This article problematises the status quo bias in IR socialisation research, and develops an alternative concept of competitive socialisation, through which subaltern actors internalise dominant norms, enhance their competitive edge, and enact more equalised power relations in global politics. The dominant strand of IR socialisation research mostly conceives of socialisation as a status-quo-oriented practice that reinforces the existing power hierarchy, such as teacher-student relationship. This has resulted in a one-sided theory neglecting the importance of proactive and self-directed socialisation efforts embarked upon by subaltern actors themselves. Based on an alternative sociological approach that defines socialisation as a practice of self-enhancement, this article develops the concept of competitive socialisation and articulates alternative pathways to the internalisation of dominant norms. It applies this framework to the cases of Chinese socialisation into the peacekeeping community, and Russia's socialisation into the multilateral development community. These case studies demonstrate that the holistic internalisation of dominant Western norms has enabled Beijing and Moscow to challenge the existing global power hierarchy. This, in turn, resulted in fundamental changes in their behaviours from initial norm rejection, to passive acceptance, and finally to active learning and norm internalisation.

A growing body of scholarship connects the participation of women and the inclusion of gender provisions to the sustainability of peace settlements. But how do women's groups navigate gender power structures and gendered forms of violence within complex and fragile political bargaining processes aimed at ending large-scale conflict? The 2016 Colombian peace agreement, internationally applauded for its inclusion of strong gender provisions and women's participation as negotiators and peace advocates, is a significant case for examining these questions. Drawing on original case material, including interviews of key actors on different sides of the conflict – this article analyses the political bargaining dynamics within and among women's movements, the Santos government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC). We argue that the inclusion of women was pivotal in transforming the elite bargaining process and power structures of Colombian society enabling a gender-based approach to the substantive peace agenda addressing transitional gender justice for sexual violence survivors and gender-equal redistribution through land and rural reform programmes. The study suggests that deeply situated political bargaining analysis is essential to navigating gender in elite bargains rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to inclusive peace.

The Trump presidency ushered in a heightened sense of ontological insecurity in the US, based on a national self-narrative that portrayed an emasculated America. Trump promised to return the US to primacy by pursuing policies and practices that focused on border protection, militarisation, and the vilification of external others, while amplifying racial tensions within the country. From caging immigrant children at the border, to an enabling of white supremacy and the Capitol riots, Trump's presidency was broadly seen as aberration in the self-narrative of America as a tolerant, democratic nation. In this article, I am interested in how gendered bordering practices inform ontological (in)security in Trump's narrative of the nation, domestic and external policy, and discourses. While Trump's electoral loss to Biden in 2020 has been described as a ‘return to normal’, this article instead considers how Trump's presidency exhibited lines of continuity when examined through a gender lens. Understanding how masculinism informs ideas of ontological security reveals how notions of gendered bordering, hierarchy, and ordering have been persistent threads in US politics, rather than simply an anomaly under Trump. This suggests greater potential to read ontological security in more complex terms through gendered bordering practices.

Many theoretical approaches to cybersecurity adopt an anthropocentric conceptualisation of agency; that is, tying the capacity to act to human subjectivity and disregarding the role of the non-human in co-constructing its own (in)security. This article argues that such approaches are insufficient in capturing the complexities of cyber incidents, particularly those that involve self-perpetuating malware and autonomous cyber attacks that can produce unintentional and unpredictable consequences. Using interdisciplinary insights from the philosophy of information and software studies, the article counters the anthropocentrism in the cybersecurity literature by investigating the agency of syntactic information (that is, codes/software) in co-producing the logics and politics of cybersecurity. It specifically studies the complexities of codes/software as informational agents, their self-organising capacities, and their autonomous properties to develop an understanding of cybersecurity as emergent security. Emergence is introduced in the article as a non-linear security logic that captures the peculiar agential capacities of codes/software and the ways in which they challenge human control and intentionality by co-constructing enmity and by co-producing the subjects and objects of cybersecurity.

Drawing on the IR theories of norm translation and strategic narratives, this article focuses on how states translate international norms to their own advantage by producing strategic narratives to advance their soft power ambitions abroad. Using the example of feminist foreign policy (FFP), the article compares Sweden, Canada, France, and Mexico in their attempts to translate international feminist norms into their countries’ strategic narratives. This comparison is based on three strategic narrative types (issue, national, and international system narratives) and two types of feminism (liberal, intersectional). Issue narratives reveal that Sweden and Mexico give more priority to social policies, while France and Canada emphasise the role of the market in addressing gender inequality. International system narratives demonstrate that Sweden and Mexico perceive global challenges as drivers of gender inequality, while France and Canada see gender inequality as a cause of global problems. National narratives show that Sweden and Mexico refer to other FFP countries to ‘back up’ their feminist initiatives, while France and Canada do not relate to other states. Finally, while liberal feminism dominates all four FFPs, each state either prioritises particular aspects of it (legal, market, security, rights-based) or incorporates elements from intersectional feminism.

While scholars within the English School have increasingly approached the traditionally liberal concept of solidarism in a normatively agnostic fashion, the idea of an ‘illiberal solidarism’ and historical manifestations thereof remain underexplored. One notable case in point surrounds the peculiar body of Italian interwar international thought, herein referred to as ‘international Fascism’. By discerning a synchronic outline of international Fascism, alongside the manner by which this project mutated and ultimately failed as it transformed from a vision theorised in the abstract to a practical initiative under the auspices of the Fascist regime, this article offers historical and theoretical insights into the realisability of illiberal forms of solidarism. Combining this historical account with theoretical insights derived from Reus-Smit's study on international order under conditions of cultural diversity, this article argues that the realisation of some form of solidarism necessitates the acceptance of a substantive pluralist component. Yet messianic illiberal visions that endeavour to retain the states-system, while simultaneously asserting the superiority of one community or a highly exclusionary vision of the ‘good life’, ostensibly lack the capacity to reconcile the contradictions inherent in efforts to universalise such projects.