The Golden Age of Multilateralism Is Over
Foreign Policy Magazine: Jo Inge Bekkevold (IFS) focuses on the multilateral system that emerged after World War II unravelling before our eyes. He argues that there is a need for a serious debate about why the system is unravelling, whether it can be saved and what might potentially save it.
Theory seminar: Theorising territorial passions
Professor Gerard Toal visits NUPI for this theory seminar on 24 April.
Spillet om Grønland – Danmarks villedning av FN og Trumps arktiske drøm
For å forstå spillet om Grønland i dag, og ikke minst situasjonen grønlendere lever i 2026, er det helt nødvendig å forstå historien til denne øya...
Theory Seminar: We are as Gods: On Silicon Valley, Longtermism and Eschatology
Professor Elke Schwarz visits NUPI on 20 March for this Theory Seminar
Sixty years of Nordic International Relations
In this contribution, the editors introduce the 60th anniversary Special Issue of Cooperation and Conflict . Emerging during the early Cold War, Cooperation and Conflict has over the years come to provide a forum for broad and pluralist theorizing within the discipline of International Relations (IR). The contributions in this Special Issue reflect on these intellectual trajectories, tracing how Nordic scholarship has simultaneously shaped and been shaped by global theoretical debates, underscoring the journal’s role as a pluralist and reflexive site of inquiry. At the same time, togther, shey showcase the breadth and scope of Nordic IR today, as well as changing notions of Nordic cooperation and the meaning of ‘Nordic’.
Constructivist theorizing in tumultuous times (ft Nicholas Onuf and Stefano Guzzini)
With the growing sense of perpetual and compounding global crises and war, it is not only policy makers that are scrambling to respond. The discip...
Roundtable: Constructivism in an Era of Geopolitics
What is the relevance of constructivist scholarship in a world shaped by great power competition, war, and security concerns?
Anarchy is What the Balance of Power Made of It: Two Core Concepts and The Public/Private Distinction in International Relations
In this article, Morten Skumsrud Andersen questions a familiar assumption in International Relations (IR): that the balance of power and anarchy are mutually reinforcing concepts. He argues instead that this relationship is neither natural nor necessary. Modern understandings of anarchy do not reflect timeless features of international politics, but are historically contingent outcomes of changes in how the balance of power concept itself has been understood and deployed. Drawing on conceptual history, Andersen traces how the balance of power transitioned from a principle embodying Europe’s public interest in the eighteenth century to an expression of national rivalry and competitive self-interest in the nineteenth. This transformation was underpinned by a broader redefinition of the public/private distinction, which enabled states to be imagined as atomistic units operating in decentralized, market-like competition—what came to be seen as anarchy. By recovering the practical history of the balance of power, Andersen reinterprets the genealogy of two foundational IR concepts and call for greater reflexivity about the analytical tools through which international relations are theorized.