Mikael Baaz

International law and international politics are closely linked. Despite this, the phenomena are most often studied in isolation, not only within the sub-fields of e.g. International Law and International Politics but also within multi- or interdisciplinary fields such as Global Studies, International Studies, International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, Peace as well as Peace and Development Studies. This is an unfortunate state of affairs, as the understanding of today’s increasingly globalized international society then becomes compartmentalized and, by extension, fractured and incomplete. The starting point in this book is that international law must be understood in its political context and that international politics must be understood in its legal context. With the ultimate aim of seeking to understand law and politics in the current international society, this book contains theoretical discussions of the entanglements between law and politics as well as analyses of a number of international political and legal issues. The book not only introduces the most productive theories of international law and politics existing today, but it also seeks to integrate some of them into a multi-disciplinary framework to study law and politics in the current international society. The book also introduces a method for practical legal problem-solving: “the method of social welfare”. More detailed analyses are provided of, among other things, (the differences between) American and European foreign policy, human rights, humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect. The various issues are analyzed from historical, contemporary and forward-looking perspectives. Mikael Baaz is an Associate Professor in International Law as well as an Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies. He currently works as a Senior Lecturer in International Law at the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg. Baaz is also an affiliated Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the University West. He is the author of several books, including, The Use of Force and International Society, 2nd edition (Jure, 2017) and, together with Mona Lilja and Stellan Vinthagen, Researching Resistance and Social Change: A Critical Approach to Theory and Practice (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017). Baaz is also widely published internationally and his papers appear in the following journals: Alternatives: Global, Local, Political; Asian Journal of International Law; Asian Politics and Policy; Conflict and Society; European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology; Global Public Health; International Journal of Constitutional Law; International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society; International Studies Review; Journal of Civil Society; Journal of International Criminal Justice; Journal of International Relations and Development; Journal of Law and Society; Journal of Political Power; Journal of Refugee Studies; Journal of Resistance Studies; Journal on the Use of Force and International Law; Leiden Journal of International Law; Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice; and, Scandinavian Studies in Law.

Resistance has often been connected with anti-social attitudes, destructiveness, reactionary or revolutionary ideologies, unusual and sudden explosions of violence and emotional outbursts. This book goes beyond these conventions. Exploring various key questions, ranging from concept definitions of affect and temporality, to complex entanglements of various social dimensions and ethical questions, this accessible guide provides a robust theoretical and methodological framework for researching of resistance and social change. By drawing connections between resistance and politics, between performance and everyday strategies, and between the juridical and its counter-strategies, this book provides students with a transdisciplinary understanding of contemporary debates in this emerging field.

Resistance has often been connected with anti-social attitudes, destructiveness, reactionary or revolutionary ideologies, unusual and sudden explosions of violence and emotional outbursts. This book goes beyond these conventions. Exploring various key questions, ranging from concept definitions of affect and temporality, to complex entanglements of various social dimensions and ethical questions, this accessible guide provides a robust theoretical and methodological framework for researching of resistance and social change. By drawing connections between resistance and politics, between performance and everyday strategies, and between the juridical and its counter-strategies, this book provides students with a transdisciplinary understanding of contemporary debates in this emerging field.

This book is about political orders, historical ones, the current one but also future alternative ones. An understanding of how the contemporary world order came to be what it is and how it may develop in the future, is an exploration of the expansion of the international society of European states across the rest of the globe, its transformation from a society fashioned in Europe and dominated by Europeans into the global international society of today, with its nearly two hundred states, the great majority of which are not European. Such an understanding requires a sense of how other societies operated and developed in the past. In fact, our present international society is puzzling if looked at in isolation. Of particular interest in the book is the (changing) view on the use of force as a legal/legitimate means in the conduct of international politics. Briefly put: what does the seemingly new attitude towards the use of force as an acceptable means in international relations that we are witnessing today imply for the future world order? The second edition of the book has been updated in its entirety and features an elaborated theoretical and methodological framework as well as a newly written epilogue on the “Obama Years”. Mikael Baaz is an Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies and a Senior Lecturer in International Law at the School of Business, Economics and Law, the University of Gothenburg. He is widely published internationally and his papers appear in e.g.: Journal of International Relations and Development; International Studies Review; Asian Politics and Polity; Journal of Political Power; Global Public Health; Peace Review; Journal on the Use of Force and International Law; Asian Journal of International Law; Scandinavian Studies in Law; Leiden Journal of International Law; Journal of International Criminal Justice; Journal of Civil Society; Journal of Resistance Studies; International Journal of Constitutional Law; European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology; International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society; and Journal of Law and Society (2017, forthcoming) Baaz has also contributed to several edited books, including, Ethical Reasoning in International Affairs: Arguments from the Middle Ground, edited by Cornelia Navari (2013) and, Progressivism and US Foreign Policy: American Thinkers on Peace and War during the Interwar Period, edited by Molly Cochran and Cornelia Navari (2017, forthcoming), both published by Palgrave Macmillan.