold War. Timeless arguments regarding non-aggression pacts thus reify these agreements and overlook key motives behind their use.

A prominent theory of political obligation argues that, to avoid the dangers of statelessness (basic needs deprivation, rights violations, and political disenfranchisement) people should establish, maintain, and obey states. This theory underwrites a statist ideal that presents states as the primary guarantors of justice and democracy. I challenge this statist ideal, arguing that statist institutions are ill-equipped to provide full justice, especially for stateless people. I argue that statelessness is a product of the state system’s structure and that eliminating the dangers of statelessness therefore requires challenging the core organising principles of the state system. I conclude that stateless people have broad prima facie moral permissions to resist the state system’s constitutive norms, practices, and institutions; that others may have obligations to support their efforts; and that addressing the dangers of statelessness requires resisting rather than obeying statist institutions. I also offer a corrective to the literature on refugees’ political obligations, illuminating how even obedience to a relatively just state or camp authority can uphold a state system that is unjust overall. I examine these issues in conversation with empirical scholarship on stateless people’s activism, like Hong Kong’s ‘Refugee Occupy’ movement.

Affective ties encompass a broad family of emotional phenomena, including love, affection, attachment, and devotion. Affective ties may appear deeply personal, and they most certainly are. But they are also important resources for the exercise of political power in international politics – not only as vulnerabilities that can be exploited for coercion but also, and more significantly, as means to mobilise action and sacrifice. Viewed from the vantage point of political agents, affective ties are thus power resources whose distribution in the international system shapes their strategies and choices. Viewed from the perspective of the system, the international realm is not only characterised by struggles over material capabilities or ideas but also competition over affective ties. Correspondingly, nationalism is not simply an identity. It is a collection of techniques and practices for generating and capturing affective ties that has emerged as a highly effective contender in this contest, with crucial implications for how the international system is organised. That being said, other forms of eliciting affective ties also persist.

This article addresses recent work on empire and colonisation which calls for a reappraisal of how agency and resistance manifests among groups responding to structural marginalisation. We argue that approaching these questions from within the colonial order reveals important idiosyncrasies regarding how groups understood resistance, agency, and popular organising as possible responses that emerged from within imperial landscapes. Using the example of race as a central regulatory category and practice of colonial power, we analyse two cases which we suggest benefit from an account of agency and resistance within colonial order: the Black Loyalists in English America and the Indigenous royalists of New Granada, two groups which pursued emancipation by choosing to remain under colonial rule. The resulting analysis produces a more dynamic account of resistance and emancipation which responds to the far-reaching influence of colonial order for resistance movements at local, national, and international levels. This account contributes to recent debates which call for theoretical analysis of “middle actors” and popular thinking as it relates to international politics, postcolonial movements, and studies of empire.