Voluntary action in International Relations

What is voluntary action in International Relations (IR)? Literatures on bargaining, empire, foreign policy, grand strategy, hierarchy, hegemony, international law, international order, legitimacy, responsibility, status, and strategy depend on the answer, yet IR has no definition of it. We argue that voluntary action is an expression of genuine will. Yet, because of theoretical commitments, there remains deep disagreement about which actors are capable of genuine will, what process produces it, and what internal and external conditions interfere with it. We lay out where and why disagreements occur and discuss ways of advancing disputes over voluntarism in world politics.