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L'approche développée par Vincent Pouliot dans son article d'International Organization ouvre des pistes fructueuses afin de repenser le fonctionnement des communautés de sécurité, en l'occurrence l'Otan, à partir des pratiques sociales et plus précisément de la logique du praticable (des savoirs non réfléchis sur lesquels repose l'action). L'objet de cet article vise à discuter deux aspects de cette approche. Le premier tient au modèle de Bourdieu qui sert de matrice à l'intelligibilité des pratiques. Il consiste à intégrer des éléments non utilisés par Vincent Pouliot comme le capital informationnel, les rites, la logique du don et contre-don, ou encore la nature du champ diplomatique comparé à celle du champ politique. Le deuxième relève des analyses alternatives qui relèvent de la théorie normative et qui sont également des sentiers possibles pour aborder cet objet, notamment la pensée d'Arendt.

Se fondant sur les constats de l'évolution des conduites institutionnelles de sécurité de six puissances majeures et d'une puissance moyenne dans quatorze études de cas, cet article remarque que l'engagement des puissances dans des us dans les cas conflictuels est plus circonspect et prudent; elles ont tendance à les utiliser pour orienter les us vers leur préférence affichée. Dans les cas réglementaires, les puissances sont plus prêtes à recourir aux ns, souvent en dépit de l'imprévisibilité des conséquences. Dans le cas de la réforme du Conseil de sécurité, il existe des divergences significatives entre les puissances majeures touchant le renforcement du Conseil, mais des convergences prononcées quant à son élargissement. Ces positions font contraste avec celles de la puissance moyenne qui entretient une vision opposée vu son intérêt dans la transformation plus radicale du Conseil de sécurité.

International relations theory has posited that transnational advocacy networks (TANs) affect international human rights norms. Human rights norms are created through a political process that involves both state and non-state actors. I establish in this project the importance of network structure as a determinant for how well human rights principles advocated by transnational networks transition into international norms. Centralized network structure is a key factor in explaining TAN effectiveness over time. Using insights from social network analysis, I build a theory that argues centralization in networks leads to the ability for certain nodes to control the agenda and rule-making powers, allowing for a core set of principles to develop within a network, and making it more likely those principles can be advocated successfully in international politics. In a historical overview of the post-World War II era, I demonstrate that although many principles of human rights existed in the middle of the 20th century, none held an internationally normative status. Even a document as vaunted as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights evinces the lack of agreement, rather than the consensus over which rights were mattered most. I then move to a network analysis of Amnesty International, from 1968-1980, demonstrating the power of centralization as the factor explaining its success in influencing international norms. I also show that Amnesty's network structure differed from its formal structure, affecting the flows of information within the network. I move to a comparison of other human rights-related TANs, the International Red Cross, Oxfam International, and Médecins Sans Frontières. Finally, I conclude with an analysis of state behavior as an indicator of international norms, using economic sanctions data from the 20th century

Ambassadors of Social Progress examines the ways in which blind activists from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe entered the postwar international disability movement and shaped its content and its course. Maria Cristina Galmarini shows that the international work of socialist blind activists was defined by the larger politics of the Cold War and, in many respects, represented a field of competition with the West in which the East could shine. Yet, her study also reveals that socialist blind politics went beyond propaganda. When socialist activists joined the international blind movement, they initiated an exchange of experiences that profoundly impacted everyone involved. Not only did the international blind movement turn global disability welfare from philanthropy to self-advocacy, but it also gave East European and Soviet activists a new set of ideas and technologies to improve their own national movements. By analyzing the intersection of disability and politics, Ambassadors of Social Progress enables a deeper, bottom-up understanding of cultural relations during the Cold War. Galmarini significantly contributes to the little-studied history of disability in socialist Europe, and ultimately shows that disability activism did not start as an import from the West in the post-1989 period, but rather had a long and meaningful tradition that was rooted in the socialist system of welfare and needed to be reinvented when this system fell apart