Please join the Harriman Institute, the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, and the Department of Political Science for a lecture by Julia Vassileva. Moderated by Allison Carnegie.
The talk addresses the use of non-legally binding international agreements (NLBIAs) in security competition. Sometimes states conclude treaties; sometimes they conclude “nontreaties” (NLBIAs). Why? This talk argues that legal form is chosen rather than defaulted into, and that it carries strategic value which states recognize and exploit. In security competition, non-binding form is a resource that does things binding form cannot.
Dr. Julia Vassileva is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Her research lies at the intersection of international law and international security, focusing on how states use legal norms and institutions as instruments of strategy and statecraft in security competition. Her current second book project is on the use of non-legally binding agreements in international security. Her first book, The Strategic Life of Norms, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Julia was previously a visiting scholar at Columbia’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4), a visiting researcher at the National University of Singapore’s Center for International Law, a visiting associate professor at Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate Law School in Japan, and a researcher at the UN International Law Commission in Geneva and New York.
Allison Carnegie is Director of the Politics and Global Economy (PaGE) Lab at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, and Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. She received a joint PhD in Political Science and Economics from Yale University in 2014. Her research interests include international relations, international organizations, and international political economy. She is the author of Global Governance Under Fire: How International Organizations Resist the Populist Wave (Princeton University Press, 2026) with Richard Clark, Secrets in Global Governance: Disclosure Dilemmas and the Challenge of International Cooperation (Cambridge University Press, 2020) with Austin Carson and Power Plays: How International Institutions Reshape Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Her work has been published in a variety of outlets including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Economics & Politics, Foreign Affairs, International Organization, Journal of Politics, and Political Analysis. She held a research fellowship at Princeton University and has received awards including the International Political Economy Society’s David A. Lake Award, the Bill and Melinda Gates GDN Award, and International Organization’s Robert O Keohane award.
