Two members of the Nunn School (INTA) faculty have just published their first books by prestigious presses (Cambridge and Stanford) accompanied by high praise from prominent scholars in the field. Please join us for a lunchtime symposium focusing on how these two authors crafted their research and arguments about the critical role of ideas in world politics today. 

Larry Rubin's Islam in the Balance: Ideational Threats in Arab Politics is an analysis of how ideas, or political ideology, can threaten states and how states react to ideational threats. It exam- ines the threat perception and policies of two Arab, Muslim majority states, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in response to the rise and activities of two revolutionary "Islamic states," established in Iran (1979) and Sudan (1989). The book has significant implications for international relations theory and engages important debates in comparative politics about authoritarianism and Islamic activism. 

Jarrod Hayes’s Constructing National Security: US Relations with India and China explores why democracies tend not to use military force against each other. He argues that democratic identity - the shared understanding within democracies of who "we" are and what "we" expect from each other - makes it difficult for political leaders to construct external democracies as threats. At the same time, he finds that democratic identity enables political actors to construct external non-democracies as threats. To explore his argument, he looks at U.S. relations with two rising powers: India and China.