Research Digest No. 4

Welcome to Issue No. 4 of our resource for scholars using interpretive approaches to study politics! For details on the Digest’s goals, ethos, and compilation, check out our inaugural issue here.

In this issue, we’re glad to include several (self-)submissions from readers. Along with our usual ten methods-based and empirical analysis articles, we include two bonus “state-of-the-art” pieces that assess research trends in subfields where interpretive methods are prominent: an article from Edward Schatz reflecting critically on the analytical use of the term “decolonization” given its multiple understandings in practice, and an article from Emma Hutchison and Roland Bleiker on the role of emotion and rituals in political change. We note that, as shared by Dr. Bleiker, this was the “last project” of Dr. Hutchison wrote before she passed. We dedicate this Digest to her memory in recognition of her pioneering contributions demonstrating interpretive ways to study emotions in International Relations; notably, her work is cited in many of this Digest’s pieces.  

We also include a bonus “state-of the-community” piece that emerged from the collaborative work on the problematic effects of “passport privilege” in academia by Ezgi Yıldız, Mert Cangönül, Yixian Sun, Juanita Uribe, Samer Sharani, Lembe Tiky, and Kelebogile Zvobgo. Their “The Passports They Carry” article amplifies perspectives of Global South scholars facing injustices, exclusions, and financial and time burdens created by what a “global academic mobility divide.”

As always, articles are listed alphabetically by author rather than ranked and include a link to the piece. Please send your suggestions for recent articles (January 2026–present), along with any other suggestions for the Digest, to Lisel Hintz at Lh2@soas.ac.uk.

Happy reading, teaching, and citing!

Bonus Research: State of the Art

Schatz, Edward. “Persistent Problems with ‘Decolonization’: Reflections on the Central Asian Example,” Perspectives on Politics, published online 3 June 2026.

Abstract:

With the term “decolonization” circulating widely and animating debates inside and outside the academy, how can we ensure that it retains analytic value? In this paper I show that the meanings that the term has acquired in practice complicate empirical analysis. Specifically, I contend that three problems emerge. First, the term’s usage in practical struggles leads a foregrounding of its normative power over analytic precision. Second, this tends to bracket ends, glossing any move away from colonial practices as decolonial, in turn affecting scholarly treatments. Third, the term’s usage often produces an analytic flattening, downplaying nuance, context, and historical specificity. Not inherent to the concept itself, these problems are stubbornly present, despite recent work that seeks to address them. To make the discussion concrete, I focus on political science interventions about a single world region: Central Asia. The relative newness of scholarly engagement with Central Asia’s colonial and decolonial experiences provides an opportunity for critical reflection.

Hutchison, Emma and Roland Bleiker. “Ritual, Emotion, and Change in World Politics,” International Theory, published online 13 July 2026.

Abstract:

The question of political change – how the nature and the distinguishing features of orders persist or change – is an enduring puzzle in international theory. We engage ensuing debates through the burgeoning literature on the politics of rituals. We proceed in two steps. First, we introduce and build on existing scholarship that presents emotions as central to how rituals create a sense of collective unity. Second and primarily, we then show that emotions are also key to understanding how rituals can disrupt and transform order. To think so appears counterintuitive at first, for it is natural to think of rituals as being associated with tradition, with time-honoured processes and patterns. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, we show how the very power of rituals to enact and entrench political orders also provides disenfranchised individuals and groups with opportunities to challenge existing power relations. We argue that discomfort – being unsettled – is important for understanding how ritual and political change take place. We do so by linking rituals with shifts in collective feelings. The ensuing affective agency can explain how rituals – and the political orders they manage and sustain – are enacted and change over time.

Bonus Research: State of the Community

Yıldız, Ezgi, Mert Cangönül, Yixian Sun, Juanita Uribe, Samer Sharani, Lembe Tiky, and Kelebogile Zvobgo. “The Passports They Carry: Global South Scholars and the Global Academic Mobility Divide,” International Studies Perspectives, published online 14 July 2026.

Abstract:

Passport inequality is more than a simple logistical inconvenience; it is a fundamental injustice that undermines the ideals of fairness and equality that academia claims to support. Scholars from countries in the Global South often require visas for short-term research trips and conference travel in Global North countries where academic resources are concentrated. However, obtaining these visas means facing high hurdles that involve administratively complex. Exclusionary, and expensive application processes.  In addition to rejection decisions that can appear arbitrary, this process itself can deter many scholars. Mobility barriers and visa challenges impede an individual’s academic endeavors. But beyond that, this epistemic exclusion (in)visibly shapes the academic community, determining whose voices are heard and what kind of knowledge is shared and taken seriously. We conceptualize this pattern, which has received scant attention in International Relations (IR) as a “global academic mobility divide.” We explain this divide’s systemic and institutional drivers as well as its personal effects by drawing on our own experiences with mobility barriers. In so doing, we call for a reflexive approach in IR to counteract apathy and the illusory sense of equality in academic practices and offer policy solutions to promote a more inclusive and equitable academic community.

Digest Articles

Arceneaux, Phillip and Mitchell Hobbs, “Grand Strategy and Reputational Security: Evaluating the Strategic Narratives of Global Ireland 2025,” Public Relations Review, Vol. 52, No. 4, 2026.

Abstract:

Governments implement public diplomacy campaigns to manage foreign perceptions and build reputational security. We examine Global Ireland 2025 as a case of grand strategy in political public relations, designed to repair the reputational damage of Ireland’s 2008–2018 economic collapse and financial crisis. Focusing on organizational storytelling, we use a discourse analysis to identify and map the strategic narratives the government employed to cultivate perceptions of a stronger, more secure Ireland. Based on policy documents, the Irish government adopted a cooperative grand strategy, emphasizing identity narratives of global citizenship, system narratives of interdependence, and intermestic issue narratives speaking both to domestic and foreign publics. This reinforced Ireland’s cultural identity as forged from historical trauma to rebuild the national self-confidence and project that strength abroad to repair the reputational damage inflicted by the European Union’s bailout. This lends a perceived authenticity, legitimacy, and credibility with which Ireland can effectively counter adversarial narratives, persuade skeptics, and mobilize allies in pursuit of its security and prosperity. This expands public relations scholarship by contextualizing public diplomacy as the securitization of reputation management and trauma as a foundation for national identity formation and projection. Further, it informs public relations practice by demonstrating how grand strategy campaigns can be evaluated.

Blajer de la Garcia, Yuna. “Habits of Democracy: Mores, Practices, and Neighborhood Meetings in Paris,” European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 25, No. 2, 2026.

Abstract:

Where are democratic mores cultivated? Amid contemporary worries about democratic backsliding and authoritarian siren calls, this article advances the Tocquevillian point that discussions of seemingly mundane questions in formalized contexts, such as neighborhoods meetings, are excellent sites to foster democratic “habits of the heart.” Grounding the normative argument in ethnographic observations carried out in Paris, I contend that quotidian spaces such as these, often dismissed as procedural or trivial, are meaningful sites of democratic practice that nurture democratic affects and a democratic ethos. While seemingly too localized to be significant for the wider democratic society, the topics considered in these neighborhood meetings pertain to political concerns such as the distribution of public goods, the possibilities of collective action, the limits of private property, and the ability of the law to compel behavior. However, the discussions’ democratic potential is undermined by the difficulty of getting past the doors of the meetings, not because of exclusionary formal rules but because of informal practices often taxing for newcomers.

El Bulbeisi, Sarah. “Between Taboo and Demonisation: Anti-Palestinian Racism and Palestinian Subjectivities in Germany,” Critical Studies on Terrorism, published online 28 May 2026.

Abstract:

Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2010 and 2024 among first- and second-generation Palestinians in Germany, this article examines how anti-Palestinian racism is reproduced through discursive, institutional, and security regimes. It shows how dominant narratives surrounding Israel and Palestine, embedded in German memory politics and state practices, render Palestinian experiences of violence unintelligible or illegitimate, while recoding them through the idioms of terrorism and antisemitism. The article conceptualises anti-Palestinian racism as operating in part through symbolic violence, a process in which Palestinian suffering is systematically misrecognised, delegitimised, and recoded as threat. By analysing media discourse, political interventions, and everyday interactions, the article traces how these regimes shape the conditions of Palestinian life in Germany. It demonstrates how Palestinians are positioned outside the bounds of moral and political legitimacy, producing forms of non-grievability, self-erasure, and internalised stigma. Drawing on narrative-biographical interviews and long-term ethnographic engagement, the article further examines how these dynamics are negotiated across generations. The article argues that anti-Palestinian racism in Germany must be situated within broader histories of European racialisation, coloniality, and post-Holocaust formations of national identity within German memory politics, in which anti-Palestinian racism is constitutive.

Head, Naomi. “Affective Regimes and Ontological Security: When Empathy Threatens the State,” Political Psychology, published online 4 August 2026.

Abstract:

The ontological security of states may be threatened by the politics of empathy. Empathy—as a contested affective-political field—has a capacity to both consolidate and unravel dominant understandings of identity, security, political subjectivity, and self-other relations. This article connects a politics of empathy to patterns of state violence and resistance in situations of conflict and authoritarian politics, arguing that the distribution of feeling that underpins a politics of empathy is structured by positionality, power, and social context. The article argues that states construct “affective regimes” through which they seek to manage the legitimate subjects of empathy in order to maintain their ontological security, and focuses on empirical testimony from the Syrian uprising in 2011 and the Assad regime's strategies of violence to explore these affective dynamics. It reveals ways in which the state's efforts are always resisted and transgressed by citizens, generating counter-narratives of security-identity and affective relations. A politics of empathy offers analytical tools for understanding the construction and effectiveness of states' affective regimes to maintain ontological security as well as being normatively essential to the task of challenging forms of state power, political violence, and generating alternative imaginings of ontological security and subjectivity.

Khan, Rasheda Rawnak. “Portable Positionality Protocol: Knowledge, Power, and Identity in Urban Ethnography,” Urban Research and Practice, published online 28 July 2026.

Abstract:

This article critically reexamines ethnographic practice by foregrounding the singularity of place, reconceiving the ‘site’ through researchers’ presence, interaction, contestation, and dialogic engagement. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Korail, Dhaka, this study examines how the researchers’ positionalities influence knowledge, power, and identity in an urban area. It identifies a paradox in which intersecting positionalities are initially obscured, before clarifying the field relations. It ethnographically reconceptualizes the urban field, which I refer to as the “Portable Positionality Protocol (PPP).” PPP theorizes knowledge production as a fluid, situated process in which positionality is continuously negotiated, challenging fixed insider/outsider binaries and enriching post-structural urban research.

Kuteleva, Anya. “Interpretive Infrastructure: Oil Museums and Corporate State Power in Russia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan,” Energy Research and Social Science, Vol. 138, 2026.

Abstract:

Oil museums take many forms, but they share a common function: actively shaping how extraction is understood, legitimized, and made to appear inevitable. This article examines how corporate-state actors use museum spaces to construct specific understandings of oil's past, present, and future in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia, and what this reveals about why energy transition remains so difficult to imagine in the Global East, a geopolitically semi-peripheral region whose petrocultures fit neither Western capitalist nor Global South postcolonial frameworks. Combining discourse analysis with ethnographic observations, I identify three mechanisms at work. Temporal ordering converts post-socialist loss into extractive loyalty by reactivating the figure of the heroic oil workers and the collective purpose they embodied—a distinctly Eastern form of petromelancholia rooted in socialism's collapsed promise. Narrative closure converts that loyalty into inevitability: immersive technologies, architectural sequencing, and selective mediation present corporate-state extraction as the self-evident driver of national progress while marginalizing alternatives. Agency fixation completes the picture by anchoring these narratives in the strongman leader, whose biographical arc absorbs both history and destiny, making structural questions difficult to raise on any terms other than those the museums themselves provide. Together, these mechanisms constitute an interpretative infrastructure—an ensemble of institutions, practices, and material arrangements through which specific understandings of extraction are organized, stabilized, and made resistant to challenge. The article suggests that a less visible obstacle to energy transition may be the organized narrowing of the conditions under which alternatives to oil can be taken seriously.

O’Driscoll, Cian and Sebastian Kaempf. “Dressed to Kill: The Material Ethics of War,” European Journal of International Relations, published online 17 February 2026.

Abstract:

What do the costumes that soldiers wear have to do with the ethics of war? This article tackles this question. It argues that military uniforms operate as a site and source of ethics of war discourse, reproducing codes of conduct as the dress code. It advances an account of the uniform as a material interface where the ethics shows itself in aesthetic form, and vice versa. It elaborates this position via a case study of the 2018 decision of the Australian Defence Force to respond to the commission of war crimes by its members by tightening uniform regulations – specifically by banning patches that displayed death symbology (e.g. the Grim Reaper logo, Punisher emblem, etc.). While critics and former military personnel have derided this move as superficial, we suggest that it reflects a sophisticated attempt to leverage dress code as a means of reinforcing ethical code. We build on this insight to mount a case for a new approach to the ethics of war. Contemporary ethics of war scholarship focuses predominantly on textual sources, treating them as if they are the only vector of ethical reasoning about war. This overlooks the reality that ethical positions bearing on war are routinely transmitted via a range of non-textual conduits, including material, aesthetic, and ritual practices. The argument, which we develop over the course of this article, is that ethics of war scholars should widen their aperture to account for the full range of forms that ethical claims about the use of force assume.

Pusteria Piccin, Francesca. “Narrating Crisis, Imagining Solidarity: The Narrative Politics of Migration,” Politics and Governance, Vol. 14, 2026.

Abstract:

This article develops a conceptual framework that synthesises post-structuralist discourse theory, affect theory, and narrative political theory to analyse how political actors deploy crisis narratives to shape political imaginaries and moral boundaries by structuring discourses of solidarity and exclusion. This framework proposes three interrelated narrative mechanisms as heuristics for understanding how solidarity is narratively mediated, contested, and reimagined. It focuses on forced migration as a significant arena of contestation, showing that political narratives do more than describe events—they delineate individuals’ belonging to specific groups, identify those entitled to assistance, and categorise others as threats. The article conceptualises crises as affectively charged and discursively produced, reshaping imaginaries and political subjectivities. Through a critical reading of political, philosophical, and literary texts that address forced displacement—one of the most politically charged and morally contested issues of our time—the article identifies three interrelated narrative mechanisms through which solidarity is constructed or foreclosed: (a) security scripting, which frames migrants as threats and legitimates sovereign control; (b) affective national belonging, which ties moral responsibility to cultural or territorial identity; and (c) transnational vulnerability framing, which invokes shared precarity and interdependence to sustain post-national solidarities. The framework contrasts dominant, state-centric narratives—mobilised by sovereigntist actors to reinforce exclusionary identities—with counter-narratives emerging from grassroots solidarities, humanitarian imaginaries, and critical transnational discourse. By situating these dynamics within broader debates in international political theory and critical international relations, the article contributes to understanding how solidarity is narratively produced, contested, and reimagined in an age of displacement and fractured belonging.

Rafomoyo, Fredrick, Nareshnee Govender, and Sameera B. Hussain. “From Bandung to X: Africa-Asia Political Communication and the Zimbabwean Digital Afterlives of Solidarity,” African Journal of Inter/Multidisciplinary Studies, published online 17 June 2026.

Abstract:

The Bandung Conference established a communicative framework for Africa–Asia solidarity grounded in anti-colonial diplomacy and state-led dialogue. However, existing scholarship has paid limited attention to how this communicative logic is reconfigured within contemporary digital platforms in the Global South. This paper addresses this gap by examining how Bandung’s legacy is translated into digital political communication in Zimbabwe’s post-2017 re-engagement period. Focusing on X, the study analyses three key hashtags: #ZimbabweIsOpenForBusiness, #AntiSanctions/#NoToSanctions, and #ZimbabweLivesMatter. It adopts a mixed-methods approach combining sentiment analysis, network analysis, and critical discourse analysis of 100 tweets from 2018 to 2025 enabling both the measurement of affective trends and the interpretation of narrative construction. The paper advances the argument that Africa–Asia solidarity has shifted from elite diplomatic communication to platform-mediated, networked discourse shaped by algorithmic visibility. The findings show that state-driven hashtags function as strategic tools of economic diplomacy and narrative control, while civic hashtags enable bottom-up activism and transnational visibility. However, both forms of communication remain structured by unequal visibility and platform dynamics. The paper concludes that while digital platforms extend Bandung’s anti-colonial communicative project, they also reproduce new forms of communicative inequality, highlighting the need for more inclusive and critically governed digital spaces in Global South political communication.

Stone, Be. “What Does Addiction Mean in US Policy Debates? A Case Study of the ‘Welfare Addict’” New Political Science, Vol. 48, No. 1, 2026.

Abstract:

The concept of addiction is threaded throughout US policy debates in unexpected contexts, yet this keyword in American political culture is understudied and undertheorized. A case study of the “welfare addict” demonstrates several facets of the term’s political power—most notably, its capacity to discredit its targets as legitimate democratic actors. Ordinary language analysis of archival and media sources shows that the recurrent theme of recipients allegedly becoming “addicted to welfare” was critical to the consolidation of welfare reform in 1996 because it provided a “color-blind” racial logic of gendered poverty with which conservatives and liberals built distinct yet complementary cases for reform. Drawing upon the term’s symbolic meanings, “welfare addiction” became a leading narrative in the reform era because it displaced public concern about the domestic effects of global economic interdependence, as well as elite anxiety about their own reliance on government subsidies, onto a systematically disempowered target population.