Wednesday, 30 September 2026, 15:30 – 17:30, Streatham Court Lecture Theatre B, University of Exeter
Organised by The Centre for Political Thought and the Centre for Advanced International Studies
The Book launch will be followed by a reception with light refreshments
Join online through the Zoom link here
Ruth Kinna and Alex Prichard will talk about their new book, Constitutionalising Anarchy, published in the LSE International Studies Series by Cambridge University Press, October 2026.
Anarchism is often assumed to stand outside constitutionalism, yet it forms a significant, if overlooked, tradition of constitutional thought. Addressing global constitutional crises and the impasses of state-centred politics, this book brings anarchism into productive dialogue with constitutional, political and international theory. At its core is a reconstruction of anarchist social theory grounded in an ontology of anarchy shaped by European social science and republican concerns with dividing and balancing power. These ideas were reinterpreted by major anarchist thinkers – from Proudhon to Lucy Parsons, and from Tolstoy to Kōtoku Shūsui – who advanced decentralised, federalist alternatives to imperial and hierarchical orders. Combining intellectual history with co-produced research alongside anarchist groups, Constitutionalising Anarchy shows how constitutional practices developed within militant labour unions, protest movements and cooperatives across the twentieth century. It reconsiders anarchy, constitutionalism and the possibilities of political organisation.
Alex Prichard is Professor of International Political Theory at University of Exeter. His research lies at the intersection of International Relations, political theory and anarchist studies. His work focuses on anarchist thought and anarchist constitutional politics in particular, as well as points at intersections and disagreements in anarchist and Marxist philosophies. In addition to this, he is interested in the ethics and phenomenology of war and violence, republican political theory, and co-production methods in political philosophy.
Ruth Kinna is Professor of Political Theory at Loughborough University. She is a political theorist and historian of ideas with interests in historical and contemporary anarchism, nineteenth and early twentieth-century socialist thought, utopianism and political militancy. She is co-founder and co-convenor (2005-2018) of the Anarchist Studies Network (a specialist group of the Political Studies Association) and with Matthew S. Adams, co-editor of the peer review journal Anarchist Studies.