How can the study of friendship inspire and enhance our understanding of international politics? Evgeny Roshchin (Princeton University) draws on conceptual history inspired by Quentin Skinner to trace the development of the concept of friendship in international diplomatic practice and in Western political philosophy. In conversation with Felix Berenskötter (SOAS University of London), Roshchin discusses his research into contractual forms of friendship, embedded in treaties, and their function in ordering colonial spaces. He explains why this understanding disappeared from social contract thinking following Hobbes and was replaced by an ethical and normative reading that remains dominant today, and why he cannot offer a definition of friendship.

Roshchin, Evgeny

Roshchin, Evgeny (2017): Friendship among Nations: History of a Concept. Manchester University Press, Manchester.

Berenskoetter, Felix (2007): Friends, There Are No Friends? An Intimate Reframing of the International. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35(3), pp. 647-676.

Smith, Graham (2011): Friendship and the Political: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Schmitt (Imprint Academic)

Koschut, Simon and Oelsner, Andrea (eds) (2014): Friendship in International Relations (Palgrave Macmillan)

Haugevik, Kristin (2018): Special Relationships in World Politics: Inter-State Friendship and Diplomacy After the Second World War (Routledge).