“Panopticons and Chokepoints,” an interview with Richard Byrne

A new view of international relations puts global networks – and how they can be weaponized – at its center. What’s the future of regulation in this new landscape?

“The debate we see at the moment is never going to be about trade and open markets in the same kind of way anymore,” says Farrell. “Once the door has been opened to thinking about these things in terms of their consequences for security, different actors will enter into the scene and begin to gobble up this policy area that you think is defined in these terms, and start redefining in it in very different ways indeed…. We’re not going back to where we were – and once you’ve opened up the door to these kinds of concerns, they are going to metastasize through the entire system.

Access the full interview at the Wilson Quarterly

Other Writing:

Chapter in an Edited Volume

“Collective Goods in the Local Economy: The Packaging Machinery Cluster in Bologna,” Local Production Systems in Europe: Reconstruction and Innovation – with Ann-Louise Holten – ed. Colin Crouch, Patrick Le Galès, Carlo Trigilia and Helmut Voelzkow

The debate about the industrial districts of central and north-eastern Italy has evolved over the last 25 years. Initially, many saw them as evidence that small firms could prosper contrary to the arguments of the proponents of big industry. Debate focussed on whether small firm industrial districts had a genuine independent existence, or were the ...
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Academic Article

The Janus Face of the Liberal International Information Order: When Global Institutions are Self-Undermining – with Abraham Newman

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman (2021), “The Janus Face of the Liberal International Information Order: When Global Institutions are Self-Undermining,” International Organization Vol 75, No.2:333-58 (75th anniversary special issue). Scholars and policymakers long believed that norms of global information openness and private-sector governance helped to sustain and promote liberalism. These norms are being increasingly contested ...
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