What role do national icons play in a political community’s drive for ontological security? And what implications does this have for global politics? This article situates national icons in service of state ontological security. Icons both unify and divide political communities; therefore they serve, but also disrupt, ontological security-seeking of collectives. Building on research on ontological security and status in International Relations, we examine two case studies of national icons – Vesna Vulović, the celebrated Serbian flight attendant who miraculously survived a major plane crash, and Muhammad Ali, the American boxing legend. Both Vulović and Ali initially generated, and then countered, ontological security for their national communities as they transformed from popular culture celebrities into anti-regime political activists. We conclude the article by discussing opportunities for future avenues of research on icons and the politics of identity going forward.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty reserved outer space for ‘peaceful purposes’, yet recent decades have witnessed growing competition and calls for new multilateral rules including a proposed ban on the deployment of weapons in space. These diplomatic initiatives have stalled in the face of concerted opposition from the United States. To explain this outcome, we characterise US diplomacy as a form of ‘antipreneurship’, a type of strategic norm-focused competition designed to preserve the prevailing normative status quo in the face of entrepreneurial efforts. We substantially refine and extend existing accounts of antipreneurship by theorising three dominant forms of antipreneurial agency – rhetorical, procedural, and behavioural – and describing the mechanisms and scope conditions though which they operate. We then trace the development of US resistance to proposed restraints on space weapons from 2000–present. Drawing on hundreds of official documents, we show how successive US administrations have employed a range of interlayered diplomatic strategies and tactics to preserve the permissive international legal framework governing outer space and protect US national security priorities. Our study illustrates the specific techniques and impacts of resistance in a domain of growing strategic importance, with implications for further refining understandings of norm competition in other issue areas.

Given China and Russia’s increasingly aggressive behaviour, balance of threat theory posits that formal US allies should close ranks behind the United States. The literature on alliance politics reinforces this logic by showing that alliances deter aggression and reduce the occurrence of war. Recent developments, however, have somewhat undermined these claims, as the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, and the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, publicly threatened to break ranks with Washington and to realign with China and Russia respectively. How can we make sense of such defiant behaviour? This article argues that populist blackmail elucidates this phenomenon and compares it to three alternative propositions: conventional bandwagoning, bandwagoning for profit, and hard hedging. Based on empirical evidence, the article reveals that the provocative statements of Duterte and Erdogan were not a genuine push for realignment with Beijing and Moscow, but rather political strategies designed to enhance their bargaining power with Washington in the hopes of securing certain concessions, while simultaneously galvanising domestic support to justify their raison d’être and to secure their hold on power. Furthermore, the article infers that two concomitant factors – political grievances and the perceived lack of security assurance – propelled both presidents to resort to blackmail.

The emergence of military ad hoc coalitions (AHCs) in Africa as a tool for conflict management outside established institutional frameworks brings about a number of questions: are they undermining existing security structures such as the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) or are they contributing to further regime complexity? In order to answer these questions, the article applies the logic of functional differentiation as it is used in the literature on regime complexity and inter-organisational studies. Scope conditions are developed exploring when and how functional differentiation operates and what consequences it brings about for interacting institutions. Empirically the example of military ad hoc coalitions in the Lake Chad Basin and Sahel is at the centre of analysis. It will be argued that ad hoc coalitions are part of a functionally differentiated system response within the African Security Regime Complex and not in direct competition to the APSA.

Strategic narratives are employed by political actors as tools to pursue their goals, constructing a shared meaning of the past, present, and future in order to shape behaviour. Building on discourse analysis of the magazine Dabiq and from in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted between 2018 and 2019 with IS civilian employees and civilians living in IS-controlled territory, we analyse how IS organised its strategic narrative of governance and statebuilding around three main themes considered as central in the statebuilding literature – the provision of security, the provision of basic services, and social cohesion – and how such a strategic narrative was received by citizens living in IS-controlled territory. We argue that the study of strategic narratives of governance and statebuilding casts light on the factors leading to the success or demise of emergent statebuilding efforts, equally demonstrating how IS’s project is quite conventional when compared to other mainstream statebuilding narratives.

This article presents a theoretical and methodological argument for employing a narrative-based approach to explore criminal organisations’ (COs) claims to political authority, accompanied by an empirical example. International Relations scholarship is increasingly interested in the role narratives play in political meaning-making processes, with violent non-state actors (VNSAs) beginning to occupy a central space in such investigations. This work has contributed important insights into how VNSAs, such as terrorists and insurgents, mobilise narratives to challenge state authority. However, this literature still needs to take stock of groups that do not directly challenge the state but rather live within it. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s literary theory and using the Sicilian Mafia as a case study, I show that COs exercise and construct their narratives of political authority by reappropriating the state’s key constitutive narratives of space, time, and identity. By reflecting the same form of (statist) political imagination via alternative spatial, temporal, and identity configurations, these groups simultaneously reject and reproduce modern articulations of political authority in their spatio-temporal and identity dimensions.

The transition from one leader to the next represents a critical moment in the life cycle of insurgencies: it is a period of heightened uncertainty and vulnerability when roles and relationships are in flux. However, remarkably little scholarly attention has been paid to understanding this process. Building our case around the insurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus, we address this gap by developing a typology of key tasks that new leaders must perform in order to navigate the transition period. We argue that, within insurgencies that are weakly institutionalised, leadership can most usefully be conceived of as a negotiated relationship in which both leaders and followers have agency. Successful performance of these tasks helps ensure the maintenance of this relationship and, through this, movement continuity. Therefore, this paper contributes to both the empirical literature on insurgency and our understanding of leadership and transition within rebel movements.

The article calls on academics and policymakers who focus on mass atrocity prevention to engage with Trust Studies. This is needed because trust and distrust are commonly identified as a significant factor in destruction processes, yet there remains no substantive engagement with these concepts. The article combines Trust Studies, interdisciplinary research on the Central African Republic (Anthropology, Sociology, African Studies, and Political Science), and primary sources to analyse social and political trust dynamics through an exploration of (a) leadership, (b) outsourcing, (c) identity politics, and (d) witchcraft. It makes a twofold contribution. First, it provides a more informed understanding of the mass violence that took place in the Central African Republic through a historical analysis of trust dynamics. Second, it considers the implications for mass atrocity prevention, as it argues that the mainstream commitment to ‘rebuilding trust’ is built on misguided assumptions. The case study holds broader implications for both Trust Studies and mass atrocity prevention. Ultimately, it calls for interdisciplinary research to aid our collective understanding of the multifaceted roles that trust and distrust play in mass violence.

Drawing on recent debates in English School (ES) theory, this article develops an analytical framework for examining how states use multilateral institutions, or what ES theorists call ‘secondary institutions’, to reshape ‘primary institutions’, i.e. fundamental practices in international society. The framework highlights the role of states’ agency in international institutional change by shedding light on strategies that they employ to bring about changes in primary institutions. It posits that, although they can seek to directly remould primary institutions, states in practice often seek to bring about primary institutional changes through existing or newly formed secondary institutions and that this is especially the case at the level of regional international societies (RISs). The article demonstrates the utility of the framework by using it to analyse the case of Russia’s peacekeeping policy in the post-Soviet regional international society (PSRIS), focusing on its efforts to institutionalise the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) as an alternative ‘peacekeeping’ actor.

Nominally, the policy of the United States towards the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan is governed by the ‘One China’ Policy (OCP). However, the conditions under which OCP was originally formulated have long since given way to substantial growth in the economic and military power of the PRC and the democratisation of Taiwan. These changes raise several questions regarding the viability and applicability of OCP. Drawing on securitisation theory, this article examines discourses across three US presidential administrations to assess the trajectory of socio-political constructions of the PRC, Taiwan, and OCP. Three case studies suggest substantial challenges for OCP as a basis for maintaining desecuritised relations between the United States and the PRC. While discourses of ‘engagement’ prominent in the 1990s have lost ground, with presidential administrations increasingly but inconsistently drawing on OCP, in Congress OCP plays no role, while Taiwan is increasingly constructed as akin to the American self, serving as an identity proxy that highlights the otherness of the PRC. Polling supports the idea that OCP is not rooted in general American understandings of the region and consequently cannot serve to ground policy in a crisis.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution was a tectonic change that influenced the geopolitics of the Middle East to this day. This article highlights the necessity of re-examining the events of 1979 from a securitisation perspective. Through an investigation of Ayatollah Khomeini's pivotal role, I challenge the methodological nationalism often found in the study of Israel–Iran relations. Despite his unconventional position in security matters, Khomeini played a crucial role in the securitisation of the 1979 revolution. Drawing on Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives, secondary sources, elite interviews, and Khomeini's theological speeches, this article re-examines the intricate stages of securitisation and counter-securitisation spanning 16 years. Khomeini effectively mobilized the political audience (Iranian people) to support the revolution, aiming to overthrow the Shah and remove Israel’s presence from Iran. I argue that a non-linear securitisation process was employed, characterised by Khomeini's ability to establish informal authority among the opposition. This process ultimately led to him gaining legitimacy from the Iranian people and culminated in the successful securitisation act of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

When and how do party politics matter in junior allies’ decisions to engage in multinational military operations? Developing a new role theory model of party politics and multinational military operations, we put forward a two-level argument. First, we argue that the rationale for military action is defined in a contest between political parties with expectations of what constitutes the proper purpose (constitutive roles) and functions (functional roles) of the state. Second, we hold that material and ontological insecurities reduce political space for contestation and debate, but that junior allies tend to focus on role demands for ‘good states’ and ‘good allies’ rather than the nature and aim of the military operation. To unpack our argument, we analyse the debate among political parties in Romania and Denmark leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Concluding our analysis, we outline the implications for the changing security order and current debates in NATO member states on how to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The role of performance in ontological security seeking is underdeveloped, despite the fact that many elements of such behaviour – narratives, rituals, routinised meetings – carry a distinctive performative quality. Drawing on Butlerian performance theory, this article makes the case that performances are essential to re-establishing coherence and a sense of self following ontologically critical situations. The reproduction of the self, especially while directly addressing fundamental existential questions, is an important way to overcome critical situations. At the state level, this reproduction of self also includes a reproduction of the international system, a task which is best enacted in everyday diplomatic practice. To explore this theory, I use Brexit as an illustrative case study. Brexit was a moment of profound crisis for the United Kingdom (UK) and an ontologically critical situation. It forced the UK to reposition itself on the world stage and confront significant challenges to its self-understanding. In Westminster, these efforts centred on ‘Global Britain’ – a narrative shift that bridged the identity gap and provided a thin framework for foreign policy. At the same time, British diplomats were tasked with international realignment post-Brexit. In this way, everyday diplomatic practice became Brexit performances.

In the last two decades, the European Union (EU) has forged an international role as a ‘force for good’ and a champion for democracy, human rights, multilateralism, free trade, climate change action, and sustainable development. However, as the international context has grown more competitive and turbulent, it has become more challenging for the EU to uphold this global role. Subsequently, the EU has pursued more proactive policies to confront urgent challenges to the rules-based international system and global governance norms. This paper explores what the EU’s evolving geopolitical foreign policy role actually entails and how it is compatible with the Union’s understanding of itself as a global leader as expressed as a Normative Power, Market Power, and Security Power. Utilising the Indo-Pacific Strategy of 2021 and subsequent communications as illustrative examples, it examines how the EU is upscaling its plans and partnerships into a broader, sustainable connectivity strategy that fits into the context of a reoriented EU foreign policy and its leadership goals. In conclusion, it finds that the credibility of the three powers that the EU proclaims to play will be dependent on the coherence of the role set and the extent to which the EU can achieve these roles.

This article makes the case that gender and racial analyses of the constitutive interplay between nation branding and diplomacy advance understandings of how liberal states use feminist agendas in response to political crises. Adopting a feminist post-colonial approach and drawing on a discourse analysis of French diplomatic speeches made in the UN Security Council between July 2011 and December 2019, the article examines how male and female diplomats address France’s accountability failures when French peacekeepers sexually abused children in Central African Republic in 2014–15, widely known as the Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, or SEA crisis. Operating as embodied brand ambassadors, diplomats use affective and performative strategies to progress through the political crisis life cycle quickly and re-establish France’s ontological security. It is contended that while feminist foreign policy and feminist diplomacy serve as short-term solutions to reputational damage, France’s longer-term nation-branding project, which follows a masculine, white-supremacist neoliberal logic, stabilises the grand narrative of the middle power and its projected image as a legitimate strategic leader in global governance. Yet in attempting to control the narrative on the SEA crisis, French diplomats downplay the global crisis of accountability surrounding sexual exploitation and abuse and silence the personal crises of SEA survivors.