Contemporary Security Policy journal

📈 Ranked 17 / 738 of Politics and IR journals in the latest Scopus ranking.

A big thank you to all authors, reviewers and editorial board members for making this possible. 👏

Onwards and upwards.

The anatomy of transnational military practices: Through the lens of Chiefs of Defence professional careers This article explores the transnational professional experiences of Chiefs of Defence (CHODs) and their connection to states’ positions in the international system. Although the military is a symbo...

🚨 New article

How much do Chiefs of Defence engage in transnational practices? And how much are these interactions shaped by the state's power status?

In this article, Tomas Kucera analyses a novel global dataset to answer these questions.

doi.org/10.1080/1352...

🚨 New article

Through a study of the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon, Jacqui Cho shows how conflict parties instrumentalize the opportunities created by the renewed global power struggle in Africa, undermining the appeal and viability of negotiations.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Large-state liability in alliance politics: Revisiting the quasi-US–Taiwan alliance in the Taiwan Strait While it is typically the smaller state in alliance politics that is expected to entangle the larger power in an unwanted conflict, there are circumstances in which the opposite is true. That a lar...

🚨 New article

Can large states also harm the security of their smaller allies?

In this article, Chin-Hao Huang shows that the US’ actions in the Taiwan Strait are leading to less efficacious outcomes, contributing to Taiwan’s insecurity.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The rise of responsible behavior: Western commercial reports on Western cyber threat actors Commercial threat reporting plays a pivotal role in shaping public perceptions of cyber conflict, providing insights into threats and behavior of key actors. This article examines the evolving prac...

🚨 New article

Commercial threat reporting shapes public perceptions of cyber conflict.

In this study, Lior Yoffe, Eviatar Matiana & Udi Sommer show that Western cybersecurity companies' reporting is increasingly influenced by geopolitical considerations.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Struggles over epistemic capital: Complex governance objects and the making of lethal autonomous weapons systems The regulation of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) has emerged as a salient and perplexing issue in global governance, especially in the UN GGE on LAWS. This article argues that contentions...

🚨 New article

In it, @fredwindfeld.bsky.social shows that the contention over defining Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) is not reducible to country positions alone; it also has its roots in epistemic contests over what constitutes superior knowledge.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Struggles over epistemic capital: Complex governance objects and the making of lethal autonomous weapons systems The regulation of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) has emerged as a salient and perplexing issue in global governance, especially in the UN GGE on LAWS. This article argues that contentions...

Just published in @cspjournal.bsky.social 💡💻⚖️
My article looks at how legal, technical, and military expertise condition the debate over defining and regulating lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS)—and how such “epistemic struggles" can produce political effects in global governance.

What do international mediators do? Reviving and refining the mediation-bargaining model This article revives and develops a dormant scholarly view of international mediation as “mediation-bargaining”. This perspective differs from the standard conception of mediation, the essence of w...

🚨New article online

In this article, Laurie Nathan studies mediations undertaken by African multilateral organizations in response to 22 coups between 2000-2022 to show how/when mediators engage in bargaining with conflict parties.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Malaysia’s defense cooperation and joint military exercises with the United States and China: quasi allies, trustable partners, potential adversaries This article explains why and how Malaysia pursues defense cooperation and joint military exercises (JME) partnerships with the United States and China. To do so, it categorizes three types of JME ...

🚨New article online

As part of a forthcoming special section on joint military exercises and regional order building in Asia, Chow-Bing Ngeow and Chiew-Ping Hoo show why Malaysia pursues defense cooperation and military exercises with the US ánd China.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Levels of division: How wedge strategies shape international and domestic politics States often seek to undermine their competitors in order to obtain a favorable balance of power. Yet, the literature on how they actually do that remains sparse and disconnected. We focus on how a...

Open Access Article in @cspjournal.bsky.social by @luissimonn.bsky.social and me. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10..... THREAD. Many people who see this post (well, not so many) are probably familiar with wedge strategies, “a state’s attempt to prevent, break up, or weaken a threatening or blocking

Levels of division: How wedge strategies shape international and domestic politics States often seek to undermine their competitors in order to obtain a favorable balance of power. Yet, the literature on how they actually do that remains sparse and disconnected. We focus on how a...

🚨New article online

How do states seek to weaken a competitor externally or internally for negative balancing purposes?

@tongfi-kim.bsky.social & @luissimonn.bsky.social provide a novel framework for analysing wedge strategies.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

@csds.bsky.social

❗New Research❗

We are delighted to share this new article on "Conventional arms control and military balance in Europe" by William Lippert and Jordan Becker for Contemporary Security Policy. Give it a read!

Read🔸 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... @jordanbecker.bsky.social @cspjournal.bsky.social

Privileged to have been part of this Special Issue connecting peace operations & peacebuilding with the shifts in the global order. Many thanks to @sarahellmuller.bsky.social and @fannybadache.bsky.social for their guidance along the way and @cspjournal.bsky.social for their editorial support.

Many thanks to @cspjournal.bsky.social for a smooth process. Happy to have written this with my @unileiden.bsky.social teammate William Lippert. It was a new substantive and methodological journey for me!

Conventional arms control and military balance in Europe Under what conditions do the more powerful states in an adversarial conventional arms control (CAC) agreement accept a reduction in their relative military power? Scholars have rarely empirically a...

🚨New article

"Conventional arms control and military balance in Europe"

W. Lippert & @jordanbecker.bsky.social ask: when do rival states in Europe decide to sacrifice some of their relative military capability when entering conventional arms control agreements?

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Very happy to see this timely(!) special issue out! Big thank you to the journal's editors and all the contributors. It is part of the project "A Child of its Time: the Impact of World Politics on UN Peace Missions" funded by @snf-fns-ch.bsky.social and hosted @gvagrad-ccdp.bsky.social

The changing regional faces of peace: Toward a new multilateralism? The fast-changing face of multilateralism, and the roles and reputations of international organizations, have invited more serious reconsideration of different institutional types and the part they...

Last (but not least), Louise Fawcett argues that in a world where existing multilateral institutions and their normative framings are increasingly contested, regional powers and agencies should be placed at the forefront of contemporary security debates.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Nothing civil about this war: UN mediation in revolutionary wars After decades of predominantly nonviolent revolutions, revolutionary wars have returned. Countries such as Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Myanmar are engulfed in protracted wars that pitch large numbers ...

In this contribution to the Special Issue, Sandra Pogodda looks at contemporary civil wars and analyses the possibilities to address these within the framework of the UN.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Next, @sarahellmuller.bsky.social & Bilal Salaymeh argue that geopolitical rivalry encouraged actors to simultaneously engage in war and peacemaking activities. This renders peace processes political marketplaces with transactionalism as main modus operandi.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Up next, @buitelaartom.bsky.social argues that in adapting to change in the international system, international organizations' discourse will cater to changes at the macro-level while also adhere to sticky organizational values.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Productive contestation: R2P and the images of protectors in UN peacekeeping Protection, uncommon in peacekeeping before the 1990s, has become the norm. This article takes issue with this normative shift and explores how the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Protection of...

In this fourth SI article, @anaprokhorov.bsky.social analyses peacekeeping and the changing nature of peacekeepers’ protection duties through the lens of norm contestation.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Next, Kazushige Kobayashi, Keith Krause & Xinyu Yuan argue for a new concept of peacebuilding given the crisis of the liberal paradigm. They argue for focusing more on the processes and practices of political ordering in conflict-affected states.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

In the second article of this Special Issue, Oliver Richmond critically examines dominant post-Cold War concepts in peacemaking. He focuses on the emergence of the concept of “stalemated peace”.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

n this introduction to their Special Issue @sarahellmuller.bsky.social & @fannybadache.bsky.social discuss how tectonic shifts in world politics affect UN peace missions. They promote a macro turn in peace research.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Contemporary Security Policy Children of their Time: The Impact of World Politics on United Nations Peace Missions. Volume 46, Issue 2 of Contemporary Security Policy

📢 Our second issue of the year is out!

Vol 46(2) features the Special Issue "Children of their time: The impact of world politics on United Nations peace operations".

Special Issue editors: @sarahellmuller.bsky.social & @fannybadache.bsky.social

👉 www.tandfonline.com/toc/fcsp20/4...

A 🧵

US allies’ foreign policy alignment in an era of great power competition: An analysis of domestic politics This article examines how audience costs affect secondary powers’ foreign policy alignment with their patron state amid great power competition. Through a novel survey experiment centered on South ...

🚨New article online

"In today’s Sino-US strategic competition, US allies face significant costs for alignment with Washington"

Do citizens of secondary powers penalize their leadership for retracting alignment commitments? Insights from South Korea: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Contemporary Security Policy Cooptation in Great Power Rivalries. Volume 46, Issue 1 of Contemporary Security Policy

Special Issue on "Cooptation in Great Power Rivalries", eds. Gadi Heimann, Deganit Paikowsky, Andreas Kruck & Bernhard Zangl, now out @cspjournal.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/toc/fcsp20/c...

Cobra Gold over four decades: hedging, alliances and a United States–Thailand multilateral military exercise This article investigates two research questions: firstly, whether small state hedging can be compatible with alliances, and secondly, what Thailand’s troubled alliance with the United States porte...

🚨New article online

Military exercises have an important role as sources of political-military messaging, argues Gregory Raymond.

What does the decline in the scale of military exercise Cobra Gold in the past 15 years tell us about the Thailand-US alliance?

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Russia’s Wagner Group and the sustainment of authoritarianism in Africa: Implications for China at home and abroad As captured by Authoritarian Conflict Management (ACM), Russian reliance upon Wagner Group in Africa runs counter to several Chinese efforts: economic and trade projects, development and conflict p...

🚨New article online

In this study, Christopher Spearin shows how Russia's use of Authoritarian Conflict Management (ACM) techniques in Africa through Wagner Group has also disrupted several Chinese efforts.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Local engagement and U.S. military attitudes toward gender integration: Evidence from Afghanistan ABSTRACT As debates on gender integration growin the military and Women, Peace, and Security scholarship, security studies scholars and policy experts are scrutinizing the link between gender and operational effectiveness. This article argues that deployed experiences create opportunities for soldiers to observe women’s engagement with host communities, particularly local women - contributing to soldiers' improved attitudes toward gender integration. Employing interviews and an online survey with a total of 43 US active duty and veterans who served in ISAF in Afghanistan, we find that most who hadserved in mixed-gender units commended female soldiers’ interactions with local populations and linked these observations with improved assessments of the operating environment.

Research Spotlight:📙Heidi Hardt and Stefanie von Hlatky examine local engagement and attitudes toward women in the U.S. military in “Local Engagement and U.S. Military Attitudes toward Gender Integration: Evidence from Afghanistan” from @cspjournal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....