Experts

John M. Owen IV

Faculty Senior Fellow

Fast Facts

  • Recipient of fellowships from the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard, the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford, and the Center of International Studies at Princeton
  • Member of the editorial board of International Security
  • 2015 winner, Humboldt Research Prize (Germany)
  • Expertise on war, regime change, religion, democracy and the international order, and international security

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • War and Terrorism
  • Religion

John M. Owen is a Miller Center faculty senior fellow and Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics. His newest book is The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order (Yale University Press, 2023). He is also the 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 co-editor of Religion, the Enlightenment, and the New Global Order (Columbia University Press, 2011).

Owen has published work in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, International Politics, International Organization, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, The National Interest, and several edited volumes. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard, the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford, and the Center of International Studies at Princeton. His research has been funded by the MacArthur, Earhart, and Donchian Foundations. He received a Humboldt Research Prize in 2015. He is a member of the editorial boards of International Security and Security Studies and a faculty fellow at the UVA Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. 

Featured Publications

Ecology of Nations
The Ecology of Nations

John M. Owen IV

John M. Owen IV News Feed

UVA Today
How Russia's attack on Ukraine threatens democracy everywhere
UVA Today checked in with John M. Owen, the Taylor Professor of Politics, to gain perspective and context on the larger struggles around democracy that Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine symbolizes. Owen also is a senior fellow at the Miller Center and a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.
John M. Owen IV UVA Today
Miller Center Presents
‘A World Safe for Democracy’
Princeton's John Ikenberry discusses his new book, A World Safe for Democracy, the first full account of liberal internationalism’s long journey from its 19th-century roots to today’s fractured political moment. Creating an international “space” for liberal democracy, preserving rights and protections within and between countries, and balancing conflicting values such as liberty and equality, openness and social solidarity, and sovereignty and interdependence—these are the guiding aims that have propelled liberal internationalism through the upheavals of the past two centuries. Ikenberry argues that in a 21st century marked by rising economic and security interdependence, liberal internationalism—reformed and reimagined—remains the most viable project to protect liberal democracy.
John M. Owen IV Miller Center Presents
Allégorie du retour des Bourbons le 24 avril 1814 : Louis XVIII relevant la France de ses ruines
The long-ago invasion that offers clues on Russia's threat to Ukraine
When France invaded Spain over fears of having a liberal democracy on its border, writes Senior Faculty Fellow John Owen.
John M. Owen IV The Washington Post
Medium
Five ways deglobalization is affecting the international order
If it continues, deglobalization could produce two partially separate international orders: a liberal one (LIO) under continuing American hegemony and an authoritarian-capitalist one (ACIO) under Chinese hegemony.
John M. Owen IV Medium
UVA Today
Q&A: Long-Term Foreign Policy Effects of a Chaotic Withdrawal From Afghanistan
We asked three faculty members in the University of Virginia’s Democratic Statecraft Lab to weigh in on the geopolitical concerns. The Democratic Statecraft Lab is part of UVA’s Democracy Initiative and examines global threats to democracy, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the rise of authoritarian populism or instances of regime change like the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. Politics professor Todd Sechser, who studies coercive diplomacy, nuclear security and political violence, directs the lab. He is joined here by politics professors Dale Copeland, who focuses on international relations theory, and John Owen, who studies American influence around the world and has written about political Islam. All three are also senior fellows at UVA's Miller Center of Public Affairs.
John M. Owen IV UVA Today
Hedgehog Review
To Make the World Select for Democracy
Is democracy an inevitability, or an achievement? Can we be confident, in America, that constitutional self-government is here to stay, regardless of how we pummel it? Or is it fragile, contingent, something to cherish, but never to take for granted? Two decades ago, as the twentieth century ended, democracy seemed permanent in the United States, and indeed a juggernaut elsewhere. The Soviet empire had recently collapsed; China was reforming its economy; there seemed no alternative.
John M. Owen IV The Hedgehog Review