The Migration Question: Politics, Economics and the Failure of Border Security. Leila Simona Talani and Matilde Rosina. Oxford University Press and Hurst Publishers. 2026.

To begin with, what prompted you and your co-author Leila Simona Talani to write The Migration Question?

Migration is one of today’s most polarising and controversial topics. It has the power to define elections, referenda and international relations across states. We see on one hand domestic publics asking for more restrictions on immigration, but on the other hand, people risking their lives to migrate to safety.

This is the backdrop that pushed us to write the book. In it, we consider the big questions of migration, such as why do people migrate, and can deterrence policies work? We also try to debunk some of the myths around the topic, because there is a lot of misinformation about migration.

Only around three per cent of the world’s population are migrants. And not only is the proportion so low, but it has been pretty much stable at that level for the past 50 years.

One interesting example is that, despite the amount of attention that migrants get in the media and in political discourse, only a small proportion of the world’s population are migrants – most people tend to spend their lives in the countries where they were born. In fact, only around three per cent of the world’s population are migrants. And not only is the proportion so low, but it has been pretty much stable at that level for the past 50 years.

Highlighting these kinds of gaps between representation and reality was one of our key motivations.

How did you research the book?

We drew on a range of sources to research and write the book. We conducted interviews with stakeholders such as policymakers, judges, prosecutors, both at the national and EU level. We conducted surveys with migrants and refugees, and we also looked at policy documents and legislation to examine the policy changes over time. Finally, we complemented all this with statistics on migration, crime, and other factors.

It was very important to us to both review the established academic evidence and to bring in the views of different stakeholders, including migrants.

There are lots of different perspectives on migration, and yet, you arrive at some conclusions through your research into some of the big claims made about migration and the impacts of migration policies. For example, you look at policies that try to deter migrants from coming to a country. Are those policies effective?

Deterrence policies are the basis of many policies on migration that we see today across Europe and North America. The idea behind deterrence supposes that people are rational decision makers, so that if we increase the costs of migrating, people will, in theory, decide not to migrate but to stay home.

Deterrence policies tend to serve domestic politics over policy outcomes – the demands of the local electorates more than the reasons why people migrate.

What we find is that deterrence policies often fail, and this is due, mainly, to four factors. First, although these policies increase the cost of the journey, they don’t address the root causes of migration, the structural factors pushing migrants to leave. Second, when deterrence policies have some kind of impact, they tend to divert routes. So, for instance, people may be diverted onto other sections of the border, rather than be deterred from entering.

Third, migrants’ degree of information is regularly overestimated. We conducted surveys in Italy and France and found that two-thirds of respondents weren’t aware of any measures concerning the sanctions for irregular migration. Importantly, of those who knew about those measures, most of them learned about them only once they arrived in Europe. Lastly, most of these deterrence policies tend to serve domestic politics over policy outcomes – the demands of the local electorates more than the reasons why people migrate.

I’d like to pick up on your point that deterrence policies push regular migration into irregular migration, where people cross at different border points rather than decide not to come. Of course, this presents many dangers and problems for migrants, but you argue this also has negative impacts on people in the host country. How does that work?

Yes. Having these restrictive policies increases irregularity, with negative consequences both for migrants and receiving societies.

If low-skilled migrants have no way to enter receiving societies in Europe other than irregularly, they are forced to rely on smuggling networks. This means that they are more subject to exploitation and are highly vulnerable. Once they arrive in Europe, they cannot work legally because they don’t have a permit. This means they do not pay taxes and cannot find regular housing, and they are pushed into the margins of society. This creates a limbo where migrants cannot be regularised, yet they cannot be returned to their own country either, due to the many challenges involved with returns.

We often hear that migrants commit more crime than citizens. Our argument in the book is that where this is the case, this is a result of securitisation and restrictive policies. First, this is because migrants are marginalised and deprived of access to regular employment. Second, it is because policies that criminalise migration create an association in people’s minds that there is a link between migrants and crime, reinforcing this marginalisation process.

On the point of securitisation, one of the key moments you look at is this period from 2014 to 2016 when there was a huge uptick in the number of refugees arriving in Europe. The EU’s response was to attempt to secure its borders. But you suggest that such securitisation policymaking does not actually produce more security.

In fact, our argument is that securitisation produces more insecurity rather than more security. This is because when you have these very restrictive policies that present migration as a security threat that should be stopped, migration automatically becomes more visible. Meanwhile, the expectations that the government will be able to control migration increase.

When [restrictive, anti-immigration] policies fail, because migration has become more visible, the failure itself is more visible

Then, when these policies fail, because migration has become more visible, the failure itself is more visible. This leads to more insecurity for the receiving societies, and locks countries into a vicious cycle of insecurity.

For instance, France has had a policy to criminalise migrants for irregular migration since the 1930s. Now, they did try to get rid of some aspects of that crime over time, however, for every piece of the policy they removed, they introduced new related sanctions to assuage voters.

This shows how, although it’s easy to introduce new securitising measures, politically, it’s hard to remove them once they’re in place, generating an insecurity loop.

We hear in political rhetoric and in the media claims that migrants could be taking jobs from citizens of receiving countries, and that their arrival could have a negative economic impact, for instance through increasing the demand for social welfare. But your research contradicts these claims.

We hear very often that migrants take our jobs or lower our wages. However, the reality is that migrants mostly do those jobs that locals refuse to do.

The working conditions for migrants are usually below minimum standards, and underemployment is very common. There is a lot of exploitation, for instance, in Southern Europe, of migrants by employers, particularly in the agricultural sector in countries such as Italy. And there is no strong evidence that migrants displace local workers.

Interestingly, studies show that if we were to liberalise or remove all barriers to migration at the global level, the world GDP would increase by 150 per cent – a massive boost.

Your book discusses how right-wing populism has latched on to anti-immigrant rhetoric. Why do you think migrants, refugees and asylum seekers have become such scapegoats for this broad populist movement on the right?

Our argument is that populism doesn’t result from the presence of migrants. Rather, it is the consequence of an economic discontent stemming from globalisation and its uneven impact, both across and within countries. This discontent is hard to address politically, and migrants are easier to scapegoat – because they are foreigners, and because they cannot vote.

If the root causes of migration are related to globalisation, then only addressing the structural components of globalisation can address migration.

Often, we hear populist actors saying that we should “help migrants at home” as an easy, alternative solution. In the book, we ask whether that would be possible. The idea of the “migration hump” hypothesis is important here. Research has found that in the short term, more development leads to more emigration from countries, and it’s only in the longer term that emigration comes down. This is because with development, people’s aspirations and economic capabilities to migrate increase up to a certain point, and only later they decrease, as the opportunities in their home countries grow.

Our argument is that it’s not as easy as just helping them at home. If the root causes of migration are related to globalisation, then only addressing the structural components of globalisation can address migration. We need substantial structural intervention in the sending countries with a focus on education, research, development and technological innovation.

Those types of structural interventions would need to be huge in scale and long-term. How do you see the politics of migration playing out in the short to medium term when it seems this populist, right-wing, anti-immigrant stance has such a hold, particularly in Europe and the US? Do you think it’s possible to move towards these kinds of structural changes and shift people’s attitudes towards embracing migration?

I think for that we would need a radical change in the way we speak about migration. We need to recognise that migration is a positive force for European and North American economies, which are structurally dependent on foreign workers.

Crucially, we need more open, legal pathways to tackle the exploitation, marginalisation and risks that come with the irregular journeys. Better legal pathways would benefit both refugees and economic migrants. And receiving countries need both high-skilled and low-migrants, for their economies. Providing safe, legal routes is key to enable migration management that is more sound, more humane, and more effective.

Note: This interview gives the views of the participants and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead. Kenneth Rogoff. Yale University Press. 2025 (hardback); 2026 (paperback).

How the dollar gained and held power

Rogoff, a former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), opens this book on the supremacy of the dollar by explaining its title. It is borrowed from a remark by US Treasury Secretary John Connally in 1971, after President Nixon suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. Facing displeased European finance ministers in Rome, Connally simply said, “It’s our dollar, but it’s your problem.” From there, Rogoff traces how the dollar arrived at such an imperious position. Before it, the international monetary system witnessed the rise and fall of multiple reserve currencies – the Spanish Peso, Dutch Florin, and British Pound. He notes that the typical life cycle of a reserve currency spans one to two centuries. On that scale, the dollar is still middle-aged, with a long road ahead – though not a smooth one.

In the post-war era, virtually every advanced economy sought to manage its relationship with the dollar rather than challenge it

Rogoff argues that dollar dominance is both a matter of luck and deliberate policy. Competitors have tried and failed; circumstances, too, have repeatedly worked in the dollar’s favour. Serious challengers have included the Soviet Union, Japan, Europe, and now China. After the 1970s, the Soviets could no longer sustain the pace of growth and innovation demanded by the Cold War. Japan, whose real estate prices and stock market share exceeded America’s in the 1980s, was forced into the Plaza Accord of 1985, and Rogoff does not hesitate to question America’s role in pressuring Tokyo into an agreement that pushed the yen past recovery. Europe succeeded in creating the euro, but the Eurozone crisis, rising inflation, and slowing growth have curtailed its challenge for the foreseeable future. China, meanwhile, signals a slowdown after its spectacular rise in the 1990s and 2000s. A real estate bubble – strikingly similar to Japan’s – sits at the core of its decelerating economy. An overbuilt nation with weak domestic consumption has reached the outer limit of its export-led growth model.

Internally, American dominance rests on its position as post-World War II first mover. The Bretton Woods system placed the US at the centre of the currency order. Its legal protections for investors, the depth of its capital markets, dollar swap facilities, and military dominance, which ensures no adversary dares strike, all reinforce that position. Even during crises, capital flows into dollars, and American interest rates fall further, allowing the US to borrow more from the world at lower cost. Overtaking the dollar, Rogoff writes, “takes much more” (169).

The Triffin trap and US privilege

A major strand of the book examines how, in the post-war era, virtually every advanced economy sought to manage its relationship with the dollar rather than challenge it. Chief among the temptations was the fixed exchange rate. The allure of the fixed exchange rate stemmed from the dollar’s ability to anchor a nation’s economy to a stable and credible external standard. It helped countries to effectively import monetary reliability, reducing inflationary pressures and smooth out the volatilities of international commerce. Even in developing countries, citizens trusted the dollar more than their own central banks.

Rogoff argues that this dynamic activates the “Triffin Dilemma”: a country cannot simultaneously maintain a fixed exchange rate, open capital markets, and an independent interest rate policy. Nations that peg their currency to the dollar relinquish control over much of their macroeconomic toolkit. He substantiates this with examples spanning Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Russia, Lebanon, and Argentina.

The fixed exchange rate, Rogoff concludes, can serve as a temporary solution. But it is “better to exit from a position of relative strength than to wait to be forced out when overwhelmed by speculators” (153). He also traces how countries adapted to manage these risks. The Tokyo Consensus emerged as a middle ground between the Washington Consensus of 1989, which favoured market flexibility and floating exchange rates, and the Buenos Aires Consensus of 2003, which favoured market control and fixed rates. The Tokyo model combines managed floats, large central bank dollar reserves, capital controls, and strong regulatory buffers. These lessons were hard-won from the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s, when the IMF visibly fell short. Rogoff also discusses technological alternatives like central bank digital currencies, cryptocurrencies, and stablecoins, and suggests that crypto could meaningfully challenge the dollar, particularly in the vast, opaque underground economy.

Being the anchor of global finance confers enormous advantages on the United States. The dollar delivers geopolitical influence, close to a billion dollars in annual economic benefits, and near – costless borrowing capacity, the last of which has historically financed American wars (214). It grants the Federal Reserve the ability to print unlimited dollars in a crisis, giving Washington sweeping leverage over the evolution of the global payments system (217). And it arms the US with the power to impose financial sanctions on any actor working against American interests.

Yet Rogoff is careful to note that this dominance has not been coerced. By simply being the most effective allocator of global capital and the world’s most trusted financial intermediary, the US has earned its “exorbitant privilege”.

The future of the dollar

Rogoff’s sharpest arguments come at the end, where he locates the real threat to dollar dominance not in Beijing or Brussels, but in Washington itself – in soaring debt, rising inflation, and mounting pressure on Federal Reserve independence.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that the US debt-to-GDP ratio will reach 166 per cent by 2054. For the first time since World War II, in 2024, US foreign liabilities exceeded its income from foreign assets. Net foreign liabilities have jumped from 17 per cent of GDP in 2010 to 71 per cent in the first quarter of 2024 (223). This is what Rogoff calls the “Modern Triffin Dilemma.” While the older version warned that gold reserves might fall short of dollar liabilities, the modern version warns that total repayment capacity may be overwhelmed by accumulated obligations. Decades of falling interest rates, he argues, have created the dangerous illusion that borrowing is nearly free in America.

The Federal Reserve’s independence, meanwhile, faces pressure from both ends of the political spectrum. That independence is the guarantee behind the dollar’s value.

The Federal Reserve’s independence, meanwhile, faces pressure from both ends of the political spectrum. That independence is the guarantee behind the dollar’s value – the bedrock of investor confidence. If debt continues to collide with higher real interest rates, and if political interference constrains the Fed’s ability to tame inflation, the consequences will be severe.

To map it overall, Rogoff convincingly argues that the dollar will remain at the top – but of a smaller hill. In a more multipolar world, others will slowly gain ground. And when the dollar eventually descends, financial stability will shake with it. To echo Connally, it will undoubtedly be everyone’s problem.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

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Queer Conflict Research: New Approaches to the Study of Political Violence. Jamie J. Hagen, Samuel Ritholtz and Andrew Delatolla. Bristol University Press. 2025.

For scholars of Queer Conflict Studies, Feminist International Relations (IR) and Queer International Relations IR, Queer Conflict Research: New Approaches to the Study of Political Violence is both a homecoming and a departure. In this expansive volume, the editors, Jamie J. Hagen, Samuel Ritholtz and Andrew Delatolla chart the emerging field of Queer Conflict Research, which examines how the logics of gender and sexuality shape queer experiences, production, and study of political violence, peacebuilding, and security.

Charting queer conflict research

 Situated at the intersection of feminist security studies (FSS), queer IR, and conflict studies, the volume builds on the work of predecessors such as Cynthia Enloe, Cynthia Weber, Dianne Otto, and J. Ann Tickner, advancing queer conflict research as a distinct conversation on political violence. However, in a very queer fashion, the editors begin by underscoring that they do not seek to police the boundaries of queer conflict research (1, 2). This sentiment reverberates throughout the collection. 

Comprised of contributions from 19 scholars, the volume consistently foregrounds the plurality of approaches, methods, epistemologies and lived experiences that constitute the field (212). In doing so, it demonstrates that these differences can converge, intersect, or never meet, remaining in productive tension and collectively shaping the contours of queer conflict research, without diluting the queer resistance to a fixed definition. 

Centring queer and trans perspectives expands the meaning of peace and conflict beyond state declarations and recognised conflict zones.

Detailing the significance of queerness in conflict research, the introduction illustrates how centring queer and trans perspectives expands the meaning of peace and conflict beyond state declarations and recognised conflict zones. It reveals how queer (in)security is often produced and negotiated in the intimate, social, and everyday spaces, long before armed conflict. This violence takes the forms of familial rejection, social exclusion, institutional discrimination and persecution. The introduction further emphasises epistemological conversations between mainstream political science and queer and critical approaches, focusing on productive engagement rather than disciplinary separation. Committed to the emancipatory commitments of FSS, the volume is organised around three interconnected lines of inquiry, exploring queer approaches, methods, and experiences in relation to the “what” and “how” of conflict research. 

Queer epistemologies

Beginning with approaches to conflict research, this section explores queer epistemologies by centring the politics of knowledge production and the ethical implications of the research design. Ritholtz provides what they call as a “how to think about epistemology” guide to navigate the academic landscapes that have historically dismissed or siloed queer and trans subjectivities. Identifying the creative potential of research design, they frame queer as subject, structure and method (19).

Critiquing institutional ignorance, the “politics of not knowing” Serrano-Amaya highlights the intertwined roles of academia and activism in producing knowledge while cautioning that increased visibility can homogenise queer experiences and institutionalise victimhood (55). Hagen extends these debates into a queer feminist praxis, using participatory workshops to foreground collaboration and cross-movement solidarity while addressing the neglect of queer women in the WPS agenda (61). Taken together, these chapters move beyond the “add and stir” tokenistic approaches critiqued by feminists, framing queer conflict research as a reflexive and politically situated practice of knowledge production. 

Methodologies pluralism

The collection also refuses to reduce queer research to a prescribed approach and methodology, and merely the inclusion of LGBTQ+ subjects. Evidently, the section on methods begins with Cooper-Cunningham arguing that methods are not inherently queer but rather become so through their capacity to interrogate cisheteronormative structures of power (91). With a tripartite framework of word, image, and body, he further demonstrates the potential of the visual as a method in studying queer (in)visibility and (in)security in the context of Russian state homophobia.

Rather than separating trauma and emotions from memory and lived experiences in pursuit of ‘objective facts’, the chapter treats them as indispensable to understanding conflict

A compelling observation emerges in poetry as a method, where Delatolla disrupts the foundations of social-scientific methods and heteromasculinist linear logic of temporality, causality, and objectivity by using art, literature, and affect as legitimate sources of knowledge. Rather than separating trauma and emotions from memory and lived experiences in pursuit of “objective facts”, the chapter treats them as indispensable to understanding conflict in the context of the Lebanese civil war.

Not only does the method reveal the complex role of trauma, but it also exposes the irrationality of treating emotional detachment as a prerequisite for objectivity. Conflict is messy, contradictory, and often makes no sense. Detachment then becomes a form of epistemic violence that sanitises the realities of conflict. This critique is echoed in the conclusion, where, extending Serrano-Amaya’s argument, Laura Sjoberg reflects on the impossibility of remaining disinvested in the results of nuclear deterrence. Such detachment is implicated in invisibilising marginalised lives and sustaining institutional ignorance (207). 

Additionally, Simonetto identifies “Ruthless Archives” as hostile institutional records that preserve queer lives only through policing and pathologisation. This chapter illustrates the centrality of historical enquiry to conflict research and revealing how archives themselves reproduce political violence through surveillance and criminalisation (131). Through visual methods, poetry, workshops, archives, activist knowledge, and trauma-informed research, the volume consistently challenges conventional notions of rigorous research scholarship. It positions methodological innovations as integral to queer inquiry rather than an exception.

Ethics in practice

The final section shifts from theory and methodology to the lived experiences of conducting queer conflict research. While Nagarajan emphasises non-extractive practices, reciprocity, and community safety in research with queer community in Nigeria (174), Munhazim reflects on finding kinship, care, and chosen family in the fieldwork with the American Afghan diaspora that reshaped their own relationship with queerness as informed by Afghanness (188).

With case studies ranging from Argentine archives to American Afghan diaspora in California, the chapters illustrate the importance of contextual specificity and resist the universalisation of queer experiences.

This complicates the conventional distinctions between the researcher and researched, highlighting the relational, intersubjective, and ethical dimensions of queer research fieldwork. The concluding roundtable conversation further notes that much research on queer lives in conflict is undertaken by NGOs despite limited academic infrastructure and funding. Such conditions underscore the need for intersectional, collaborative, and context-sensitive research practices (194). 

Context, futures, and researching otherwise

Besides methods, experiences, and approaches, the collection’s diversity is also reflected in its geographical and empirical breadth. With case studies ranging from Argentine archives to American Afghan diaspora in California, the chapters illustrate the importance of contextual specificity and resist the universalisation of queer experiences. This is also evident in the volume’s generous use of endnotes, which function not merely as a site for citations but as spaces for contextualisation and qualification, reinforcing the commitment to avoiding decontextualised claims and engaging readers in adjacent conversations rather than presenting the concepts as settled or universal. 

However, a concluding synthesis of how these diverse interventions collectively reshape the study of conflict would have further helped establish the field. While refusing disciplinary closure allows Queer Conflict Research to embrace the queer commitments to fluidity and plurality, it also leaves unresolved the precise contours that distinguish queer conflict research from its neighbouring and related fields. Even so, this is more of a productive tension than a shortcoming, reflecting the editors’ commitment to plurality. 

The two resource guides in the appendices, addressing the ethical research conduct with queer communities in sensitive contexts and the researcher’s psychological well-being, further enrich the volume. They extend its queer ethical framework into praxis, making queer conflict research more grounded, responsible and accessible. The volume ends by moving towards multiple and transformative futures of queer conflict research, inviting scholars to further complicate, articulate and expand this emerging field.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

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How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare. Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez. Stanford University Press. 2024.

The ongoing war between the United States, Israel, and Iran has brought several critical questions to the fore: What lies at the root of the grievances that triggered a protest movement in Iran earlier this year, exploited by the US and Israel? How widespread are the sentiments of resentment towards the regime among the Iranian population? How did Iranian society not collapse, and what prevented the sanctions from incapacitating the Iranian economy, thereby preserving Tehran’s ability to resist today?

How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare effectively answers these questions from different angles. It is written by Narges Bajoghli – an anthropologist with expertise in media, power, and military dynamics, Vali Nasr – a political scientist, specialising in international relations, Middle Eastern politics, and Islamic political movements, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani – an economist with interests in demographic and energy economics, with a focus on Iran and the Middle East, and Ali Vaez – a policy analyst that helped bridge gaps during Iran-P5+1 nuclear negotiations. What sets this book apart from other approaches is its balanced take on the subject, enabling readers to form their own opinions. Their multifaceted methodological approach, combining inputs from dozens of leading scholars, discourse analysis, interviews with Iranians, and quantitative analysis based on surveys and official economic data, lends further credence to their work.

Sanctions against Iran predate the expansion of Tehran’s nuclear program, initially imposed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis the same year. Over the decades, the sanctions regime became increasingly comprehensive.

Sanctions against Iran predate the expansion of Tehran’s nuclear program, initially imposed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the hostage crisis the same year. Over the decades, the sanctions regime became increasingly comprehensive: “no country in the world has been the target of this array of sanctions to the extent experienced by Iran over the past four decades (56).” Beyond the explicit restrictions on Iranian banks, oil revenues, and access to the global financial system also lies an unspoken component of the sanctions regime. The vagueness of the sanctions regulations, particularly in their language, coupled with Iran’s portrayal as a ‘pariah’ state, leads to their overinterpretation, effectively deterring the Western scientific, literary, and academic communities from interacting with their counterparts in Iran.

Impacts of sanctions on the public

On the impact of sanctions on the economy, the book offers compelling evidence.  Beginning in 2018, sanctions became increasingly harsh; between 2018 and 2021, healthcare costs in Iran rose by 125 per cent, and food prices increased by a staggering 186 per cent. The resultant hardships inevitably generated frustration among the public and, among some, resentment towards the regime. However, the expression of this resentment was not widespread enough to trigger regime change, one of the sanctions’ key goals. In fact, authors hold that sanctions weakened the middle class and strengthened the regime by increasing the population’s dependency on the state.

To highlight societal resilience, the authors include first-hand accounts of Iranians living through sanctions. Some respondents highlighted coping strategies that included detachment from the capitalist struggle for money and material desires, and finding refuge in nature, music, and art. For instance, Kaveh, an architect in his late thirties recounted, “I quit my job. I began to play music again. I hike and cook and document it all on my Instagram. I’ve found so many others my age who are doing the same thing… We’ve literally downsized our lives to two backpacks. We’ve given up the race of being ‘successful’ and instead have decided to connect with nature and music and art and each other” (26-27).

Businesses formed economic links with non-Western partners and learning from how sanctioned nations, such as Cuba, developed their domestic industries despite external embargoes.

The authors also show that, while the socioeconomic impacts were challenging, they did not become entirely dismal for most Iranians. Unemployment remained contained, as nearly half of all Iranian workers were self-employed, the country’s labour laws discouraged employers from laying off workers, and a large informal economy accommodated the unemployed. Meanwhile, the government’s decision to allow the currency to depreciate, along with the associated rise in the cost of imported goods, enabled domestic businesses to capture a larger market share and grow. Besides government cash transfers, mutual aid networks, run mostly by women, and formal impacts were charities helped the population in dealing with everyday hardships.

How sanctions drove innovation and complicated diplomacy

As with society, so did the economy adapt in meaningful ways, as sanctions forced Iran to innovate. In 2010, the then Iranian Supreme Leader, the martyred Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, formulated the notion of a “resistance economy’” (eghtesad-e moqavemat), calling on economists, scholars, and businessmen to propose and pursue policies to diversify markets and revenue sources. By providing testimonies from Iranian businesspeople, the authors show that businesses actively rallied behind these calls, forming economic links with non-Western partners and learning from how sanctioned nations, such as Cuba, developed their domestic industries despite external embargoes. More importantly, sanctions encouraged Tehran, alongside international actors such as China and Russia, to explore alternatives to the dollar-based cross-border payment system. These adaptations could not fully offset the impact of sanctions, given their scope and magnitude, but they kept Iran from collapsing under pressure.

But while the authors mention the role of “workarounds” in alleviating sanctions-related pressures, at times, readers are left seeking deeper explanations in some cases. For instance, What role did the Iranian shadow fleet of tankers play, and to what extent did it help mitigate the impact of sanctions on oil revenues? What role did barter trade play? Beyond this, an analysis of the role Iran’s high literacy rate, and the employment opportunities this affords, played in helping the country endure sanctions could have enriched the discussion.

The authors contend that sanctions complicated diplomacy, as they were easier to impose than to remove. Congress and domestic politics strongly supported Iranian sanctions, making it difficult for US leaders to lift them even when negotiations required it. However, neither could the sanctions trigger a regime change, nor did they lead Iran to abandon its nuclear program. Instead, while sanctions may have been effective in the short run in bringing Iran to the negotiating table, culminating in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in the long run, they led Iran to accelerate its nuclear program and pursue a more assertive regional policy.

A partial view of Iran’s nuclear program

One shortcoming of the book is that while the authors treat the acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program as a reactive response to the hardline approach by the West, they do not probe the veracity of dubious claims made about it. It is unknown which direction the Iranian nuclear program will take after the current war ends. At the time of the book’s writing, sufficient evidence suggested that assumptions surrounding the program may have been grossly exaggerated, even if Iran was expanding its uranium enrichment program. For instance, multiple Western intelligence assessments concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, while an International Atomic Energy Agency report found no conclusive evidence linking Iran’s undeclared nuclear activities, even prior to 2003, to a weapons program. (The report was published during the tenure of Mohamed ElBaradei, who was widely regarded for his impartiality.)

By incorporating local testimonies and vivid descriptions of Iranian streets and social spaces into the research, the book allows readers to picture everyday life in Iran under sanctions,

While the discussion briefly acknowledges Washington’s lack of sustained commitment to diplomacy in compelling Tehran to accelerate its nuclear program, it places an outsized emphasis on the role of sanctions, without adequately exploring other factors. For instance, in 2021, former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani linked Iran’s decision to produce 60 per cent enriched uranium to a suspected Israeli attack on a nuclear site. The limited consideration of other factors results in a somewhat reductionist conclusion.

These limitations aside, the book is a comprehensive and insightful account of Iran’s survival and resilience under sanctions. By incorporating local testimonies and vivid descriptions of Iranian streets and social spaces into the research, the book allows readers to picture everyday life in Iran under sanctions, where hope and vibrancy still existed – characteristics that remain evident even amidst the new war. Despite being a compilation of contributions from four authors, the book maintains coherence and consistency in style throughout. It is a worthwhile read for current and future policymakers, effectively demonstrating why maximum pressure strategies fail to achieve their intended results.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s. Jason Burke. The Bodley Head. 2025.

Anna D’Alton (AD): In your book, The Revolutionists, you focus on a period of political violence between 1967 and ‘83, wherein a new transnational terrorism emerged. What did that involve, and what factors created it?

Jason Burke (JB): I look at a wave of violence in the 1970s which saw extremists using transnational terrorist violence as a weapon in a new way. There had been transnational attacks before, but this was quantitatively and qualitatively different: there were many more attacks involving a much wider range of both targets and perpetrators than ever before. These were designed to be spectacular or attention-grabbing in a way that struck me as new, too. A high-profile example I look at in the book is the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

One cause of this wave of violence is the emergence of new media technology that its perpetrators wanted to exploit to raise the profile of their various grievances. Another factor is the new strategic terrain of contemporary aviation and its infrastructure which enabled numerous airplane hijackings. And you also have a very important moment of global agitation and protest in the late 1960s in support of so-called revolutionary causes. It’s this that generates the political energy that underlies the violence of the ‘70s and a very internationalised vision of revolutionary activism.

The book is about individuals, and what brings a person to use (often lethal) violence, their motivations and the circumstances that might direct them towards that kind of activity

But at around the same time in the Middle East, you have the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War in 1967 and the broad changes geopolitically, socially and politically that followed it. Israel’s victory and its repercussions pushed Palestinian armed groups towards a new strategy. All of this comes together and generates the wave of transnational political violence that you see from the late ‘60s through to the mid ‘70s.

AD: Why do you think it’s worthwhile to understand not just the attacks, which encompass hijackings and bombings and other types of violence, but the people behind them and their motivations? I’m interested as well in your use of the term “revolutionists”.

JB: The term “revolutionist”, popularised in the 19th century, refers to people whose profession is effectively attempting to foment a revolution. Importantly, it is neither “revolutionaries” nor “terrorists”, both of which wouldn’t have been acceptable as a title of the book. To use either would be to take an immediate political stance, which I did not think would be helpful.

The book is about individuals, and what brings a person to use (often lethal) violence, their motivations and the circumstances that might direct them towards that kind of activity, and the personal consequences, positive and negative, that follow. More broadly, it’s about how political and religious movements looking to effect change generate extremist fringes that see violence as the only useful tactic, and how that can play out historically.

The characters are also fascinating in their own right. They’re complex individuals who act out of multiple motives. I in no way sympathise with them, but I have attempted to render them as human beings with the complexity we all have. I think that approach makes it much easier to understand what happened in specific events, and to understand the events of that period more broadly.

AD: You look at the solidarity that was built internationally across different causes, from the liberation of Palestine to Vietnam’s struggle against the US, and multiple anti-imperialist causes. Did they manage to build solidarity?

JB: There was plenty of rhetorical and aspirational solidarity. There was a strong sense of solidarity between Western European leftists and the Viet Cong, or earlier with the Algerians and their fight against the French, or later, with those fighting on the ground against the Apartheid regime in South Africa, and of course, with the Palestinians. European radicals genuinely believed that they could help bring about a global revolution that would end the twin scourges of imperialism and capitalism through their support of causes in the Global South.

One of the reasons I wrote the book was to consider the trajectories of the leftist radical movement alongside that of the Islamist movement in the same period.

In practical terms, it was difficult to instrumentalise that solidarity. You had organisations with divergent agendas, ways of working and cultural approaches, which led to misunderstandings, arguments and few examples of successful collaboration.

AD: In the second half of the book, you look at the rise of Islamic extremism, and you argue there was a failure in the revolutionary leftist movement, a vacuum that Islamism stepped into.

JB: One of the reasons I wrote the book was to consider the trajectories of the leftist radical movement alongside that of the Islamist movement in the same period. The ‘70s saw the resurgence of faith-based political ideologies across the Islamic world. The key moments for modern political Islamism and its extremist variants, I argue, are in the mid- to late 60s, which aligns with that moment of global revolutionary mobilisation, activism and protest.

By the mid-70s in the West, that wave of mobilisation had receded. Some people were repelled by some of the violence that it entailed, others had just moved on or redirected their political energies into other, narrower, identity-based causes such as environmentalism or the anti-nuclear movement. Also, in the West, you’d had a lot of reform. The movement of the late ‘60s had achieved many of its aims, at least in social and cultural terms. It had gained better reproductive rights for women, lowered voting ages, secured better funding for universities and successfully challenged post-war political hierarchies. There was much less reason to protest by the end of the decade.

Iran is back in the news these days. People forget that the Left in Iran was a real force for a long time before it was crushed by Iranian authorities.

But in the Middle East, there were no such gains. Any left-wing radicalism was ruthlessly repressed. The material circumstances that so many people wanted to change remained the same. So, there was inevitably a vacuum, and that meant a different revolutionary programme – with different ideas and vocabulary – that diverged from the Left in some areas. But it was still, at heart, a programme of transformation of society, culture and much else towards an imagined utopia.

Iran is back in the news these days. People forget that the Left in Iran was a real force for a long time before it was crushed by Iranian authorities. In the ‘70s, the main armed violent opposition groups that targeted the Shah’s regime were on the Left. By 1980, they were all in prison or exiled or dead, leaving a massive vacuum that greatly aided the radical clerics to take power.

AD: That example of Iran and Shah Khomeini coming to power, and many of the events you explore in the book are seismic moments, and it feels like we’re still seeing the effects of them play out today. You see it in counterterror policy and US relations with so many Arab countries.

JB: As I researched, I was astonished by how much of the politics we see today has its roots in this period in the ‘70s. You see it the current situation in Iran, and in Sunni jihadi activism – Bin Laden was a child of the 70s. He was 13 in 1970, his formative experiences were during that decade. You see it in the role of states like Syria in the region, or indeed Israel, and the rise of the Right there during that period.

The events of the ‘70s and early ‘80s fomented a new understanding of terrorism. Rejecting that which had been prevalent earlier in the decade which described terrorism as a criminal activity, effectively, with social and political and other root causes, this new framing which saw terrorism as a cancer that could be cut out. And it viewed terrorists as mad, bad or misled, but certainly not acting out of an authentic desire to change their and other people’s circumstances.

AD: It’s interesting to consider that reframing in light of the recent decision from the UK’s High Court to overturn the Government’s proscription (in 2025) of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

Yes it is. The definition of terrorism and application of the noun “terrorists” – which I don’t use at any point in the book, deliberately – is hugely politicised. You very rapidly run out of fingers if you want to start counting governments, democratically elected or otherwise, that have described their enemies as terrorists.

There are technical definitions of terrorism, including under UK law. In the case of Palestine Action, it seems very difficult to argue that their actions, their activities meet the standard or broadly accepted definitions of terrorism. And it seems to me to be highly politicised and counterproductive to characterise them in that way.

Note: This interview gives the views of the person interviewed and the interviewer, not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Worlding Home: An Urban Ethnography of Peacekeeping Camps in Goma, DRC. Maren Larsen. Indiana University Press. 2025.

Peacekeeping camps as active processes

Looking behind the walls of a peacekeeping camp – breaking down the physical and conceptual barriers and tracing the many flows and leakages between the camp and the city – is profoundly revealing. In Worlding Home, Maren Larsen offers an intimate and sharply observed account of the embeddedness of United Nations’ peacekeeping camps within both the urban fabric of Goma and the wider global network of humanitarian and military intervention. Peacekeeping camps are the sites where the personnel of a UN mission live and work while stationed in a conflict zone. Focused on the military branch of UN peace operations, Larsen’s ethnography demonstrates that such camp is never a sealed island; rather, it is a porous, eventful, and continuously transforming – improved and “beautified” – space within the city.

The book elegantly weaves together three interconnected geographies: the peacekeeping camp itself, the peacekeepers’ place(s) of origin, and the city of Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, where peacekeepers are stationed as part of the UN mission. By moving between these sites, with a focus on the camp, Larsen shows how spatial practices, routine actions and moments, inside and outside the camp co-constitute an urbanism shaped by the logics of “camping”. The camp emerges not as static or exceptional, but as a multi-layered process: the camp keeps changing. Through fine-grained analysis, the book provides the reader with insights into how peacekeepers dwell, how they become embedded in local rhythms while maintaining deep connections to places elsewhere, and how their presence reshapes the urban life they are part of.

An interdisciplinary lens on peacekeeping 

Traditionally, peacekeeping has been the subject of political sciences and international relations, mostly focused on questions of effectiveness and driven by a security lens. Running parallel to this scholarship is a vibrant body of anthropological, sociological, and urban scholarship that interrogates humanitarianism, the international aid industry and infrastructure, and everyday practices of interveners. Within this interdisciplinary landscape, studies of camps – refugee and IDP camps, transit sites, or labour compounds, have been central in illuminating the spatial politics and materiality of encampment. Larsen draws from and contributes to this rich lineage. At the same time, Worlding Home builds upon a long-standing, rich body of research on Goma, a city shaped by decades of humanitarian presence, conflict, and displacement. The book, in line with prior literature, acknowledges Goma as both a humanitarian hub and an epicentre of emergencies that have generated successive layers of encampment, from colonial camps to the massive influx of refugees in the 1990s to the contemporary UN bases. 

Peacekeeping camps constitute active, evolving processes that blur boundaries between dwelling and mobility, as well as between ‘here’ and ‘there’

Mindful of this urban palimpsest of camping, Larsen situates the peacekeeping camp as part of a longer historical and spatial continuum in Goma. From a recent vantage point, she guides the reader through different moves, from outside the camp, to the camp’s fringes and through the gates, inside the camp, to everyday routines and practices, and beyond into global circuits of mobility of people, practices, flavours, and music. Through these movements, Larsen demonstrates that UN camps are neither isolated enclaves nor entirely exceptional spaces. Instead, building on scholarship that conceptualises camps as dynamic social formations, she argues that peacekeeping camps constitute active, evolving processes that blur boundaries between dwelling and mobility, as well as between “here” and “there.” 

A further strength of Worlding Home is its vivid portrayal of the interactions that produce hybrid forms of urbanity. Military peacekeepers in Goma (from places as far away as India, Bangladesh, South Africa, or Uruguay) and Congolese civilians (including children, contractors, or local friends and intimate partners) form both deep and fleeting connections. Larsen details the festivities, the importance of food and eating, the linguistic abilities of kids lingering around the camps (some learn to speak the language of the resident military contingent), and the routines of military culture, both inside the camp and their interaction with the world outside the camp. These scenes illustrate how camps function both as global nodes of UN intervention and as everyday domestic spaces. Indeed, “camping” as practice involves varied interactions that reshape socio-spatial relations, offering new understandings of home-making, global mobility, and urban development under conditions of humanitarian intervention. 

Dilemmas of peace operations 

The book also addresses some of the most pressing dilemmas facing contemporary peace operations: sustainability, blurred lines between humanitarian and military roles, civil-military tensions, and instances of abuse of power. Larsen engages these issues not abstractly but through grounded, often moving ethnographic vignettes. These moments remind the reader that peacekeeping is lived and experienced by individuals navigating complex moral terrains. 

The reader comes away understanding the peacekeepers’ camp as deeply entangled in the life of Goma: a space of global circulation, local negotiation, and everyday improvisation.

Larsen’s focus on the military branch of peace operations is justified and analytically productive, but this choice does narrow the aperture of inquiry. Civilian staff, local NGOs, and the city’s broader population play crucial roles in shaping the social and spatial dynamics of UN bases. Those actors live with chronic insecurity and multi-faceted urban violence. Urban dwellers’ perspectives and place-making in, and with, the camp(s) occasionally appear but are not explored with the same depth as those of uniformed peacekeepers. How, for example, do the many contractors, visitors, camps’ neighbours, and informal workers, shape the camp, and what is their share in “camping”? As a result, the portrayal of Goma sometimes leans more toward an ethnography of camps in a city rather than an ethnography of the city with camps, including its long-term urban, environmental, social, cultural, and economic consequences. Readers may find themselves wanting more sustained engagement with the urban residents whose daily lives intersect with, support, challenge, or adapt to the presence of peacekeeping infrastructures. 

Peacekeeping camps’ place in the world 

This desire for more in no way diminishes the book’s accomplishment. Worlding Home offers an invaluable perspective on what peacekeeping camps are and what they do in the world. It shows that the peacekeeping camp is not merely a site but a process – what Larsen aptly calls “eventful happenings” – embedded within urban space. The book illuminates these processes with nuance, empathy, and theoretical sophistication. 

In the end, the reader comes away understanding the peacekeepers’ camp as deeply entangled in the life of Goma: a space of global circulation, local negotiation, and everyday improvisation. Worlding Home stands as a perceptive and timely contribution to the study of peace operations in an urban context and the anthropology of encampment. It invites us to rethink what it means to make a home – however temporary – amid intervention, and what it means for a city to continually absorb, reshape, and respond to the demands of those who camp within it.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Theresa Squatrito will present on the book at an LSE Research Showcase on Tuesday 17 February, Can international courts judge without political constraint? Find details and register.

Judging under Constraint: The Politics of Deference by International Courts. Theresa Squatrito. Cambridge University Press. 2025.

Anna D’Alton (AD): Firstly, how many International Courts (ICs) are there, what sort of functions do they have, and how is it decided which countries are in the jurisdiction of a certain court? 

Theresa Squatrito (TS): There are currently 25 permanent ICs, spanning the globe. Some of them have a much smaller jurisdiction in terms of what states they cover, and some are near global in coverage. 

For all of them, a member state decides whether they’re part of the jurisdiction, and sometimes this is connected to membership of an international organisation. For example, the EU has a court attached to it, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the choice to be included in its jurisdiction is a question of whether you’re a member of the EU. To take another example, the African Court of Human and People’s Rights (ACtHPR) is attached to the African Union (AU), but not all members of the AU (and so, not all countries on the continent of Africa), fall within the jurisdiction of the court, because states have to take an extra decision to opt in. So, it depends on the court, but there’s always a step at which a state chooses to become a member. 

AD: In the book you highlight that ICs differ from other international organisations in that they serve their functions through decisions only. How does this work? 

TS: It’s an important distinction. An international organisation like the UN has processes of making decisions, like through UN Security Council resolutions. But a lot of what the UN also does is service provision: there are UN agencies worldwide helping to provide food aid, crisis relief, technical assistance and so on. The World Bank, for example, take decisions on granting loans, but a big part of what it does is gather data. The World Bank gathers and publishes some of the best data we have on development. 

Courts are distinct because the only sort of activity they engage in decision making, bar some exceptions, like when international criminal tribunals conduct investigations or how some courts monitor the execution of their decisions.  

AD: You argue that the centrality of decision making for ICs warrants research into how courts come to decisions. You focus on judicial deference. What is deference? 

TS: Deference is an idea that isn’t confined to courts. You could have an executive defer to a legislature, or a legislature defer to an executive. Or your mother could defer to your father on a question (“go ask your father”). Deference is a process of accepting another person’s authority or position on a matter. In that example of the family, the mother abstains from making the decision and tells the child, I’m going to accept your father’s position on this. 

If an International Court defers, it either abstains from making a decision, and so accepts the position of the state’s national government, or it actively validates that state’s decision.  

That’s in essence what I’m looking at: whether or not the IC is deferring to the states on an exercise of authority they’ve engaged in. In other words, is the court abstaining from making a decision, or does it validate what the state has said? If an IC defers, it either abstains from making a decision, and so accepts the position of the state’s national government, or it actively validates that state’s decision.  

AD: You claim that the amount of “strategic space” an IC has influences how likely it is to defer. What is a court’s strategic space? 

TS: The strategic space is the range of possible decisions that the court could make that would be acceptable to the state. If the court steps outside that strategic space, then it’s taking a decision that the state will potentially object to, and perhaps try to override, or worse, punish the court for. A court’s strategic space can be broader or narrower, and that depends, I argue, on two main things. 

The first is how like-minded or divergent member states’ preferences are on a given issue. More divergence among member states means that those states will have a harder time overriding the court: if they view things very differently, it becomes difficult for them to agree on what that override would be. The second factor is how independent the court is or not: how vulnerable a court is to states restricting its authority, restricting its budget or trying to punish its judges. The more opportunities states have to do that, depending on the rules of the institution, the more vulnerable the court becomes, and that can limit its strategic space.

AD: What did you discover about tendencies to defer in your three case studies, the East African Court of Justice (EACJ), the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), and the ACtHPR? 

TS: I found that the broader the strategic space, the less likely a court is to defer. The range of decisions they can make is wider because that strategic space is more permissive. Within the law, there is always reasonable room for interpretation. Courts that have broader strategic space are more inclined towards interpretations and remedies that are more intrusive on state sovereignty. They may ask a state to provide compensation, to expunge a person’s criminal record, to reform a certain law, or they could find a state in violation of the law.

I was interested in what sorts of potential impacts a court being in the developing world has on its functioning

With the three case studies I examined, the EACJ has a narrower strategic space, so by the reasoning I’ve outlined, I thought it would be the most likely to defer. I looked at all the judgments from the court over about a 15-year period and found that this bore out: the EACJ is the most deferential of the three. On the opposite end, the ACtHPR has the broadest strategic space, and I found that it was the least deferential, meaning it was the most inclined towards finding states in violation of the law and telling them they must provide victims with some relief. 

AD: The three ICs you looked at are all in the Global South, and they are also newer courts. Why did you focus on these three, and how does the newness of a court figure in its decision making? 

TS: I took a few things into consideration when I was choosing them. One element was methodological: because I was interested in the influence of formal independence, I wanted each court to be different along that dimension. But I was also interested in courts in the Global South that are less studied. Those that have been studied the most by scholars are the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) the CJEU and the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body (its dispute settlement mechanism) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The courts I chose are newer, which is part of the reason they are less researched. I was interested in what sorts of potential impacts a court being in the developing world has on its functioning. Being in the Global South, and being newer institutions, means that people might have less access to the courts and there might be different relationships with, for example, the rule of law, compared to courts based in the Global North.  

AD: In our current moment of declining multilateralism and a recalibrating international order, what power do ICs have, and are there any trends you’re seeing across them? 

TS: ICs are a venue where states and private actors can go to seek answers to some major questions and problems. Sometimes this stems from a social pressure and public salience to bring an issue to the fore. To take some high-profile examples, South Africa has brought a case against Israel for alleged violations of the convention against genocide in Gaza before the ICJ, a case which has been supported by several other states. The ICJ and all the regional human rights courts have been asked to weigh in on issues around climate change, sparked in part by social mobilisation. And the CJEU is weighing in on the outsized power of Big Tech with the case of (Google’s parent company) found to be wrongfully pushing Google onto Android users in a way that violated fair competition. in a way that violated fair competition. 

Having these cases heard in ICs matters because these institutions carry a certain gravitas: we’re inclined to look on their authority and decisions as having a social power, and even hearing a case gives that case a real social legitimacy. For this reason, it’s important for us to understand how these courts arrive at their decisions on such key issues and what political factors affect the international judiciary.

Note: This interview gives the views of the person interviewed and the interviewer, not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Register for the upcoming LSE Research Showcase with Theresa Squatrito, Can international courts judge without political constraint?

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Gendered Peace through International Law. Louise Arimatsu and Christine Chinkin. Bloomsbury. 2024.

In discussion around international peace, there is a growing narrative that peace can no longer mean merely the absence of war, but must also include the promotion of equality and justice for all. Gendered Peace Through International Law by Louise Arimatsu and Christine Chinkin, both based at the Centre for Women Peace & Security at the London School of Economics and Political Science, provides a new angle on this discussion. The book aims to promote the rights of women as essential to international peacebuilding. 

Peace and gender within international law 

Arimatsu and Chinkin provide an alternate, gender-focused viewpoint on women’s involvement in international law and peace-making. Their framework builds upon a consensus amongst feminist scholars that changes within international law must be made to uphold the rights and safety of women. Gendered Peace considers gender within international law through a wide prism that includes gender studies, international relations and history. Uniquely, the book focuses solely on peace, rather than conflict. The exclusive focus on peace counters how international lawyers tend to conflate peace with conflict or frame it as the absence of war. Arimatsu and Chinkin challenge the idea of peace as negative space, and instead conceptualise a positive peace.  

Chinkin and Arimatsu complicate our understanding of what peace means […] peace to some is not peace to others, and that Western perspectives may conceal how women in other parts of the world have different ideals for peace.

The book opens with a conversation between Chinkin and Arimatsu rather than a traditional introduction, a choice which exemplifies the book’s disruptive nature. As a conversation opens up ideas instead of pinning them down, “gendered peace” is presented as an open, multifaced concept. Near the beginning, Chinkin explains it as a concept with “multiple facets… there will never be an end point or a definitive answer.” These facets include “other axes of oppression,” such as race, sexuality and militarisation, among others, though Chinkin asserts that “the book is primarily about women and women’s struggles for equality and peace within the structures of international law.” 

Western bias and online abuse hindering peace

Chinkin and Arimatsu complicate our understanding of what peace means, drawing on feminist scholarship to highlight that peace to some is not peace to others, and that Western perspectives may conceal how women in other parts of the world have different ideals for peace. For example, Magenya and Hussen highlight that “the internet has emerged as a site of conflict and violence for women and girls” and women in Africa are being disproportionately affected by online gender based violence. The book argues that the impunity of online violence against women “is fostering a rise in sexist and misogynistic behaviour offline,” encouraging the reader to challenge and broaden their potentially biased understanding of peace. 

Through a mix of personal reflections, essays and conversations the book emphasises education’s key role in uplifting the rights and voices of women with the aim of building a feminist peace. The authors call for a multifaceted and multidisciplinary approach to achieve this. They argue that global discourse, broadly, has failed to adequately include women in peace-making efforts. As an example, the authors criticise the 1968 World Conference on Human Rights, example, as an “essentialising stereotype”, labelling women as inherently “peace loving” which “fails to take account of the many roles women play in supporting and participating in conflict.” They also scrutinise the UN Decade for Women, a period beginning in 1976 that saw a series of meetings and conferences centring issues that impacted women such as pay equity, violence against women, landholding, and basic human rights. The authors look more favourably on these efforts than the 1968 conference, But though the Decade “concluded with significant statements and strategies for the advancement of women that resonate today,” the progress made was limited, and “peace slipped even further off the agenda” after the Fourth World Conference on Women a decade later.  

Barriers to, and strategies towards, a feminist peace 

Chapter 10 explores how misogyny and sexism have historically blocked gendered peace, as freedom from violence and discrimination is a form of peace sought by – but too often denied to – women. The essay builds upon Kate Manne’s claim that women experience misogyny “due to the enforcement and policing of patriarchal norms” that encourage men to feel entitled to have control over women and girls, perpetuating violence. The misogynistic nature of online violence against women and girls, discussed in the book, is touched upon by the United Nations but has seldom been considered within the broader scope of a feminist peace. Building upon the authors’ atypical methods for achieving peace, they label the current climate for online violence as a “pandemic fuelled by the commodification of misogyny and sexism,” implying that the patriarchal order of “Big Tech” has used equality and peace to its advantage to incite outrage and draw more people onto their platforms. Women are silenced and victimised in the digital age, the book claims, which constructs a hostile online space which hinders a feminist peace.  

Promoting the rights and voices of women, as well as conceptualising peace in its own right instead of as the absence of war, are essential to the global peacebuilding agenda.

The authors then move into discussions of the “strategic practice” employed to further a gendered peace. They highlight that “women have… engaged in multiple tactics, typically non-violent, in pursuing strategies for peace,” including creative projects, such as the Palestinian embroidery project which highlighted women’s life stories, including ones of suffering. However, as the authors concede in a nuanced section of the book, difficult questions for feminists remain about when, if ever, the use of force is justified when peaceful strategies come up short. Strategies such as increasing women’s visibility within the international legal sphere and “breaking the silence about sexual violence as a war crime and a crime against humanity,” are positive but neither are “directly relevant to securing peace”. Raising awareness of an issue does not create a plan for change: gendered discourse directed towards ending violence and promoting peace is essential, and we must “ask where peace is to be found in the Women Peace and Security agenda” and in international treaties.  

Overall, Gendered Peace reconceptualises peace beyond dominant framings that emphasise war and sideline gendered concerns in peacebuilding. By identifying barriers to peace and presenting strategies to overcome them, the authors have produced a thought-provoking picture of how equality can promote peace. It would have been beneficial if the authors had more clearly laid out their proposals for what a gendered peace may look like, or how they believe it could be achieved in practice. Despite this limitation, Gendered Peace provides a bias-challenging lens for scholars in law, international relations and gender studies researching issues with current peace-making scholarship and teaching. Readers will come away convinced that promoting the rights and voices of women, as well as conceptualising peace in its own right instead of as the absence of war, are essential to the global peacebuilding agenda.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention: An Introduction. Jonathan Parry. Routledge. 2025.

What warrants humanitarian intervention?

Jonathan Parry kicks off this slim but surprisingly demanding book with a scene most of us remember: Libya, March 2011, a burning tank column outside Misrata, kids cheering as French fighter jets roar overhead. For a moment, it feels simple: bad guys stopped, civilians rescued. But Parry doesn’t let that simplicity sit for long. He shifts the focus forward to when the municipal buildings lie in ruins and rival militias carve up the power vacuum. That jolt from adrenaline to uncertainty frames the moral knot he untangles across these 180 pages. When a government turns on its own people, outside force can seem not only justified, but necessary. But as Parry reminds us, rescue never arrives without its own blast radius, political fallout, and lingering after-effects. 

Parry outlines four thresholds for possible intervention: genocide, ethnic cleansing, systematic war crimes and large-scale repression. But he makes clear that size alone doesn’t settle the case.

Parry does most of that hard thinking in what feels like a crowded but calm intellectual workshop. He brings in familiar voices: Michael Walzer’s defence of community self-determination in Just and Unjust Wars (1977),  Fabre’s view that individuals, not states, carry the real moral weight in Cosmopolitan War (2012), and Alex Bellamy’s account of how the UN’s Responsibility to Protect (2013) took shape. But Parry doesn’t take sides. Instead, he lets them argue with one another. Walzer reminds us why outsiders should hesitate before intervening. Fabre objects when hesitation becomes an excuse for doing nothing, and Bellamy steps in when theory runs into the reality of institutions and international rules. Instead of handing over a finished theory, Parry provides a set of tools for examining this issue and leaves the space open for readers to grapple with the ideas themselves. 

The book’s structure mirrors how intervention often unfolds in real life, from the first sense of urgency to the complicated aftermath. Each chapter closes with questions prompting reflection rather than conclusions, inviting readers to sit with the arguments instead of reach for definitive answers. The opening chapters explore questions of sovereignty and self-determination   and the problem of consent, asking whether it matters if approval for intervention comes from governments, rebels or ordinary people. The heart of the book lies in chapters Four and Five, which look at what really counts as a just cause for intervention, and whether these efforts work in practice. After that, Parry takes up the alternatives in more detail from the risks of backing rebel groups (Chapter Six), the use of sanctions (Chapter Seven) and the often-overlooked strategies of providing aid and offering refuge (Chapter Eight).  In his concluding chapter, Parry then circles back to the bigger question of whether intervention is ever not just allowed but morally required. 

Sovereignty and its limits 

Parry’s discussion of sovereignty is where his teaching style really shows. He acknowledges that collective self-government has value, drawing on Anna Stilz’s argument that political membership gives people basic freedom to shape their choices. But for Parry, that value depends on how a state treats its people. When a regime turns on its citizens and commits mass violence, it is the regime, not the population that loses its claim to immunity. The idea feels intuitive, but Parry lays out clearly and convincingly why sovereignty only holds when it serves the interests of real people. His next chapter on consent follows the same thread. Genuine popular backing can give intervention legitimacy, but staged referendums or invitations from embattled juntas only add farce to tragedy. The Liberia 2003 case, where West African troops finally intervened after pleas from civilians in Monrovia, gives the argument something solid to hold onto and pulls it out of abstraction. 

Thresholds for intervention 

The most striking section comes in the middle of the book where Parry explores just cause, proportionality, and effectiveness. He outlines four thresholds for possible intervention: genocide, ethnic cleansing, systematic war crimes and large-scale repression. But he makes clear that size alone doesn’t settle the case; we must look at patterns, intentions, and what is likely to come next, he argues. The genocide in Bosnia (1992 to 1995) qualifies but shows how late action still leaves moral costs. Rwanda (1994) shows how speed, not just legal clarity, might have saved lives. Darfur (2003 to 2005) warns what happens when bold statements aren’t backed by capacity. These examples probe whether moral theory can stand up to what history throws at it. 

While quantitative data can guide us, it is limited, and no chart can account for the weight of making moral choices when lives are at stake.

Parry treats effectiveness not as something we judge after the action, but as something we must consider before it begins. Using case studies from Libya, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, he explains that airstrikes carried out from a distance often lead to more civilian deaths than missions that also include on-the-ground peacekeeping and rebuilding efforts. But while quantitative data can guide us, it is limited, and no chart can account for the weight of making moral choices when lives are at stake. Helping rebel groups can shift the balance but may also make wars last longer. Parry uses examples such as Libya and the former Yugoslavia to show that outside support to rebel factions resulted in escalated violence and drawn-out wars, sometimes worsening conditions for civilians rather than ending them quickly. 

Sanctions might pressure governments, but they often hurt ordinary people the most. Sanctions on Iraq (1990s) led to devastating humanitarian consequences for civilians, contributing to malnutrition, lack of medicine, and increased mortality. Recent sanctions against regimes like Iran, North Korea, and Russia have demonstrated that leaders can bypass restrictions, but ordinary citizens pay the highest personal price in reduced living standards and access to essentials. As case studies from Bosnia and Syria show, safe zones and aid routes can save lives, but sometimes leave countries emptied of the people they need to recover. 

Centring human lives 

Parry’s writing succeeds in centring human lives throughout. He uses technical terms sparingly, and when a phrase like “reasonable prospect of success” does show up, it’s quickly grounded in real-life examples instead of abstract language. At times, there’s even a flicker of humour, though Parry is careful never to make light of the suffering. At one point, he compares states with unclear motives for intervention to gangsters who save someone to boost their own image The reflection questions at the end of the chapters push readers to examine the core ideas rather than just absorb them. 

The book does have certain key absences. African Union missions are mentioned only briefly, and private military contractors stay mostly outside the discussion. Those looking for detailed proposals like Security Council reform or international courts won’t find them here. Even something as practical as a note on casualty data is missing, and the growing link between climate disasters and state responsibility is touched on only lightly. But these omissions seem deliberate. The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention doesn’t hand down verdicts, but opens space for careful moral argument to take shape. Philosophy and political theory students will find it a solid starting point, and researchers in ethics, international relations, or conflict studies will see how its questions stretch into deeper work. For policymakers, it outlines the moral stakes behind decisions usually framed in technical language. What lingers most is its insistence on patience and on balancing moral urgency with thoughtful comparison before action begins. I left the book with more questions than I expected: Who is accountable when humanitarian coalitions fail to deliver? What remains when the cameras leave? Parry offers no final answers, but he makes it harder to ignore the questions that matter.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: Mosul, Iraq, March 2006. Source: Picryl.com

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The post Ethical dilemmas in humanitarian intervention first appeared on LSE Review of Books.

How Africa Eats: Trade, Food Security and Climate Risks. Edited by David Luke. LSE Press. 2025.

Africa is facing a troubling rise in food insecurity, with more than one in five people unable to access sufficient nutritious food. In How Africa Eats: Trade, Food Security and Climate Risks, edited by David Luke, scholars and practitioners explain why, by focusing on the trade-related drivers of hunger on the continent. Compiling research undertaken by the African Trade Policy Programme at LSE’s Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa, the book’s ten chapters converge on a central message: without a sharp focus on trade policy, African countries will remain mired in food insecurity, and climate change will only magnify the challenge. 

The roots of Africa’s food insecurity  

The volume begins by tracing food insecurity in Africa to a deep-seated structural imbalance: an agricultural sector focused on exporting raw commodities whilst relying heavily on imports of consumable food. Today, 82 per cent of African countries’ basic food comes from outside the continent, and 16 African countries spend over 40 per cent of their export revenue on food imports. 

Every country’s domestic support allowance is tied to the value of its agricultural production. This automatically constrains African nations, whose production values are low compared to wealthy countries.

The authors argue that stagnating export volumes and values, compounded by the mounting pressures of climate change require a rapid and fundamental shift in the continent’s trade make-up. Through extensive data visualisations, they bring fresh urgency to the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis which contends that over time, the price of primary commodities declines relative to that of manufactured goods, due to differences in income elasticity of demand. The book’s early chapters establish the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis as an observable reality, underscoring the vulnerability of African economies locked into commodity-export dependence, and pointing to the urgent need for structural transformation.

The paradox of subsidies 

Subsequent chapters focus on trade flows and regulations within and outside the continent. A standout contribution is the chapter devoted to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) legal framework. Authors Van der Ven and Luke frame their analysis in a profound yet under-appreciated paradox: “subsidies in countries that can afford them contribute to global food availability but disincentivise production in poorer countries through price suppression.” 

Against this backdrop, they unpack the rules and intricacies of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture and related mechanisms with clarity and precision, exposing an over-arching framework that systematically disadvantages all but a handful of countries. For instance, every country’s domestic support allowance is tied to the value of its agricultural production. This automatically constrains African nations, whose production values are low compared to wealthy countries. As a result, just four WTO members (the EU, Japan, USA, and Mexico) hold 88.4 per cent of the total allowances for trade-distorting agricultural subsidies known as the Final Bound Total Aggregate Measurement of Support (FBTAMS). 

A chapter on the expected impact of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) underlines the importance of dismantling non-tariff barriers, improving infrastructure and cross-border coordination

However, as the chapter goes on to explain, unfair rules are only part of the story. Many African countries struggle to make full use of the allowances and preferences they do have, such as those under the “Development Box” due to institutional, technical and financial constraints. Compounding this, reductions in global subsidies could drive up the cost of food imports for Africa, especially since any increase in local production would take time.  
 

How global trade rules disadvantage Africa

The story of global trade rules stifling Africa’s agricultural exports is re-told through the lens of bilateral trade in a separate chapter by Vinaye Dey Ancharaz. Ancharaz examines the continent’s evolving relationships with key partners, from the EU and the US, to rising players like Brazil, India, and China. We see how even preferential access schemes like the EU’s Everything But Arms concession and the US Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) fall short of expectations. While these arrangements offer duty-free access to African exporters, in practice they are undermined by exceptions and complex non-tariff barriers. For example, the EU applies temporary restrictions on imports of sugar, fruits, vegetables, poultry and meat, which are already aided by subsidies and tariff protection. These “special safeguard measures” are permissible under WTO rules. Non-tariff barriers, especially those related to food safety and hygiene are also major hurdles. To illustrate, the author provides the striking example of baby squash and courgettes from Zambia, which were considered for export following the enactment of AGOA in 2001, but received the green light more than seven years later. 

Conflicting policy interests and staple food vulnerability

The chapter also addresses recent developments on regulations to curb climate emissions and improve sustainability which risk morphing into a new form of trade protectionism. Using the EU’s Deforestation Regulation (2023) as a case in point, the author invites readers to consider whether climate goals can be pursued without deepening global trade inequities. In a similar vein, a chapter on the expected impact of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) underlines the importance of dismantling non-tariff barriers, improving infrastructure and cross-border coordination to realise the full benefits of an already largely liberalised continent. 

A chapter titled “What Africa Eats – the basic foods” by Olawale Ogunkola and Vinaye Dey Ancharaz provides valuable insights on the eight most widely consumed foods on the continent by calorie intake. The consumption, production, trade, and climate vulnerability profiles of each one is analysed in detail based on publicly available data from the Food And Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Yams turn out to be the only staple for which production keeps pace with consumption. For every other major food source, (cassava, maize, rice, wheat, poultry, meat, and fish) demand consistently outstrips production and yields are far below the global average. Based on this, the authors position improvements in productivity as core to Africa’s food security strategy, conceding that in some cases (meat for instance), this may compromise climate resilience. 

Alternative ways to secure quality food 

In focusing on caloric sufficiency however, the authors sideline nutritional quality. Hidden hunger is widespread across the continent and centring the analysis on calories leads to a framing of food security that prioritises quantity over quality. Considering the nutritional makeup of the African plate could open the door to more holistic policy responses. Investing in indigenous crops like millets, sorghum, and legumes, for example, offers a double dividend: these foods are nutrient-dense and well-suited to the continent’s changing climate. Unfortunately, the authors seem to dismiss such actions as too modest, arguing instead for shifts in trade policy to drive transformation.  

The volume provides a rich account of how trade flows and frameworks shape food insecurity across Africa.

Given the authors’ emphasis on import dependency, it is also surprising that no reference is made to food sovereignty movements which advocate for more local control over food systems to reduce reliance on volatile global markets, while also enhancing nutrition and livelihoods. Such perspectives are essential for the continent’s long-term resilience.

Overall, the volume provides a rich account of how trade flows and frameworks shape food insecurity across Africa. It offers pragmatic guidance to practitioners and policymakers interested in the continent’s food future. In a policy space peppered with difficult trade-offs, competing interests, and inertia, the authors succeed in identifying several actionable levers for reform. These include African countries advocating for a special safeguard mechanism to protect domestic producers from import surges, signing the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, and participating in discussions on repurposing subsidies to improve environmental outcomes. How Africa Eats makes a key contribution to the scholarship. I hope it sparks deeper engagement with the structural drivers of food insecurity on the continent and generates the strategic policy responses it calls for.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main Image Credit: Kabai Ken on Wikimedia Commons.

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