Search results

Scholarship on the politics of secrecy in international relations and foreign policy has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. This article begins by providing an overview of this literature, analyzing the conditions under which leaders opt for secrecy in both economic and security domains. These motivations differ greatly depending on whether the presumed audience from which a leader keeps a secret is domestic, international, or corporate in nature. Next, it considers methodological innovations and challenges, particularly in the measurement of secrecy. Finally, it reflects on the lessons learned and discusses some exciting questions that scholars could explore in future research. As a burgeoning field within international relations, the study of secrecy offers a variety of promising and potentially fruitful directions.

This title provides an authoritative account of the controversy about the first great debate in the field of international relations.

No-one seriously doubts the importance of E. H. Carr in the history of the study of international relations. The publication of The Twenty Years' "Crisis, 1919–1939, in 1939 marked a turning point in international theory, ending, as it did in Britain, the dominance of the more traditional 'pro-gressivist' or 'idealist' schools of thought characterized in the writings of, for example, Norman Angell, Bertrand Russell, Alfred Zimmern, Arnold Toynbee, G. Lowes Dickinson and others. The bulk of Carr's work in the field was written in the twenty or so years between 1936 (when he accepted the Woodrow Wilson Chair of International Politics at Aberystwyth) and 1955 (when he accepted a Fellowship at Trinity, his old Cambridge College), and since then his energies have been concentrated on his abiding concern with the history of Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, he is still an important figure in the field and although international relations has not been his life' work, his unique contribution to its understanding, ensures him a permanent place in the British tradition of international studies.

Recognition in general comes in many flavours, and so do desires and hopes for recognition. The same is true of recognition of agency in particular. In this short text, I will engage in some basic conceptual work that could be useful for thinking about the theme of this special issue. I will, first, distinguish between several forms of agency that matter in international relations (though not only there) and that can be either recognised or remain unrecognised. Second, I will reflect on what exactly it may mean to 'recognise' agency of these various kinds. Finally, I will discuss possible uses of the denial of agency in international relations.