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Since its publication three decades ago, Hedley Bull and Adam Watson's The Expansion of International Society has served as the main point of departure for historically informed discussion of how today's states system emerged and then went on to envelop the world. In a recent article, Iver Neumann criticized Bull and Watson's conceptualization for being Euro-centric, in the sense that these scholars only ascribed agency to the European side of the relationship between an entrant and international society. For International Relations, it is particularly apposite that the new entrants to international society themselves came from suzerain systems, such as Habsburg-dominated or the Ottoman-dominated one. Neumann's example was Russia, whose experiences with Mongol suzerainty and, before that, with being a part of a suzerain system centred on Byzantium, infused Muscovy with experiences and memories that formed the reference point for what to expect when getting in contact with international society. This forum broadens this debate by looking not only at one state, but at a set of Central and South-Eastern European states with experiences and memories from various suzerain systems. The articles discuss when and how Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Turkey began to aspire for membership in international society; experiences, memories and ideas such as translatio imperii that informed what they made of the entry; and how and in what degree the ensuing tensions remain today.

© The Author(s) 2020. This article analyses trends in Chinese–international marriages and divorces, using Australia, a major migrant-receiving country, as a comparative case study. In exploring the recent rise of 'Chinese–foreign' marriage in the People's Republic of China (PRC), we show that Chinese–international marriage within mainland China is a small, gendered phenomenon that largely involves Chinese women marrying men from other Asian societies. By examining unique data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, we reveal that most marriages involving PRC-born people in contemporary Australia are between two people born in China. But the displacement of Chinese intimate relationships to a non-Asian country results in significant behavioural divergences from couples 'at home', especially regarding prior cohabitation. Marriages solely involving PRC-born couples in Australia are also typically less enduring than marriages to non-Chinese. We argue that these differences underscore the roles of country-specific immigration policies and labour mobility patterns in shaping unpredicted family formation behaviour.

ABSTRACTThe standard framework for debating the international currency system casts doubt on the dollar's continuing hegemonic position because it raises questions regarding the ability of the US to finance its external liabilities in the face of worsening economic fundamentals. This article addresses these questions by adding to the usual matrix linking the international functions of money to two different types of agents, private and official, a second matrix linking the functions of money to two different types of commodities, material goods and services on the one hand, and financial securities on the other. Once it is understood that bonds and equities are now not only different types of funding instruments but also different types of commodities whose use value to the world's large investors is to serve as stores of value, it is possible to understand why the size of the US capital markets will long continue to bind foreign investors to the dollar because it will be some time before other capital markets will reach a comparable size.

There has been a wide debate on whether democracy actually has an effect on economic outcomes, and especially on international trade. In reality, economies very active in the international trading network are not necessarily the most democratic countries. With a new estimation strategy, we analyze this relationship taking a look at the distribution of countries' trading activity. Using a panel quantile estimation framework, we find a stronger relationship at the lower quantiles, especially for the import activity. Our results suggest that the impact of democratization on trade is more important when countries trade less: the marginal benefit of democratization decreases as countries trade more. The results are robust to different institutional variables and even to instrumental variables estimation. Our results demonstrate that the effect of democracy on trade is underestimated using Ordinary Least Squares estimation for the group of countries for which the effect is statistically significant for, namely those countries that are active in the lower quantiles of the trading distribution.

Abstract
Understanding the selves, situations and actions of Africans can never be comprehended outside kinship. Local and foreign worldviews are first pigeonholed into culture and defined within kinship realities in Nigeria and Africa. There have been studies on kinship in Africa. However, the findings from such studies portrayed the immutability of African kinship. Thus, as an important contribution to the on-going engagement of kinship in the twenty-first century as an interface between the contemporary Diaspora, this article engaged kinship within international migration. This is a major behavioural and socio-economic force in Nigeria. Methodological triangulation was adopted as part of the research design and primary data were collected through in-depth interviews (IDIs), and life histories of international migrants were documented and focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with kin of returnees. The article found and concluded that while returnees continued to appreciate local kinship infrastructures, the infrastructures were liable to reconstruction primarily determined by dominant support situations in the traditional African kinship networks.

This text argues that we must look beyond the traditional criteria of compliance and effectiveness to judge the performance of Africa's international courts. It demonstrates how these courts are important venues for activists and opposition parties to wage political, social, environmental, and legal struggles on the international stage.

Chapter 1. An Apostle of Commonwealth: Introduction -- Chapter 2. Empire and Classical Republicanism -- Chapter 3. Zionist Internationalism -- Chapter 4. A Turn: From Global Reformism to Euro-Atlanticism -- Chapter 5. Nuclear One-Worldism -- Chapter 6. Postscript. .