In the English School, the relationship between international and world society has recently received increasing attention – conceptually and empirically. Adding to this developing literature, we study how world societal actors not only serve as normative counterpoints to international society or function as norm-entrepreneurs, but decisively contribute to its reproduction. Going beyond the common preoccupation with actor types, we focus on practices that are performed on the international stage. We examine the role which world sport events, especially FIFA's World Cup and the infrastructure of football, play for international society. Building on Wight, we conceptualize world sport events as a (world societal actor driven) derivative primary institution of international society, which is embedded within the particularly hybrid master primary institution of sites and festivals. We find that world sport events allow for the ludic and festive reproduction of key primary institutions (like sovereignty, territoriality, and nationalism), while they highlight how members of international society compete on the basis of shared norms and values. Naturalizing world order as international order, they make international society emotionally experienceable as feasible and desirable at a global level. In performing world sport events, world societal actors uphold rather than challenge international society.

This article develops the concept of ‘frontline diplomacy’ – what practitioners referring to work in embassies, consulates, and permanent representation as ‘the field’ –, defined here as all diplomats’ activities taking place away from headquarters. IR scholarship tends to focus on Ministries of Foreign Affairs located in capitals. On the contrary, building on the practice turn in IR, we first show that international politics emerge from frontline practices. Adding to criticism against the practice turn, we then explain that it has missed important transformations occurring in frontline diplomacy because it tends to privilege stability over change. We finally discuss two innovations in frontline practices: the action of Sherpas in G20 summits following the 2008 crisis and the use of Twitter by US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul (2012–14). For each we answer three questions: How do these activities transform traditional modes of operation? How are non-state actors involved in them? What do they tell about transformation of global politics? Because diplomatic practices at the frontlines epitomise international politics, these new directions for inquiry contribute substantively to IR scholarship. At the theoretical level, they enrich the continuing encounter between IR and diplomatic studies through practice theory and help to understand change in practice.

This article develops an International Practice Theory (IPT) approach to United Nations peace operations through the study of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). MINUSTAH saw the introduction of new practices within the context of a UN peace operation, namely the use of joint military-police forces to conduct offensive action against armed groups that were labelled as ‘gangs’. While more objectivist problem-solving approaches would argue that the UN mission was simply adapting to the situation on the ground, an IPT lens reveals that there was considerable struggle to integrate these new practices within the repertoire of peacekeeping. The article argues for the benefits of applying an IPT lens to peace operations while proposing to develop theoretical and methodological approaches that have been less prominent in IPT. Theoretically, it posits that IPT can better articulate practice and discourse by paying more attention to what actors say about what they do.