What Image Does IR Project? Chess, a Visual Metaphor for IR

The article focuses on the image the discipline of International Relations (IR) projects of itself via visuals, particularly the image of chess on IR book covers. It points out the corroborative and critical role that images can play in defining the way we see IR. The article underlines particular features of visual metaphors, first pointing out their role in the epistemological process, and second, highlighting their capacity for voicing an expressive and captivating critique of the social world, which is enabled by the template they offer, a template that may be distorted and manipulated for expressing criticism. Finally, the article reflects on the image chess conveys about expectations of the kind of knowledge IR as a discipline could provide for “mastering” the world and identifying a winning strategy. Here, the image of chess is compared to insights offered by Clausewitz’s pendulum

Populist foreign policy in the Central and Eastern Europe : Poland, Hungary and the shock of the Ukraine crisis

Victor Orbán of Hungary and Jarosław Kaczyński of Poland are symbols of successful, long-standing populist leaders in power. Therefore, within populism studies, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) enjoys special attention as an interesting case study of a disrupted (successful) democratization but also in its role as a source of inspiration for other movements particularly within the European Union (EU) (Buštíková & Guasti, 2018; Meislova & Buckledee, 2021; Orenstein & Kelemen, 2017; Varga & Buzogány, 2020). The past decade has shown considerable similarities in the ways in which these two populist actors attack democratic institutions, solidify their hold over domestic audiences, and appear as disruptors of the European status quo. This chapter, however, problematizes this apparent uniformity of CEE populisms in the realm of foreign policy (FP) and highlights differences between Hungary and Poland that characterized their FP well before Russia’s war on Ukraine. These differences, we argue, are rooted in the ideological depth of these actors. Whereas Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is not bound by ideology and therefore can flexibly take opportunistic political actions and construct narratives that give meaning to these moves, Poland’s populists are much more (self)constrained in their decisions as these have to be ideologically consisten