Alastair Iain Johnston

About

Alastair Iain Johnston is the Governor James Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs at Harvard University, affiliated with the Committee on Regional Studies East Asia. His research interests include international relations theory, East Asian international relations, and Chinese foreign policy. He is based at 1737 Cambridge Street, Room K238, and can be contacted via email at johnston@fas.harvard.edu or by phone at (617) 496-3965. His work focuses on understanding the dynamics of China's foreign policy within the broader context of international relations, contributing to the academic discourse on East Asian geopolitics and China's role on the global stage.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Aesthetics
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Law
• Social psychology
• Geometry
• Gender studies
• Epistemology
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• What (If Anything) Does East Asia Tell Us About International Relations Theory?

  Annual Review of Political Science · 2012-05-11 · 112 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Transatlantic international relations (IR) theory has more or less neglected the international relations of East Asia. This relative neglect has come in different forms: excluding East Asian cases from analysis, including East Asian cases but miscoding or misunderstanding them, or including them but missing the fact that they do not confirm the main findings of the study. A review of the East Asia–related literature on three important clusters of theorizing—structural theories of conflict, insti…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Failures of the ‘Failure of Engagement’ with China

  The Washington Quarterly · 2019-04-03 · 79 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  One core element in the current narrative in Washington about China as a challenger to the so-called U.S.-dominated liberal “rules-based order” is that the previous U.S. engagement strategy, pursue...

  PublisherDOI

• Memes, narratives and the emergent US–China security dilemma

  Cambridge Review of International Affairs · 2019-07-04 · 69 citations

  articleSenior author

  All major theoretical approaches that explain the growing rivalry between the United States (US) and China share a common prediction: as tensions develop, the US and China will each construct a master narrative emphasizing zero-sum interests, the efficacy of coercion, and the perceived blamelessness of the Self for the Other’s aggressions. However, the concrete process by which these narratives emerge has been neither explicitly theorized nor measured in practice. We theorize that in the digital…

  PublisherDOI

• 6. Chinese Attitudes toward the United States and Americans

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2018-12-31 · 37 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Evolution of Interstate Security Crisis-ManagementTheory and Practice in China

  Naval War College review · 2016-01-01 · 28 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Rawi Abdelal

  13 shared

• Rose McDermott

  12 shared

• Yoshiko M. Herrera

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  12 shared

• Jeffrey T. Checkel

  7 shared

• Robert S. Ross

  6 shared

• Peter J. Katzenstein

  Cornell University

  3 shared

• Amitav Acharya

  3 shared

• Allen Carlson

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Political Science

  Harvard University

  1995

• M.A., Political Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  1990

• B.A., Political Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  1987

Similar researchers at Harvard University

• Yuhua Wangh-69
• David Howellh-53
• Xiaofei Tianh-31