The Routledge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and International RelationsEdited By Diego Brasioli, Laura Guercio, Giovanna Gnerre Landini, and Andrea de GiorgioRoutledge, 2025.

The transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on virtually every facet of human society presents unprecedented challenges and opportunities for the international system. The Routledge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and International Relations, expertly edited by Diego Brasioli, Laura Guercio, Giovanna Gnerre Landini, and Andrea de Giorgio (2025), arrives as a seminal and comprehensive volume dedicated to systematically exploring this critical intersection. Bringing together a diverse array of international scholars, the handbook undertakes the ambitious task of mapping the multifaceted ways in which AI technologies are reshaping the core concepts, practices, and structures of International Relations (IR). This review provides a detailed overview of the handbook's structure, content, and its significant contribution as a foundational resource for understanding the AI-IR nexus.

The editors position the handbook as an essential resource for scholars, students, and practitioners navigating the complex terrain where rapidly evolving AI technologies meet established and emerging dynamics of global politics. Its primary objective is to provide a broad, multidisciplinary examination of AI's implications across the spectrum of IR concerns. Recognising the inherent interdisciplinarity of the subject, the volume explicitly incorporates perspectives beyond traditional IR, drawing from law, ethics, security studies, political economy, sociology, and elements of computer science. The editors emphasise grounding the analysis in critical IR theory, seeking to understand AI not merely as a neutral tool but as a phenomenon deeply embedded in social, political, and economic power structures, capable of reconfiguring agency, sovereignty, security, governance, and global inequality.

The handbook is meticulously organised into six coherent parts (each examined below), including 29 thematic encompassing chapters, each addressing a distinct dimension of the AI-IR relationship.

Conceptualising AI and IR – Foundations and Frameworks

The foundational section establishes the conceptual bedrock for the entire volume. It explores the fundamental nature of AI and its core technologies (machine learning, neural networks, etc.) in terms accessible to an IR audience. Here, chapters rigorously examine how AI challenges and potentially redefines core IR concepts such as power (hard, soft, structural), sovereignty (state capacity, territoriality, informational control), agency (of states, non-state actors, and potentially AI systems themselves), and the nature of the international system. It delves into the epistemological and methodological challenges AI poses for IR research and theory-building, discussing how big data and algorithmic analysis might inform or transform the study of global politics. Foundational ethical considerations and the integration of critical theoretical perspectives (e.g., postcolonial, feminist) into the analysis of AI are introduced here, setting the tone for subsequent sections.

AI, Global Economy, and Development – Shaping Prosperity and Inequality

The book analyses AI's........

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