Michal SmetanaCharles University in Prague | CUNI
Michal Smetana
Ph.D.
About
56
Publications
10,216
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225
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Associate Professor at Charles University :: Head of Peace Research Center Prague (PRCP)
Additional affiliations
September 2019 - March 2020
January 2018 - October 2020
Peace Research Center Prague
Position
- Researcher
October 2012 - present
Charles University
Position
- Lecturer
Publications
Publications (56)
The quinquennial Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference represents a highly important event from the perspective of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Though not a party to the treaty itself, the EU has made a consistent effort since the 1990s to coordinate the positions of its member states and achieve higher visib...
This book examines the issue of nuclear disarmament in different strategic, political, and regional contexts. This volume seeks to provide a rich theoretical and practical insight to one of the major topics in the field of international security: global abolishment of nuclear weapons. Renewed calls for a nuclear weapons-free world have sparked a wi...
Frozen conflicts, situations in which war ended yet stable peace did not materialize, trouble both Asia and Europe. Despite the clear policy relevance of this problem, the notion of frozen conflicts remains surprisingly blurred in peace and conflict studies literature. In this paper, we seek to provide a rigorous conceptualization of frozen conflic...
In this paper, we provide an empirical test for the theoretical claim that ambiguous nuclear threats create a "commitment trap" for American leaders: when deterrence fails, supposedly they are more likely to order the use of nuclear weapons to avoid domestic audience costs for backing down. We designed an original survey experiment and fielded it t...
In the past, the European public has not been enthusiastic about nuclear deterrence and the stationing of US American nuclear weapons in Europe. Has the Russian invasion of Ukraine changed that aversion? We conducted a unique study, surveying the same population of respondents at two points in time—in September 2020 and in June 2022. We find that E...
Does partisan ideology influence whether Europeans are willing to use nuclear weapons, and if so, how? The US nuclear weapons stationed in Europe have been at the core of European security since the Cold War, but we have still yet to learn what would make Europeans be willing to support their use. In this paper, we present the results of a survey,...
We present findings of a survey experiment on a sample of 2350 American and British citizens, in which we examined attitudes towards nuclear and chemical strikes. Our findings demonstrate that even though the public accurately judges nuclear weapons as more destructive and indiscriminate, it is still more averse to the use of chemical than nuclear...
This article presents findings of an original survey experiment on public attitudes toward nuclear use conducted on a representative sample of Russian citizens. We randomly assigned our participants to experimental treatments with vignettes describing a military conflict between Russia and NATO in the Baltics, where Moscow considered a limited nucl...
p>This preprint presents findings of an original survey experiment on public attitudes toward nuclear use conducted on a representative sample of Russian citizens. We randomly assigned our participants to experimental treatments with vignettes describing a military conflict between Russia and NATO in the Baltics, where Moscow considered a limited n...
p>This preprint presents findings of an original survey experiment on public attitudes toward nuclear use conducted on a representative sample of Russian citizens. We randomly assigned our participants to experimental treatments with vignettes describing a military conflict between Russia and NATO in the Baltics, where Moscow considered a limited n...
A recent surge in survey-based scholarship has shed new light on public attitudes toward nuclear weapons. Yet, we still know little about how these public attitudes differ from those of political elites. To address this gap, we conducted an original survey on a large representative sample of German citizens and on a unique elite sample of German pa...
The advent of autonomous weapons brings intriguing opportunities and significant ethical dilemmas. This article examines how increasing weapon autonomy affects approval of military strikes resulting in collateral damage, perception of their ethicality, and blame attribution for civilian fatalities. In our experimental survey of U.S. citizens, we pr...
p>This preprint presents findings of an original survey experiment on public attitudes toward nuclear use conducted on a representative sample of Russian citizens. We randomly assigned our participants to experimental treatments with vignettes describing a military conflict between Russia and NATO in the Baltics, where Moscow considered a limited n...
While many consider the threat posed by nuclear weapons to be greater than ever, the general public has largely lost interest in the issue of nuclear disarmament. To reinvigorate public support for a nuclear-weapons-free world, disarmament advocates have presented a range of arguments about the necessity of nuclear abolition. This article presents...
Even if most European countries have not yet joined the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the treaty has been salient in a number of national settings. In the Netherlands, the TPNW enjoys broad societal appeal, and the Dutch parliament has, on a number of occasions, called on the government to explore options for joining the trea...
We introduce “antifragility” as a conceptual framework to understand the impact of occasional violations of regime norms on the health of respective regimes. Contrary to the prevailing understanding of norm violation as a strictly negative phenomenon that leaves regimes damaged, we show that normative deviance is, under certain conditions, a stress...
Three decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States still deploys about 100 nuclear weapons in Europe under NATO’s nuclear sharing policy. Two of the hosting states, Germany and the Netherlands, are now debating the prospective withdrawal of these weapons from their territory. This article presents the findings of a recent public opinion...
Stationing of US nuclear weapons in Europe is a pillar of NATO deterrence. Despite their growing contestation, scholarly research on contemporary attitudes of both voters and political elites to the continued stationing of these weapons on their soil is lacking. We conducted original surveys of 2020 Germans and of 101 Bundestag members. Our results...
That nuclear weapons have not been used in war since 1945 is one of the most intriguing research puzzles in the field of international relations. It has sparked a fruitful scholarly debate: Can the persistence of the nonuse of nuclear weapons be understood with reference to a normative “taboo” subject to a constructivist logic of appropriateness, o...
We present the results of two survey experiments on public support for nuclear, chemical, and conventional strikes. We examined how moral values of individuals interact with the approval of different kinds of strikes and with the effects of information about the ingroup and out-group fatalities. Our results show that while the public is more averse...
In this article, we present the results of two survey experiments on public support for nuclear, chemical, and conventional strikes. We examined how moral values of individuals interact with the approval of different kinds of strikes and with the effects of information about the ingroup and out-group fatalities. Our results show that while the publ...
This article introduces the first comprehensive dataset of frozen conflicts in world politics. It draws on a new, broader conceptualization of frozen conflicts that revolves around an unresolved core issue between the warring parties and transcends the common understanding of frozen conflicts as a recent, post-Soviet phenomenon. The authors identif...
![Figure 3: Number of Cases [votes] (all chambers)](profile/Falk-Ostermann/publication/340116987/figure/fig2/AS:872549726560258@1585043474878/Number-of-Cases-votes-all-chambers_Q320.jpg)
Updated version of our previously uploaded paper (forthcoming chapter) with minor number fixes.
In this article, we use an adapted version of Wayne Sandholtz’s cycle of normative change to examine the dynamics of contestation of norms against incapacitating chemical agents and riot control agents, often imprecisely grouped together under the term ‘non-lethal chemical weapons’. We draw on a concept-driven analysis of statements and in-depth in...
In this chapter, I apply the conceptual apparatus introduced in previous chapters to study the (re)construction of North Korea’s deviant image in global nuclear politics during the second nuclear crisis in the North Korean Peninsula (2002–2018). I use this framework to analytically unpack the North Korean case in five sections, which correspond to...
In this chapter, I employ the concept of stigma politics as an analytical lens through which to study the case of Iran’s nuclear program between 2002 and 2018. Drawing on the interactionist perspective, I try to unpack the dynamics of reconstructing Iran’s deviant image in the course of the crisis. Furthermore, I analyze the interactive stigma cont...
In this introductory chapter, I introduce the interactionist perspective on deviance in sociology, which I later use to build my conceptual framework. I review the existing IR attempts to employ interactionist theorizing in the field of international politics and provide a summary of my theoretical argument, drawing both on the interactionist persp...
The aim of this chapter is to bridge the theoretical and empirical parts of the book and provide the reader with a broader context of norms, rules, and order in global nuclear politics. I briefly discuss the historical constitution of nuclear order as it gradually emerged after the Second World War and review the dominant perspectives on nuclear or...
In this chapter, I apply the interactionist concept of stigma politics to study the (re-)construction of Indian deviant identity following the 1998 Pokhran-II nuclear tests. In particular, I analyze the ways how international society (re)imposed stigma on India for its violation of the nonproliferation norm; how India dealt with the shame through t...
In this chapter, I aim to provide the reader with a critical overview of relevant segments of IR literature, i.e., those related to international norm dynamics and norm violations. The survey clearly reveals that we already know a great deal about how norms change, yet we know much less about the role the norm violations play in this process. To fi...
In this chapter, I draw on the interactionist perspective in sociology to conceptualize “stigma politics” as an interactive process of social construction of deviance in international affairs. Specifically, I elaborate on the ways how deviant categories—social identities, acts, practices, and discourses—are negotiated, contested, stigmatized, and p...
This concluding chapter synthesizes and discusses the findings of my book. I conduct a cross-case comparison of operations of stigma politics in the empirical Chapters 5, 6, and 7 and highlight several empirical observations as they emerged throughout the cases. In turn, I discuss theoretical contribution of my book and propose avenues for future r...
This book examines the linkage between deviance and norm change in international politics. It draws on an original theoretical perspective grounded in the sociology of deviance to study the violations of norms and rules in the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. As such, this project provides a unique conceptual framework and applies it to hig...
This article deals with the concept of indirect coercion as a distinct type of coercive strategy involving three actors. We introduce a taxonomy of triangular strategies commonly employed in international politics: ‘hostage-taking’, ‘patron-client’ and ‘composite’ strategies. These three types of indirect coercion cover different ways in how the co...
The Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan remains at the core of one of the most intractable conflicts in modern history. This article provides a plausibility probe into the dynamics of this South Asian rivalry that is conceptually based on the dynamic understanding of “frozen conflicts” introduced in this special issue of Asia Europe Journal....
In this article, we draw on insights from the interactionist perspective in sociology and international relations (IR) norm contestation literature to explore the relationship between deviance and normative change in international politics. In IR, this is still largely unexplored territory: we already know a great deal about how norms change, yet w...
Planetary defense scientists frequently consider nuclear explosive devices (NED) among the suitable tools for deflection of near-Earth objects. Despite the convenient physical characteristics of nuclear explosions, this chapter sketches the negative implications of developing any options in this direction for the nuclear non-proliferation regime an...
In this article, I employ an interactionist perspective from sociology to examine the dynamics of de-stigmatisation of nuclear-armed India after the 1998 nuclear tests. Drawing on Erving Goffman and other interactionist scholars, I study the social dimension of India’s transformation from ‘nuclear pariah’ to a ‘responsible’ nuclear-armed power that...
This book is concerned with deviant, norm-violating behavior among states in global nuclear politics, and the relation of such behavior to the development of international rules, norms, and order. Drawing primarily on the symbolic interactionist theories of deviance and the social constructivist tradition in International Relations (IR), I employ a...
Nuclear disarmament seems like a dream in both sense of the term. On the one hand, most of us regard it as an ideal situation. On the other hand, like many ideal states it seems to occur only in our dream. If it is a dream, it is recurring one. At the dawn of the nuclear age it seemed like a shared a horror of the weapons, which at that point were...
Článek se zabývá dvojsečnou rolí vojenské jaderné infrastruktury ve vztahu k jadernému odzbrojení. Na jedné straně se jedná o strategický prvek, který jaderným státům umožňuje snížit výrazným způsobem své arzenály a současně zvyšuje politickou vůli přistoupit k úplnému jadernému odzbrojení. Po dosažení světa bez jaderných zbraní se však zachování r...
The maintenance of a robust nuclear infrastructure – and therefore the capability to quickly reconstitute nuclear arsenals – is often mentioned as a necessary prerequisite for the current nuclear-armed states to take the final steps on the road to “global zero”. The aim of the present paper is to unpack the paradoxical double-edged nature of nuclea...
At three minutes to midnight on the Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock, the time has come to consider constructive steps on the multilateralization of nuclear arms control negotiations that lead toward disarmament. After explaining the context of and existing obstacles to such a multilateral turn, the authors propose constructive but realistic steps: first,...
WMD proliferation is often considered to be one of the gravest security threats of our time. This article aims to explore how the post-Cold War securitization of this phenomenon influenced the evolution of U.S. nuclear policy. The systemic change related to the collapse of bipolar world order is depicted as a major impulse which led to the need to...
The present paper aims to compare the approaches of the Bush and Obama administrations towards the role of nuclear weapons in the United States security strategy. The author focuses on the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) reports from 2001 and 2010, employing a detailed comparative analysis of their respective content as well as their implications. The...
Projects
Projects (4)
That nuclear weapons have not been used in a military conflict since 1945 is one of the most intriguing research puzzles in the field of International Relations (IR). Despite notable scholarly attempts to explain the persistence of nuclear weapons non-use in world politics, the international team behind this proposal identified several gaps and neglected perspectives in the current state of the art that it will seek to address within the proposed research project. Specifically, the main aim of this research endeavor is to enrich the existing scholarship on the nuclear “taboo” through innovative cross-national and multi-dimensional approaches to this phenomenon.
Contested Meanings of the Norm Against Chemical Weapons: CWC and the Issue of "Non-Lethal" Agents
