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It is time for International Relations (IR) to join the relational revolution afoot in the natural and social sciences. To do so, more careful reflection is needed on cosmological assumptions in the sciences and also in the study and practice of international relations. In particular it is argued here that we need to pay careful attention to whether and how we think 'relationally'. Building a conversation between relational cosmology, developed in natural sciences, and critical social theory, this book seeks to develop a new perspective on how to think relationally in and around the study of IR. International Relations in a Relational Universe asks: What kind of cosmological background assumptions do we make as we tackle international relations today and where do our assumptions (about states, individuals, or the international) come from? And can we reorient our cosmological imaginations towards more relational understanding of the universe and what would this mean for the study and practice of international politics?The book argues that we live in a world without 'things', a world of processes and relations. It also suggests that we live in relations which exceed the boundaries of the human and the social, in planetary relations with plants and animals. Rethinking conceptual premises of IR, Kurki points towards a 'planetary politics' perspective within which we can reimagine IR as a field of study and also political practices, including the future of democracy.

Democracy promotion has been an influential policy agenda in many Western states and international organisations, and amongst many NGO actors. But what kinds of models of democracy do democracy promoters promote? This book examines in detail the conceptual orders that underpin democracy support activity, and the conceptions of democracy that democracy promoters, consciously or inadvertently, work with. Such an examination is not only timely but much-needed in today's context of multiple democratic and financial crises. Contestation over democracy's meaning is returning, but how is this cont.

"World political processes, such as wars and globalization, are engendered by complex sets of causes and conditions. Although the idea of causation is fundamental to the field of International Relations, what the concept of cause means or entails has remained an unresolved and contested matter. In recent decades ferocious debates have surrounded the idea of causal analysis, some scholars even questioning the legitimacy of applying the notion of cause in the study of International Relations. This book suggests that underlying the debates on causation in the field of International Relations is a set of problematic assumptions (deterministic, mechanistic and empiricist) and that we should reclaim causal analysis from the dominant discourse of causation. Milja Kurki argues that reinterpreting the meaning, aims and methods of social scientific causal analysis opens up multi-causal and methodologically pluralist avenues for future International Relations scholarship."--Jacket

AbstractThere is a multifaceted relational revolution afoot in International Relations (IR) and in the social sciences more widely. This article suggests, via engagement with varied forms of relational thought and practice in IR, but in particular via engagement with 'relational cosmology' associated with the 'natural' as well as the 'social' sciences, that there are important reasons for relational thought and practice in IR and around it to be more attentive to dialogues on relationality across natural and social sciences. If relational thought in IR has challenged the colonial and bifurcated ontologies of the field, relational cosmology too assists in shifting 'modern' understandings of science and the cosmos by facilitating engagement with situated knowledges and deep-going relationalities across 'nature' and 'society', 'human' and 'non-human' communities. Relational cosmology may be productive in joining, and perhaps even in facilitating, conversations across multiple relationalities emerging from different parts of the world and in different fields of inquiry, and yet – reflecting its relational and pluriversal orientations – it is not proposed here as a new 'meta-' or 'grand-' narrative for relational theorising or IR.

As the challenges presented by the coronavirus are being processed within national communities and the international order, important new avenues for re-thinking democratic theory and practice present themselves. This short article discusses the potential implications of a shift toward planetary politics whereby we engage not only human communities but also non-human ones in our thinking and practice of democracy. New opportunities to rethink "international order" and how we negotiate with ecosystems are presented by opening up (rather than closing down) our political imaginations in the context of the coronavirus challenge.

Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance, edited by Alexander Cooley and Jack Snyder, assembles an impressive group of political scientists to critically discuss "the important analytical, normative, and policy issues associated with the contemporary practice of 'grading states.'" The volume addresses a topic of importance to a wide range of political scientists in comparative politics, international relations, and political theory, and raises some fundamental questions about the role of political science at the nexus of theory and practice. We have thus invited a number of colleagues to discuss the volume and its broader implications for political science inquiry.

This article is driven by the belief that there is great potential benefit in carefully considering the implications of 'situated knowledge' in IR scholarship. This can be helpful not just for scholars thinking through meta-theoretical puzzles in International Relations (IR), but also for shaping concrete knowledge practices in international political practice today. Yet, there seems to be something of an unresolved puzzle at the heart of the situated knowledge paradigm: a puzzle relating to what the situatedness of knowledge entails and how we should 'deal with it'. This piece suggests that philosophical and social theoretical, and by extension also IR theoretical, engagements with situated knowledge can benefit from being considered anew: from the point of view of theoretical physicists and cosmologists. While not always reflexive concerning 'social' situatedness, the physicists and cosmologists considered here have reflected on aspects of situatedness that have been under-emphasised in standpoint philosophy. Crucially, physics and cosmology framings of situated knowledge can help to show why dealing with situated knowledge should mean more than attentiveness to various knowers and their positionality, and more than reflexive 'dialogue' between knowers; it also seems to require 'stretching beyond' the horizons of 'situated knowers'. It is suggested that science is, and perhaps even 'scientifically aspirant' IR then should be, about imaginative conceptual 'stretching' rather than merely 'situating'. This stretching should go hand in hand with opportunistic but critical methodological probing, seeking to push us 'beyond' how we understand the world from our situated perspectives. The provocations developed here have three main audiences in IR: scholars engaged in meta-theoretical debates in IR, those studying international politics through the situated knowledge approach, and also critical theorists seeking to understand conditions of critique.

This piece examines the curious nature of the conceptual foundations of current democracy promotion practice. I point out that while it is broadly accepted today that a liberal democratic politico-economic model should stand at the heart of democracy promotion, the scholarly literature on democracy-capitalism relationship stands in sharp contrast to this consensus in highlighting the contested nature of this relationship. Through a survey of some of the key theoretical texts on capitalism and democracy, and a brief empirical survey of politico-economic contours of current democracy promotion, this article highlights the poorly thought-through links between capitalism and democracy in current democracy promotion. It is argued here that un-reflexive conjoining of democracy and liberal capitalism and sidestepping of the plurality of nuanced positions on this relationship in scholarly literature is problematic and that revisiting the lines of contestation over the relationship between capitalism and democracy is deeply consequential for re-evaluating and revising democracy and market promotion policies in the current context of 'dual crisis' facing democracy promoters today. Adapted from the source document.