Ken Stiles

Ken Stiles teaches and researches international organization, international law, international history, and international ethics. He is co-senior editor of Global Governance, which is hosted by BYU.

His current book project involves a study of power transitions across history. He is aided by many very capable research assistants and student authors from BYU (for a list, see "student assistants" above). You can read an overview here.

Recent most recent books include Domestic Sources of International Institutions (Routledge, 2023), a study of the ways the internal norms of the major powers have shaped international norms and institutions, and Global Institutions in a Time of Power Transition (Edward Elgar, 2023), a reader with Joel Oestreich that explores how the great powers interact with United Nations staff and leadership.

His Trust and Hedging in International Relations (U. Michigan Press, 2018) explores the ways small states establish legal agreements with their powerful neighbors. State Responses to International Law (Routledge, 2014) shows why some states are inclined to obey certain types of international rules and regulations and some others are not. The book received recognition as the best book in international law by the International Law Section of the International Studies Association in 2016.