What is the eligibility level for participants in this congress?

The congress is open to college-level participants.

What is the format of the congress?

The congress is presented as a conference format.

9th Politics and International Relations Congress

Name: 9th Politics and International Relations Congress
Start: 2026-10-21T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-10-23T00:00:00Z
Location: Trabzon

Oct 21–23, 2026Trabzon, TurkeyIn-person

Registration open

The 9th Politics and International Relations Congress is scheduled to take place in Trabzon, Turkey. This academic gathering serves as a platform for college-level participants to engage with contemporary issues in politics and international relations. The congress is designed to foster intellectual exchange and present research findings within the field.

Committees & topics

Topics
Regionalism and Theoretical Approaches at a Moment of Crisis in Global Politics · Social and Global Health Implications of New Weapons Systems · Economic Transformations in a Fragmenting Global Order · Socio-Cultural Changes Driven by Artificial Intelligence Technologies · Diplomacy and International Law in Global Politics

Why it matters

This congress offers a significant opportunity for scholars and students to delve into the evolving landscape of global politics. The discussions and presentations will likely cover a broad spectrum of topics, reflecting current geopolitical trends and theoretical advancements in international relations. Such events are crucial for the dissemination of new ideas and for challenging existing paradigms.

For those involved in diplomatic studies, understanding the discourse at events like this congress is vital. It provides insights into how academic thought shapes policy considerations and public understanding of international affairs. The location in TUR, a country with a unique geopolitical position, further enriches the context for discussions on regional and global dynamics.

How to prepare

Participants preparing for the congress should focus on developing a strong foundational understanding of international relations theories and current global political issues. Given the academic nature of the event, familiarity with research methodologies and critical analysis is essential. Reviewing recent publications in political science and international relations journals can provide valuable context for the types of discussions that will occur.

Considering the host country, TUR, it would be beneficial to understand its role in regional and international politics. This includes its relationships with neighboring states and its engagement with major global powers. Such contextual knowledge can enhance participation in discussions and provide a deeper appreciation for the perspectives presented at the congress.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Türkiye

As the host nation, TUR provides the geographical and cultural backdrop for the congress, influencing the regional focus of some discussions.

Role in topic

TUR's strategic location at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and its active role in regional diplomacy, makes it a pertinent setting for discussions on international relations. The congress in Trabzon offers a unique vantage point for examining geopolitical dynamics from a perspective rooted in this significant region.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Regionalism and Theoretical Approaches at a Moment of Crisis in Global Politics

The post-Cold War liberal international order, anchored in multilateral institutions and US-led security architectures, has come under sustained strain since the late 2010s. The 2016 Brexit referendum, the Trump administration's challenges to NATO and the WTO, the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the war in Gaza since October 2023 have collectively eroded confidence in universal multilateralism. In its place, regional formations — the EU, ASEAN, the African Union, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and an expanded BRICS+ — have grown in salience as alternative or complementary venues for cooperation and contestation. This shift has reopened long-standing theoretical debates in International Relations. Realists emphasize the return of great-power competition and balancing dynamics, particularly between the United States and China. Liberal institutionalists point to the resilience of regional regimes even as global ones falter. Constructivists and post-colonial scholars highlight contested norms — sovereignty, non-intervention, development models — and the agency of the so-called Global South. Regionalism is thus both an empirical phenomenon and a lens: a way of asking whether world politics is fragmenting into competing blocs, layering into multi-order coexistence, or merely adapting through new forms of governance. Today the agenda includes how regional bodies handle spillovers from Ukraine and Gaza, the durability of EU strategic autonomy, ASEAN centrality amid US-China rivalry in the Indo-Pacific, African Union mediation in Sahel coups and Sudan, and BRICS+ expansion as a hedge against Western financial dominance. The core question is whether regional orders can supply the public goods — security, trade rules, climate action — that global institutions increasingly struggle to deliver.

Key players

Social and Global Health Implications of New Weapons Systems

Advances in lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), armed drones, hypersonic missiles, cyber-physical weapons, and dual-use biotechnologies are reshaping not only the conduct of war but its human cost. Since the 2014 launch of Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) discussions on LAWS and the 2023 Group of Governmental Experts report, states have failed to agree on a binding instrument, even as drones and AI-enabled targeting have been deployed at scale in Nagorno-Karabakh, Ukraine, and Gaza. Civilian casualties, destruction of health infrastructure, and population displacement in these theatres have intensified concern that the speed and opacity of new weapons outpace international humanitarian law. The global health dimension is broad. The WHO has repeatedly documented the targeting of hospitals and health workers in modern conflicts, while the destruction of water and sanitation systems has triggered cholera and other outbreaks in Yemen, Sudan, and Gaza. Cyber operations against hospitals — from WannaCry in 2017 onward — have demonstrated how digital weapons can degrade health services without kinetic effect. Dual-use AI and synthetic biology raise the prospect of engineered pathogens, prompting renewed attention to the Biological Weapons Convention, which still lacks a verification protocol. The contemporary debate links arms control, humanitarian law, and public health governance. Issues include meaningful human control over autonomous targeting, accountability for algorithmic harm, protection of medical facilities under the Geneva Conventions, mental health consequences of remote and persistent warfare, and the long-tail environmental and epidemiological impacts of munitions. The question is whether existing regimes — CCW, BWC, IHL, WHO emergency mechanisms — can be adapted, or whether new instruments are required.

Key players

Economic Transformations in a Fragmenting Global Order

The global economy is undergoing its most significant restructuring since the end of Bretton Woods. The 2008 financial crisis, the US-China trade war from 2018, the COVID-19 shock, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting sanctions regime, and the green and digital transitions have together pushed states toward industrial policy, friend-shoring, and export controls. Hyperglobalization — characterized by deep, rules-based integration through the WTO — has given way to what the IMF and others describe as 'geoeconomic fragmentation,' with trade and investment increasingly routed along geopolitical lines. Key vectors of transformation include the US Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act, the EU's Green Deal Industrial Plan and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, China's dual-circulation strategy and dominance in clean-tech supply chains, and the weaponization of finance through SWIFT exclusions and reserve freezes. Simultaneously, sovereign debt distress has spread across low- and middle-income countries, with the G20 Common Framework widely seen as inadequate; calls for a UN-led debt restructuring mechanism gained traction at the 2025 Financing for Development conference. Digital public infrastructure, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies are reshaping payments and monetary sovereignty. The agenda today spans how to reconcile climate-driven industrial policy with WTO rules, how to manage the energy transition's critical-minerals geopolitics, how to restructure unsustainable debt, and how to govern AI's labour-market disruption. Underlying these is a normative contest: whether the rules of the global economy will be rewritten through inclusive multilateralism or through competing blocs.

Key players

Socio-Cultural Changes Driven by Artificial Intelligence Technologies

The public release of ChatGPT in late 2022 marked an inflection point in the diffusion of generative AI, but the underlying transformation began earlier with the spread of recommender systems, facial recognition, and algorithmic decision-making across labour, finance, education, and policing. AI is now reshaping how cultural content is produced and consumed, how languages are mediated, how political information circulates, and how identity, work, and creativity are understood. The 2024 Hollywood writers' and actors' strikes, mounting copyright litigation against model developers, and the proliferation of synthetic media in elections from the United States to Indonesia and India illustrate the scope of contestation. Governance responses have multiplied. The EU AI Act, adopted in 2024, established the first comprehensive risk-based regulatory framework. The US issued an executive order on AI in 2023 (subsequently revised), the UK hosted the Bletchley and Seoul AI Safety Summits, and UNESCO's 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of AI remains the leading global normative instrument. The UN's 2024 Global Digital Compact and the work of the UN AI Advisory Body have sought to give the Global South a stronger voice. Yet a significant compute, data, and talent gap persists, raising concerns about cultural homogenization, English-language dominance in models, and the marginalization of low-resource languages and indigenous knowledge. Current debates focus on labour displacement and the future of creative industries, algorithmic bias and its effects on minority communities, the integrity of democratic discourse amid deepfakes, children's rights in AI-mediated environments, and the broader question of human agency. The challenge is to govern AI's socio-cultural footprint without entrenching either monopolistic platform power or fragmented digital sovereignty.

Key players

Diplomacy and International Law in Global Politics

International law and diplomacy are facing a credibility test unmatched since 1945. Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine constituted a manifest violation of the UN Charter's prohibition on the use of force; the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against President Putin in 2023. In 2024, the International Court of Justice issued provisional measures in South Africa's genocide case against Israel concerning Gaza, and an Advisory Opinion deeming Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful. The ICC subsequently issued warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders. These developments have placed international courts at the centre of geopolitics while exposing deep enforcement gaps and selective compliance by major powers. Classical diplomacy is also being transformed. Track-II initiatives, mediation by middle powers (Qatar, Norway, Türkiye, South Africa), and the rise of summit diplomacy through the G20, BRICS+, and regional bodies have partially substituted for paralysis in the UN Security Council, where the veto has been invoked repeatedly on Ukraine, Syria, and Gaza. Sanctions diplomacy, the weaponization of visas and reserve assets, and 'lawfare' through universal jurisdiction cases have blurred the lines between legal, economic, and coercive instruments. Key questions before the committee include Security Council reform and accountability for the use of the veto, the universality and enforcement of ICC jurisdiction, the law on the use of force in an age of grey-zone and cyber operations, the status of customary norms such as non-refoulement under migration pressure, and the role of diplomacy in climate, AI, and pandemic governance. The deeper issue is whether international law can retain legitimacy as a common framework, or whether it is becoming an instrument applied unevenly across geopolitical lines.

Key players