I am Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science and serve as the Academic Dean of the TRIUM Global Executive MBA, an alliance between LSE, NYU Stern School of Business and HEC Paris, and one of the world’s leading EMBA programmes.
My research and teaching focuses on international political economy, global environmental politics, and the role of business in international relations. My recent books include Great Powers, Climate Change, and Global Environmental Responsibilities (co-edited, Oxford University Press, 2022), Environmentalism and Global International Society (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and The Handbook of Global Climate and Environment Policy (edited, Wiley, 2013). My new book, The Market in Global International Society: An English School Approach to International Political Economy (co-authored with Barry Buzan), will be published by Oxford University Press in January 2025.
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Forthcoming in January 2025:
the market in global international society: an english school approach to international political economy
Oxford University Press, 2025 (with Barry Buzan).
The Market in Global International Society tracks the idea and practice of the market through both modern and premodern times, and its evolution as a primary institution in international relations over the past two centuries. It develops a new approach to understanding the relationship between the market and other social and political institutions of global international society. Buzan and Falkner view the market as a political ideology in support of a liberal system of governance, and not just as an economic practice or economy-wide structural feature. In doing so, they draw attention to the market's powerful impact on international order.
This historical grounding brings into close contact two areas of study that have for much too long stood back-to-back: the English School of International Relations (ES), and International Political Economy (IPE). For the ES, the book fills in the large economic gap in its understanding and portrayal of the primary institutions of international society. Adding in the economic sector has a major impact on how the other primary institutions of international society both work in themselves, and interact with each other. For IPE, the book opens up a new and usefully detailed view of the constant and wide-ranging interaction of the market with the other social and political institutions of global international society. The approach through primary institutions fills in the middle ground between the big-picture classical approaches to IPE, and the current focus on intergovernmental organisations and regimes.
Great powers, climate change, and global environmental responsibilities
Oxford University Press, 2022 (co-edited with Barry Buzan).
This book is the first of its kind to examine the role of great powers in the international politics of climate change. It develops a novel analytical framework for studying environmental power in international relations, what counts as a great power in the environmental field, and what their special environmental responsibilities are. In doing so, the book connects International Relations (IR) debates on power inequality, great powers and great power management, with global environmental politics (GEP) scholarship.
The book brings together leading scholars of IR and GEP whose contributions focus on major environmental powers (United States, China, European Union, India, Brazil, Russia) and international institutions and issue areas (UN Security Council, multilateral environmental agreements, international climate leadership, coal politics). The contributors to this volume examine how individual great powers have responded to the global climate challenge and whether they have accepted a special responsibility for stabilizing the global climate. They place emerging discourses on great power responsibility in the context of wider debates about international environmental leadership and climate change securitization. And they provide new insights into how international power inequality intersects with the global ecological crisis, and what special role great powers could and should play in the international fight against global warming.
Great Powers, Climate Change, and Global Environmental Responsibilities is available as an audiobook:
Latest research
Falkner, Robert (2024), ‘The Longue Durée of International Environmental Norm Change: Global Environmental Politics Meets the English School of International Relations’, in: Global Environmental Politics, 24(1): 124-37. [link]
Watch an interview with Yixian Sun about my GEP article ‘The Longue Durée of International Environmental Norm Change’ here.
Buzan, Barry and Robert Falkner (2023), ‘La responsabilidad ambiental de las grandes potencias internacionales.’ in: Anuario Internacional CIDOB, pp. 55-64. [link]
Falkner, Robert (2023), ‘Weaponised Energy and Climate Change: Assessing Europe’s Response to the Ukraine War’, in: LSE Public Policy Review. 3(1): 10, 1-8. [link]
Buzan, Barry and Robert Falkner (2022), ‘The Market in Global International Society: A Dialectic of Contestation and Resilience’, in Rebooting Global International Society: Change, Contestation, and Resilience, ed. by Trine Flockhart and Zachary Paikin, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 237–60.
Selected Publications
Falkner, Robert, Naghmeh Nasiritousi and Gunilla Reischl (2022). ‘Climate Clubs: Politically Feasible and Desirable?’ in: Climate Policy, (22)4: 480-87. [link]
Falkner, Robert and Barry Buzan (2019), 'The Emergence of Environmental Stewardship as a Primary Institution of Global International Society', European Journal of International Relations, 25(1): 131-155 [link].
Falkner, Robert (2019), ‘The Unavoidability of Justice - and Order - in International Climate Politics: From Kyoto to Paris and Beyond’, in: British Journal of Politics and International Relations, (21)2: 270-78 [link].
Falkner, Robert (2016) 'The Paris Agreement and the New Logic of International Climate Politics', International Affairs 92(5), September, pp. 1107–1125.
Falkner, Robert (2016) 'A minilateral solution for global climate change? On bargaining efficiency, club benefits and international legitimacy', Perspectives on Politics 14(1), pp. 87-101.
Falkner, Robert (2014) 'Global Environmental Politics and Energy: Mapping the Research Agenda', in: Energy Research and Social Science, 1:1, pp. 188-97.
Falkner, Robert (2012) 'Global Environmentalism and the Greening of International Society', in: International Affairs, vol. 88, no. 3, pp. 503-22.
Falkner, Robert and Nico Jaspers (2012) 'Regulating Nanotechnologies: Risk, Uncertainty and the Global Governance Gap', in: Global Environmental Politics vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 30-55.
Falkner, Robert (2007) 'The Political Economy of 'Normative Power' Europe: EU Environmental Leadership in International Biotechnology Regulation', in: Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 507-526.
Falkner, Robert (2003) 'Private Environmental Governance and International Relations: Exploring the Links', in: Global Environmental Politics, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 72-87.
podcasts/media
Interview with Miguel Ors Villarejo, “Descarbonizar el planeta va a ser caro, pero no hacer nada lo es mucho más”, El Liberal, 9 October 2024.
Interview with Yixian Sun about my article ‘The Longue Durée of International Environmental Norm Change’ in Global Environmental Politics, 2024, 24:1, available here.
LSE Public Event, “Ukraine: The War that Changed the World,“ 2 October 2023. Video recording available.
LSE Public Lecture, “The Strategic Nexus Between Climate Change, Energy and Geopolitics”, 11 October 2022. Video recording and podcast available.
LSE Research For the World summary of book launch event, 15 March 2022.
Book launch event ‘Great Powers, Climate Change, and Global Environmental Responsibilities,’ LSE, 3 March 2022, with Barry Buzan, Alina Averchenkova, Kathy Hochstetler, Miriam Prys-Hansen and Stacy VanDeveer. A video recording is available here.
Book launch event ‘Environmentalism and Global International Society’, LSE, 23 November 2021. A video recording is available here.
Book launch event ‘Environmentalism and Global International Society, GLOBE Webinar, KU Leuven, 9 December 2021. A video recording is available here.
LSE panel discussion: “China's Environmental Foreign Relations”, 30 September 2021.
Interview in E-International Relations, 26 September 2021.
LSE Public Event “Climate Change, Displacement, and International Justice”, 15 October 2020.
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