On the basis of a review of forces shaping the initial publication of International Political Sociology in 2007, we explore how some of the challenges to which it responded remain unresolved and may now be even more pressing. We focus initially on the need to internationalize the study of international relations and then on the principled difficulties of combining social, political, and international analysis. We argue that these two challenges are closely related, partly in terms of claims about history and temporality and partly in terms of a fallacy of simple addition. We then explore some implications of this relationship. We note the need for but also dangers of more temporally oriented modes of analysis. We also note a tendency to minimize the significance of both "international" and "political" in favor of "sociology." On these and related grounds, we argue that international political sociology names a site of profound problems more than it does a coherent project or vocation, and that the strength of the journal lies in the heterogeneity of contributions it has attracted. Finally, we speculate that international political sociology offers insight into problems confronting interdisciplinary scholarship more generally. En nous fondant sur un passage en revue des forces qui ont initialement fa & ccedil;onn & eacute; la publication d'International Political Sociology en 2007, nous nous int & eacute;ressons au fait que certains d & eacute;fis que la revue a trait & eacute;s restent d'actualit & eacute; et qu'ils pourraient rev & ecirc;tir un caract & egrave;re encore plus urgent maintenant. Nous nous concentrons d'abord sur la n & eacute;cessit & eacute; d'internationaliser l'& eacute;tude des relations internationales, puis sur les difficult & eacute;s de principe de la combinaison d'une analyse sociale, politique et internationale. Nous affirmons que ces deux d & eacute;fis entretiennent des liens & eacute;troits, tant au niveau des revendications historiques et temporelles que de la croyance erron & eacute;e qu'il s'agirait d'une simple addition. Nous analysons ensuite certaines implications de cette relation. Nous soulignons le besoin de modes d'analyse & agrave; l'orientation davantage temporelle, mais aussi leurs dangers. Nous remarquons par ailleurs une tendance & agrave; minimiser l'importance de l'& laquo; international & raquo; et du & laquo; politique & raquo; en faveur de la & laquo; sociologie & raquo;. Pour ces raisons, et d'autres raisons connexes, nous affirmons que la sociologie politique internationale d & eacute;signe un site de probl & egrave;mes profonds plut & ocirc;t qu'un projet coh & eacute;rent ou une vocation, et que la force de la revue r & eacute;side dans l'h & eacute;t & eacute;rog & eacute;n & eacute;it & eacute; des contributions qu'elle a attir & eacute;es. Enfin, nous supposons que la sociologie politique internationale nous renseigne quant aux probl & egrave;mes rencontr & eacute;s par la recherche interdisciplinaire de fa & ccedil;on g & eacute;n & eacute;rale. Analizamos, partiendo de la base de una revisi & oacute;n de las fuerzas que dieron forma a la publicaci & oacute;n de Sociolog & iacute;a Pol & iacute;tica Internacional en 2007, c & oacute;mo algunos de los desaf & iacute;os a los que se enfrent & oacute; la revista siguen sin resolverse y pueden ser ahora incluso m & aacute;s apremiantes. Nos enfocamos, inicialmente, en la necesidad de internacionalizar el estudio de las relaciones internacionales y, a continuaci & oacute;n, ponemos el foco sobre las dificultades, a nivel de principios, que conlleva combinar el an & aacute;lisis social, pol & iacute;tico e internacional. Argumentamos que estos dos desaf & iacute;os est & aacute;n estrechamente relacionados, por un lado, en t & eacute;rminos de afirmaciones sobre la historia y la temporalidad y, por otro lado, en t & eacute;rminos de una falacia de simple suma. A continuaci & oacute;n, estudiamos algunas de las implicaciones que conlleva esta relaci & oacute;n. Observamos la necesidad, pero tambi & eacute;n los peligros, que conllevan aquellos modos de an & aacute;lisis m & aacute;s orientados temporalmente. Tambi & eacute;n notamos una tendencia a minimizar la importancia tanto de lo & laquo;internacional & raquo; como de lo & laquo;pol & iacute;tico & raquo; en favor de la & laquo;sociolog & iacute;a & raquo;. Partiendo de esta base, y de otras relacionadas, argumentamos que la sociolog & iacute;a pol & iacute;tica internacional designa un & aacute;mbito de problemas profundos m & aacute;s que un proyecto o una vocaci & oacute;n coherente, y que la fortaleza de la revista radica en la heterogeneidad de las contribuciones que ha atra & iacute;do. Por & uacute;ltimo, especulamos que Sociolog & iacute;a Pol & iacute;tica Internacional ofrece una visi & oacute;n sobre los problemas a los que se enfrenta la investigaci & oacute;n interdisciplinaria en general.

This article argues that there is no single form of security that reduces insecurity but rather forms of (in)security that are contradictory and mutually destructive. This is the case between traditional liberal security, based on evidence, the individual and the penal order, and contemporary predictive preventive security, based on 'reasonable' suspicion. The digitisation of data has accelerated this trend towards preventive security, which is created through the creation of specific data-organising categories according to algorithms, the sorting out of profiles of 'persons of concern' ranked according to their level of danger, and the so-called ability of artificial intelligence to predict the future behaviour of individuals in order to place some of them under surveillance. This applies not only to terrorists or criminals, but also to many international travellers, making their use banal. The databases of the European agency EU-LISA will help to show the functioning of this new 'dispositif' of suspicion, which endangers democratic politics.

This article discusses the current legacy of Michel Foucault in relation to the current political situation. It is articulated in three parts. The first insists on the fact that Michel Foucault has been and still is significant for discussions concerning political sciences and international relations by the way he has discussed them and by his own academic politics. The second part highlights the key role of his attempt to define a dispositif of security in the 1977-78 lecture course ‘Security, Territory, Population’ and the various interpretations given after his death. The third part introduces my own research on the subject and its development. Twenty years ago, I called this dispositif of security surveillance a ban-opticon dispositif. This is only partly relevant since the violence of the effects on individuals has been intensified by a multifocal construction of "suspects" by various transnational guilds of security professionals who systematise profiling and weak correlations as an alternative method of seeking the truth about causalities and facts attributed to an individual. Because of this systematicity of "suspicion first", which jeopardises the principle of innocence, I call this dispositif of security a transnational dispositif of suspicion-prediction, which is organised both as a rearticulation of the modern episteme with suspicion back at its core and as a "legitimate" one, thus allowing a "preventive" violence to be re-enacted in the name of scientific predictions of a future so deadly that it is necessary to act violently now in order to prevent even more violence. This question of inverted temporality, in which the imagined future dominates the present, leads to the belief that the future can already be known under a grammar of the future perfect. Combined with the strategic orientation of right-wing parties to abandon the celebration of the past in order to mobilise the fear of apocalyptic futures, this characteristic of the ‘future-perfect’ explains a series of contemporary developments in security and surveillance, reframing the attachment of the population to a new form of conservatism that captures the imagination of the future, including some contemporary discourses of war. Resisting this attraction to the future-perfect is possible by reinventing hope.

This article transects and articulates different disciplines and lines of thought in order to understand the redefinitions of the boundaries of political power in times of COVID-19, and the practices which may outlive the potential normalisation of the crisis when an efficient vaccine is discovered. We claim that the COVID-19 pandemic is an original form of governmentality by unease articulating three dimensions. First, the basic reaction of modern states when faced with uncertainty is to apply national-territorial logics of controls. Second, bureaucracies consider the virus as a danger to security and organise public health emergencies according to the rules of the game of national security, creating tensions between internal security, public health and the economy because policymakers may be unsure about the priorities and may prioritise border controls. Third, resistance against the chosen national policies show that people are not led by a politics of fear and/or protection, but rather their own concerns about themselves with peer-to-peer surveillance as a key element of their compliance. Contact tracing technologies and strategies of border controls are key elements to analyse. We do so in different contexts: the UK, the EU and Turkey.

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Based on international political sociology (IPS), this chapter analyses through a field approach how the transformation of the scale of action in terms of secret violence and surveillance of large segments of the population has disrupted the tacit agreement that the use of secret services is a necessity for stability in the world. The practices of the coalitions of secret services have gone wrong after the three episodes of extraordinary rendition, mass surveillance and, more recently, the use of spyware to target opponents, journalists and human rights defenders. The current combination of four main factors (transnational coalition, preventive ideology, digital capacities, and marketization) explains the qualitative expansion of the field of transnational secret services and its impact on everyday citizens and internet users. The impact of the transnational guilds changes power politics globally. Therefore, a legitimacy gap is emerging, and the need for a transnational oversight about what the "watchers" are doing is now on the agenda. From inside the services as well as from many other actors, the obligation to recreate a sense of limits distinguishing democracies from other regimes is considered necessary.

Beaucoup de commentateurs depuis le début de la guerre en Ukraine insistent sur le fait que nous devons changer de paradigme pour analyser la guerre en cours. Ce serait la fin de la mondialisation, la fin du contreterrorisme, le retour aux «vraies» guerres internationales. La géopolitique classique reprendrait ses droits. Si ces grands débats agitent le petit monde des plateaux télévisés, ils ne proposent guère d’alternatives et répètent ad nauseam les mêmes arguments. Nous analysons pourquoi ce retour de la géopolitique et la focalisation sur l’Otan et les ventes d’armes comme «solution» se met en place et proposons un cadre conceptuel alternatif à partir d’une réflexion de sociologie politique internationale fondée sur une réflexion polémologique qui vise à comprendre les cadres de guerre, et s’inspire des travaux de René Girard, Pierre Bourdieu et Judith Butler pour proposer des perspectives transversales redonnant aux victimes et aux tierces parties leur place dans les compétitions autour de l’assignation du sens de cette guerre.

This article analyses the collaboration between the French external services and the Egyptian government of President Sissi. In a first part, it recounts the revelations of the Disclose journalists in 2021 and their interview with an anonymous source, as well as the follow-up investigation in 2023 by the European Consortium of Independent Journalists. In the second part, the two authors comment on the relationship between data cooperation and counter-terrorism activities, the way in which the sale of arms and spying tools undermines the legitimacy of cooperation, and the way in which the French government has used the argument of defence of secrecy to prevent investigative journalists from investigating the issue.

Abstract The dematerialisation of physical borders via the digitisation of the process of control has changed the ways we understand international frontiers. Surveillance of the borders are now exercised at a distance, before individuals arrive. Even if most border guards insist that they have the ultimate (sovereign) right to decide who enters, the development of pre-check-in databases have de facto displaced the modalities of authentification and identification of travellers. This chapter depicts these changes, and shows how control is ‘distributed’ along the journeys of the passengers, and between many different actors, who are not all, by any means, public agents. The role of corporate actors are crucial.

Many analysts of intelligence have noted the transformation of the world of intelligence services in the past 30 years. Among the justifications for this are the transformation of the security situation and the development of asymmetric war and terrorism, instead of the previous justification of ‘bipolarity’. Analysts call for a necessary adaptation to this new situation by obliging intelligence services to collaborate between themselves in order to get a global reach, to develop sophisticated technologies of surveillance, to use them as much as possible to collect the traces left by individuals or groups on the Internet, to have more personnel or to contract private companies to exploit the mass of information, and to push towards the use of artificial intelligence. This has created a huge extension (some would say a colonisation) of other social spaces by professionals of secret services and their collaborators. Private partners, Internet users, privacy analysts, international lawyers, and others who until recently have been unaware of the old ‘spy’ activities, have also entered, sometimes against their will, as ‘amateurs’ in this social space. Using Norbert Elias’ theories, this chapter discusses these dynamics at work, as well as their effects.

Political sociology is a field of inquiry at the crossroads of sociology and political science. Long dominated by the latter, political sociology is interested in the trajectories of politics in all its occurrences and questions a certain number of assumptions about the state, democracy, the mechanisms of power relations and their relationship to the political sphere. It emphasizes relationships, flows, processes, and the reflexivity necessary to understand the diversity of expressions of the political.

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