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International Relations scholars are certain about two facts: power is the defining concept of the discipline and there is no consensus about what that concept means. One explanation for this problematic state of the field is that most International Relations scholars freight their analyses of power with hidden assumptions about time. Temporality is an essential component of political analysis, as a burgeoning literature has begun to explore. This paper argues that there are two latent presumptions about time that fundamentally affect how scholars conceptualize power in world politics. First, scholars are rarely explicit in defining the temporal scope of their key causal processes. The longer the implicit temporal scope, the more expansive their definition and operationalization of power can be. Second, there is considerable variation of beliefs about the temporal returns to power: does exercising or accumulating power generate positive or negative feedback effects over time? Relying on canonical works in the field, this paper examines the hidden assumptions that different paradigms make about power and time. Illuminating these assumptions clarifies the root of cross-paradigmatic disagreements about international politics and suggests some interesting pathways for future theoretical and empirical work.

There has been a renaissance in the study of how the backgrounds of individual leaders affect foreign policy outcomes. Donald Trump's presidency highlights the limits of this approach. Trump's psychology is so unique, and so akin to that of a small child, that studying his background alone is insufficient to explain his decision-making. The evidence for this characterization of Trump's leadership comes not from his political opponents, but his allies, staffers and subordinates. Trump's lack of impulse control, short attention span and frequent temper tantrums have all undercut his effectiveness as president as compared to his predecessors. Nonetheless, the 45th president helps to clarify ongoing debates in American politics about the relative strength of the presidency as an institution. In particular, the powers of the presidency have become so enhanced that even comparatively weak and inexperienced leaders can execute dramatic policy shifts. The formal checks on presidential power, from the legislative, judicial and executive branches have all eroded. Similarly, the informal checks on the presidency had also degraded before Trump's inauguration. This article uses Trump's presidency—and his severe limitations as a decision-maker—to highlight the ways in which even a weak leader can affect change by holding a powerful office.

This article reflects on the role that technological change has played in the last century on international relations. It makes two main points. First, the relationship is reciprocal; while technological change has undeniable effects on international relations, the changing nature of world politics also affects the pace of technological change. Second, any technological change is also an exercise in economic redistribution and societal disruption. It creates new winners and losers, alters actor preferences, and allows the strategic construction of new norms and organizations. The nature of the technology itself, and the extent to which the public sector drives the innovation, generates differential effects on international relations. To demonstrate these arguments, special emphasis is placed on two important innovations of the last century for international relations: nuclear weapons and the Internet.

"Critical analyses of the global financial crisis of 2008 (GFC) have neglected the ways in which structural inequalities around gender and race factor into (and indeed make possible) the current economic order. Scandalous Economics breaks new ground by arguing that an explicitly gendered approach to the GFC and its ongoing effects can help us to understand both the root causes of the crisis and the failure to significantly reform financial institutions and macroeconomic models." These words, from the blurb on the back cover of Scandalous Economics, nicely summarize the book's topic and the general approach to it. Because the book contains contributions from a number of the top political scientists writing about the gendering of political economy, and because this topic is such an important one, we have invited a range of political scientists to comment on the book and on the broader theme of the gendering of political economy.

Think tanks have been a part of the United States' foreign policy establishment for more than a century. They have played a significant role at key junctures in US foreign policy. Two inflection points, however, have dramatically altered the think tank landscape in the last 15 years. The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks caused these organizations to dramatically expand their staff and overhead, as the demand for their services increased. The 2008 financial crisis subsequently left many of these same think tanks financially overextended. This circumstance forced these organizations to seek out more unconventional funding arrangements, imposing new constraints at the exact moment that their competitive environment intensified. In the twenty-first century, US foreign policy think tanks will maintain their relevancy by moving beyond what made them relevant in the last century.