A Subjective Approach to International Relations: The Battle for Meaning

China’s growing power and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have thrust geopolitics back to the centre of the global stage, but the old frameworks of international relations, with their positivist methods and their emphasis on structural determinants, will not enable us to understand the increasingly dangerous world in which we are living today.

Bertrand Badie argues that states and the many other actors now operating in the international arena are products of their cultural contexts and politic...