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This article posits empirical and political reasons for recent 'micro--moves' in several contemporary debates, and seeks to further develop them in future International Relations studies. As evidenced by growing trends in studies of practices, emotions, and the everyday, there is continuing broad dissatisfaction with grand or structural theory's value without 'going down' to 'lower levels' of analysis where structures are enacted and contested. We suggest that empirics of the last fifteen years -including the war on terror and the Arab Spring -have pushed scholars into increasingly micropolitical positions and analytical frameworks. Drawing upon insights from Gilles Deleuze, William Connolly, and Henri Lefebvre, among others, we argue that attention to three issues -affect, space, and time -hold promise to further develop micropolitical perspectives on and in IR, particularly on issues of power, identity, and change. (Routledge, 2008). He is currently working on a project investigating restraint in global politics, an edited volume on methods and constructivism, and two journal symposia on the politics of constructivism. He is also the co--editor of three books and one handbook, and has published articles in a number of international studies journals. 2 Every macro--theory presupposes, whether implicitly or explicitly, a micro--theory to back up its explanations--Steven Lukes, Introduction to Emile Durkheim's The Rules of Sociological Method, (1982: 16) The balance one strikes between the macro and micro is a tension that has characterized social theory since at least Durkheim's time. Whether it is titled a level--of--analysis (Singer, 1961) or agent--structure (Wendt, 1987) 'problem', International Relations (IR) has faced its own related quandaries over which level(s) should be regarded theoretical, methodological, and even normative primacy. Since Kenneth Waltz's (1959) critique of the first and second images as inadequate to capture the most important dynamics of world politics, IR has at times focused within a grand theory mode that too--often eschews the myriad of sub--system and sub--state phenomena. Attention to anarchy and its inescapable pressures on nation--states were said to offer the most reliable insights into the 'small number of big and important things' of which IR should mostly concern itself (Waltz, 1986: 329). While a recent and persuasive 2013 special issue of European Journal of International Relations considered whether we were at the 'End of IR theory', there continues to be a default admonition to scholars, and students, to re--embrace grand theory (Snyder, 2013; Harrison and Mitchell, 2014). A 15 December 2011 post by Professor Brian Rathbun on the popular blog 'Duck of Minerva' provides ample illustration of this move --an exaltation to all IR scholars to find the 'big' theoretical argument that will make them famous. The post asks graduate students (especially) whether the empirical studies that 3 seem to have permeated IR as of late 'will make you the next Robert Keohane? Or Ale...

Why did Great Britain remain neutral during the American Civil War? Although several historical arguments have been put forth, few studies have explicitly used International Relations (IR) theories to understand this decision. Synthesising a discursive approach with an ontological security interpretation, I propose an alternative framework for understanding security-seeking behaviour and threats to identity. I assess the impact Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had upon the interventionist debates in Great Britain. I argue that the Proclamation reframed interventionist debates, thus (re)engendering the British anxiety over slavery and removing intervention as a viable policy. I conclude by proposing several issues relevant to using an ontological security interpretation in future IR studies.

Objectives. This study examines the relationship between white ethnic diversity and community attachment in 99 small Iowa towns. Methods. Our data come from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Rural Development Initiative (RDI) at Iowa State University. The RDI data, which consist of interviews with approximately 110 people in each of the 99 towns, are used to develop a community attachment score for each town. These scores serve as the dependent variable in ordinary least squares regression models to assess the extent to which ethnic diversity is related to attachment. Results. The findings show that towns with high levels of white ethnic diversity tend to have low levels of community attachment. Moreover, residents of diverse towns tend to view their communities with more suspicion and tend to be less involved in community activities than citizens in more homogeneous towns.Conclusions. Looked at narrowly, these results indicate that white ethnic diversity may be detrimental to community building in small Iowa towns. More broadly, the findings provide support for the idea that white ethnic diversity is alive and well in America.In recent years, several scholars have turned their attention to investigating the causes of community attachment. Generally defined as the "commitment of individuals to their places of residence" (Liu et al., 1998:433), community attachment has been found to vary systematically with sociodemographic factors, such as population size, mobility patterns, and property ownership. Conspicuously absent from these analyses, however, has been an examination of the link between ethnic diversity and community attachment. Given the prominent role that diversity has played in structuring a wide range of attitudes and behaviors in American society, it seems entirely possible that the ethnic diversity of a community might in-

The authors compare the subjective well-being of citizens in 20 nations with the subjective well-being of Americans who claim to have ancestors from those nations. The results show that the rank order of the wellbeing scores for the citizens of the 20 nations is similar to the rank order of the well-being scores for the Americans with ancestors from those nations. This finding suggests that the aspects of culture that influence subjective well-being have been passed from people who lived centuries ago to their contemporary descendants at home and in America. Additional analysis suggests that religion may be an important agent in the transmission process.

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The loss of faith in mainstream political parties and moderate electoral candidates seems characteristic of the zeitgeist in much of the Western world and beyond. Whether in the form of the United Kingdom's vote to exit the European Union (EU), the 2016 United States (US) presidential election of the Republican nominee Donald Trump, the prior strength of Senator Bernie Sandecrs within the Democratic party primaries, or the rise of the anti-neoliberal left alongside resurgent rightist anti-migration groups in Europe, varieties of populism have gravitated from the fringes of politics into the center. They have gained traction in tandem with widespread perceptions of crises, insecurity and alienation as markers of a 'runaway world' whose forces lie beyond the control of the many (Giddens 1999). The urgency of populist politics calls attention to the everyday anxieties and concerns of 'ordinary' individuals in a variety of everyday settings. Although it is often invoked as a self-evident term or concept, the meaning of 'populism' depends upon the contexts within which it operates. A broad understanding of populism therefore acknowledges that it is an approach, ideology or discourse that easily escapes definitional straightjackets but which centrally features the driving of a wedge between two antagonistic sides-the bad, corrupt elite and the good, pure people-to appeal to the 'common' person (Mudde 2004, 543). 1 While much remains undefined here both in terms of who (or what) is a populist, 2 as well as whom such politics is aimed towards-both for and against-the politics of populism centralizes the power struggles and emotional contexts that involve who (or what) gets to be considered as part of the 'true' people, and who does not. Boundary-making practices, especially those relating to emotionally charged processes of exclusion

Prominent communicative approaches to humanitarian crisis assume that international action is constrained by definitional disagreement. Yet interpretive agreement is not always enough to stimulate states into acting. Reflexive discourse is an alternative form of communicative action, and it occurs when international actors (state, nonstate, or suprastate) generate insecurity in powerful states, and stimulate these states into actions that they might initially be reluctant to pursue. By calling out the discrepancy between a targeted state’s actions and its biographical narrative, reflexive discourse challenges a targeted state’s self‐identity and thus illuminates the interest such a state has in confronting certain crises. I use the American response to the recent Asian Tsunami, reviewing how then U.N. Undersecretary‐General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland inadvertently used reflexive discourse by suggesting that Western nations were being “stingy” with their initial aid offers. This (in part) prompted the United States, albeit with much indignation, to increase by twenty times its aid to the affected areas. I then posit how a reflexive discourse strategy might have been used to persuade the United States into acting to confront the genocide in Darfur.