Janis Grzybowski
Biographic Data
| ID | 1667495 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Janis Grzybowski |
| GIVEN NAMES | Janis |
| FAMILY NAME | Grzybowski |
| SIGNATURE | GRZYBOWSKI J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Université Catholique de Lille |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5713-9084 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Meta-Moves: Fracturing, Ontologizing, or Reconstructing the International?
The thriving field of international political sociology (IPS) has expanded explorations of the world while challenging the apparent abstractions of the international—and increasingly abandoning it altogether. Yet what early IPS called “the problem of the international”—the apparent productivity, ambiguity, and resilience of the concept—has lingered in the background, thus also provoking new responses to come to terms with it. While some call for …
Bootstrapping sovereignty: The placeholder dynamics of contested states from identity documents to international courts
The literature on contested states and other sovereignty claimants, from de facto states to governments-in-exile, has explored their predicaments, trajectories, and bids for recognition to grasp whether and how their sovereignty claims stick. In this article, we complement existing research by focusing on actors other than governments and international organizations, including ordinary people, field offices of UN agencies, and international court…
After states, before humanity? The meta-politics of legality and the International Criminal Court in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine
In the debate on the (de-)judicialisation of international affairs and the International Criminal Court (ICC) specifically, the distinctions between legality and politics and between state sovereignty and the international remain contested. While realist and legalist approaches discuss the transformation of international politics by international criminal law, sociological and critical-legal perspectives instead highlight the politics of internat…
State Creation Out of Bounds? Pro-Russian Separatists,Da’esh, and (Liberal) International Order-ing
Debates about the politics of state creation and recognition and about the supposed crisis of the “liberal international order” intersect where new state creations are regarded as challenges to the (liberal) international order. Cases in point are the secessionist bids of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine and their recognition, support, and incorporation by Russia, as well as the even more widely rejected claim of the self-declared Islamic State…
Horror Vacui: Da'esh and the Inter-Territory Effect
The ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’, or Da’esh, claimed territorial control and declared itself a state and Caliphate, but scholars disagree on the quality of these claims. Some argue that Da’esh really was a state, others reject this as propaganda of a non-state actor, and still others highlight that Da’esh challenged the international order as a whole. This article combines the notions of the ‘territory effect’ and ‘inter-territory’ to explai…
Moving ‘red lines’: The Russian–Ukrainian war and the pragmatic (mis-)use of international law
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has widely been seen as a failure of the international legal order, which could neither stop Russia from launching a war of aggression, nor prevent the perpetration of international crimes. In such a reading, great power politics have (once again) trumped international law. We argue instead that international law plays a crucial part in the conflict by providing a semantic infrastructure, which the opposing parties…
(Re-)conceptualising the international: Introduction to the special section
‘The international’ is the background condition that holds together inquiries of international politics, orders, systems, societies, practices, and so forth. Albeit being usually taken for granted, its foundational function begs the questions of what the international actually is or, instead, what conceptualisations of the international imply, project, and do. Periodic discussions in International Relations (IR) about the international as the sub…
Separatists, state subjectivity, and fundamental ontological (in)security in international relations
Ontological security studies (OSS) in International Relations (IR) emphasize the role of identity, anxiety, and a sense of self in world politics. Yet suggesting that states act in certain ways because of 'who they are' also assumes that they are in fact states. In this article, I problematize the presupposition of state subjects in the context of separatist conflicts in which claims to statehood compete and overlap. Where unrecognized de facto s…
The matrix reloaded: Reconstructing the boundaries between (international) law and politics
Interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of international law (IL) and International Relations (IR) has illuminated the roles of politics in law, of law in politics, and of the shifting boundary between the two in various areas of international affairs. The boundary itself, however, has proven resilient. While critical approaches investigating the politics of international law have come to insist on the lasting significance of legality p…
Re-enacting the international order, or: Why the Syrian state did not disappear
At the height of the Syrian civil war, many observers argued that the Syrian state was collapsing, fragmenting, or dissolving. Yet, it never actually vanished. Revisiting the rising challenges to the Syrian state since 2011 – from internal collapse through external fragmentation to its looming dissolution by the ‘Islamic State’ – provides a rare opportunity to investigate the re-enactment of both statehood and international order in crisis. Indee…
The paradox of state identification: De facto states, recognition, and the (re-)production of the international
The literature on de facto states challenges the conventional identification of states by legal recognition, proposing to identify states based on their effectiveness instead. Yet, as I argue in this paper, rather than turning the tables on recognition, the de facto state challenge ultimately reveals all state identification in International Relations and international law to be essentially indeterminate. This lacuna, I suggest, is not an acciden…
To Be or Not to Be: The Ontological Predicament of State Creation in International Law
International law is classically based on a system of states whose members it attempts to identify by virtue of their effectiveness, their recognition by other states, and their creation in accordance with the rules of international law. In this article, I illustrate the indeterminacy of these three dimensions and argue that assessments of individual state creations are instead necessarily based on blunt, but silent, ontological commitments to an…
Between regional community and global society: Europe in the shadow of Schmitt and Kojève
While celebrated for bringing peace and prosperity to the region, European integration has been recently challenged by various internal and external crises that call the progressivist narrative of ever closer—and larger—union into question. Torn between regional community and global society, particularism and cosmopolitanism, and politics and technocracy, the European Union appears beset by fundamental tensions. In search of a different theoretic…
The paradox of state identification: De facto states, recognition, and the (re-)production of the international
The literature on de facto states challenges the conventional identification of states by legal recognition, proposing to identify states based on their effectiveness instead. Yet, as I argue in this paper, rather than turning the tables on recognition, the de facto state challenge ultimately reveals all state identification in International Relations and international law to be essentially indeterminate. This lacuna, I suggest, is not an acciden…
State Creation Out of Bounds? Pro-Russian Separatists,Da’esh, and (Liberal) International Order-ing
Debates about the politics of state creation and recognition and about the supposed crisis of the “liberal international order” intersect where new state creations are regarded as challenges to the (liberal) international order. Cases in point are the secessionist bids of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine and their recognition, support, and incorporation by Russia, as well as the even more widely rejected claim of the self-declared Islamic State…
Separatists, state subjectivity, and fundamental ontological (in)security in international relations
Ontological security studies (OSS) in International Relations (IR) emphasize the role of identity, anxiety, and a sense of self in world politics. Yet suggesting that states act in certain ways because of 'who they are' also assumes that they are in fact states. In this article, I problematize the presupposition of state subjects in the context of separatist conflicts in which claims to statehood compete and overlap. Where unrecognized de facto s…
To Be or Not to Be: The Ontological Predicament of State Creation in International Law
International law is classically based on a system of states whose members it attempts to identify by virtue of their effectiveness, their recognition by other states, and their creation in accordance with the rules of international law. In this article, I illustrate the indeterminacy of these three dimensions and argue that assessments of individual state creations are instead necessarily based on blunt, but silent, ontological commitments to an…
Between regional community and global society: Europe in the shadow of Schmitt and Kojève
While celebrated for bringing peace and prosperity to the region, European integration has been recently challenged by various internal and external crises that call the progressivist narrative of ever closer—and larger—union into question. Torn between regional community and global society, particularism and cosmopolitanism, and politics and technocracy, the European Union appears beset by fundamental tensions. In search of a different theoretic…
Horror Vacui: Da'esh and the Inter-Territory Effect
The ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’, or Da’esh, claimed territorial control and declared itself a state and Caliphate, but scholars disagree on the quality of these claims. Some argue that Da’esh really was a state, others reject this as propaganda of a non-state actor, and still others highlight that Da’esh challenged the international order as a whole. This article combines the notions of the ‘territory effect’ and ‘inter-territory’ to explai…
The matrix reloaded: Reconstructing the boundaries between (international) law and politics
Interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of international law (IL) and International Relations (IR) has illuminated the roles of politics in law, of law in politics, and of the shifting boundary between the two in various areas of international affairs. The boundary itself, however, has proven resilient. While critical approaches investigating the politics of international law have come to insist on the lasting significance of legality p…
Re-enacting the international order, or: Why the Syrian state did not disappear
At the height of the Syrian civil war, many observers argued that the Syrian state was collapsing, fragmenting, or dissolving. Yet, it never actually vanished. Revisiting the rising challenges to the Syrian state since 2011 – from internal collapse through external fragmentation to its looming dissolution by the ‘Islamic State’ – provides a rare opportunity to investigate the re-enactment of both statehood and international order in crisis. Indee…
Between regional community and global society: Europe in the shadow of Schmitt and Kojève
While celebrated for bringing peace and prosperity to the region, European integration has been recently challenged by various internal and external crises that call the progressivist narrative of ever closer—and larger—union into question. Torn between regional community and global society, particularism and cosmopolitanism, and politics and technocracy, the European Union appears beset by fundamental tensions. In search of a different theoretic…
To Be or Not to Be: The Ontological Predicament of State Creation in International Law
International law is classically based on a system of states whose members it attempts to identify by virtue of their effectiveness, their recognition by other states, and their creation in accordance with the rules of international law. In this article, I illustrate the indeterminacy of these three dimensions and argue that assessments of individual state creations are instead necessarily based on blunt, but silent, ontological commitments to an…
The paradox of state identification: De facto states, recognition, and the (re-)production of the international
The literature on de facto states challenges the conventional identification of states by legal recognition, proposing to identify states based on their effectiveness instead. Yet, as I argue in this paper, rather than turning the tables on recognition, the de facto state challenge ultimately reveals all state identification in International Relations and international law to be essentially indeterminate. This lacuna, I suggest, is not an acciden…
The matrix reloaded: Reconstructing the boundaries between (international) law and politics
Interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of international law (IL) and International Relations (IR) has illuminated the roles of politics in law, of law in politics, and of the shifting boundary between the two in various areas of international affairs. The boundary itself, however, has proven resilient. While critical approaches investigating the politics of international law have come to insist on the lasting significance of legality p…
Re-enacting the international order, or: Why the Syrian state did not disappear
At the height of the Syrian civil war, many observers argued that the Syrian state was collapsing, fragmenting, or dissolving. Yet, it never actually vanished. Revisiting the rising challenges to the Syrian state since 2011 – from internal collapse through external fragmentation to its looming dissolution by the ‘Islamic State’ – provides a rare opportunity to investigate the re-enactment of both statehood and international order in crisis. Indee…
(Re-)conceptualising the international: Introduction to the special section
‘The international’ is the background condition that holds together inquiries of international politics, orders, systems, societies, practices, and so forth. Albeit being usually taken for granted, its foundational function begs the questions of what the international actually is or, instead, what conceptualisations of the international imply, project, and do. Periodic discussions in International Relations (IR) about the international as the sub…
Separatists, state subjectivity, and fundamental ontological (in)security in international relations
Ontological security studies (OSS) in International Relations (IR) emphasize the role of identity, anxiety, and a sense of self in world politics. Yet suggesting that states act in certain ways because of 'who they are' also assumes that they are in fact states. In this article, I problematize the presupposition of state subjects in the context of separatist conflicts in which claims to statehood compete and overlap. Where unrecognized de facto s…
Moving ‘red lines’: The Russian–Ukrainian war and the pragmatic (mis-)use of international law
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has widely been seen as a failure of the international legal order, which could neither stop Russia from launching a war of aggression, nor prevent the perpetration of international crimes. In such a reading, great power politics have (once again) trumped international law. We argue instead that international law plays a crucial part in the conflict by providing a semantic infrastructure, which the opposing parties…
After states, before humanity? The meta-politics of legality and the International Criminal Court in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine
In the debate on the (de-)judicialisation of international affairs and the International Criminal Court (ICC) specifically, the distinctions between legality and politics and between state sovereignty and the international remain contested. While realist and legalist approaches discuss the transformation of international politics by international criminal law, sociological and critical-legal perspectives instead highlight the politics of internat…
State Creation Out of Bounds? Pro-Russian Separatists,Da’esh, and (Liberal) International Order-ing
Debates about the politics of state creation and recognition and about the supposed crisis of the “liberal international order” intersect where new state creations are regarded as challenges to the (liberal) international order. Cases in point are the secessionist bids of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine and their recognition, support, and incorporation by Russia, as well as the even more widely rejected claim of the self-declared Islamic State…
Horror Vacui: Da'esh and the Inter-Territory Effect
The ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’, or Da’esh, claimed territorial control and declared itself a state and Caliphate, but scholars disagree on the quality of these claims. Some argue that Da’esh really was a state, others reject this as propaganda of a non-state actor, and still others highlight that Da’esh challenged the international order as a whole. This article combines the notions of the ‘territory effect’ and ‘inter-territory’ to explai…
Meta-Moves: Fracturing, Ontologizing, or Reconstructing the International?
The thriving field of international political sociology (IPS) has expanded explorations of the world while challenging the apparent abstractions of the international—and increasingly abandoning it altogether. Yet what early IPS called “the problem of the international”—the apparent productivity, ambiguity, and resilience of the concept—has lingered in the background, thus also provoking new responses to come to terms with it. While some call for …
Bootstrapping sovereignty: The placeholder dynamics of contested states from identity documents to international courts
The literature on contested states and other sovereignty claimants, from de facto states to governments-in-exile, has explored their predicaments, trajectories, and bids for recognition to grasp whether and how their sovereignty claims stick. In this article, we complement existing research by focusing on actors other than governments and international organizations, including ordinary people, field offices of UN agencies, and international court…
Politics (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · International law (8 works) · International relations (8 works) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (5 works) · International Law and Human Rights (5 works) · State (computer science (5 works)