Yesterday was a very busy day for our department and knowledge production! Thank you to everyone who attended the book launch for Dr @ndmlees.bsky.social and our offsite round table for the Dayton Peace Agreement which featured Dr @birtegippert.bsky.social at @ljmuofficial.bsky.social 📚👩‍⚖️⚖️

An excellent day for the Liverpool politics departments A superb book launch by the superb @ndmlees.bsky.social at UoL And a brilliant roundtable at LJMU reflecting on 30 years since the Dayton Peace Agreement organised by @matesuba.bsky.social @birtegippert.bsky.social

Launch event for my new book 'The International Relations of the North-South Divide' today.

An underrated big picture question is why small, rich countries exist. Why aren't they bullied and extorted by countries with greater total resources?

This is overall quite similar to Michael Mann's analysis of fascism's appeal as offering a) revenge for frightened elites b) 'cracking heads together' to get the nation moving again during a period of class conflict.

Jost's recent book provides a new analysis of the dangers of fragmented national security institutions. The accompanying article in International Studies Quarterly has a slightly different (and better designed) quantitative analysis as well as an extra case study: academic.oup.com/isq/article/...

Book launch event upcoming!

'the Security Dilemma... does not exist without underlying competition – actual or potential – over scarce, coveted objects of human desire, which is the overlooked reason why the Dilemma flares up in the first place. The structural realists’ ‘explanation’ has no engine.' Azar Gat

The book is now with the publisher for printing and distribution. bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-internat...

An absolute classic. I think it's a broader phenomenon: 'We pretend to work and you pretend to pay us' ; 'We pretend to study and you pretend to test us'.

Just read this very interesting contribution to the debate on the Global South as a diplomatic coalition at the United Nations by Gorana Draguljić and @nickanspach.bsky.social academic.oup.com/isagsq/artic...

Another great thread from Liam, genuinely very thought provoking.

Really great thread. Seems to me like some of the 'restrainers' and unilateralists were suffering from what Jon Elster calls the 'younger sibling' fallacy - that others won't react strategically to our own strategic actions.

Had a great @mybisa.bsky.social panel on foreign policy of Global South states feat Obert Hodzi, Ahmed Umar, Thaís Doria with Meera Sabaratnam as discussant.

Most self-proclaimed 'geopolitics analysts' simply aren't very good at analysing geopolitics. It's usually little more than sports commentary, with a terrible signal to noise ratio.

In a week and a day, I'll be presenting findings from my new book The International Relations of the North-South Divide as part of the British International Studies Association conference in Belfast. Looking forward to sharing ideas with others interested in Global South foreign policy.

Looking forward to @mybisa.bsky.social - where I'll be discussing 'Southern Strategies: Foreign Policy Perspectives of Global South States' with a great group of panelists. My paper offers a new way of looking at foreign policy differences between Global South states, using cluster analysis.

My forthcoming book with Bristol University Press, The International Relations of the North-South Divide, now available to pre-order from Blackwells. blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...

Research (incl mine) shows that making decisions in a bubble based on loyalty rather than competence can be disastrous for foreign & economic policy (never thought my research on dictatorships would be relevant to the US rather than its adversaries) www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801...

Forthcoming, my first book 'The International Relations of the North-South Divide' with Bristol University Press. bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-internat...

I have a lot of new followers, so I thought I’d introduce myself. I’m Nicholas Lees, Senior Lecturer (Associate Prof) of International Politics at Liverpool University. I mainly research role of material inequalities in shaping diplomatic relations between states. Recent research below.

This is terrible news and a great loss for conflict studies. Valeriano made important contributions to research on international rivalries, territorial conflict and cyberwarfare. He also published a peer-reviewed forecast of the Russian war with Ukraine.

Good to see this in print. New perspectives on some classic questions in international relations.

There's a reason why even authoritarian powers like the USSR never pulled stunts like this even with vassals. Absolute amateurism.

Very good, as usual. 'I don’t write about international power politics because normally I just don’t know enough about the countries and actors involved, even though it often seems as if this is also true of many of those who do talk about such things.' Very true.

“We should no more support secular versions of blasphemy laws than the old religious variety.” My @observeruk.bsky.social column: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

If you've ever used the Polity data, read this from Monty Marshall. tl;dr Polity is coding recent US events as an executive self-coup and an adverse regime change.

It looks pretty certain that Global North-Global South relations will continue to be rocky for the next 4 years.

Reminds me of when Jervis posed a puzzle for power political theories of IR: 'how can we explain the fact that the United States did not conquer Canada sometime in the past hundred years?'

Alongside the dire implications for US democracy, the dismantling of USAID is hugely consequential for America's relationship with states of the Global South.

As highlighted by this discussion between philosophers, Trump's presidency is a natural experiment testing different versions of the democratic peace thesis. The consequences might be unhappy, but we might learn quite a lot.

Aujourd’hui, Charlie pense à toutes les victimes de janvier 2015 : à Frédéric Boisseau, à Michel Renaud, à Franck Brinsolaro, à Ahmed Merabet, à Clarissa Jean-Philippe, à Yohan Cohen, à Philippe Braham, à François-Michel Saada et à Yoav Hattab.

Professionally, the best thing about 2024 has been the growing sense that I'm surrounded by a group of really great, supportive colleagues @livunipol.bsky.social Come study with us! We are great.

What can conflict studies learn from a diversionary war that never happened because the leadership that needed the diversion was too incompetent?

The rapid fall of the Assad regime is a great example of an information cascade. Repressive regimes lead to a lot of preference falsification, creating information problems for the authoritarian leader and for citizens.

History & Politics at Edge Hill University is advertising an open call PhD scholarship - fees and stipend. This is a great programme which ensures that candidates exit with a solid teaching qualification as well as a PhD: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DKY256/g...

Kyung-Pil Kim in @jjps.bsky.social 'A series of revelations related to armed forces over the past few years in South Korea highlighted a problem in Korean democracy: the use of the military in domestic politics for the political interests of the ruling power.' www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Coup scenarios are a saddle, and its not good to be a prominent political actor on the wrong side.

A few important fact to remember: S. Korea lived under some form of military dictatorship from 1965-1988! Brazil lived under a military dictatorship from 1964-1985! Democracy is not an abstraction to these folk, it's a vulnerable thing that they want to protect.

Hard to ignore as an element in the explanation for American political trends.

My documentary, The Battle For Kyiv, is available online now for the next two weeks as part of the Byline Documentary Festival, you can watch it from today until the 8th December using the link below thanks to @bylinetv.bsky.social! www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ERJ...

Anything missing? #IRsky

Noted with interest: 'Does economic globalization promote civil peace in developing countries?' Kollmeyer in @coco-journal.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Politics at Liverpool is inviting applications for the UKRI-funded PhD or MA+PhD scholarships through the NWSSDTP. Open to UK and international students, fully funded, start date October 2025, application deadline 3rd February 2024. nwssdtp.ac.uk/how-to-apply/

Recent reading: Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa edited by Mansour and Thompson. Another major contribution to research on strategic rivalries, examining how their evolution has been shaped by major upheavals in the region.

Freshly published 'Is world politics class politics? States, social forces and voting in the United Nations General Assembly 1946–2020' @coco-journal.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Japanese Journal of Political Science Where not #OpenAccess, the articles in our September 2023 issue are free to read until the end of 2024 - cup.org/3Yx0TEE With papers by @ndmlees.bsky.social & more

Moynihan and Kirkpatrick were also wary or even hostile. The General Assembly is a long way from being America's favourite international forum.

This is not new for Republicans to be fair. As John Bolton, the UN ambassador under Bush said: “There's no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.”