The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

British political studies has traditionally focused on the analysis of policy failures. This is reflected in a vast literature on catastrophes and crises which has uncovered a range of specific and systemic factors to explain failure. The central argument of this article is that this intense disciplinary negativity-bias risks creating an intellectual form of path dependency in which examples of successful public policy are rarely acknowledged, let alone studied. This matters because the existence of an implicit but highly normative analytical lens may produce a skewed account of democratic performance in the United Kingdom; this may at some level feed into public debates in ways which reinforce public disillusionment and contribute to populist pressures; and the notion of looking ‘beyond blunders’ creates methodological questions which require the development of a new analytical toolkit and may pose new questions and opportunities for the social and political sciences. This article tests this ‘beyond blunders’ thesis by for the first time utilising the arguments and insights of the emergent field of ‘positive public policy’ in the context of British politics. Based on the available evidence and data, a cautious and carefully framed case for the study of successful public policy is made.

How the UK government has politicised asylum by categorising Albanian asylum-seekers as ‘criminals’ and Albania as a ‘safe’ country to advance an immigration deterrence agenda remains unresearched. We use agenda-setting and policy framing analytical insights to explain how and why UK government’s successful agenda-setting was underpinned by the racialised and gendered criminalisation of Albanian males and the politicisation of the safety conditions in Albania. Our findings draw on qualitative empirical data, alongside triangulation with official and stakeholder data and documents. We argue that the racialised and gendered criminalisation of Albanian males – as evidenced by political rhetoric and the media – was integral to the targeted legal and political measures making Albania a ‘safe’ country. Nonetheless, we show that these framings misrepresent the reality in Albania and the challenges that vulnerable Albanians face when seeking protection in the United Kingdom.

A number of recent articles have sought to carve out space for more feasible and action-guiding political theories of migration. These accounts have focused on policy-makers as target agents. I suggest an alternative approach that targets migrant and refugee-led social movements who can generate social and political goods that are crucial in non-ideal conditions. These include situated social critique, embodied non-oppressive alternatives and community-building. Making these goods salient renders three desiderata for normative theorising. Movement-oriented theories need to be intelligible to such movements, they need to provide a framework for transformative worldmaking and they need to attend to affective relations created in and by social movements. Engaging with migrant and refugee social movements, I suggest that a movement-oriented theory of migration renders ‘no borders’ more action-guiding by focusing on how border regimes sustain a hierarchical international order that makes some people more vulnerable to displacement and its associated harms.

How do European Union members balance national and common European Union positions when acting in international organisations? This article studies the rhetoric of national and European Union diplomats in the United Nations General Assembly, examining the influence of domestic and European Union-level factors on revealed foreign policy priorities. Analysing almost 40,000 speeches from 1993 to 2022, we identify a latent dimension that pits countries that emphasise multilateral cooperation against those that focus on national security and sovereignty. Our results suggest that member states with a higher quality of democracy and left-leaning governments are more prone to emphasising multilateral cooperation. Furthermore, we identify a division of labour between national and European Union diplomats. This division became even more important after the Lisbon Treaty, which significantly extended the mandate of European Union diplomats.

The Global Gateway represents a strategic adaptation of the EU’s role enactment amid an increasingly fragmented international order. Confronted with the challenges posed by China’s Belt and Road Initiative and a weakened Liberal International Order, the EU recalibrated its external action to preserve liberal norms and institutions. Drawing on role theory, this article interprets the Global Gateway as a manifestation of role adaptation, enabling the EU to assert itself geopolitically while promoting a development model grounded in liberal principles and values. This initiative underscores the EU’s evolving self-conception as a defender of the Liberal International Order in a competitive global landscape.

Regional integration scholars have long stressed the role and importance of bilateral and other minilateral relations between states for multilateral politics in a regional organisation. However, the literature on bilateralism and multilateralism mostly evolves separately from one another, both conceptually and empirically. To bridge this divide, this article develops a tripartite differentiation of competing, coexisting and complecting relations or, correspondingly, of bilateralism or, and, as well as in multilateralism. It then scrutinises the bilateral link between France and Germany as a particularly developed case of minilateral relations mingling with the multilateral politics of the European Union. Analysing three pivotal episodes which span 50 years of European integration and different policy domains, we document why and how France and Germany repeatedly came together bilaterally to promote multilateral European polity stabilisation and development. The article contributes to an emerging but so far dispersed scholarship on bilateralism within multilateralism in Europe and beyond.

When do suspensions of member states by international organisations terminate due to target state compliance, international organisation capitulation, or draws? While existing research analysed the imposition of multilateral sanctions and the success of economic sanctions, this question has not been systematically addressed. I develop a theoretical framework based on research on cooperation and sanctions, which I test through quantitative analysis based on an original dataset of suspension episodes in regional international organisations (1990–2024), as well as two qualitative comparative case studies of suspension terminations in the Economic Community of West African States and the Council of Europe. The paper finds that suspensions end through target state compliance if the regional international organisation is united, the target state is vulnerable to the international organisation’s pressure, and the international organisation perceives the transgression as a severe violation of its community norms – and through international organisation capitulation if otherwise. If these factors point into different directions, this increases the chance for suspensions to be terminated as draws.

Why do some regional organisations shame violators of international norms while others stay silent? I address this question by examining how non-Western regional organisations responded to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Unlike Western regional organisations, non-Western regional organisations did not cohesively condemn Russia’s violation of the territorial integrity norm. Only six non-Western regional organisations shamed Russia, while most remained neutral. Using qualitative comparative analysis, I investigate the determinants of this variation by integrating state-level factors (democratic density and material dependence on Russia) with organisational factors (voting rules and presence of BRICS regional powers). The analysis reveals three key findings: First, democratic density was critical – all regional organisations that shamed Russia had medium-to-high democratic density, whereas those with low democratic density did not. Second, majority voting rules enabled democratic members to overcome opposition from minorities aligned with Russia or dependent on its agricultural exports. Third, even without majority voting, the absence of BRICS regional powers and low dependence on Russian agriculture facilitated shaming. These findings advance the international organisation shaming literature by demonstrating how democratic density, institutional design, power asymmetries, and material dependencies interact to shape regional organisation responses to norm violations. They also contribute to debates over Global South positioning amid growing international norm contestation.

In recent years, the ethnonym ‘Anglo-Saxon’ has frequently appeared in geopolitical discourse. This trend has been most visible in Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. By analysing over 500 state media texts, this article deciphers the meanings of the so-called ‘Anglo-Saxons’ in Russia’s wartime narratives to understand how global actors cast the Anglosphere in geopolitical imagination. It identifies nine key narratives that construct the Anglosphere as a civilisational ‘other’, consistent with Eurasianism in Russian geopolitical thought. The findings demonstrate how Russia invokes the ‘Anglosphere as other’ to justify atrocities in Ukraine while seeking ontological security but it cautions against dismissing ‘Anglo-Saxons’ as a mere propaganda trope. Instead, it argues that the increasingly visible ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ethnonym signifies ongoing shifts in how global actors conceive geography and international order amid uncertainty and transformation. This article contributes to the burgeoning research agendas on the Anglosphere, Russian geopolitics, and non-Western civilisational discourse.

This article introduces the concept of myth diplomacy: the mobilisation of audience-held political myths in diplomatic communication to shape interpretation, ascribe significance, and prompt action. It shows how myth, as a mechanism of influence in public diplomacy, differs from memory diplomacy, analogy, and strategic narrative, and examines its use in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speeches to UK audiences following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Through discourse analysis of Zelenskyy’s speeches, an elite interview with a senior member of his speechwriting team, and analysis of UK media coverage, the article shows how Churchill and Second World War myths were repeatedly used to frame Ukraine’s struggle, shape British understandings of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and reinforce calls for support. In doing so, it clarifies the role of myth in diplomatic communication and offers a framework for identifying myth diplomacy in practice.

Before the Paris Agreement, only developed countries were obligated to undertake mitigation efforts. Developing countries like India rejected domestically financed mitigation efforts. Yet, from 2007 until 2008, the Indian government rapidly shifted its stance and surprisingly adopted a national climate action plan in 2008. How can we explain rapidly changing norm interpretations of a target-state in the context of international negotiations and domestic politics? I argue that norm socialisation and localisation have limitations to explain this outcome. Building upon sociological work on glocalization, insights from norm translation, and rooted in the methodology of scientific realism, I develop ‘norm glocalization’, which captures the dynamics between proactive domestic and external actors. Their interactions result in glocalized norm interpretations, representing the fusion of external and domestic actors’ preexisting norm interpretations. Applying this framework allows me to explain the emergence of India’s special approach, which is based on developmental goals that produce mitigation co-benefits.

How the structure of the international economic cooperation network among the G20 countries has evolved over the past quarter century, and what are the roles and power levels of different countries in the network? We collect big data on economic cooperation events among the G20 countries from 2000 to 2024, and divide the 25 years into four periods using structure changepoint detection algorithms to separately construct international economic cooperation networks. We calculate and compare the multifaceted characteristics of the G20 economic cooperation network and trade network based on network analysis. At the macrolevel of network structure, we find that even when trade relations among the G20 countries became closer, economic cooperation among them became more distant. At the mesolevel of group classification, the result of community detection and the disparity of edge weight of the G20 economic cooperation network and trade network show clear but different regional characters. At the microlevel of power distribution, we measure and compare the power levels of the G20 countries in the economic cooperation network and their dynamics over time using weighted centrality indices based on current flow and random walks. By combining network analysis and event big data, we study economic interactions between countries in a unique approach that differs from traditional approaches employing trade volume or institutional data (e.g. free trade agreements).

How does populism interact with space? While it is increasingly acknowledged that populism operates across geographical scales from the local to the transnational, a systematic framework for analysing how populism functions across these scales remains lacking. Moreover, space and spatial identities have often been treated as explanatory variables for populist success, rather than as categories actively constructed and politicised through populist discourse. This article proposes a discourse-theoretical framework for studying the populist politicisation of space. Introducing the concept of spatial political logics and systematising the existing research on populism through that lens, it identifies five key spatial political logics that structure the populist politicisation of space: lower scale/higher scale, centre/periphery, North/South and East/West, in/out, and rooted/rootless. It also develops an analytical framework for future research on the intricate relations between populism and space across geographical scales, setting out key questions that can guide case studies, comparative research, and broader theoretical reflections.

Political science has no shortage of theories to explain ethnic majority support for radical right parties. This article enriches political psychology literature on the radical right by combining two prominent approaches – relative deprivation and social dominance theories. Evidence using data from a representative survey in the United Kingdom shows for the first time that feelings of group relative deprivation for White Britons are associated with an increase in social dominance orientation. Afterwards, as suggested by the established literature, social dominance orientation influences anti-immigrant prejudice, which then increases radical right support. This article contributes to the literature on political psychology and the radical right. It indicates that relative deprivation and social dominance theories can be used together rather than separately to explain why people support radical right parties.

In this article, we examine the extent to which attitudes linked with the populist radical right are associated across Europe with belief in three different types of conspiracy theories: general conspiracy ideation, science conspiracy ideation and Covid-19. To do this, we analysed 2020–2022 European Social Survey data from 28 countries. We found that four sets of populist radical right attitudes were consistently associated with the three levels of conspiracy theory here analysed: Believing that citizens should have the final say in referendums, that decisions should be made nationally rather than at the EU level, that it is not important for minority rights to be protected and that it is acceptable to have a strong leader above the law. In addition, we found that some of these associations were stronger in Western Europe, and others were stronger in Central and Eastern Europe.