Abstract How do international organizations manage social discontent while opening their governance processes to civic actors? This essay conceptualizes co-optation as a mode of contention management through which international institutions selectively integrate critical voices into participatory arrangements that channel, moderate, and reframe dissent in more regulated forms of engagement. Moving beyond rationalist accounts that treat co-optation as a strategic exchange between rulers and challengers, the article develops a relational framework attentive to sustained interactions among bureaucratic agents, civic actors, experts, and intermediaries. It argues that co-optation operates through institutional infrastructures and cross-boundary chains that stabilize cooperation, organize access, socialize civic actors, and expose critical claims to filtering and normative alignment. These chains do not eliminate the agency of co-opted actors. Rather, they make agency part of the process through which critique becomes institutionally acceptable. The article contributes to international studies by showing how international organizations manage contention through relational forms of capture, and how advocacy engagement can help stabilize institutional authority.
Abstract This essay reviews two most recent entries to the voluminous literature on international orders. After highlighting their key contributions, I focus on three key issues that emerge from the two volumes: universalism/cosmopolitanism versus multi-culturalism/civilizationalism, the West versus the Rest (i.e., non-West), and the prospect of more inclusive and equal international orders. Finally, I call for a social niche construction (SNC) approach for understanding order, not only because constructing orders is a quintessential niche construction process but also because SNC, as a social evolutionary approach, offers critical advantages over existing approaches when it comes to understanding order.
Abstract Minilateral groupings have dramatically risen in number and importance in recent times. Although such arrangements are not new, minilateralism remains relatively under-theorized as a concept. The forum seeks to engage with key questions at the heart of minilateralism—such as the appropriate size and function of groupings, their degree of formality, their relationship with multilateral institutions, the role played by “like-mindedness,” and issues of legitimacy—and situate it within the broader international relations literature.
Abstract Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing states and the international community in recent decades, prompting adaptation and mitigation efforts among international actors. The proliferating field of Ontological Security (OS) studies in International Relations (IR) offers timely tools to address this challenge. However, a comprehensive theorization of climate change through an OS lens has yet to be developed. Focusing on the interface between existential anxiety and climate action, this article aims to fill this void. First, we position our contribution within the “material turn” in OS studies and distinguish between three climate-induced anxieties drawing on Tillich’s existentialist typology: anxieties of fate and death, emptiness and meaninglessness, and guilt and condemnation. Second, we move from existential anxiety to climate action, offering a novel framework that shows how each type of climate-related anxiety triggers a different set of OS-seeking strategies with strikingly different outcomes for mitigation and adaptation, ranging from denial, distraction and intellectualization (anxieties of fate and death), through futurization, meaning preservation, and spiritual self-affirmation (anxieties of emptiness and meaninglessness), to social alignment, social differentiation, and conscious cleaning (anxieties of guilt and condemnation). We demonstrate the contribution of this framework to two key realms in IR and climate action: Loss and Damage from climate change, and the questioning of socio-economic paradigms underlying climate action. The article concludes by highlighting the practical utility of this framework for moving from climate anxiety to climate action in IR research, and for opening new interdisciplinary research channels on climate change in IR.
Abstract As cities play increasingly visible roles in international relations and global governance, scholars have proposed multiple explanations for variation in their engagement and influence. This study examines a relatively understudied yet crucial factor: vertical coordination between cities and national governments. Through a structured-focus case comparison of four cities (San Francisco, Austin, Shanghai, and Shenzhen), it traces each city’s representation in governance networks, reputation-building efforts, and mobilization of its tangible and intangible resources across two contrasting approaches to coordination by the United States and China. The findings reveal that coordination functions as a pathway-structuring variable that determines the sequence and logic through which cities establish their presence and argue for their legitimacy. Strongly coordinated cases convert national legitimacy into flagship representational opportunities and sustained reputational gains; less coordinated cases generate visibility through local ecosystems but lack the structural capacity to translate reputational capital into norm-setting roles. These insights contribute to polycentric governance studies, advance scholarship on city diplomacy, and offer practical insights for the design of coordination frameworks in an era of growing urban involvement in global affairs.
