Adam Bower
Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of St Andrews
Dr Bower is a Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. He was a founding director of the Centre for Global Law and Governance and continues to sit on the Steering Committee of the Institute for Legal and Constitutional Research. He is also a member of the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science, a Fellow of the Outer Space Institute, and is the St Andrews representative on the Scottish Space Academics Forum.
Dr Bower’s research explores how actors strategically engage with international institutions to pursue their objectives and how norms and rules can in turn shape and constrain future policy choices in often unanticipated ways. He has expertise in the fields of arms control and disarmament, international humanitarian and criminal law, and outer space politics and governance. He is currently undertaking a long-term project on outer space security which includes research and policy work on the Scottish space sector.
Dr Bower received his PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia. He was subsequently a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (2012-13) and a SSHRC Canada Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Relations and Non-Stipendiary Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford (2013-15).
Articles
Bower, Adam and Jeffrey S. Lantis. 2024. “Contesting the Heavens: US Antipreneurship and the Regulation of Space Weapons.” European Journal of International Security 9 (1): 1-22.
ABSTRACT | LINK | OPEN ACCESS: FULL ARTICLE (PDF)
Bower, Adam. 2020. “Entrapping Gulliver: The United States and the Antipersonnel Mine Ban.” Security Studies 29 (1): 128-161.
ABSTRACT | LINK
Bower, Adam. 2019. “Contesting the International Criminal Court: Bashir, Kenyatta, and the Status of the Non-Impunity Norm in World Politics.” Journal of Global Security Studies 4 (1): 88–104.
ABSTRACT | LINK
Bower, Adam. 2015. “Norms Without the Great Powers: International Law, Nested Social Structures, and the Ban on Antipersonnel Mines.” International Studies Review 17 (3): 347–73.
ABSTRACT | LINK
Bower, Adam. 2015. “Arguing with Law: Strategic Legal Argumentation, US Diplomacy, and Debates over the International Criminal Court.” Review of International Studies 41 (2): 337–60.
ABSTRACT | LINK
Books
Bower, Adam. 2017. Norms Without the Great Powers: International Law and Changing Social Standards in World Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Book Chapters
Bower, Adam. 2023. “Orbital Uncertainty and the Governance of Outer Space Activities.” In Uncertainty in Global Politics, edited by Anastasia Shesterinina and Miriam Matejova, 191-211. London: Routledge.
The entire volume is Open Access and available for free download here.
Bower, Adam. “Global Constitutionalism and Outer Space Governance.” In Handbook on Global Constitutionalism, second edition, edited by Anthony Lang Jr. and Antje Wiener, 529-541. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Bower, Adam. 2023. “The International Criminal Court: Between Sovereignty and the Internationalised Fight Against Impunity.” In Tracing Value Change in the International Legal Order: Perspectives from Legal and Political Science, edited by Heike Krieger and Andrea Liese, 173-190. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bower, Adam. 2020. “Negotiating Responsibility in Conventional Weapons Disarmament.” In The Rise of Responsibility in World Politics, edited by Antje Vetterlein and Hannes Hansen-Magnusson, 55-73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bower, Adam. 2016. “Networking for the Ban: Network Structure, Social Power, and the Movement to Ban Antipersonnel Mines.” In The New Power Politics: Networks and Transnational Security Governance, edited by Deborah Avant and Oliver Westerwinter, 169-195. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bower, Adam, and Richard Price. 2013. “Moral Mission Accomplished? Assessing the Landmine Ban.” In Justice, Sustainability, and Security: Global Ethics for the 21st Century, edited by Eric A. Heinze, 131–69. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
