Why do states protect refugees? In the past twenty years, states have sought to limit access to asylum by increasing their border controls and introducing extraterritorial controls. Yet no state has sought to exit the 1951 Refugee Convention or the broader international refugee regime. This book argues that such international policy shifts represent an ongoing process whereby refugee protection is shaped and redefined by states and other actors. Since the seventeenth century, a mix of coll...

Today, there are over 40 million conflict-induced internally displaced persons (IDPs) globally, almost double the number of refugees. Yet, IDPs are protected only by the soft-law Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement at the global level. Instead of a dedicated international organization, IDPs receive protection and assistance only through the UN’s cluster approach.Orchard argues that while an international IDP protection regime exists, many aspects of it are informal, with ID...

Norms research in international relations has developed sufficiently over the past thirty-five years to become its own sub-discipline within the field. It has its own corresponding 'toolbox' of concepts, approaches, and methods which have often resulted from debates representing distinct perspectives on how norms matter for IR as a field and for global international relations more generally. Even so, three groups of enduring questions continue to sit at the heart of norms research: first, ...

Transnational Actors in War and Peace provides a comparative examination of a range of transnational actors who have been key to the conduct of war and peace promotion, and of how they interact with states and each other. It explores the identities, organization, strategies and influence of transnational actors involved in contentious politics, armed conflict, and peacemaking.While the study of transnational politics has been a rapidly growing field, to date, the disparate actors h...

Over the past thirty years, norms research has evolved into a significant subfield within International Relations and beyond. 'Contesting the World' delves into the development of norms, exploring their emergence, change and legitimacy on both domestic and international levels. This in-depth volume presents the interpretation-contestation framework, positioning it as the primary theoretical mechanism for understanding norms. Leading scholars spanning diverse sub-fields and epistemological ...

This volume examines the ongoing construction of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, elaborating on areas of both consolidation and contestation.The book focuses on how the R2P doctrine has been both consolidated and contested along three dimensions, regarding its meaning, status and application. The first focuses on how the R2P should be understood in a theoretical sense, exploring it through the lens of the International Relations constructivist approach and through dif...