Bryan Peeler

• POLS 2502 - Introduction to World Affairs 
• POLS 4160 - Cases in International Law 
• POLS 7100 - The Study of Politics
• POLS 7270 - Cases in International Law

My research focuses on the intersection of international relations and international law. I seek to understand the different ways international law constrains state power. There is a growing tendency to argue that international law shapes the behavior of states via a logic of appropriateness rather than the logic of consequences stressed by realists and neoliberal institutionalism. By contrast, I understand the core evolution in law to be a more nuanced understanding of reciprocity. Building on Robert Keohane’s distinction between specific and diffuse reciprocity, I distinguish between two types of specific reciprocity: legal and strategic. While legal reciprocity involves the reciprocal commitments that states build into the wording of international law, strategic reciprocity can be used as a policy device regardless of the law. This understanding of reciprocity gives my research an appreciation of domestic debates regarding international obligations that are missed by other logic of consequences approaches.

• PhD (Political Science), University of British Columbia, 2016
• MA (Political Science), University of Manitoba, 2008
• M Phil (Philosophy), King’s College (London), 1996
• MA (Philosophy), University of Manitoba, 1994
• BA (History), University of Manitoba, 1991

Research interests

• International relations
• International law

Research affiliations/groups

• Research Fellow, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, University of Manitoba
• Advisory Board Chair, Manitoba Chair of Global Governance Studies

• Bryan Peeler, 2019. The Persistence of Reciprocity in International Humanitarian Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.