Political science
Jens Bartelson received his doctorate from the University of Stockholm in 1993. His fields of interest include international relations and the history of international thought. Jens Bartelson has published extensively on core concepts in international thought and their history. He is the author of Becoming International (Cambridge University Press, 2023), War in International Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Visions of World Community (Cambridge University Press, 2009), The Critique of the State (Cambridge University Press, 2001), A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge University Press, 1995), as well as of numerous articles in leading journals across the human, legal, and social sciences.
Selected publications
2025
'Forum on Charlotte Epstein’s Birth of the State: The Place of the Body in Crafting Modern Politics' (with Nina Krickel-Choi, R. B. J. Walker, and Lauren Wilcox),Cooperation and Conflict (2025). https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367251330919
‘Shadows of Empire: A Reply to My Critics.’ Global Intellectual History (2025). https://doi.org/10.1080/23801883.2025.2464562
2024
‘Of Selves and Others’, in Halvard Leira, Alireza Shams Lahijani & Einar Wigen (eds.), Uses of Iver Neumann. Nothing International is Alien (London: Routledge, 2024), pp. 12-22.
‘World Statehood and World Community’ in Mathias Albert et al. ‘Forum on Heikki Patomäki’s World Statehood: The Future of World Politics.’ Cooperation and Conflict (2024). https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367241261483
2023
Becoming International (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
'Cosmologies of Conquest: The Renaissance Foundations of Modern International Thought.' Review of International Studies (2023).https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210523000694
'Violent Modernity: Brawls in the Waiting Room of History.' Global Intellectual History (2023).https://doi.org/10.1080/23801883.2023.2269485
2021
’Epilogue: The Ironies of Misrecognition.’ in Rebecca Bryant and Madeleine Reeves (eds.), The Everyday Lives of Sovereignty: Political Imagination Beyond the State, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021), 240-252.
’War and the Turn to History in International Relations.’ in Benjamin de Carvalho, Halvard Leira, and Julia Costa-Lopez (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Historical International Relations (London & New York: Routledge, 2021), 127-137.
2020
(with Patrick Thaddeus Jackson). ’Introduction: Forum on Adom Getachew’s ‘Worldmaking after Empire’.' Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2020, 1-6.
2019
‘A Reply to my Critics: War and Historical Ontology’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 48, No. 1, 2019, pp. 105-114.
2018
‘Dating Sovereignty’, International Studies Review, Vol. 20, No. 3, 2018, pp. 509-513.
‘From the International to the Global’ in Andreas Gofas, Inanna Hamati-Ataya, and Nicholas Onuf (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of the History, Philosophy and Sociology of International Relations (Thousand Oaks, CA.: SAGE, 2018), 33-45.
2017
’Ending Empire. Lustotropicalism as an Imperial Ideology’, in Harry D. Gould (ed.), The Art of World-Making: Nicholas Greenwood Onuf and his Critics (London & New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 248-261.
War in International Thought, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
‘That Brutal Uncivilizer of Nations’, Critical Analysis of Law, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 152-159.
2016
‘The Language of Law and the Laws of Language’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2, 2016, pp. 250-257.
’Sovereignty’, in Aoileann Ní Mhurchú and Reiko Shindo (eds.) Critical Imaginations in International Relations, (London & New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 183-195.
‘Om Genealogins Möjligheter och Begränsningar som Historisk Metod’, i Victoria Fareld & Hans Ruin (red.), Historiens Hemvist I: Historiens Teori och Historiseringens Gränser, (Stockholm: Makadam Förlag, 2016), pp. 307-322.
‘Recognition: A Short History’, Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 30, No. 3, 2016, pp. 303-321.
‘Blasts from the Past: War and Fracture in the International System’, International Political Sociology, Vol. 10, No. 4, 2016, pp. 252-368.
2015
‘Acabando con el Imperio: Lusotropicalismo como ideología imperial’, Relaciones Internacionales, No. 30, 2015, pp. 11-26.
’Sovereignty and the Personality of the State’, in Robert Schuett & Peter M. R. Stirk (eds), The Concept of the State in International Relations. Philosophy, Sovereignty, and Cosmopolitanism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), pp. 81-107.
’Sovereignty as Symbolic Form’, in Halvard Leira & Benjamin de Carvalho (eds.) Historical International Relations, Vol. 3 (London: SAGE, 2015).
’Towards a Genealogy of ’Society’ in International Relations’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2015, pp. 675-692.
2014
Soverignty as Symbolic Form, (London & New York: Routledge, 2014).
'From Empire to Sovereignty - and Back?', Ethics & International Affairs, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2014, pp. 251-262.
‘Can Sovereignty be Divided?’, in Mathias Mossberg & Mark Levine (eds.) One Land – Two States? (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 29-43.
’International Theory meets Intellectual History’, Contemporary Political Theory, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2014, pp. 392-397.
2013
‘Three Concepts of Recognition’, International Theory, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2013, pp. 107-129.
‘Functional Differentiation and Legitimate Authority’, in Rodney Bruce Hall (ed.), Reducing Armed Violence with NGO Governance (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 41-57.
2011
’Ways of Warmaking’, in Hans Ruin & Andrus Ers (eds.) Rethinking Time. Essays on Historical Consciousness, Memory, and Representation, Södertörn Philosophical Studies 10, 2011, pp. 167-178.
‘On the Indivisibility of Sovereignty’, Republics of Letters. A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2011, pp. 85-94.
‘What is Wrong with the World?’, Contemporary Political Theory, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2011, pp. 290-293.
2010
’Beyond Democratic Legitimacy: Global Governance and the Promotion of Liberty’, in Christer Jönsson & Jonas Tallberg (eds.) Transnational Actors in Global Governance, (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 218-236.
’Double Binds: Sovereignty and the Just War Tradition’, in Hent Kalmo & Quentin Skinner (eds.) Sovereignty in Fragments. The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Concept, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 81-95.
Globality, Democracy, and Civil Society (edited with Terrell Carver) (London: Routledge, 2010).
’The Social Construction of Globality’, International Political Sociology, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2010, pp. 219-235.
2009
The Future of Political Community (edited with Gideon Baker) (London: Routledge, 2009).
’Is There a Global Society?’, International Political Sociology, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2009, pp. 112-115.
Visions of World Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
2008
’Globalizing the Democratic Community’, Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 1, No. 4, 2008, pp. 159-174.
’Sovereignty Before and After the Linguistic Turn’, in Rebecca Adler-Nissen & Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen (eds.) Sovereignty Games. Instrumentalizing State Sovereignty in Europe and Beyond (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 33-45.