International Relations and Foreign Policy

International relations and foreign policy research examines how states, international organizations, and other actors pursue their interests across borders—through negotiation, institutional cooperation, coercion, and the slow accumulation of shared norms. Understanding these dynamics matters because decisions made in diplomatic corridors or multilateral forums shape everything from trade and climate agreements to the conditions under which conflicts begin or end. Scholars continue to debate how much weight to assign material power versus ideational forces like soft power and international law in explaining state behavior, and whether the post-1945 architecture of global governance can adapt to a world where rising powers increasingly contest the rules that architecture embodies. Questions about the stability of hegemonic orders and the conditions under which the security dilemma can be managed—rather than allowed to spiral—remain as urgent now as at any point in the discipline's history.

Works

78,577

Total citations

764,270

Keywords

PowerInternational InstitutionsGlobal GovernanceNormsSoft PowerSecurity Dilemma