I am Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science and serve as the Academic Dean of the TRIUM Global Executive MBA, an alliance between LSE, NYU Stern School of Business and HEC Paris, and one of the world’s leading EMBA programmes. My research and teaching focuses on international political economy, global environmental politics, and the role of business in international relations. My recent books include Great Powers, Climate Change, and Global Environmental Responsibilities (co-edited, Oxford University Press, 2022), Environmentalism and Global International Society (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and The Handbook of Global Climate and Environment Policy (edited, Wiley, 2013). My new book, The Market in Global International Society: An English School Approach to International Political Economy (co-authored with Barry Buzan), will be published by Oxford University Press.

LSE website | Bluesky | X(Twitter) | Google Scholar

New Book

Falkner, Robert and Barry Buzan (eds.) (2022). Great Powers, Climate Change and Global Environmental Responsibilities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This book is the first of its kind to examine the role of great powers in the international politics of climate change. It develops a novel analytical framework for studying environmental power in international relations, what counts as a great power in the environmental field, and what their special environmental responsibilities are. In doing so, the book connects International Relations (IR) debates on power inequality, great powers and great power management, with global environmental politics (GEP) scholarship. 

The book brings together leading scholars of IR and GEP whose contributions focus on major environmental powers (United States, China, European Union, India, Brazil, Russia) and international institutions and issue areas (UN Security Council, multilateral environmental agreements, international climate leadership, coal politics). The contributors to this volume examine how individual great powers have responded to the global climate challenge and whether they have accepted a special responsibility for stabilizing the global climate. They place emerging discourses on great power responsibility in the context of wider debates about international environmental leadership and climate change securitization. And they provide new insights into how international power inequality intersects with the global ecological crisis, and what special role great powers could and should play in the international fight against global warming.

Now available as audiobook:

Latest research

Selected Publications

Falkner, Robert and Barry Buzan (2019), 'The Emergence of Environmental Stewardship as a Primary Institution of Global International Society', European Journal of International Relations, 25(1): 131-155 [link]. 

Falkner, Robert (2019), ‘The Unavoidability of Justice - and Order - in International Climate Politics: From Kyoto to Paris and Beyond’, in: British Journal of Politics and International Relations, (21)2: 270-78 [link].

Falkner, Robert (2016) 'The Paris Agreement and the New Logic of International Climate Politics', International Affairs 92(5), September, pp. 1107–1125. 

Falkner, Robert (2016) 'A minilateral solution for global climate change? On bargaining efficiency, club benefits and international legitimacy', Perspectives on Politics 14(1), pp. 87-101.

Falkner, Robert (2014) 'Global Environmental Politics and Energy: Mapping the Research Agenda', in: Energy Research and Social Science, 1:1, pp. 188-97.

Falkner, Robert (2012) 'Global Environmentalism and the Greening of International Society', in: International Affairs, vol. 88, no. 3, pp. 503-22.

Falkner, Robert and Nico Jaspers (2012) 'Regulating Nanotechnologies: Risk, Uncertainty and the Global Governance Gap', in: Global Environmental Politics vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 30-55.

Falkner, Robert and Aarti Gupta (2009) 'The limits of regulatory convergence: globalization and GMO politics in the South', International Environmental Agreements, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 113-133.

Falkner, Robert (2007) 'The Political Economy of 'Normative Power' Europe: EU Environmental Leadership in International Biotechnology Regulation', in: Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 507-526.

Falkner, Robert (2003) 'Private Environmental Governance and International Relations: Exploring the Links', in: Global Environmental Politics, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 72-87.