Bounding War: the Institutional Logic of Prohibitions on Militarized Bargaining

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• Dr Anatoly Levshin, Harvard University
• Thursday 20 March 2025, 13:00-14:30
• Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road (Sidgwick Site), Room S2.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Ayse Zarakol.

It is a familiar observation that the possibility of war permeates relations among states under anarchy. It is less well appreciated that states deliberately and routinely regulate that possibility by delineating prohibitions on the use of militarized bargaining. Three ambitious examples of such prohibition – the rule of non-aggression embedded in the Covenant of the League of Nations (1920), Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), and Charter of the United Nations (1945) – have attracted enormous attention from political scientists and historians alike. Few scholars appreciate that these three instruments are, however, only the most well-known cases inhabiting a much broader universe. Indeed, across the past two centuries alone, various groups of three or more states concluded over 97 legal instruments containing 120 distinct provisions variously circumscribing the right and ability of different states to engage in militarized bargaining. Despite their ubiquity in modern international relations, states’ use of such prohibitions is documented only incompletely and rather imperfectly understood. Why do states enact them? What explains variation in their design? And what does the practice of such prohibitions tell us about the ability of states, especially the great powers, to cooperatively limit the use of military force in the international system? In this talk, Anatoly Levshin will articulate a new institutionalist theory that resolves these questions. He will provide guidance on the use of prohibitions on militarized bargaining as policy instruments and, drawing on extensive archival research, develop new narratives of the origins of some of the most familiar prohibitions, including the rule of non-aggression articulated in Article 10 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

This talk is part of the POLIS Department Research Seminars series.

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