International Studies Quarterly

International Studies Quarterly (ISQ) is the flagship journal of the International Studies Association. It seeks to publish
leading scholarship that engages with significant theoretical, empirical, and normative subjects in international
studies.

Volume 63, Issue 4 December 2019

Article Title
1) Social Ties and Strategy of Civil Resistance
Author & Problem Discussed
Publication
Ches Thurber This article examines the impact of social ties on a
challenger's ability to initiate a civil resistance campaign.
13 July, 2019 Recent waves of nonviolent uprisings, from the color
revolutions of Eastern Europe to the Arab Spring, have
sparked renewed scholarly interest in civil resistance as a
strategy in conflict. However, most research has focused
on the effectiveness and outcomes of civil resistance,
with less attention paid to when, why, and how
challengers to regime power come to embrace a
strategy of nonviolent action in the first place. Drawing
upon a longitudinal analysis of challenger organizations
and coalitions in Nepal, this article illustrates how social
ties inform challenger’s assessments of the viability of
civil resistance and consequently shape their strategic
behavior.
2) The Dark Side of Cooperation: International
Organizations and Member Cooperation
3) The Diplomatic Representation of a State in
International Crisis: Diplomatic
Collaboration during the US- Iran Hostage
Crisis
Emilie M The central argument of this article is that the
Hafner- characteristics of IO membership determine both
whether corruption is tolerated and the extent to which
Burton,
formal anti-corruption rules effectively combat the
Christina J problem. First, groups of corrupt states are reticent to
Schneider enforce good governance norms or rules against other
IO members, rendering punishment for corruption
August 19, incredible. Second, leaders may witness the value of
corruption to their IO peers and learn to act the same
2019 way.
Theories of crisis de-escalation often focus on conflict,
stress, and information problems. However, crisis de-
David E Banks
escalation may sometimes hinge on how de-escalation is
interpreted by domestic audiences. This article shows
July 6, 2019 how diplomatic presentation can be instrumental for the
crafting of diplomatic outcomes that states believe are in
their mutual interest but that run the risk of being
rejected by their domestic publics. Successful diplomatic
presentation requires that states collude together to
manage their performance, engage in teamwork, and
control the impact of unsympathetic audiences.
In evaluating this mechanism, Author has analyzed the
diplomacy surrounding the Iran Hostage Crisis. During
this crisis, regime officials from the United States and
Iran colluded in a theatrical “scenario,” in which both
sides adopted specific roles in order to satisfy the
sentiments of US and Iranian publics. This article shows
that complications regarding the presentation of this

4) How do prior ruling Affects Future Disputes
scenario explain escalation of the crisis better than
prominent alternatives. This argument contributes to
the growing literature on symbolic diplomacy in
international relations, while also challenging common
assumptions about the adversarial nature of crises.
Jeffery Kucik International dispute systems are often designed so that
dispute body rulings do not set precedent. Yet
August 19, 2019
governments have incentives to learn from prior
decisions. Past rulings convey important information
about how the law is applied. This is especially true in
the World Trade Organization (WTO), where disputes
frequently occur between the same members and over
the same issues. Author argues that case law increases
the likelihood of early settlement. This helps explain why
fifty percent of WTO cases end prior to a formal ruling.
 Volume 63 Issue 3 September 2019

Article Title Author & Problem Discussed

1) War as Symbolic Politics
Publication
Stuart J This article uses Kaufman's symbolic politics theory of ethnic war as
Kaufman the basis for a broader theory integrating most existing insights
about the causes of international and civil war. It starts with
April 30, 2019 findings from psychology showing that people are intuitive thinkers
whose decisions result less from rational calculation than from
symbolic predispositions—biases such as ideology and prejudice.
Studies also show that increased feelings of threat lead to increased
aggressive attitudes and behavior. Symbolic politics theory explains
how individual attitudes can result in collective action using
mobilization theory, with social organization and framing by leaders
explaining which attitudes become political action. According to
symbolist logic, important causes of war include aggressive
symbolic predispositions among leaders or mass publics,
heightened threat perceptions, and strong political organizations
backing aggressive leaders. Crises and enduring rivalries make war
more likely because they strengthen hostile predispositions and
threat perceptions, thereby promoting mobilization for war.
Cooperative transnational ties and democratic political institutions
are among the factors that tend to promote peace.
2) Proximities of Violence: Civil Order Beyond
Governance Institutions
June 17, 2019
Sarah G Phillips This article is concerned with the relationship between the quality
of a country's governance institutions and the degree of civil order
it experiences. Using evidence from Somaliland, it argues that order
and peaceful cohabitation can be sustained not only when, but
even partly because, governance institutions are incapable of
reliably controlling violence. It suggests that Somaliland's post
conflict peace is less grounded in the constraining power of its
governance institutions than in a powerful discourse about the
country's structural, temporal, and physical proximity to war.
Through its sensitivity to the ease with which peace gives way to
war, this discourse indirectly harnesses an apparent propensity to
disorder as a source of order. This case challenges the “common
sense” causal relationship between institutions and order. If either
the strength or the weakness of institutions can offer foundations
for order, then neither quality can be assigned as its cause without
also being its effect.
3) Track-Change Diplomacy: Technology,
Affordances, and the Practice of International
Negotiations
Rebecca Adler- How does technology influence international negotiations? This
Nisen, Alena article explores “track-change diplomacy,” that is, how diplomats
use information and communication technology (ICT) such as word
Drieschova
processing software and mobile devices to collaboratively edit and
negotiate documents. To analyze the widespread but understudied
June 21, 2019 phenomenon of track-change diplomacy, the article adopts a
practice-oriented approach to technology, developing the concept
of affordance: the way a tool or technology simultaneously enables
and constrains the tasks users can possibly perform with it. The
article shows how digital ICT affords share ability, visualization,
and immediacy of information, thus shaping the temporality and
power dynamics of international negotiations. These three
affordances have significant consequences for how states construct
and promote national interests; how diplomats reach compromises
among a large number of states (as text edits in collective drafting
exercises); and how power plays out in international negotiations.
 Volume 61 Issue 1 March 2017
Article Title
1) Altering Capabilities or Imposing Costs?
Intervention Strategy and Civil War Outcomes
2) Who keeps the Peace? Understanding State
Contributions to UN Peacekeeping Operations
Author & Problem Discussed
Publication
Benjamin T. How do military interventions affect the outcome of civil wars? The
Jones diversity of military interventions makes it difficult to answer this
question; their variation means that they do not affect civil wars in a
straightforward way. In particular, strategy and timing play a pivotal
May 10, 2017 role in determining the effect of an intervention. Thus, author
isolates three intervention strategies: indirect (bolstering the
capabilities of the supported side), direct-conventional (degrading
the capabilities of the opposition), and direct-unconventional
(imposing costs on the opposition). He evaluates the impact of these
strategies on the outcome of civil wars using a dataset of all civil
wars from 1944 to 2007. His analysis reveals that the efficacy of
intervention strategies varies over time. Third-party support for
rebel organizations is most effective during a critical window early in
a civil war. In contrast, direct military assistance for the government
increases the odds of a government victory only once a civil war
becomes protracted. It also reduces the odds of a negotiated
outcome to the conflict, whereas indirect support for the
government proves most effective early in the war.
Jacob D. Kathman, Recent research demonstrates that larger and better-equipped
Molly M. Melin United Nations peacekeeping missions more effectively ensure
peace and security. This raises an important question: what explains
November 17, the willingness of member-states to contribute the substantial
2016 numbers of troops needed to achieve peacekeeping goals? We
argue that narrow member-state security interests offer an
important explanation. We find that states embroiled in an ongoing
rivalry with another state in the international system contribute

3) The Emergence of Foreign Policy
more personnel to ongoing missions. Additionally, we find that
regimes concerned about coup attempts increase deployments to
peacekeeping operations. In a more general sense, this article
suggests that the provision of security by peacekeeping operations
to their host states is partially dependent upon higher levels of
insecurity elsewhere in the international system.
Halvard Leira International relations scholarship typically treats foreign policy as a
taken-for-granted analytical concept. It assumes either that all
historical polities have foreign policies or that foreign policy
Feb 5, 2016
originates in seventeenth-century Europe with the separation
between the “inside” and “outside” of the state. It generally holds
that foreign policy differs in essential ways from other kinds of
policy, such as carrying with it a special need for secrecy. I argue
against this view. The difference between “foreign” and “domestic”
policy results from specific political processes; secrecy begat foreign
policy. Growing domestic differentiation between state and civil
society in the eighteenth century—articulated through a relatively
free press operating in a nascent public sphere—enabled the
emergence of foreign policy as a practical concept. The concept
served to delimit the legitimate sphere of political discourse from
the exclusive, executive sphere of king and cabinet. I explore these
processes in Britain and France, important cases with different
trajectories, one of reform, the other of revolution. Historicizing
foreign policy like this serves to denaturalize the separation
between different forms of policy, as well as the necessity of
secrecy. Doing so cautions against the uncritical application of
abstract analytical terms across time and space.
 Journal: Insight Turkey
Published since 1999, Insight Turkey has been a leading journal in the area of the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. The journal covers a broad range of
topics related to Turkish domestic and foreign policy issues and global affairs, in particular in the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Europe.

Volume 21, issue 1, Winter 2019

Article Title Author Problem Discussed

1) Militarization and Securitization in Africa: The Role of
Sino-American Geostrategic Presence
Earl Conteh- This article is predicated on the argument that the African continent
Morgan has become a focus of geopolitical and economic attention,
especially as a locus of Sino-American rivalry and to some extent
cooperation. Accordingly, Sino-American presence in Africa has
resulted in: (i) the militarization and securitization of Africa
impelled by the war on terrorism and the need to protect vested
political and economic interests; (ii) the continent becoming a
theater for the interplay of differences between American and
Chinese militarization and securitization; and (iii) the inevitable and
rare cases of military and security cooperation between the two
powers on the continent. The article probes how and why the two
powers have militarized and securitized the continent, the activities
that constitute militarization and securitization, and prospects for
further militarization and securitization in the context of both
rivalry and minimal cooperation.
2) Re-examining the “Base”: The Political and Security
Dimensions of Turkey’s Military Presence in Somalia
3) The U.S War on Terror Discourse: Mapping De-
politicization and the Politics of Confinement in
Afghanistan
4) Guardians of Arab State: When Militaries Intervene in
Politics, from Iraq to Mauritania
Ash Rossiter, In late 2017, Turkey opened a facility to train the Somali National
Breden J. Cannon Army. Routinely described as a military base since, the move has
caused consternation within and beyond the region and is held up
as proof that a new scramble for Africa is underway. By
contextualizing this new military mission within Turkey’s wider role
in Somalia, this article demonstrates why the term “base” is
misleading and how training the SNA is consistent with Turkey’s
foreign policy aims in the country. As the SNA becomes a more
powerful security actor, the article also shows how it may be (mis)
used, by whom, and for what purposes, and identifies the risks this
might pose for Turkey, Somalia and the wider region.
Pamir H. Sahill This article argues that today, 17 years after the September 11,
2001 attacks, it is even more important to look at the beginnings of,
and to reinterpret, the U.S. “War on Terror” discourse. To do so,
this article employs a poststructuralist Critical Discourse Analysis
and it advances the debate around the notion of “evilization.”
Drawing upon Foucault’s work on the history of madness, it
develops the notion of the politics of confinement and situates it in
the context of Afghanistan. The article notes that the politics of
confinement is illiberalizing and oppressive, contradicting the idea
of emancipation functioning behind the U.S. intervention in
Afghanistan. Thus, the contradictory discourse of the war in
Afghanistan does not serve the purpose of victory as Trump
envisages it.
.
Florence Gaub The article discusses the role of the militaries in politics in the
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) which has been one of the
most popular issues among scholars and researchers focusing on
 the Middle East politics since the Arab Uprisings erupted against the
autocrats. It is a common assumption that the autocrats in the
MENA ruled for decades with the support of the militaries.

Journal: Insight Turkey

Volume 21, Issue 2, Spring 2019
Article Title Author Problem Discussed
1) Prospects of Trilateral Relations between Turkey, Serbia, Muhidin Mulalic This paper aims to evaluate the trilateral relations between Turkey,
and Bosnia and Herzegovina Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the course of a proper
evaluation of the growing dynamics of diplomatic relations between
these three countries, it is important to assess relations at the
presidential and ministerial levels. The research analyzes official
statements, declarations, and agreements that envision the
tripartite mechanism. Besides putting these official statements,
declarations, and agreements into perspective, the research aims to
assess the major implications, activities, and results of trilateral
relations. It is significant to determine to what extent trilateral
relations affect diplomatic relations, regional stability, regional
cooperation, tourism, trade, and economic relations. This paper
also aims to put the trilateral relations into perspective by
explaining constructive and proactive Turkish foreign policy in the
Balkans.

2) Russia in Balkans: Great Power Politics and Local Vsevolod The present paper looks into the current policies of Russia in the
Response Samokhvalov Balkans. It argues that after a short period of withdrawal from the
region, Moscow is currently making efforts to regain its position

3) Transformation of Political Islam in Turkey: Causes and
Effect
4) The Western Balkans in the Transatlantic Security
Context: Where do we go from here?
and, in some sense, it has been a quite successful come-back.
Russia has enhanced its economic presence, political clout, and
symbolic influence in some of the countries of the region. However,
Russia’s present return to the Balkans is of a quite different nature
than its past engagement there as Moscow has now moved to a
more assertive foreign policy. The paper also looks at the response
of the Balkans countries to Moscow’s policies. It argues that the
Balkans countries have adopted a more pragmatic approach to
relations with Russia and as a result, Russia and these countries are
in the process of finding a new, workable modus operandi for their
interaction.
Hakan Koni In Transformation of Political Islam in Turkey: Causes and Effects,
Hakan Köni focuses on Turkish Political Islam’s (TPI) transformation
in terms of the movement’s understanding of secularism and
foreign policy. While the structure of the book is quite
comprehensive in that it begins with the late Ottoman era, the
author focuses on the era between 1960 and 2012.
Oya Dursun- This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the contemporary
Ozkansa situation in the Western Balkans, examining the regional countries’
prospects for Euro-Atlantic integration and the implications of the
latest developments for transatlantic security. It makes the
argument that NATO accession acts as a prelude to eventual EU
accession, ensuring that the countries stay the course of engaging
in reforms and contributing to Euro-Atlantic security while
confirming their commitment to democracy.
 Journal: Insight Turkey
Volume 21, Issue 3, Summer 2019
Article Title
1) Persuading through Culture, Values, Ideas: The Case of
Turkey’s Cultural Diplomacy
2) Syria Burning: A short History of a Catastrophe
3) Economic Power and International Security
Author Problem Discussed
Federico Donelli Cultural diplomacy always links to and often overlaps with soft
power and public diplomacy. Thus, the three notions have entered
the lexicon of International Relations, and have become standard
terms in foreign policy thinking. Drawing on the conceptualization
of cultural diplomacy, this article examines the features, structure,
actors, and possibilities of Turkey’s foreign cultural strategy.
Specifically, it focuses on an analysis of the double dimension of
Turkish cultural diplomacy, the high-culture, and the pop-culture,
asserting that the success of the latter has allowed Turkey to limit
the damage to its soft power caused by domestic political turmoil.
Furthermore, the research aims to highlight how Turkey has used
culture as a resource for its diplomacy –useful for strengthening
relations with other countries, enhancing cooperation, and
promoting Turkish interests abroad
Charles Glass Since the commencement of the Syrian uprising in March 2011,
which would thereafter change the existent regional order in the
Middle East, many have endeavored to understand the nature of
this conflict. There is a debate whether it is a promising revolution
or a devastating civil war.
H. Sonmez International security theories generally identify economic power
Atesoglu as the key determinant of military power, and thereby of security,
but there is usually not much explanation about the determinants
of economic power. In this article, a comprehensive model of
economic power is introduced and integrated with an international
security model. The integrated security model explicitly identifies
how the determinants of economic power affect international
security. The integrated model yields policy implications for
security and also suggests economic policies for enhancing the
international security of a regional or of a major power.