Written as events unfolded, this edited collection of articles offers insightful and diverse perspectives on the Arab uprising, and expands to consider related political unrest outside the predominantly Arab world.

During recent years the phenomenon of Boko Haram has dominated policy debates among academics and policymakers interested in African and Nigerian politics. Yet, many issues about the sect remain unclear and contested. This collection of articles on Boko Haram by selected experts is essential reading for those interested in Nigeria, and the broader issues of state building, terrorism, humanitarian emergencies, conflict resolution and intrastate violence.

The events of the Arab Spring, beginning in December 2010, saw renewed hope for Arab Civil Society. However, the fall of authoritarian regimes did not always seem to benefit Civil Society – whilst Political Islamic movements often took advantage. In Syria, Iraq, and beyond, groups like the Islamic State are declaring Caliphates in the territories they seize in an attempt to fulfil the Political Islam ideal of a ‘global Islamic Caliphate’ encompassing the Muslim world. This collection of articles aims to address common questions about Political Islam, as well as to provide an assessment of the Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL and finally challenge common understandings on the issue of Islam and democracy.

The purpose of this collection is to present Samuel P. Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis, and to appraise its validity and shortcomings 25 years after the publication of his landmark article.The notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’ is examined from a multidisciplinary perspective. First, the volume examines Huntington’s contribution from a theoretical perspective, focusing on his ideas about politics and the concept of civilization. Second, the individual articles also consider Huntington’s thesis in the light of recent events, including the conflict in Ukraine, the rise of ISIS, China–India relations, the electoral success of far-right movements in Europe, the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean and the activity of the International Criminal Court in Africa. In sum, this book offers a vibrant and multifaceted conversation among established and emerging scholars on one of the most important paradigms for the understanding of international politics.

The Middle East’s geographical and strategic uniqueness has made every great power in history to seek to advance its interests in the region. Yet, the region constitutes the greatest single reserve of oil in the world, which has made it a regular source of foreign interference in the post-World War II era. In addition to its geographical and strategic uniqueness, the Middle East is the birthplace and spiritual center of the world’s three most important monotheistic religions. Due to its geopolitical importance, any inter- and intra-state conflict in the Middle East has the potential not only for destabilizing the region as a whole or upsetting the regional balance of power but also affecting global stability. After employing the Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) in order to define and delimit the region of the Middle East, the chapters of this book address the question of regional order, examine how regionalism and globalism feature in Middle Eastern integration processes, explore regional bids for hegemony, and investigate the approaches and policies of major international actors.

Critical Epistemologies of Global Politics combines social science and cultural studies approaches to IR, showing why contemporary Border Studies needs to be trans-disciplinary if it is to avoid reproducing the epistemological and political order that has led to contemporary global crises like the rise of ISIS, global migration, or increasing contestations of the State form as such. The volume offers a critical epistemology of global politics and proposes an enriched vision of borders, both analytically and politically, that not only seeks to understand but also to reshape and expand the meanings and consequences of IR.

Thousands of people risk their lives daily by crossing borders in search of a better life. During 2015, over one million of these people arrived in Europe. Images of refugees in distress became headline news in what was considered to be the worst humanitarian crisis in Europe since 1945. This book provides a critical overview of recent migration flows and offers answers as to why people flee, what happens during their flight and investigates the various responses to mass migratory movements. Divided in two parts, the book addresses long-running academic, policy and domestic debates, drawing on case studies of migration in Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific. Coming from a variety of different fields, the contributors provide an interdisciplinary approach and open the discussion on the reasons why migration should be examined critically.

To state that climate change and environment issues are important to International Relations is an understatement. Mitigation and adaptation debates, strategies and mechanisms are all developed at the international level. Yet, the complexities of climate change make it a difficult phenomenon for international governance. In the wake of the 2015 Paris conference, this edited collection details current tendencies of study, explores the most important routes of assessing environmental issues as an issue of international governance, and provides perspectives on the route forward.

This book is designed to be a ‘Day 0' introduction to International Relations. As a beginner's guide, it has been structured to condense the most important information into the smallest space and present that information in the most accessible way. The chapters offer a broad sweep of the basic components of International Relations and the key contemporaryissues that concern the discipline. The narrative arc forms a complete circle, taking readers from no knowledge to competency. The journey starts by examining how the international system was formed and ends by reflecting that International Relations is always adapting to events and is therefore a never-ending journey of discovery. Unlike typical textbooks, there are no boxes, charts, pictures or exercises. The philosophy underpinning this book is that these things can be a distraction. This book, like others in the E-IR Foundations series, is designed to capture attention with an engaging narrative. The chapters are short, with simple paragraphs and clear sentences placing the reader inside crucial issues and debates so they can understand how things work, and where they fit in the world around them.

This book is designed as a foundational entry point to International Relations theory – structured to condense the most important information into the smallest space and present that information in an accessible manner. The first half of the book covers the theories that are most commonly taught in undergraduate programmes. The book then expands to present emerging approaches and offer wider perspectives. Each chapter sets out the basics of a theory whilst also applying it to a real-world event or issue, creating a lively, readable and relevant guide that will help students to see not only what theories are – but why they matter.

The humanitarian crisis in Syria poses major challenges to doctrines, legal frameworks, and institutional norms about the moral imperative to intervene on behalf of afflicted populations. At the heart of this challenge presented by Syria is the debate surrounding the Responsibility to Protect, or R2P, doctrine. This edited collection brings together some of the most important voices on R2P and humanitarian intervention to examine the doctrine’s validity in the context of Syria’s civil war.

Diplomacy is an evolving practice in terms of historical circumstance and changing national interests. History and interests do not always coincide. This book explores in brief, pungent case examples, the challenges diplomacy faces today as actors seek to change history and undermine interests. Stephen Chan OBE was Foundation Dean of Law and Social Sciences at SOAS University of London, where he remains as Professor of World Politics. He has occupied many named chairs around the world, most recently the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Chair of Academic Excellence at Bir Zeit University in 2015, and the George Soros Chair of Public Policy at the Central European University in 2016.

Since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the beginning of the war in Donbas, Eastern Europe has been facing a migration crisis. Several million Ukrainians are internally displaced or have fled the country and now face an uncertain future. At the same time, Western-imposed sanctions and the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union have affected Russia’s migration policies. These largely ignored processes have a potential to change the social landscape of the region for many years to come. The aim of this collection is to shed light on the forgotten migrant crisis at the European Union’s doorstep and make sense of the various migration processes in and out of Ukraine and Russia. The book is divided into two sections. The first section deals with migration processes that have taken place within Ukraine or have involved Ukrainian citizens’ migration out of the country, excluding Russia. The second section discusses Russia’s response to the rapid inflow of migrants from Ukraine, its changing migration policies and their effect on migrants, as well as other processes related to the phenomenon over the course of the Ukraine crisis.

This edited collection presents a balanced analysis of the multifaceted roles taken on by religions, and religious actors, in global politics. The volume brings together over thirty leading scholars from a variety of disciplines who utilise case studies, empirical investigations, and theoretical examinations to move beyond the simplistic narratives and overly impassioned polemics which swamp the discourse on the subject.

Numerous academics have researched Japan’s dehumanizing comfort women system that, for decades, forced innocents into sexual slavery. Since 2010 a campaign has been in place to proliferate comfort women memorials in the United States. These memorials now span from New York to California and from Texas to Michigan. They recount only the Korean version of this history, which this text finds incomplete. They do not mention that, immediately following World War II, American soldiers also frequented Japan’s comfort women stations. They say nothing of how, to the present day, GIs continue to patronize Asian women and girls organized in brothels near their barracks. The Korean narrative also ignores the significant role that Koreans played in recruiting women and girls into the system. Intentionally or not, comfort women memorials in the United States promote a political agenda rather than transparency, accountability and reconciliation. This book explains, critiques, and expands on the competing state and civil society narratives regarding the dozen memorials erected in the United States since 2010 to honor female victims of the comfort women system established and maintained by the Japanese military from 1937 to 1945.

The articles in this edited collection were written and published on E-IR as events unfolded during the contentious Iranian elections of June 2009.

This edited collection brings together cutting edge insights from a range of key thinkers working in the area of popular culture and world politics (PCWP). Offering a holistic approach to this exciting field of research, it contributes to the establishment of PCWP as a sub-discipline of International Relations. Canvassing issues such as geopolitics, political identities, the War on Terror and political communication – and drawing from sources such as film, videogames, art and music – this collection is an invaluable reader for anyone interested in popular culture and world politics.

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) aimed to halt atrocities as they occurred and rebuild and reconstruct societies in the wake of such crimes. It represented the policy realization of the statement never again. Now a growing international norm, the R2P cuts to the core of what it means to be a moral player in the international arena. With contributions from many of the world’s most respected R2P experts and practitioners, this Edited Collection attempts to draw attention to the major points of contention that have been highlighted by the Western intervention in Libya following the Arab Spring.

The purpose of this book is to appraise the current relevance and validity of realism as an interpretative tool in contemporary International Relations. All chapters of the book are animated by a theoretical effort to define the conceptual aspects of realism and attempt to establish whether the tradition still provides the necessary conceptual tools to scholars. The chapters address important issues in contemporary world politics through the lens of realist theory such as the refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East; the war against ISIS; the appearance of non-state actors and outlaw agents; the rise of China; cyberwarfare; human rights and humanitarian law. The collection also provides insights on some of the theoretical tenets of classical and structural realism. Overall, the collection shows that, in spite of its many shortcomings, realism still offers a multifaceted understanding of world politics and enlightens the increasing challenges of world politics.

This book exposes a much needed discussion on the interconnectedness between objects, organisms, machines and elemental forces. It seeks to disturb dogmatic ontologies that privilege human life and successfully questions the separation between the natural and human worlds. By doing so, the collection confronts, challenges, and energises discussion beyond International Relations’ traditional territorial lines. By revealing the fragility of mainstream narratives of the ‘human,’ each author in this collection contributes to an unsettling vision of a posthuman world. Questions of what the future beyond the Anthropocene looks like pervasively infiltrate the collection and move away from a system that all too often relies on binary relationships. In contrast to this binary view of the world, the book (re)entagles the innate complexities found within the world and brings forward a plurality of views on posthumanism.

Indigenous peoples around the world find themselves locked in power struggles with dominant states and transnational actors who resist their claims to land, culture, political recognition and other key factors associated with the idea of national self-determination. In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – suggesting that an important attitudinal shift might now be taking place internationally. Yet, as this volume’s contributors suggest, much more work is needed in terms of understanding what Indigenous self-determination means in theory and how it is to be achieved in practice.

This collection features seven articles which tackle the subject of religion and its resurgence in international politics from diverse approaches.

Sounds of War, by Susanna Hast, is a book on the aesthetics of war experience in Chechnya. It includes theory on, and stories of, compassion, dance, children’s agency and love. It is not simply a book to be read, but to be listened to. The chapters begin with the author’s own songs expressing research findings and methodology in musical form. Susanna Hast is Academy of Finland postdoctoral researcher with a project “Bodies in War, Bodies in Dance” (2017–2020) at the Theatre Academy Helsinki, University of the Arts. She does artistic research on emotions, embodiment and war and teaches dance for immigrant and asylum-seeking women in Finland.

The 2014 Russia–Ukraine conflict has transformed relations between Russia and the West into what many are calling a new cold war. The West has slowly come to understand that Russia’s annexations and interventions, interference in elections, cyber warfare, disinformation, assassinations in Europe and support for anti-EU populists emerge from Vladimir Putin’s belief that Russia is at war with the West. This book shows that the crisis has deep roots in Russia’s inability to come to terms with an independent Ukrainian state, Moscow’s view of the Orange and Euromaidan revolutions as Western conspiracies and, finally, its inability to understand that most Russian-speaking Ukrainians do not want to rejoin Russia. In Moscow’s eyes, Ukraine is central to rebuilding a sphere of influence within the former Soviet space and to re-establishing Russia as a great power. The book shows that the wide range of ‘hybrid’ tactics that Russia has deployed show continuity with the actions of the Soviet-era security services.

Since its reorganisation in the 1990s, the English School has emerged as a popular theoretical lens through which to examine global events. Those who use the approach promote it as a middle way of theorising due to its ability to incorporate features from both systemic and domestic perspectives into one coherent lens. This volume, now in its second edition, brings together some of the most important voices on the English School to highlight the multifaceted nature of the School’s applications in International Relations.

International Relations scholars have traditionally expressed little direct interest in addressing time and temporality. Yet, assumptions about temporality are at the core of many theories of world politics and time is a crucial component of the human condition and our social reality. Today, a small but emerging strand of literature has emerged to meet questions concerning time and temporality and its relationship to International Relations head on. This edited collection provides a platform to continue this work. The chapters in this book address subjects such as identity, terrorism, war, gender relations, global ethics and governance in order to demonstrate how focusing on the temporal aspects of such phenomena can enhance our understanding of the world.

When Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych decided to postpone an EU Association Agreement, few would have predicted that it would lead to a prolonged conflict. What started as a peaceful demonstration of support for Ukraine’s pro-European course soon developed into a vicious confrontation dividing families, communities and the Ukrainian nation. The authors of this Edited Collection each present a facet of the intense and dangerous turmoil, and contribute to a deeper understanding of a crisis that now afflicts both European and global affairs.

Through a series of articles written between 2013 and 2017, this book examines Ukraine during its period of conflict – from the protests and uprising of Euromaidan, to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in Ukraine’s two eastern provinces Donetsk and Luhansk. It also looks at Ukraine’s response to Russian incursions in the form of Decommunisation – the removal of Lenin statues, Communist symbols, and the imposition of the so-called Memory Laws of the spring of 2015. The book places these events in the context of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, and Ukraine’s geostrategic location between Russia and the European Union. It seeks to provide answers to questions that are too often mired in propaganda and invective and to assess whether the road Ukraine has taken is likely to end in success or failure.

How can you counteract an information war? Hromadske Radio, Public Radio Ukraine, decided to provide accurate and objective information to audiences – free of state and corporate censorship and any kind of manipulation. This book, by Marta Dyczok, brings together a series of English language reports on the Ukraine crisis first broadcast on Hromadske Radio between 3 February 2014 and 7 August 2015. Collected and transcribed here, they offer a kaleidoscopic chronicle of events in Ukraine. Bookending the reports, purpose written introduction and conclusion sections contextualize the independent radio project within the larger picture of Ukraine’s media and political developments – both before the Euromaidan and in its dramatic aftermath.

9/11 and the subsequent war on terror have misleadingly reinforced the idea of a world politics based on a ‘civilizational’ clash. While post-9/11 Afghan society appears to be troubled with a conflict between so-called Islamic-terrorist and secular-democratic forces, the need for an alternative understanding to pave the way for peace has become paramount. This book uses a critical theoretical perspective to highlight the hidden political and economic factors underlying the so-called civilizational conflict in post-9/11 Afghanistan. It further demonstrates how a post-Islamic humanist discourse has the potential to not only carve the way for peace amidst dangerous entanglement between politics and religion in post-9/11 Afghanistan, but also vindicate Islam of its unjustified denigration in the contemporary world.

The birth of South Sudan in July 2011 was met with jubilation by its citizens. Amidst the celebrations, there was a glimmering sense of hope that the sundering of North and South might act as a beginning from which to establish a prosperous nation. This compendium draws together E-IR’s coverage of the independence of South Sudan, spanning initial reactions in July 2011 to reflections offered a year later.