Nuclear strategy involves the production of nuclear weapons for political ends as well as the goals, means, and ways in which they are, or are planned to be, used. The roots of nuclear strategy can be traced to World War II, when nuclear scientists, as well as American and British high-level officials, began thinking about how nuclear weapons could be harnessed. Several ideas then emerged that became central to nuclear strategy, but largely ignored in early postwar American military planning. Aside from war-fighting, the United States’s grand strategy and national security policy soon focused on containment as the way to deal with communism around the world. Containment was politically and intellectually well-suited for emphasizing nuclear deterrence as a means of preventing the Cold War from escalating into war. The theory and resulting strategy was dominated by two problems: the stability problem and the credibility problem. As for actually fighting a nuclear war, strategies include demonstration explosions to curb enemy military actions, preventive and preemptive attacks, and retaliation after being attacked. The design and implementation of nuclear postures and strategies have been beset by numerous deficiencies, such as accidents with nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Fortunately, nuclear strategy did not give rise to what many feared—a self-sustaining security dilemma that made insecurity overwhelming and impossible to dispel.
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Nuclear Strategy
Patrick M. Morgan
Article
Peace: A Conceptual Survey
Paul F. Diehl
Peace is an elusive concept with many different meanings. Traditionally, it has been equated with the absence of war or violence, but such “negative peace” has limited value as it lumps wildly disparate situations together, such as rivalries (India–Pakistan) and close political relationships (e.g., European Union). Nevertheless, this conception remains the predominant approach in theory, research, teaching, and policy discourse. “Positive peace” definitions are much broader and encompass aspects that go beyond war and violence, but there is far less consensus on those elements. Conceptions encompass, among other elements, human rights, justice, judicial independence, and communication components. In the early 21st century, a number of alternative conceptions and frameworks have been developed to modify, extend, or replace the core concepts of negative and positive peace. Research on positive peace and alternatives is also comparatively underdeveloped. Peace can also be represented as binary (present or not) or as a continuum (the degree to which peace is present). Peace can be applied at different levels of analysis. At the system level, it refers to the aggregate or global conditions in the world at a given time. At the dyadic or k‑adic level, it refers to the state of peace in relationships between two or more states. Finally, internal peace deals with conditions inside individual states, and the relationships between governments, groups, and individuals. Aspects of peace vary according to the level of analysis, and peace at one level might not be mirrored at other levels.
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Peacekeeping Economies
Kathleen M. Jennings
“Peacekeeping economy” designates the political economy of a peacekeeping operation. It broadly encompasses economic activity that either would not occur, or would occur at a much lower scale and pay rate, without the international peacekeeping (or peacebuilding) presence. Peacekeeping economies are, to a significant degree, inextricable from peacekeeping missions: While they are not under the purview or direct control of the mission, the formal and informal economic activity that they include is important to peacekeeping missions’ ability to function in the host society. Of course, behind this simple formulation is a significantly more complex phenomenon. Moreover, the peacekeeping economy is not just an interesting empirical reality. It is also a useful analytical framework for examining and better understanding how peacekeeping is designed, regulated, and done; its socioeconomic, gendered, and racialized dimensions; and its (intended and unintended) consequences.
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Peacemaking, Peacekeeping, and Peacebuilding
Luc Reychler
Peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding have generated considerable interest in the areas of education, research, and politics. This can be attributed in part to the growing recognition that there are limits to violence and that proactive violence prevention is more cost-effective than reactive conflict prevention. Peacebuilding became part of the official discourse when the United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali introduced the concept of post-conflict peacebuilding in the Agenda for Peace. The agenda specified four areas of action relating to preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. Two important documents have helped bring peacebuilding to the mainstream: the 2000 Brahimi Report, a response to the failures of complex UN peacekeeping in the 1990s, and In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights, which led to the establishment of the Peacebuilding Commission. Conflict prevention and peacebuilding have also been mainstreamed in the European Union and in most of the foreign offices of the member states. A central focus of studies on peacebuilding is the interrelationships between peacemaking, political change, development, peacekeeping, and reconciliation. Despite the progress made in terms of research, there are a number of gaps and challenges that still need to be addressed. Many analysts, for example, leave the end state vague and implicit and make no systematic differentiation between different types of peace. With respect to context, two salient issues require more attention: the qualities of a peacebuilder and the role of integrative power. The widest research gap is found in the planning of the peacebuilding process.
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Peace, Pacifism, Nonviolence: 21st Century Developments
Aidan Gnoth and Richard Jackson
Despite the achievements of pacifist and nonviolent movements in influencing the course and nature of international politics over the last century or more, and despite obvious theoretical overlaps and connections, pacifism and nonviolence have largely been excluded from contemporary theories and practices of peace. Instead, the dominant conception of peace in both international relations and peace and conflict studies has been of “negative peace” narrowly defined as the absence or management of large-scale political violence. In this conception, states, militaries, and international organizations are viewed as essential to the maintenance of peace, which are primarily associated with stability, law and order, and strong public institutions. Some attempts to expand the conception of peace beyond a negative value have occurred, including the rise of critical peace building in the early 2000s and new mainstream frameworks of peace studies such as quality peace, the peace continuum, world peace, and varieties of peace. Upon examination, it can be argued that these approaches remain rooted in a state-centric, militaristic paradigm, or they problematically fail to go beyond descriptive analysis. Few, if any, take nonviolence and pacifism seriously and seek to radically transform the existing violent state-based international order. Nevertheless, the present historical juncture provides an opportune moment for rethinking the theory and practice of peace and for seeking to transform politics and political theory away from states, militarism, and the values of “negative peace” toward nonviolent, pacifistic, social justice–based forms of “positive peace.” Notwithstanding a number of conceptual and practical obstacles, existing conceptions of agonistic peace, feminist peace, and decolonial peace, among others, as well as expanding interest in the field of nonviolent resistance, provide an important foundation for advancing this important objective.
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Peace Research/Peace Studies: A Twentieth Century Intellectual History
Carolyn Stephenson
Peace research is a component of the field of international relations (IR) that focuses on the causes of war and violence as well as the conditions of peace. The origins of peace research can be traced to the works of Plato, Thucydides, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, and Immanuel Kant. The central debate in peace research revolved around the question of whether peace is to be defined simply as the absence of war and direct violence (“negative peace”) or the whether the concept encompasses both the absence of war and direct violence plus the presence of social justice (“positive peace”). Three primary waves of peace studies worldwide since its beginnings between the world wars can be identified: the first wave, roughly from the 1930s to 1960s, focused largely on the causes of war; the second wave was concerned with radicalization and democratization of peace studies; and the third wave saw the rise of two dominant fields—those of nuclear weapons, arms control and disarmament, and conflict resolution/management. During the 1990s, there was a renewed attention to research on topics such as sanctions, peacemaking, the concept of a culture of peace, environment, development, and conflict. Peace research and peace studies have in some ways brought about a transformation not only of dominant power structures, but also of the very concept of power itself. However, there are areas that need improvement, such as developing alternatives to armed conflict and injustice.
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Peace Studies and (Counter)Terrorism
Valentina Bartolucci
Scholarly attention on both Peace Studies (PS) and contemporary security issues, in particular “terrorism” and “counterterrorism,” is notable and has been growing in recent decades. Several academic institutions now offer undergraduate and postgraduate modules on “Terrorism Studies” (TS) and PS all over the world, and in recent years there has been growing interest in both areas. Still, the two fields have long remained stubbornly distant and only a few scholars have investigated the interaction between Peace and Terrorism Studies. This article, building on the openings produced by seminal contributions on the possible intersection between the two areas of research, seeks to review such contributions and point to some commonalities and issues affecting both fields to finally underline fruitful areas of cross-pollination. To achieve its aim, the article is structured in the following way: it begins with an investigation of characteristics common to both fields as well as common issues affecting them, then reports the results of a preliminary review of the most relevant contributions investigating the possibilities of crossroads between Terrorism Studies and Peace Studies. The contributions succinctly reviewed in this article are full of important considerations (theoretically and empirically informed) about the feasibility and desirability of intersections between TS and PS and are particularly welcomed for opening up new avenues for research. However, given the initial stage of this enterprise, they should be better regarded as excellent launch pads for stimulating further research and for encouraging more dialogue between disciplines.
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The Political Economy of Violent Conflict Within States
Achim Wennmann
The political economy of violent conflict is a body of literature that investigates how economic issues and interests shape the dynamics associated to violent conflict after the Cold War. The literature covers an area of research focusing on civil wars—the predominant type of conflict in the 1990s and early 2000s—and an area of research focusing on other types of violent conflict within states, such as permanent emergencies, criminal violence, and political violence associated to turbulent transitions. The first area involves four themes that have come to characterize discussions on the political economy of civil wars, including research on the role of greed and grievance in conflict onset, on economic interests in civil wars, on the nature of conflict economies, and on conflict financing. The second area responds to the evolution of violent conflict beyond the categories of “interstate” or “civil” war and shows how political economy research adapted to new types of violent conflict within states as it moved beyond the “post-Cold War” era. Overall, the literature on the political economy of violence conflict emphasizes the role of informal systems behind power, profits and violence, and the economic interests and functions of violence underlying to violent conflict. It has also become a conceptual laboratory for scholars who after years of field research tried to make sense of the realities of authoritarian, violent or war-affected countries. By extending the boundaries of the literature beyond the study of civil wars after the Cold War, political economy research can serve as an important analytical lens to better understand the constantly evolving nature of violent conflict and to inform sober judgment on the possible policy responses to them.
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Population Aging as a Global Issue
Jennifer D. Sciubba
The late 20th century brought the dawn of global population aging, the culmination of decades-long shifts to lower fertility and longer life expectancy. These novel age distributions—larger proportions of older persons relative to working-age or youth—bring with them a plethora of questions about the political, economic, and social causes and consequences of such aging. There are multiple theoretical perspectives and ways to measure population aging, and decisions about approaches, definitions, and measurements can make a dramatic difference on the results of studies of its impact. Some scholars approach the study of aging through a generational lens, others through chronological age, dependency ratios, or other measures of age structure. Studies of the implications of population aging fall into three major categories: political, economic, and social. Political demography studies often focus on the political power of various age groups and attempt to assess the degree to which intergenerational conflict is emerging as the sizes of age groups change and their demands on services like entitlements shift alongside. Political demography studies also look at voter behavior and preferences to assess possibilities for reform of age-related policies, like retirement, healthcare, and education. A separate branch of political demography examines the military implications of population aging, particularly its effect on the willingness and ability of a state to use force. Of the few studies that show a link between aging and war, empirical results are inconclusive, meaning that it is just as likely a state with a high median age will be belligerent as not. Studies on the economic implications of population aging look at the changing nature of the labor market itself and on the possibility of macroeconomic growth in the face of demographic change. Finally, research on the social impact of population aging is mostly concerned with individual- and family-level well-being, as the care demands of an aging population create pressures on individuals, families, and social safety nets. There are many controversies and debates over the impact of aging, including debates over the relative weight of demographic factors and whether population aging is a trend warranting celebration or alarm. In all, there are far more questions about the implications of aging than there are answers, and the projected development of this trend means that more questions constantly arise. Lingering questions surround historically rapid demographic aging, new sets of aging states at different speeds, shrinking populations, the intersection between migration and aging, and the intersection between aging and climate change. The field is ripe for more comparative aging work in general.
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Postconflict Reparations
Peter J. Dixon, Luke Moffett, and Adriana Rudling
The devastation brought by war leaves behind irreparable loss and destruction. Yet over the past 100 years there has been a concerted effort by states, both within their territory and following conflicts with other states, to resolve the past through reparations. As a legal and political tool, reparations can affirm values in a postconflict society through recognising suffering and responsibility, as well as helping those most affected by the conflict to cope with their loss. However, the scale of harm and damage of war may devastate a state’s capacity to redress all victims, and states may have more pressing priorities to reconstruct and encourage development. While the guns have been silenced, the motivations and ideologies that fueled and justified violence may continue, politicising debates over which victims are deserving of reparation or absolving the responsibility of certain actors, causing reparations to be delayed or dropped. Where reparations are made, furthermore, assessments of their effectiveness in meeting their goals are both challenging and necessary. This article addresses these issues, providing a snapshot of the key debates in the area, the continuing gaps, and the need for further research.
Article
Private Military and Security Companies
Berenike Prem and Elke Krahmann
While early private military and security companies (PMSCs) were likened to mercenaries, as of the 21st century, PMSCs have become regular actors in many nations and conflicts. Typically organized as legal corporate entities, they provide a wide range of military and security services, including transport, logistics, and maintenance to military and police training, demining, intelligence, risk analysis, armed and unarmed protective services, antipiracy measures, border protection, drones, and cyber operations. Not only have PMSC services diversified since the 1990s but so has their client base. Industrialized countries, autocratic regimes, failed states, international organizations, transnational corporations, and even humanitarian organizations hire PMSCs. There are several explanations for the rise of the industry. Functional explanations see the proliferation of PMSCs as a rational response to military capability gaps and increased demand for international security. Ideational and constructivist approaches attribute the outsourcing of military and security services to changing beliefs and norms about the appropriate relationship between states and markets. The consequences of using PMSCs for accountability, effectiveness, control, gender and racial equality, the location of political authority, and the provision of public and private security in conflict environments are key areas of research, as is the question of suitable forms of regulation for the industry, ranging from national and international laws to industry self-regulations, multistakeholder initiatives, and standard setting schemes. Finally, the privatization of military and security services raises concerns about a fundamental transformation in modern warfare.
Article
Process Tracing Methods and International Studies
Derek Beach
Process tracing (PT) is a case study method that enables scholars to study how causal processes (also known as causal mechanisms) play out in real-world cases. Despite the increasing popularity of the method in international studies, there is still considerable disagreement among scholars about how to understand the process actually being traced and how these processes can be studied empirically. This article tries to bring clarity to these disagreements by arguing that there is not one correct variant of PT, but instead several distinct variants of PT methods that differ based on the positions scholars take on what is being traced and how it can be traced. First, some scholars work with simple, abstract (minimalist) process theories, whereas others disaggregate process theories into parts composed of actors engaging in activities. Second, some scholars contend that inferences that assess the difference that a process makes for outcomes can only be made through controlled comparisons of cases. Others posit that we should study processes through the empirical traces left by their operation within cases. Finally, there are scholars who contend that causal processes in international studies involve social actors, meaning that more interpretive methods should be combined with more traditional PT. The article illustrates how different variants of PT have been used in published work within international studies, followed by a discussion of key challenges with using PT methods.
Article
Progress in the Democratic Peace Research Agenda
Steve Chan
According to the democratic peace theory, democracies are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other identified democracies. Contrary to theories explaining war engagement, it is a “theory of peace” outlining motives that dissuade state-sponsored violence. The proposition that democracies are more peaceful than autocracies has spawned a huge literature. Much of the relevant quantitative research has shown that democracies indeed rarely, if ever, fight each other, although they are not necessarily less aggressive than autocracies in general. Although, statistically, the probability of war between any two states is considerably low, the absence of war among liberal democracies across a wide range of different historical, economic, and political factors suggests that there is a strong predisposition against the use of military violence between democratic states. According to scholars, the democratic peace theory can elaborate on the empirical phenomena previously explained by the earlier dominant research program, realism in international relations; in addition, the initial statement that democracies do not, or rarely, wage war on one another, has been followed by a rapidly growing literature on novel empirical regularities. This democratic peace proposition not only challenges the validity of other political systems, but also the prevailing realist account of international relations, which emphasizes balance-of-power calculations and common strategic interests.
Article
Public Perceptions of International Terrorism
Nazli Avdan
Terrorist violence appeals to and pivots on the creation and dissemination of fear. In that respect, it hinges on public perceptions and threat manufacturing to have policy impact. Scholars have long recognized that terrorist actors appeal to multiple audiences, including the public audience. By sowing fear, actors hope that the public will put pressure on the target regime to enact policy concessions to militants or that policymakers, fearing the erosion of public support, will bend to the terrorists’ demands. Recognizing this, it behooves scholars to delineate the mechanisms that shape perceptions and parse the different types of emotional and cognitive responses that terrorist violence arouses. Violence inculcates a range of public responses, most notably, anxiety, fear, anger, and perceptions of threat. These responses may vary with individual demographics, such as gender and age, but are also guided by the political environment in which individuals are embedded. Variegated emotive responses have important policy consequences as distinct emotions are associated with different policy demands. On the whole, psychological reactions to terrorism underlie the effectiveness of terrorism and have downstream social, political, and cultural ramifications.
Article
Quantitative Human Rights
Amanda M. Murdie and K. Anne Watson
Quantitative human rights scholarship is increasing. New data sets and methods have helped researchers examine a broad array of research questions concerning the many human rights laid out in the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related documents. These innovations have enabled quantitative human rights scholarship to better connect to existing qualitative and theoretical literatures and have improved advocacy efforts.
Quantitative scholars have primarily operationalized the concept of human rights through the use of four kinds of data: events data (such as counts of abuses or attacks), standards-based data (such as coded scores), survey data, and socioeconomic statistics (such as maternal mortality or malnutrition rates). Each type of data poses particular challenges and weaknesses for analyses, including the biased undercounts of events data and the potential for human error or biases in survey or standards-based data. The human rights field has also seen a systematic overrepresentation of analyses of physical integrity rights, which have fewer component parts to measure. Furthermore, qualitative scholars have pointed out that it is difficult for quantitative data to capture the process of human rights improvement over time.
The creation of new technologies and methodologies has allowed quantitative researchers to lessen the impact of these data weaknesses: Latent variables allow scholars to create aggregate measures from a variety of classes of quantitative data, as well as understandings from qualitative scholars, leading to the creation of new measures for rights other than physical integrity rights. New machine learning techniques and algorithms are giving scholars access to greater amounts of data than ever before, improving event counts. Expert surveys are pulling new voices into the data-generating process and incorporating practitioners into data processes that are too often restricted to academics. Experimental studies are furthering the field’s understanding of the processes underlying advocacy. Drawing on the lessons of past work, future scholars can use quantitative methods to improve the field’s theoretical and practical understandings of human rights.
Article
Radicalization and Deradicalization
Bethany Leap and Joseph Young
What is radicalization, and what drives individuals to become radicalized? Many individuals who hold radical beliefs will never become violent, yet others are compelled to enforce their ideology through violence. Drawing from existing literature, radicalization is defined as a transformation rooted in grievances, networks, enabling environments, and ideology that brings an individual to hold radical beliefs and support the use of violence. Conversely, deradicalization is defined as both a cognitive departure from radical ideology and a behavioral shift away from radical activities and group membership. Competing theories of radicalization and deradicalization have created a debate about whether or not these phenomena must be experienced in a linear fashion, and several scholars posit that strains caused by society can lead to both cognitive and behavioral forms of radicalization. The evidence supporting these theories is demonstrated in the counter-radicalization policies of several Western countries, which use localized policing and community members to address the social and political issues that breed radicalization.
Moreover, radicalization and deradicalization are not “one size fits all” phenomena; instead, they are experiences that can differ between ideologies as well as within ideologies. For example, sociopolitical factors specific to one’s nationality can impact the radicalization and deradicalization of individuals and organizations belonging to the same ideology. Despite all this, there are still significant gaps in the study of radicalization and deradicalization that need to be addressed. In academia, two debates must be settled: how should radicalization be defined, and should radicalization be understood as occurring in a linear or nonlinear fashion? In the policy realm, professionals must understand and address the grievances that increase the risk for radicalization to occur through social programs and education initiatives. Finally, policymakers and academics must communicate with each other regarding the research needs for enacting sound policies that will reduce the occurrence of radicalization.
Article
Reassessing Truth Commissions
Bronwyn Leebaw
Truth commissions are temporary institutions that are tasked with investigating patterns of political violence under a prior regime as part of a process of political change. In the past, truth commissions were generally seen as a “second best” alternative in contexts where prosecuting past abuses was deemed unrealistic. Today, they are regarded as important tools for pursuing a wide array of goals, from democratization and reconciliation to human rights protection and individual healing. Early scholarship on the development of truth commissions focused on comparative democratization and on typologies that could be used to predict various transitional justice outcomes. More recently, scholars in the field of international relations have undertaken qualitative and quantitative studies in hopes of understanding what is driving the development of truth commissions. However, opinions differ as to the causes, consequences, and moral implications of truth commissions. Some attribute the proliferation of truth commissions to the growing strength of human rights norms and advocacy, whereas others argue that they merely function to manage the balance of power in transitional contexts, or serve as a basis for advancing values such as justice, democracy, and peace. These debates seem to have only intensified as truth commission scholarship continues to grow. One interesting pattern is that a number of scholars, have questioned the effectiveness of truth commissions in satisfying their own claims to investigate the “truth” about past abuses.
Article
Regional Organizations and Conflict Management in Africa: The Case of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in the Horn of Africa Region
Kasaija Phillip Apuuli
The Horn of Africa (HoA) is one of the most conflict-ridden and insecure regions in the world. The regional organization—specifically, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)—has emerged as one of the most important actors in seeking solutions to the conflicts. The normative and legal foundation for regional organizations to get involved in managing regional conflicts is Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. In this regard, the Economic Community of West African States and the Southern Africa Development Community, among others, have engaged in mediating regional conflicts. The advantages of having regional organizations managing regional conflicts include that they can mobilize faster due to being near the conflict, they have a better grasp of the issues, and they are motivated to take action because they potentially have to live with the consequences of the conflicts. In the case of the HoA, while the IGAD has successfully intervened (to the extent that peace agreements have been concluded) in Sudan, Somalia, and South Sudan conflicts, the intervention processes were ad hoc. At the same time, the organization did not intervene in other regional disputes such as the Ethiopia–Eritrea border dispute, Kenya–Somalia maritime boundary dispute, and the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency in northern Uganda, among others, mainly for the reason of protecting member states’ national interests. In 2012, IGAD decided to establish a mediation support unit (MSU) as part of the organization’s peace and security architecture to systematically conduct conflict mediation, whenever the need arises. The IGAD MSU has established a roster of regional mediators and crafted strategic guidelines for mediation, among others. Nevertheless, it has faced a number of challenges including thin staffing levels and dependence on external funding. Moreover, IGAD as an organization has in some instances been altogether ignored as a mediator, and it generally lacks a mechanism to enforce its will. In the end, the organization occasionally continues to be called upon to intervene in regional conflicts notwithstanding the highlighted challenges.
Article
Religion, Insurgency, and Counterinsurgency
Jason Klocek
The academic study of religion and irregular warfare has expanded considerably since the turn of the 21st century—driven by both global events such as 9/11 and empirical studies that find armed rebellions with religious dimensions to be longer, bloodier, and more difficult to resolve than nonreligious conflicts. Most of this research focuses on the religious, usually radical, ideas and practices of insurgent groups. Of particular interest has been the way religion shapes the motivations and means of guerrilla fighters. Less attention has been paid to the role of counterinsurgent armies in irregular, religious wars. Following the U.S.-led invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, a few initial studies explored how state forces misunderstand or ignore the religious dynamics of armed conflict. A growing body of research since the mid-2010s has pushed further, cataloguing a more varied set of ways counterinsurgent forces account for religion in combat and information operations. Moving forward, studies that look at both sides of the battlefield need to expand their empirical emphases, as well as more directly address a common set of challenges to the broader study of religious violence—how best to conceptualize, measure, and analyze the religious dynamics of war. Future scholarship should also consider research designs that test the causal processes purported to link religion with conflict outcomes and pay increased attention to the interaction between insurgent and counterinsurgent forces.
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Religion, Nationalism, and Transnational Actors
Jeffrey Haynes
The relationship between “religion,” “nationalism,” and transnational actors in contemporary international relations is often unclear and sometimes controversial. Many scholars have questioned the view that religion and nationalism are necessarily separate. This became necessary as it was clear that rather than fading away, religion showed surprising persistence, with deepening religious identities in many countries around the world, both “developed” and “underdeveloped.” Religion and nationalism were not necessarily apart. Instead, as two kinds of self-identification, although they were sometimes in tension, often they were not; either coexisting unproblematically, or acting in mutually supportive ways. Various approaches are suggested to explain the relationship. Rather than “either or,” the relationship between nationalism and religion can be seen as a continuum. At one end is an ideal-type “secular nationalism” and at the other there is fully realized “religious nationalism.” Somewhere in the middle is “civil-religious nationalism,” for decades believed to be the situation in America, with characteristics of both. Over time, the issue of transnationalism has also appeared of interest to scholars. This includes “transnational religious actors” which operate across international boundaries, including the Roman Catholic Church and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Our discussion commences with a discussion of secularization, in order to locate the issues of religion, nationalism, and religious transnationalist actors within an appropriate intellectual and ideological context. The aim of the essay is to illustrate how religion has a strong role in relation to nationalism and transnationalism during what many identify as a period of post-secular international relations. The two case studies highlight different aspects of religion’s involvement in international relations and underline that neither conflict nor cooperation can solely characterize such involvement.
