Jacob Fortier

Northwestern University | NU · Department of Political Science

Why does state violence sometimes fail to crush a secessionist movement and instead facilitate international support for the separatist cause? Based on the literature on the international recognition of secessionist entities and on the impact of state repression against social movements, this paper develops an argument according to which the timing...

As a middle power committed to liberal international human rights standards, Canada often joins allied countries in international denunciation campaigns against repressive regimes. These campaigns are seen by Canadian leaders as an alternative to military intervention and thus serve to reflect Canada's commitment to international security, despite...

Faced with the decline of American power and the growing assertiveness of China and Russia, Washington’s main allies must make strategic choices in foreign policy and defense. Yet U.S. allies appear to be making quite divergent strategic choices in dealing with the transition of power. Representative of these strategic differences, France and Canad...

Pourquoi certains mouvements indépendantistes principalement non-violents sont-ils entraînés dans la violence par des factions radicales tandis que d’autres mouvements résistent à l’escalade des violences et continuent de s’engager sur une trajectoire non-violente ? Au Québec, la tentative la plus achevée du FLQ de faire escalader le conflit entre...

American policymakers usually assume, at best, that foreign aid will improve the human rights situation in a recipient country—or, at worst, that it negligibly alters human rights records, generating no significant change in either direction. In Aiding and Abetting, however, Trisko Darden offers a more pessimistic view: Foreign aid can exacerbate h...

Global politics has shown increasing interest in cities, particularly in the field of climate policy and governance. Yet, we still have little understanding of which cities engage the most in global urban climate governance. Answering this question is a first step towards understanding who decides for whom in a system that has decisive influence on...

As a middle power committed to liberal international human rights standards, Canada often joins allied countries in international denunciation campaigns against repressive regimes. These campaigns are seen by Canadian leaders as an alternative to military intervention and thus serve to reflect Canada's commitment to international security, despite...

Much of the surprise and terror generated by the 11 September 2001 attacks originated from the perception that Al-Qaeda's tactics were completely innovative, thus striking the security blind spot of the US superpower. In fact, the hijacking of planes and their use as weapons of destruction did not come out of nowhere, and it is possible to trace th...

La répression sanglante du mouvement populaire de contestation au coup d’État ayant renversé le gouvernement élu d’Aung San Suu Kyi au Myanmar a été largement critiquée par la communauté internationale. Dès mars dernier, plusieurs États occidentaux, dont le Canada, ont fait part de leurs inquiétudes vis-à-vis d’une situation extrêmement tendue où l...

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Contrary to popular belief, quagmires in civil war are made, not found.This is the argument of Quagmire in Civil War, Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl‘s new account of the phenomenon of quagmire in civil wars that outlines how particular interactions and strategic choices can lead to this political trap. This is an essential theoretical study of international...

Accounts of an expected American decline, the rise of China as a new superpower and the resulting disruptions in global politics abound in International Relations (IR) scholarship. Discussing the evolution of American hegemony in an innovative way thus constitutes a major challenge—even more when one's purpose is to question the ontological foundat...