Book Project 1: Power Vacuums in Great Power Politics
My first book project, tentatively titled Power Vacuums in Great Power Politics: The End of Hegemony and Its Aftermath, won the 2024 John McCain Dissertation Award from the Munich Security Conference and received honorable mention for the 2025 Nuno P. Monteiro Best Dissertation Award from the APSA IR Theory Section.
The book answers two questions: what are power vacuums? And how do great powers respond to their emergence? While the concept of ‘power vacuums’ has long featured prominently in both academic and policy debates about IR, scholars of international politics have largely neglected to study power vacuums in a serious social scientific manner.
My book seeks to rectify this omission by providing the first systematic assessment of the nature and role of power vacuums in great power politics. It 1) proposes and defends a conceptualization of power vacuums as instances of international authority collapse; 2) develops and tests a theory of when and how great powers seek to fill power vacuums; and 3) shows how the resulting understanding of power vacuums and their role in international politics helps us better understand not only crucial moments in international history but also current policy issues such as the rise of China and how the United States should navigate the dusk of unipolarity.
Book Project 2: The Selective Spread of Nuclear Weapons
My second book project, co-authored with Mark Raymond and tentatively titled The Selective Spread of Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Global Order After Unipolarity, investigates under what circumstances nuclear proliferation enhances global security.
The book argues that the answer depends on the prospective proliferator, specifically on, first, a state’s external strategic environment, and second, its internal stability and orientation toward global order. While many states fail to meet the circumstances that render proliferation an attractive prospect, a small set of capable and reliable states does meet them, suggesting that further proliferation in these cases would strengthen global stability. The book thus charts a middle-ground position between non-proliferation absolutists (like Sagan) and radical nuclear optimists (like Waltz) and, by applying this framework to the current political moment, promises to inform ongoing debates about the possibility of developing nuclear deterrents in states such as Japan, South Korea, Germany, Sweden, and many others.
Working Papers
“The Causes of Great-Power War” (with Sebastian Rosato)
“Collective Intentionality in International Relations: A Reductionist View” (with Marcel Jahn)
“The Normative Legitimacy of International Institutions and Its Sociological Foundations” (with Marcel Jahn)
“A Dialogue Long Overdue: How Security Studies and IO Theory Can Learn From Each Other” (with Stephanie Hofmann)
