Introduction

DOI10.1177/0047117811415479
Published date01 September 2011
AuthorShahar Hameiri,Florian P. Kühn
Date01 September 2011
Subject MatterArticles
International Relations
25(3) 275 –279
© The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117811415479
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Introduction: Risk,
Risk Management and
International Relations
Shahar Hameiri
Murdoch University, Western Australia
Florian P. Kühn
Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg
The field of international relations (IR) has a long history of engagement with the disci-
pline of sociology. In recent times, however, sociology’s influence on IR has undoubt-
edly become more explicit, due to the emergence and popularity of social constructivism
and critical IR theory.1 In the latest wave of cross-disciplinary migration, sociological
concepts and theories of risk have gained an increasing foothold in the work of a rela-
tively small but rapidly expanding group of IR scholars. The transition of risk into IR is
perhaps not entirely surprising, as governments and international organisations have
over the past two decades made risk management a leading policy paradigm in areas as
disparate as counter-terrorism, financial regulation and public health. To give but one
recent example, the 2010 United States Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), unlike its Cold
War predecessors, is focused less on responding to the strategic threat posed by states
with large nuclear stockpiles than it is on managing the risk of isolated nuclear terrorist
attacks.2 Risk management in this context does not mean developing contingency plans
to deal with the specific threat posed by another nuclear-armed state, as in the Rand
Corporation’s Cold War modelling of a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.3
Rather, it involves establishing a wide range of checks and balances, within the US and
internationally, with the aim of limiting the movement of materials, technologies and
personnel that could potentially enable terrorist organisations or rogue states to acquire
nuclear weapons.
Risk is a concept well known to bankers, financiers and insurers. Indeed, these indus-
tries would arguably not have existed in their current form if it were not for the ability to
make potential future dangers – risks – ‘knowable’ through statistical calculation and
mathematical modelling. The cost of insurance coverage, for example, tends to increase
with the assessed risk, while higher risk investments in financial products usually yield
415479IREXXX10.1177/0047117811415479Hameiri and KühnInternational Relations
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