Winners – The Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award
2023
Winner: Jonathan Wyrtzen, Worldmaking in the Long Great War: How Local and Colonial Struggles Shaped the Modern Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2022)
Citation from the jury:
This historically rich, theoretically informed book offers a new history of the making of the modern Middle East in the period 1911 to 1934, from the perspective of the local actors that played crucial roles in shaping that history. It challenges the “Sykes-Picot” version of that history, which suggests that European imperial powers artificially imposed national borders after World War I upon local people. Even in recent years, ISIS and other groups have peddled the notion that these artificial borders cut across supposedly natural population groups, and thus, are a contributing cause of war in the region. Wyrtzen upends this story, arguing that “war made borders” much more than “borders made wars.” It was violent conflicts in this period, Wyrtzen argues, between European forces and local actors, and among local actors, that made the national borders we observe today. He carefully distinguishes between three interrelated but distinct political processes: border making, state formation, and national identity creation. He shows that the process of creating modern states in the North Africa to Persian Gulf region now known as the Middle East was broader than the Sykes-Picot version of history, both geographically and chronologically. The key violent conflicts began before the July 1914 hostilities of World War I and ended more than a decade after the Treaty of Versailles. All in all, this book does much to deepen our understanding of this vital region, and contributes to a broader collection of research that decolonizes our understanding of world politics.
Honorable mention: Jonathan Kirshner, An Unwritten Future: Realism, Uncertainty, and World Politics (Princeton University Press, 2022).
Citation from the jury:
This intellectually rich and empirically broad book offers a novel reassessment of classical realism, an often overlooked or sidelined perspective in modern international relations (IR). Pushing back against the dominance of structural theories and “hyper-rationalism” within the field of IR, Kirshner critiques what he views as the excessive abstractionism and attendant limitations of the more popular realist or rationalist frameworks as theoretical logics and explanations of both historical and contemporary events. Moving beyond an exclusive focus on anarchy and the responses of like (state) units to relative distributional capabilities across the international system, Kirshner argues for the utility of classical realism’s more comprehensive if messy approach that incorporates both power and purpose, along with history, uncertainty, and contingency. He does so through a deep dive into the intellectual forebearers of classical realism and articulation of its theoretical contours, including through discussion of Thucydides, Morgenthau, and Aron. Kirshner then illustrates the merits of his preferred theoretical approach through exploration of great puzzles in the 20th century – British appeasement of Germany Pre-World War II, American overextension in Vietnam – and application to the rise of China as a great power. Overall, this significant and thoughtful book takes aim at many giants of international relations using logic, theoretical concepts, history, and economics to do so. With its superb and clear writing, the book will find broad appeal across the scholarly and policy community, likely even among those who disagree with it.
Honorable mention: Ayşe Zarakol, Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Citation of the jury:
In her meticulously researched and compellingly argued Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders, Zarakol provides a novel macro-history of Eurasian world orders between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries that is liberated from their post-hoc employment in standard “decline of the East/rise of the West” narratives of Europe’s global ascendancy. Zarakol’s historical appraisal of (Eur)Asian politics on its own terms elaborates key concepts such as sovereignty and order as Eastern rulers practiced them amongst themselves, claiming that associated practices and ideas influenced European visions of world order and not the other way round. This work therefore surpasses scholarly accounts that intervene in established debates simply “with more data” (227). Before the West exceeds otherwise powerful critiques of IR’s Eurocentrism by providing an alternative account of world politics that examines the foundations of (Eur)Asian orders independently of Europe’s (post-)imperial restructuring of the globe. The book’s findings address multiple areas, such as historical Eurocentrism; the ‘rise’, ‘decline’ and ‘rivalry’ of great powers; and micro-histories of non-Western world politics.
2022
Winner: Jeff D. Colgan, Partial Hegemony: Oil Politics and International Order (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Honorable mention: Sinja Graf, The Humanity of Universal Crime: Inclusion, Inequality, and Intervention in International Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Honorable mention: Rachel Elizabeth Whitlark, All Options on the Table: Leaders, Preventive War, and Nuclear Proliferation (Cornell University Press, 2021)
2021 Co-Winners
Kyle Lascurettes, Orders of Exclusion: Great Powers and the Strategic Sources of Foundational Rules in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Don Levin, Meddling at the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions (Oxford University Press, 2020)
Honorable Mention: Lora Anne Viola, The Closure of the International System (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
2020 Co-Winners
Ahmet Kuru, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
Jelena Subotić, Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance After Communism (Cornell University Press, 2019)
2019
Arjun Chowdhury, The Myth of International Order: Why Weak States Persist and Alternatives to the State Fade Away (Oxford University Press, 2018)
2018
Catherine Lu, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
2017
Winner: Rosella Cappella Zielinski, How States Pay for Wars (Cornell University Press, 2016).
Honorable mention: Debra Thompson, The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
2016 (joint winners)
Andrew Phillips and Jason Sharman, International Order in Diversity: War, Trade and Rule in the Indian Ocean (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
Ronald Krebs, Narrative and the Making of U.S. National Security (Cambridge University Press, 2015)
2015
Eric Grynaviski, Constructive Illusions: Rethinking the Origins of International Cooperation (Cornell University Press, 2014)
2014
Winner: Adria K. Lawrence, Imperial Rule and the Politics of Nationalism: Anti-Colonial Protest in the French Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Honorable mention: Jennifer Mitzen, Power in Concert: The Nineteenth- Century Origins of Global Governance (University of Chicago Press, 2013).
2013
Winner: Ted Hopf, Reconstructing the Cold War: The Early Years, 1945-1958 (Oxford University Press, 2012)
Honorable mention: Kristen Renwick Monroe, Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice (Princeton University Press, 2012)
2012
Elizabeth N. Saunders, Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions (Cornell University Press, 2011)
2011
James Mahoney, Colonialism and Postcolonial Development: Spanish America in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
2010
Patrick J. McDonald, The Invisible Hand of Peace: Capitalism, The War Machine, and International Relations Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
2009
Winner: Richard Ned Lebow, A Cultural Theory of International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Honorable mention: George Gavrilis, The Dynamics of Interstate Boundaries (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
2008 (joint winners)
Etel Solingen, Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and The Middle East (Princeton University Press, 2007)
Daniel Deudney, Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village (Princeton University Press, 2007)
2007
Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press,2006)
2006
Winner: Victoria Tin-bor Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Honorable mention: Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Evaluate Military Threats (Cornell University Press, 2005)
2005
Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Risks: Great Power Intervention in the Periphery (Cornell University Press, 2004)
2004
Richard Samuel, Machiavelli’s Children: Leaders and Their Legacies in Italy and Japan (Cornell University Press, 2003)
2003 (joint winners)
Neta Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Dorothy Jones, Toward a Just World: The Critical Years in the Search for International Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2002)
2002
John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton University Press, 2001)
2001
Matthew Evangelista, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War (Cornell University Press, 1999)