King’s College London‘s Research Center in International Relations (RCIR) has turned the spotlight on one of the field’s most pressing conceptual puzzles: how individual and collective actors shape world politics. As part of its ongoing Speaker Book Series, RCIR recently hosted Adam B. Lerner to discuss his influential work, A Theory of Agency in International Politics. Bringing together scholars, students, and policy-minded practitioners, the event unpacked Lerner’s central claim that understanding international outcomes requires a far more nuanced grasp of agency than customary theories allow. In a moment marked by volatile leadership, resurgent nationalism, and fragmented global governance, the book – and the debate it has sparked at King’s – offers a timely rethinking of who really drives change on the international stage, and how.
Exploring agency in international politics through Adam B Lerner’s innovative framework
Lerner challenges traditional state-centric explanations by foregrounding the messy, human dimensions of global politics-from the emotions of leaders to the narratives that citizens tell themselves after moments of rupture such as war, revolution or atrocity.Rather of treating states as unified, rational actors, his work traces how individual and collective agency emerges, fragments and recombines across time and space, revealing why similar crises can produce radically different political trajectories. Drawing on historical cases and contemporary debates, the framework highlights how memory, trauma and moral claims shape who gets to act, on whose behalf, and with what legitimacy in the international arena.
At King’s, this framework becomes a powerful lens for rethinking established debates in security studies, international law and global governance. It invites students, scholars and practitioners to reconsider familiar questions-such as duty, intervention and order-through a more nuanced map of actors and capacities, including those often written out of the script. Key themes discussed in the series include:
- Contested authority in post-conflict and post-colonial settings
- Emotion and memory as engines of foreign policy change
- Non-state actors and their claims to moral and political agency
- Temporal layers of agency, from immediate crisis response to long-term reconstruction
| Analytical Lens | What It Reveals |
|---|---|
| Individual leaders | How biography and emotion disrupt “rational” state behavior |
| Collective memory | Why past violence shapes present alignments and claims |
| Marginalised actors | Hidden sites where global norms are contested and remade |
How historical trauma and collective memory shape the behaviour of states and leaders
Drawing on Adam B. Lerner’s argument, the discussion at King’s illuminated how past catastrophes become embedded in national institutions, foreign policy doctrines and even diplomatic rituals. Leaders do not simply remember; they inherit scripts of victimhood,guilt and redemption that structure what seems politically imaginable. These scripts are sustained through school curricula, war memorials and constitutional preambles, turning collective memory into a form of political capital that can justify bold action or profound restraint. In this view, agency in international politics is less about isolated decision-makers than about how leaders navigate dense landscapes of remembrance, expectation and emotion.
Speakers highlighted that such memory-laden agency can generate both restraint and escalation, sometimes within the same state over time. For example, historical trauma may encourage cautious multilateralism or, conversely, uncompromising security doctrines. Lerner’s framework helps explain why similar shocks produce divergent responses across countries,as leaders selectively mobilise historical analogies and traumas to legitimate their choices:
- Policy framing: invoking past suffering to frame interventions as moral obligations.
- Alliance behaviour: clinging to or rejecting partnerships based on remembered betrayals.
- Domestic legitimation: using narratives of survival to rally support for costly strategies.
| Memory Pattern | Leader Behaviour |
|---|---|
| National victimhood | Risk-averse defense, moralised diplomacy |
| Redemptive mission | Activist foreign policy, humanitarian language |
| Guilt and complicity | Multilateralism, legalistic constraint |
Implications of Lerner’s theory for contemporary conflicts and global governance at King’s College London
Drawing on Adam B. Lerner’s focus on how individuals and small groups shape world politics, this discussion at King’s recasts today’s most pressing crises-from Ukraine and Gaza to climate breakdown and digital surveillance-as stories not only of structures and states, but of moral entrepreneurs, technocrats, victims’ movements and mid-level officials whose decisions reverberate globally. By scrutinising how trauma, memory and responsibility are narrated by these actors, the theory invites students and scholars to reconsider who counts as a “maker” of international order and how seemingly marginal voices can recalibrate legal norms, sanctions regimes and humanitarian practices. Within the intellectual ecosystem of King’s, where security studies, law and political theory intersect, the book provides an analytical bridge between abstract IR debates and the lived experience of policymakers, activists and communities grappling with war, occupation and displacement.
This perspective also raises pointed questions for the future of global governance: Which agents are empowered by current institutional designs, and which are systematically silenced? How do international courts, NGOs and multilateral bodies convert individual suffering into categories, cases and precedents? In seminars, reading groups and policy labs at King’s, Lerner’s framework can be mobilised to examine:
- Conflict mediation – understanding how negotiators’ biographies influence peace processes.
- Transitional justice – tracing how victims’ associations reshape post-conflict settlements.
- Climate diplomacy – mapping the rise of youth and Indigenous leaders as norm-setters.
- Digital governance – analysing how platform engineers become de facto regulators of speech.
| Domain | Key Agents | Possible Shift |
|---|---|---|
| Post-war settlements | Survivor networks | From elite deals to memory-driven justice |
| Sanctions policy | Policy advisers | From abstract targets to human impact metrics |
| Human rights advocacy | Grassroots organisers | From case-by-case to narrative-based campaigns |
| Tech regulation | Platform designers | From “neutral tools” to accountable rule-makers |
Recommendations for policymakers and scholars applying agency theory to real world foreign policy decisions
Translating Lerner’s insights into practice demands that both decision-makers and researchers move beyond stylised models of rational, unitary states and instead foreground the messy, often contradictory ways in which individuals and institutions co-produce foreign policy. For policymakers, this means building mechanisms that map who actually exercises agency at each stage of the decision chain, and how their personal histories, moral vocabularies and risk perceptions shape outcomes. Embedding this sensitivity can involve closer collaboration with historians and area experts, as well as the systematic use of reflective tools within foreign ministries-such as internal “agency audits” that trace how a policy idea evolves from initial framing to final implementation. Scholars, for their part, can refine models of state behaviour by incorporating micro-level evidence from memoirs, interviews and archival sources, bringing to light the contingent choices and emotional dynamics that conventional IR theories often bracket out.
- Interrogate hidden assumptions in bureaucratic procedures and strategic doctrines.
- Design accountability frameworks that recognise layered responsibility rather than scapegoating single actors.
- Integrate qualitative and quantitative methods to capture both structural pressures and individual decision pathways.
- Foster structured dialog between practitioners and scholars to test theoretical claims against policy constraints in real time.
| Policy Practice | Agency-Theoretic Focus |
|---|---|
| Sanctions design | Which actors bear costs and who can adapt? |
| Alliance management | How do leaders’ beliefs shift commitment signals? |
| Crisis diplomacy | What role do emotion and memory play in escalation? |
| Post-conflict justice | How is blame apportioned across individuals and institutions? |
In Retrospect
As the event drew to a close, Lerner’s reflections underscored why questions of agency remain central to understanding power, responsibility, and change in international affairs. By situating individual actors within broader structures of memory, identity, and trauma, his work challenges scholars and practitioners alike to reconsider how decisions are made-and who is truly accountable-on the global stage.
The RCIR Speaker Book Series once again provided a platform not only to showcase cutting-edge research,but also to test it against critical debate. In bringing Lerner’s arguments into conversation with the King’s College London community, the discussion highlighted the enduring value of interdisciplinary engagement in unpacking the complexities of world politics.
As international crises continue to expose the limits of conventional theories, the questions raised in A Theory of Agency in International Politics are likely to resonate well beyond this session-informing future research agendas, classroom conversations, and policy discussions across and beyond King’s.
