John Owen

"The Clash of Ideas in World Politics"

Wednesday, September 28, 2011
3:30 p.m.
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
1501 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43201

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John Owen is a professor of politics in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia and is a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture (IASC).  He is a political scientist specializing in the study of international relations.

Owen's research concerns how ideologies and cultures affect and are affected by international relations.  He is particularly interested in the life cycles of regime types across regions (e.g., how did liberal democracy come to be dominant in so many places? how long will this dominance last? how might it end?); the endogenous relationship between hegemony and ideological attractiveness; resistance and alternatives to predominant regime types (e.g., Islamism; authoritarian capitalism) and how these can cause civil unrest, foreign intervention, and war; and how transnational networks perpetuate and challenge regime types.  

Owen is author of Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Cornell University Press, 1997) and The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change 1510-2010 (Princeton University Press, 2010). He is also co-editor of Religion, the Enlightenment, and the New Global Order (Columbia University Press, 2011).

He has published work in Foreign Affairs, International Organization, International Politics, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, The National Interest, and several edited volumes.

Owen is the recipient of fellowships from the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, and the Center of International Studies at Princeton University. He is the editor Security Studies and a member of the editorial board of International Security. 

Owen received his AB from Duke University, MPA from Princeton University, and his AM, PhD from Harvard University.

John Owen
Professor of Politics
Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics
University of Virginia