This paper argues that Russia's international behavior can be conceptualized by understanding how events in the late 20th and early 21st centuries shaped the country's views on sovereignty. The central research question is the following: how have perceptions of sovereignty shaped Russian foreign...

It is traditional to theorize about an Administration's foreign policy on human rights in terms of liberalism v. realism, with a dash of constructivism thrown in. This essay charts a different course. It notes three general benchmarks for discussing an Administration and its foreign policy on...

In this essay, I develop an alternative explanation of British policy in the 1930s. I argue that it was Hitler's legitimation strategies that undercut British balancing, and led to a policy of appeasement. As Hitler mounted his program of expansion and aggression, he justified Germany's actions...

Most accounts of U.S. foreign policy change tend to be unsystematic in their characterizations of what the policy is at a given time and regarding a specific issue or country. A basic reason for this is that specific sequences of actions are glossed over. We propose an alternative,...

Despite much speculation about the influence of religious factors over public attitudes on foreign policy, there are still few systematic analyses testing that influence. In this paper, we use the 2008 American National Election Study to investigate support for one central dimension of American...

A series of influential studies maintain that growing emphases on matters of human security - notably the impact of non-state actors on human rights debates in international organizations and global politics generally - have gradually eclipsed traditional preoccupations with state actors and...

Between the 1898 and 1941 American foreign policy was much more restrained than other great powers and rising powers of this era despite the fact that the USA had the largest economy and highest rate of economic growth among the great powers. Therein lies a puzzle of considerable historical and...

Why is expansionism absent from the Obama foreign policy agenda? The question seems bizarre precisely because expansionism is so completely absent from US policy discussions. In the modern world, the lack of great-power expansionism in the international system may be overdetermined, but the...

China's ascent is often discussed in economic or geo-strategic terms. Yet little attention is paid to the ways in which China's growing assertiveness in international relations will lead to novel challenges for human rights. Chinese foreign policy has an increasingly pronounced effect on a...