About the Seminar

Small states have usually been regarded as ‘price takers’ or ‘rule followers’ in an international system, where creating and sustaining orders are the responsibility of great powers. Yet historically, small states have been significant voices in the debates and maintenance of these orders, setting up regional institutions that sustain critical norms and practices guiding the international relations between states. Today, as great power rivalry threatens upheavals to the international system, small states face considerable uncertainty and potential vulnerability from the lack of predictability that has resulted. Yet if moments of upheaval represent risks to stability, they also offer creative opportunities for devising new international structures amenable to national interests, and small states have perhaps the greatest stakes for putting their ideas forward early. This seminar will look at how small states have approached order problems, how their responses have reshaped international order, and what this bodes for the future.

About the Speakers

Dylan M.H Loh, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Public Policy & Global Affairs programme at Nanyang Technological University. His research interests include Chinese foreign policy, international diplomacy, and conceptions of international orders. Dylan received his PhD from Cambridge University and his articles have appeared in China Quarterly, Cooperation & Conflict, International Studies Review, Global Studies Quarterly, The Pacific Review and International Relations of Asia-Pacific among others. His 2024 article on Singapore and the international order was nominated for the ‘Early Career Prize’ by International Affairs. He is the author of China’s Rising Foreign Ministry (2024) published by Stanford University Press and is working on his second monograph on Chinese discourse power.

Patrick Quinton-Brown joined SMU as an Assistant Professor of International Relations in 2023. Previously he was a Departmental Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford where he also held a Senior College Lectureship at University College. From January 2021 to October 2022, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Institute in the National University of Singapore. His articles have appeared in journals including International Affairs, International Relations, Millennium, and Review of International Studies. His research interests cover theories of international relations and global governance; international institutions and organisations; interpretive and postcolonial approaches; and the Global South in historical international society. His first book, Intervention before Interventionism: A Global Genealogy, was published with Oxford University Press in 2024.