This study explores one of the least studied components of forced migrants’ journeys—the internal political conditions of the host/transit countries. Using the social navigation approach, we demonstrate how these conditions influence the progress or halt of migration journeys of asylum seekers. We interviewed asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan about their journey from their country of origin. Based on these life stories, we derived three salient political themes affecting their journeys: state political instability, the state of freedoms, and lasting persecution. We conclude with insights into the influence of the political component along the journey.

How do protracted conflicts abroad impact the relations between diaspora groups in their shared host state? Drawing from the rivalry between the Israel and pro-Palestinian ethnic lobbies in the United States, this paper develops an original framework for assessing the relations diasporas have with one another when their ‘homelands’ are in conflict. The Israel and pro-Palestinian lobbies have used four strategies, along with their accompanying tactics, to actively hamper the interests of their opponent. The results raise important questions regarding the extent ethnic lobbies represent their diasporas, as well as drive the need for further research into other prospective cases.

With growing numbers of forcibly displaced people and their tendency to spatially cluster, destination countries around the world consider dispersing them over their territory. While the egocentric not-in-my-back-yard syndrome (NIMBYism) predicts that dispersion will spark a public backlash, sociotropic considerations and appeals to civic fairness predict the contrary. I theorize that the institutional set-up determines which force prevails. Although the local proximity of refugees triggers public opposition, it can be substantially countered by tighter regulation on refugee dispersion. Setting clear guiding rules, such as an upper limit or proportional allocation can enhance both burden-sharing in the resettlement of refugees and public support for their incorporation. Evidence from survey experiments conducted in Norway and Israel supports these theoretical accounts. The findings have implications for understanding how countries can mitigate public backlash against immigrants and refugees while maintaining their admission and integration.

In this article, we locate a tendency to revert to ‘Western,’ ‘national,’ and/or ‘racial’ times during periods of intense uncertainty or ‘crisis’ when individuals and societies seek to make sense of the present through the past, drawing upon the concept of a ‘time-border.’ We suggest this tendency is a ‘conventional’ pull in temporal thinking that has recurred in modern time cultures. In our own present, this reversion appears to be occurring despite novel approaches to time and periodization in historical research over the past thirty years, prompting a radical reformulation of how historians study the past (in terms of the influence of the global turn or Deep Turn and big history on notions of historical time, or new periodizations of the Anthropocene and posthumanism). This innovative approach to time jostles uneasily against the pull towards ‘conservative,’ linear, and national/racialised time often found in public discourse — highlighting the tension, as well as the reciprocity, between linear and cyclical approaches to time in lived experience and historiography. Throughout the essay, the urgency to reconsider notions of historical time and periodization in view of the coronavirus pandemic is a key theme tying together an analysis of time, periodization, and historiography.

Does social cohesion explain variation in violence within divided cities? In line with insights drawn from the ethnic politics, criminology and urban geography literature we suggest that explaining variation in intergroup violence is not possible by relying on motivational elements alone, and attention to social cohesion is required as well. While cohesion can facilitate collective action that aids violent mobilization, it can also strengthen social order that contributes to the group’s capability to control and prevent unrest. We test these relationships using an application of a latent variable model to an integration of survey results, crime data and expert-coded data in order to measure cohesion in East Jerusalem neighborhoods. We then analyze its impact on riots using three original geolocated datasets recording violence in the neighborhoods between the years 2013 and 2015. Our results reveal that even with controls for economic and political determinants of violence, as well as for spatial clustering and temporal explanations, neighborhood-level social cohesion is a robust explanatory variable that negatively correlates with riots.

Personal commitments are a ubiquitous but undertheorized phenomenon in the everyday wheels of world politics. While resonating with multiple threads in international relations theory, the role of individuals’ commitments in statecraft, diplomacy, and foreign policy has hardly been addressed in and of itself. Drawing on insights from symbolic interactionism and organizational psychology, this article conceptualizes the notion of commitment highlighting its omnipresence in foreign policy and diplomatic practice. Specifically, the article demonstrates the analytical cache of the notion of commitment by focusing on moments when state-agents deviated from their commitment to the national interest, acting on behalf of other foci of commitment. Relying on Israeli, French, and EU diplomatic archives, we examine three illustrative case studies that show how and why state-agents dedicate time, energy, and resources to advance interests other than those of the state.

In recent years, political scientists increasingly have used data-science tools to research political processes, positions, and behaviors. Because both domestic and international politics are grounded in oral and written texts, computerized text analysis (CTA)—typically based on natural-language processing—has become one of the most notable applications of data-science tools in political research. This article explores the promises and perils of using CTA methods in political research and, specifically, the study of international relations. We highlight fundamental analytical and methodological gaps that hinder application and review processes. Whereas we acknowledge the significant contribution of CTA to political research, we identify a dual “engagement deficit” that may distance those without prior background in data science: (1) the tendency to prioritize methodological innovation over analytical and theoretical insights; and (2) the scholarly and political costs of requiring high proficiency levels and training to comprehend, assess, and use advanced research models.

Established powers enjoy privileges in world politics coveted by emerging powers. These privileges vary in their level of institutionalization: full formal privileges, partial formal privileges, and informal privileges. We identify two alternative strategic routes through which emerging powers target these three types of privileges: a top-down and a bottom-up route. We analyze two factors that impact the choice between these two routes: restrictiveness of eligibility criteria for winning privileges, and the expected levels of opposition by both established powers and outsiders. We examine the impact of these factors on two cases in which India negotiated privileges: India’s top-down campaign to win a permanent seat on the UN Security Council; and India’s bottom-up campaign to enter the nuclear club as a de facto nuclear weapon state. Highly restrictive eligibility criteria along with high levels of opposition drove India to gradually seek nuclear privileges through a bottom-up route.

In 2017, we formed a writing group with Lee Ann Fujii in which we shared chapters and discussed our respective book projects, including the work that would eventually become Show Time. The text below draws, inter alia, on our correspondence.

It is a crazy, crazy project that may yet fail but if it does, it will fail spectacularly. And I will be happy with that.

On January 6th, 2021, a shirtless, heavily tattooed man wearing a fur hat topped with horns and trailing animal tails, face painted red, white, and blue, stood in the halls of US Congress holding a “Q SENT ME!” sign and an American flag. In photos, he appears to roar as his fellow insurrectionists’ stream around him. We think it’s fairly safe to say that political scientists did not see the QAnon Shaman coming.

Does an ongoing stalemate in a peace process affect the international agenda toward the conflict and international perceptions about policies that should be adopted to resolve it? We provide a tentative answer to this question by drawing insight from analysis of developments and trends in international media attention to key terms and concepts in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict during cycles of violence, as well as periods of rapprochement and peace negotiations, in the last two and half decades (1996–2021). We find that although attention to the Israeli–Palestinian peace process has been declining over the years, much of the international discussion continues to be devoted to relaunching a negotiation process leading to a two-state solution. The ongoing stalemate in such “process,” we show, provides ample opportunities for alternative approaches to emerge advocating alternative endgames (e.g., one-state), international pressure (e.g., Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), or unilateral steps (e.g., annexation). Each of these approaches promotes an alternative vision and provides a different path and employs its own terminology and vision of the future. The Israeli–Palestinian case study helps illustrate what may happen to peace when the process is stalled, and how a stalemate can produce change in the international debate on the conflict and push for the emergence of new policy directions and agendas.