Digital International Relations: Technology, Agency and Order

This book analyses how digital transformation disrupts established patterns of world politics, moving International Relations (IR) increasingly towards Digital International Relations.

This volume examines technological, agential and ordering processes that explain this fundamental change. The contributors trace how digital disruption changes the international world we live in, ranging from security to economics, from human rights advocacy to deep fakes, and from diplomacy to international law. The book makes two sets of contributions. First, it shows that the ongoing digital revolution profoundly changes every major dimension of international politics. Second, focusing on the interplay of technology, agency and order, it provides a framework for explaining these changes. The book also provides a map for adjusting the study of international politics to studying International Relations, making a case for upgrading, augmenting and rewiring the discipline. Theory follows practice in International Relations, but if the discipline wants to be able to meaningfully analyse the present and come up with plausible scenarios for the future, it must not lag too far behind major transformations of the world that it studies. This book facilitates that theoretical journey.

This book will be of much interest to students of cyber-politics, politics and technology, and International Relations.

Corneliu Bjola is Associate Professor of Diplomatic Studies at the University of Oxford, UK.

Markus Kornprobst is a Professor of International Relations at the Vienna School of International Studies, Austria.