Loughborough University
Browse

An anarcho-pacifist reading of international relations: A normative critique of international politics from the confluence of pacifism and anarchism

Download (555.19 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2022-10-07, 09:46 authored by Alexandre ChristoyannopoulosAlexandre Christoyannopoulos

Pacifism and anarchism have been until recently largely missing on the landscape of international relations (IR) theories, even though they help articulate valuable and nuanced reflections on core IR themes such as war and peace, the structure of the international order, and the multiple effects of political violence. In particular, an analysis grounded in the territory shared by pacifism and anarchism offers a focused vantage point from which an original contribution can be articulated around five main themes: the widespread fetishization of violence; the chronic sliding toward systemic militarism; the multifaceted manifestations of intersectional exploitation and domination enforced by states around the world; both current and potential alternative structurings of international politics; and reflections concerning political agency. This puts an anarcho-pacifist encounter with IR in a position to either develop further or dispute claims central to more established schools of IR theory. This article thus offers a normative reading of international politics, which adapts and develops arguments aired separately by anarchism and pacifism, demonstrates where they fruitfully overlap, develops anarcho-pacifism by extending its analysis specifically to international politics, and invites a reconsideration of established orthodoxies in IR theory by articulating a more radical, critical, and normative diagnosis of the Westphalian international order.

History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

  • International Relations, Politics and History

Published in

International Studies Quarterly

Volume

66

Issue

4

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

©The Author(s)

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, An Anarcho-Pacifist Reading of International Relations: A Normative Critique of International Politics from the Confluence of Pacifism and Anarchism, International Studies Quarterly, Volume 66, Issue 4, December 2022, sqac070, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqac070

Acceptance date

2022-07-15

Publication date

2022-10-04

Copyright date

2022

ISSN

0020-8833

eISSN

1468-2478

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Alexandre Christoyannopoulos. Deposit date: 6 October 2022

Article number

sqac070

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC