Over the past few decades, genocidal killing and other mass atrocities have become less frequent and less lethal. At the same time, collective international responses have become more common and more comprehensive. What explains these two phenomena, and are they connected? This article suggests that the evidence of declining mass violence and growing international activism is not only compelling but that the two phenomena are connected by the emergence of a new international human protection regime. The article proceeds in three parts. The first examines the evidence for thinking that the world is experiencing both a decline in mass violence and an increase in international activism in response to such violence. The second outlines the emergence, scope, and limits of the human protection regime. The third considers whether the regime itself is associated with the changing practices of third parties to mass violence. The fourth part contrasts this explanation with potential alternatives.

To date, cyber security research is built on observational studies involving macro-level attributes as causal factors that account for state behaviour in cyberspace. While this tradition resulted in significant findings, it abstracts the importance of individual decision-makers. Specifically, these studies have yet to provide an account as to why states fail to integrate available information resulting in suboptimal judgements such as the misattribution of cyber operations. Using a series of vignette experiments, the study demonstrates that cognitive heuristics and motivated reasoning play a crucial role in the formation of judgements vis-à-vis cyberspace. While this phenomenon is frequently studied relative to the physical domain, it remains relatively unexplored in the context of cyberspace. Consequently, this study extends the existing literature by highlighting the importance of micro-level attributes in interstate cyber interactions.

Spheres of influence remain one of the most pervasive phenomena in the practice and history of international relations, yet only rarely have they been taken up analytically. To bring conceptual and discursive clarity, this article advances two arguments. First, it argues that spheres of influence are not a distinct form of hierarchy in international relations, but rather practices of control and exclusion that can be found within any ideal-type hierarchy. Second, these hierarchical practices are generally underspecified by those invoking the term. Different theoretical perspectives on international relations offer highly divergent ways of understanding control and exclusion, and all do so with plausible empirical mooring. Spheres of influence do not themselves denote a form of governance even if it does a form of order construction and maintenance. Any given empire, hegemonic order, or alliance may also be a sphere of influence depending on the practices that occur; the key is not to identify whether particular hierarchical traits are dispositive of one of these relational structures, but rather whether, and the extent to which, assertions of control and exclusion define the hierarchy.

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.

Overconfidence in the controllability of nuclear weapons creates danger. The passing of the last elite witness of the most dangerous nuclear crisis, that is, the ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’, and the current Trump administration only make this more salient. In this context, this article reviews the scholarly literature about the limits of predictability and controllability of nuclear crises and investigates three failures of learning from them. Given that France displays in particularly acute form some of the sources of overconfidence in the controllability of nuclear crises that can been found in other nuclear armed states, this article offers the first study of the French experience and evolving interpretation of the Cuban missile crisis in comparative perspective, based on untapped primary material. In security studies, this article makes three contributions. First, the publication and interpretation of primary sources is a contribution in itself given the frequent misconceptions about nuclear dynamics due to theory-driven extrapolations. Second, it challenges a widespread assumption of automaticity linking a fear-induced deterrent effect and the presence of nuclear weapons. Third, empirically, this article studies part of a regime of valuation of nuclear weapons. It finally outlines a research agenda to take luck seriously in security studies.

States generate the hardware of military power by either developing new technologies as first mover or adopting demonstrated technology as second mover. Given that military drones have arguably demonstrated effectiveness and thus proliferate, scholars have produced profound insights into today’s second mover dynamics. Yet, the preceding political process of developing this military technology remains poorly understood. The article’s objective is to explain how states become first movers of military hardware. To this end, it applies four causal mechanisms of military innovation studies to the historical trajectory of the development of drones. I argue that security threats initially formed state interests in drones. Yet, capacity was necessary for success. Politically induced transfers and cross-sector diffusion supplied technological progress. At the same time, distributional implications and legacy systems constrained the development process, but could ultimately be overcome. This mechanismic pathway results from the process-tracing analysis of two separate, but related trajectories in Israel and the United States since the 1970s. Given within-case variation, a sequencing and domain-of-application perspective allows the formulation of scope conditions of the mechanisms behind military innovation. This contributes to a historically contingent, yet generalisable, understanding of the political process of how states generate military power.

Three decades after what is widely referred to as the transition from a First to a Second Nuclear Age, the world stands on the cusp of a possible Third Nuclear Age where the way that we conceptualise the central dynamics of the nuclear game will change again. This paradigm shift is being driven by the growth and spread of non-nuclear technologies with strategic applications and by a shift in thinking about the sources of nuclear threats and how they should be addressed, primarily, but not solely, in the United States. Recent scholarship has rightly identified a new set of challenges posed by the development of strategic non-nuclear weaponry (SNNW). But the full implications of this transformation in policy, technology and thinking for the global nuclear order as a whole have so far been underexplored. To remedy this, we look further ahead to the ways in which current trends, if taken to their logical conclusion, have the capacity to usher in a new nuclear era. We argue that in the years ahead, SNNW will increasingly shape the nuclear order, particularly in relation to questions of stability and risk. In the Third Nuclear Age, nuclear deployments, postures, balances, arms control, non-proliferation policy, and the prospects for disarmament, will all be shaped as much by developments in SNNW capabilities as by nuclear weapons. Consequently, we advocate for an urgent reassessment of the way nuclear order and nuclear risks are conceptualised as we confront the challenges of a Third Nuclear Age.

Since its inception in 2000, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has conceptualised the conflict-affected woman as a subject worthy of international attention, protection, and inclusion. In the wake of Europe's ‘refugee crisis’, this article examines how the remit of WPS has broadened from women in conflict zones to refugees in Europe's borderlands. A minority of European states now attend, in their WPS policy, to these conflict-affected women on the move. This inclusion productively challenges established notions of where conflict-affectedness is located. It exposes Europe as not always peaceful and safe for women, especially refugees who flee war. Conversely, the dominant tendency to exclude refugees from European WPS policy is built on a fantasy of Europe as peaceful and secure for women, which legitimises the fortressing of Europe and obscures European states’ complicity in fuelling insecurity at their borders, cultivating an ethos of coloniality around the WPS agenda. The inclusion of refugees is no panacea to these problems. If focused solely on protection, it repositions European states as protective heroes and conflict-affected women as helpless victims. The WPS framework nonetheless emphasises conflict-affected women's participation in decision-making and conflict prevention, opening space for recognising the refugee women as political actors.

Promoting Private Security Company (PSC) self-regulation has become a key focus due to high profile scandals during the military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Related efforts include the Montreux Document, the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers (ICoC), American National Standards Institute/ASIS certification, and the new International Standards Organization (ISO) Management System Standard for Private Security Operations. Implicit in industry self-regulation, however, is the assumption that the consumers of private security services will help facilitate and enforce professional standards by shifting their custom to PSCs which have signed up to these codes of conduct or certification schemes. This article investigates the validity of this assumption with regard to government contracting. To what degree are public agencies able – and willing – to let professional standards guide their contracting behaviour? To answer this question, this article develops a general framework for the analysis of public consumer influence through choice, voice, and exit which draws on insights from microeconomics and Albert Hirschman’s classical treatise Exit, Voice, Loyalty. Taking the United States government as an illustrative example, the analysis observes several obstacles to encouraging security industry self-regulation through consumer power.

This article makes a case for incorporating the concept of ‘Critical Security History’ (CSH) into security studies. While history plays a powerful role in a cornucopia of security stories, we contend that it often goes unnoticed in scholarly research and teaching. Against this backdrop, we present a detailed guide to study how history is told and enacted in non-linear ways. To do this, the article outlines how CSH can contribute to securitisation and ontological security studies. As shown, this lens casts a new light on the legacies of (de)securitisation processes and how they are commemorated. It also illustrates that ontological security studies have only begun to call into question the concept of historicity. Working through these observations, the article marshals insights from Halvard Leira's notion of ‘engaged historical amateurism’ to entice scholars interested in ‘doing’ CSH. While acknowledging that this research agenda is hard to achieve, our study of the 2012 Sarajevo Red Line project helps to illustrate the added value of trying to ‘do’ CSH in theory and in practice. We end with some reflections for future research and continued conversations.

Latin American militaries are today in many regards inoperative and obsolete as an instrument of defence. Yet, they seek to maintain their organisational power and privileges. Governments, on the other hand, lack the adequate means to fight criminality, persisting poverty and social inequality. In an apparent win-win situation, Latin American governments have used the military as a wildcard to step in where civilian state capacity falls short, including for urban and border patrols, literacy campaigns and to collect garbage, among many other tasks. The military's manifold internal use has been defended mainly based on pragmatic reasons. We argue instead that the ostensive pareto optimality between militaries and governments has had negative effects for civil-military relations from a democratic governance point of view that takes into consideration the efficiency and effectiveness of how the state delivers basic services across different policy areas.

Twenty years after the passing of Resolution 1325, the participation of women as military personnel in peacekeeping operations remains limited. Women currently comprise just under five per cent of military personnel in UN peacekeeping missions, and the UN consistently calls for more. We contend the low numbers of female military personnel in peacekeeping reflects a lack of gender mainstreaming in national militaries globally. This article introduces the problem of sidestreaming, the practice, deliberate or unintentional, of sidelining women and relegating them to specialised spaces in international peace and security while attempting gender mainstreaming or increased gender integration. Drawing on empirical evidence from national militaries we show how and where sidestreaming occurs with the result being that women remain clustered in gendered and low-status spaces in national militaries and in specialised spaces in peacekeeping operations. This has a negative effect on retention and recruitment contributing to the low numbers of female peacekeepers in UN peace operations. We conclude that gender mainstreaming in its fullest sense will require military reform that decouples violence and combat skills from masculinity and inclusive research strategies that engage men as well as women.

Despite widespread public opposition to the Iraq War, numerous democracies joined the US-led multinational force. However, while some stayed until the end of coalition operations, and several increased their deployments over time, others left unilaterally. How to explain this variation? While some studies suggest that democratic defection from security commitments is primarily motivated by electoral incentives or leadership change, scholars have not reached a consensus on this issue. To account for the complex interplay between causal factors, this article develops an integrative theoretical framework, using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) on original data on the Iraq War involvement of 51 leaders from 29 democracies. The findings document the existence of multiple paths towards coalition defection. Among others, the results show that: (1) leadership change led to early withdrawal only when combined with leftist partisanship and the absence of upcoming elections; (2) casualties and coalition commitment played a larger role than previously assumed; and (3) coalition defection often occurred under the same leaders who had made the initial decision to deploy to Iraq, and who did not face elections when they made their withdrawal announcements.

This article suggests studying special relationships in international politics from an ontological security perspective. It argues that conceptualising the partners to special relationships as ontological security seekers provides a promising theoretical angle to address gaps in our understanding of three important dimensions of such relations: their emergence and stability; the processes and practices of maintaining them; and the power relations within special relations. The article illustrates its theoretical argument in a case study on the German-Israeli relationship. The close partnership between the two countries that has developed since the Holocaust ranks as one of the most remarkable examples of special relationships in the international arena. We argue that foregrounding the ontological security that the special relationship provides, in particular for Germany, sheds important new light on how German-Israeli relations have developed. Specifically, we hold that Germany’s ontological security needs were already an important driver in establishing the relationship and have been a key stabiliser of it ever since; that the ontological security perspective can make sense of three interrelated practices of maintaining the ‘specialness’ of the relationship; and that the asymmetries between the ontological security needs of the two partners help account for Israel’s political leverage in the relationship.

Our primary aim in this article is to explore vernacular constructions of Europe’s so-called ‘migration crisis’ from the grounded everyday perspectives of EU citizens. We do so as a critical counterpoint to dominant elite scripts of the crisis, which are often reliant upon securitised representations of public opinion as being overwhelmingly hostile to migrants and refugees and straightforwardly in favour of tougher deterrent border security. In addition to broadening the range of issues analysed in vernacular security studies, the article seeks to make three principal contributions. Theoretically, we argue for an approach to the study of citizens’ views and experiences of migration and border security that is sensitive to the performative effects of research methods and the circular logic between securitising modes of knowledge production and policy justification. Methodologically, we outline and apply an alternative approach in response to these dynamics, drawing on the potential of critical focus groups and a desecuritising ethos. Empirically, we identify a vernacular theory of ‘the border’ as information management, and a significant information gap prevalent among participants with otherwise opposing views towards migration. These findings challenge bifurcated understandings of public opinion towards migration into Europe and point to the existence of vernacular border security imaginaries beyond either ‘closed’ or ‘open’ borders.

This article theorises the repressive security practices of authoritarian states in the context of transnationalism and globalisation. While emerging research on transnational repression has identified a range of extraterritorial and exceptional security practices adopted by authoritarian states, it has not fully studied the implications of such practices on space and statecraft. Using data from the Central Asia Political Exile Database project (CAPE) and interviews conducted with exiled Tajik opposition groups based in Russia and Europe, we theorise the spatial connections between the territorial and extraterritorial security practices using the concept of assemblages. We further outline how these practices escalate in a three-stage model, in which exiles go on notice, are detained and then rendered or assassinated. Such an approach sheds light on the inherent links between the normalisation of security practices and the creation of transnational space with distinct forms of geographical state power that is embedded in non-national spaces and is manifested through spatially organised actors, networks, and technologies within assemblages.

Current debates about surveillance demonstrate the complexity of political controversies whose uncertainty and moral ambiguities render normative consensus difficult to achieve. The question of how to study political controversies remains a challenge for IR scholars. Critical security studies scholars have begun to examine political controversies around surveillance by exploring changing security practices in the everyday. Yet, (de)legitimation practices have hitherto not been the focus of analysis. Following recent practice-oriented research, we develop a conceptual framework based on the notion of ‘narrative legitimation politics’. We first introduce the concept of ‘tests’ from Boltanski's pragmatic sociology to categorise the discursive context and different moral reference points (truth, reality, existence). Second, we combine pragmatic sociology with narrative analysis to enable the study of dominant justificatory practices. Third, we develop the framework through a practice-oriented exploration of the Snowden controversy with a focus on the US and Germany. We identify distinct justificatory practices in each test format linked to narrative devices (for example, plots, roles, metaphors) whose fluid, contested dynamics have the potential to effect change. The framework is particularly relevant for IR scholars interested in legitimacy issues, the normativity of practices, and the power of narratives.

While the current practice of the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, and the United States leans towards imposing only targeted sanctions in most of the cases, private actors often complain about inability to process financial transactions, ship goods, or deliver services in countries where sanctions targets are located. The impact of sanctions often ends up being widespread and indiscriminate because sanctions are implemented by for-profit actors. This article investigates how for-profit actors relate to the imposition of sanctions, how they reflect them in their decisions, and how they interact with the public authorities. The findings of our research show that for-profit actors, with the possible exception of the largest multinationals, do not engage with public authorities before the imposition of sanctions. The behaviour of for-profit actors in the implementation phase is in line with the assumption of firms and business as profit-maximisers. Weighting the profits from business against the costs of (non-)compliance and make the decisions that in their view maximise their profit. Indeed, de-risking seems to be the most common approach by the companies due to the uncertainties produced by the multiple and overlapping sanctions regimes imposed by the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States.

Created in 1972, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has a normative mandate to promote the protection of the environment at the international level. However, since 1999, the organisation has been conducting field assessments in postconflict situations and addressing the role of natural resources in conflict, framing the environment as a security issue. To do so, the programme insists on its neutrality as a technical and ‘apolitical’ actor within the UN system. Considering depoliticisation as a political act, this article unpacks the concrete practices by which international organisations (IOs) enact depoliticisation. It further argues that IOs can perform securitising moves through practices and techniques presented as outside of the political realm. It draws upon the recent work on depoliticisation at the international level and reinforces studies considering the links between (de)politicisation and securitisation.

While there has been a long engagement with the impact of time on peacebuilding policies and practice, this engagement has to date focused predominately on issues of short- versus long-term initiatives, and of waning donor support for such initiatives. More recently, the critical peacebuilding turn has focused attention on the politics of the everyday as being essential to emancipatory endeavours enacted through localisation. Yet despite this, time itself has not been the subject of analysis, and the politics of time have not been integrated into the study of peacebuilding. This article, drawing both on historical institutionalist and on critical international studies analyses of temporality, provides a framework for analysing the impacts of time on the potential to achieve emancipatory peace. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Cambodia, this article asserts that a focus on Policy Time, Liberal Political Time, and Intergenerational Time highlights how peacebuilding initiatives are framed by disparate timescapes that limit the visibility of local chronopolitics, and that this in turn restricts local empowerment and resistances.