Oedipal authority and capitalist sovereignty: a Deleuzoguattarian reading of IR theory

Despite advancements in the theorisation of political sovereignty brought about by the engagements of critical international relations theory, there remain significant lacunae in our understanding of the reproduction of this peculiar configuration of social life. This article, drawing on the collaborative work of Deleuze and Guattari, seeks to provide a more robust theorisation of the subjectivities underpinning modern political sovereignty — here understood as capitalist sovereignty. It looks to their programme of ‘schizoanalysis’, which interrogates the unconscious libidinal investments of capitalist reproduction. Specifically, Deleuze and Guattari argue that a factitious Oedipal configuration of desire allows the sovereign flow of capital. This article gathers insights from schizoanalysis in elucidating a dynamic affective relationship between sovereignty and the territorial state. It also suggests the potential of schizoanalysis for reconceptualising world politics and contributing to emancipatory IR scholarship

Money for Nothing: Everyday Actors and Monetary Crises

Why do monetary unions fail? Structural approaches that focus on shifts in the distribution of capabilities ascribe non-elites limited agency to influence large-scale political and economic change. Existing agent-centred approaches tend to simplify the social dynamics of the everyday politics of money by concentrating on how elites determine formal changes within monetary systems. Answers to this question from a material-based perspective often point to a breakdown in elite political support, driven by actors’ material incentives to cheat on their multilateral commitments rather than cooperate to overcome the collective action problem that a monetary union entails. Recent ideational perspectives have focused on the role of shared economic ideas among elites, as well as elite struggles over national identity, as crucial ingredients in the construction, maintenance, or failure of a monetary union. While drawing on the insights of rationalist and constructivist theories, this article uses a historical sociology approach to argue that the everyday actions taken by non-elites as survival strategies in a monetary crisis provide an important additional ingredient for understanding monetary system change. This approach is illustrated through a case study of the collapse of the ruble zone monetary union over 1991–1993

Actor-networking the ‘failed state’ — an enquiry into the life of concepts

Concepts such as the ‘failed state’ are jointly produced by academics and political actors and hence connect academia and global politics. Little attention has been spent to study such concepts and the practices that create them and sustain their relevance. We develop an innovative framework for studying concepts. Relying on actor-network theory, we suggest studying concepts as effects of relations between different actors building an actor-network. We introduce actor-network theory and demonstrate its value for international relations (IR) research. Our empirical case study of the concept of failed states combines bibliometric analysis and qualitative text analysis. We show how various actors have brought the concept of failed states to life; analyse how actors transformed because of their participation; and investigate the persistent struggles to define and homogenise the concept. In summary, this is an article about the life of the failed state, the discipline of IR and its relations to other actors, and an introduction of the actor-network theory toolbox to the sociology of IR

Sovereignty at Sea: The law and politics of saving lives in mare liberum

This article analyses the interplay between politics and law in the recent attempts to strengthen the humanitarian commitment to saving lives in mare liberum. Despite a long-standing obligation to aid people in distress at sea, this so-called search and rescue regime has been marred by conflicts and political standoffs as states were faced with a growing number of capsising boat migrants potentially claiming international protection once on dry land. Attempts to provide a legal solution to these problems have resulted in a re-spatialisation of the high seas, extending the states’ obligations in the international public domain based on geography rather than traditional functionalist principles that operated in the open seas. However, inadvertently, this further legalisation has equally enabled states to instrumentalise law to barter off and deconstruct responsibility by reference to traditional norms of sovereignty and maritime law. In other words, states may be able to reclaim sovereign power by becoming increasingly norm-savvy and successfully navigating the legal playing field provided by the very expansion of international law itself. Thus, rather than being simply a space of non-sovereignty per se, mare liberum becomes the venue for a complex game of sovereignty, law and politics