About

Austin Carson is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and serves as the Director of the Committee on International Relations. His research addresses the role of secrecy and intelligence in International Relations theory, international conflict, and global governance. He has authored two books: 'Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics' and 'Secrets in Global Governance: Disclosure Dilemmas and the Challenge of International Cooperation,' the latter coauthored with Allison Carnegie. Carson's work has been published in prominent venues such as International Organization, the American Journal of Political Science, and Security Studies. His books and articles have received numerous awards, including the Lepgold Prize for Book of the Year, the Robert O. Keohane Award, ISA’s Best Security Article Award, and the Best Book Award from APSA’s International Collaboration section. He earned his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 2013.

Research topics

• Political science
• Computer science
• Business
• Law and economics
• Computer security

Selected publications

• Allies and Access: Implications of an American Turn Away from Alliances

  International Organization · 2025-11-20 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract A defining feature of the post-1945 international system is the American network of allies and partners that has underpinned its global power. Recent developments within the United States and in the international system have severely strained that alliance network. If it collapses, what is at stake? Existing scholarship in International Relations highlights losses in aggregated military capabilities, reduced diplomatic support, and lost trade. In this essay we review these benefits and another that has been overlooked: ally-enabled access. Access refers to permission from allies and partners to engage in military and intelligence missions within their borders on their territory, through their airspace, or in their territorial waters. Access via America’s allies and security partners has enabled Washington to use foreign sovereign spaces for military logistics, military operations, and foreign surveillance to overcome the tyranny of distance. Examples include permission from allies and partners in the Middle East to allow the US Air Force to fly from their bases to strike targets in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11, and US intelligence installations built and operated by permission from Pakistani, Turkish, and Japanese territory during the Cold War. We describe the broad functions of alliances and show how access has been key to projection of American military and intelligence power at a global scale. Perhaps limiting or ending America’s global hegemonic role is desirable; perhaps it is dangerous. We argue that accounting for the contributions of access made by allies and security partners is critical if scholars, policymakers, and publics are to properly assess what is at stake in an American turn away from alliances.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Performative Violence and the Spectacular Debut of the Atomic Bomb – ADDENDUM

  American Political Science Review · 2025-11-19

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Performative Violence and the Spectacular Debut of the Atomic Bomb

  American Political Science Review · 2025-10-13

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki reshaped international politics and the field of International Relations. But one question—“ How should the atomic bomb be used?”—has been largely overlooked in political science. This article recovers American deliberations on alternative nuclear use options before August 1945, including the “noncombat demonstration,” targeting military installations, giving advance warning, and striking more symbolically valuable cities. We develop theoretical insights on the value of staging violent spectacles and the emotive power of visible destruction. We then use a wide range of sources to show that U.S. leaders selected an ostentatiously lethal means of atomic debut due to concerns about conventional military inferiority vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, the desire to instill a widespread view of the bomb’s revolutionary character, and the imperative of shaping the postwar international order. This study advances our understanding of the post-1945 international order and the performative dimensions of political violence.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Unique Challenges of Covert Missions

  2025-08-21

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter examines the enduring appeal and inherent challenges of covert action, demonstrating how leaders weigh their strategic benefits against its risks. It explains how covert action offers operational advantages, including precise targeting, escalation control, and reduced political backlash, but also introduces logistical constraints, muted messaging, exposure risks, and long-term blowback. The chapter analyzes how decision-makers interpret and respond to adversary covert operations, assessing whether to inform allies or the public and determining appropriate countermeasures. It also explores how technological advancements, such as cyberattacks, drones, and artificial intelligence, expand covert capabilities while increasing the likelihood of exposure. Finally, the chapter argues that although covert action remains a tempting policy tool, leaders must continually navigate trade-offs between secrecy, effectiveness, and unintended consequences.

  PublisherDOI

• History, archeology, and espionage as improvised legibility

  European Journal of International Relations · 2025-10-21

  article1st authorCorresponding

  How do states develop the capacity to understand new geographic domains and issue areas? This article introduces a theory of “improvised legibility” to explain how states make sense of the new and unfamiliar, extending James Scott’s concept of legibility to include clandestine intelligence collection of foreign areas. Improvised legibility occurs in two phases: first, improvised connections, involving ad hoc relationships with non-state experts, and second, improvised institutionalization, through experimental organizations fitted to the new domains. We emphasize the role played by emerging epistemic communities of professional experts in these new areas, which states leverage as “off-the-shelf” experts. This theory is illustrated by British efforts to make legible the Middle East from the 1840s to World War I, particularly highlighting the part played by the emerging field of archeology in British intelligence. Archeology gained prominence in the 19th century amid European status competition, producing experts with local knowledge, technical skills, and scientific cover. Britain’s use of improvised legibility is shown through the development of ad hoc relationships with archeologists (improvised connections) and the later creation of the Arab Bureau in World War I (improvised institutionalization). In the process, we underscore the role that key archeologists played in British intelligence, including figures such as Austen Henry Layard, the Palestine Exploration Fund, D.G. Hogarth, Gertrude Bell, and T.E. Lawrence. This article denaturalizes the modern surveillance state and shows how experts like archeologists contributed to the emergence of the modern intelligence state, contributing to literatures on state formation and epistemic communities.

  PublisherDOI

• Racial Tropes in the Foreign Policy Bureaucracy: A Computational Text Analysis

  International Organization · 2024-01-01 · 39 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract How do racial stereotypes affect perceptions in foreign policy? Race and racism as topics have long been marginalized in the study of international relations but are receiving renewed attention. In this article we assess the role of implicit racial bias in internal, originally classified assessments by the US foreign policy bureaucracy during the Cold War. We use a combination of dictionary-based and supervised machine learning techniques to identify the presence of four racial tropes in a unique corpus of intelligence documents: almost 5,000 President's Daily Briefs given to Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. We argue and find that entries about countries that the US deemed “racialized Others”—specifically, countries in the Global South, newly independent states, and some specific regional groupings—feature an especially large number of racial tropes. Entries about foreign developments in these places are more likely to feature interpretations that infantilize, invoke animal-based analogies, or imply irrationality or belligerence. This association holds even when accounting for the presence of conflict, the regime type of the country being analyzed, the invocation of leaders, and the topics being discussed. The article makes two primary contributions. First, it adds to the revival of attention to race but gives special emphasis to implicit racialized thinking and its appearance in bureaucratic settings. Second, we show the promise of new tools for identifying racial and other forms of implicit bias in foreign policy texts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Scared to Share: Why Fighting Pandemics Requires Secrecy, Not Transparency

  Global Perspectives · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This article analyzes how fears regarding information disclosure have shaped responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and whether innovations in confidentiality at institutions like the World Health Organization may address those concerns. Sensitive information abounds in global health crises including health data, treatment options, and treatment administration. This creates a dilemma: sharing information is necessary to identify outbreaks but is prevented by concerns regarding privacy, profits, and political scrutiny. Building on insights from other institutions and issue areas, we assess how global governance institutions might respond to these disclosure dilemmas by developing forms of confidentiality in global disease governance. We analyze the benefits and trade-offs in equipping organizations like the World Health Organization with stronger methods for keeping sensitive information secure. We also use new data on a range of international organizations to show that such enhanced confidentiality can improve institutional effectiveness.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Co-Optation at the Creation: Leaders, Elite Consensus, and Postwar International Order

  Security Studies · 2022-08-08 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article analyzes how democratic leaders cultivate an elite consensus in favor of participating in international institutions. We theorize two tactics to prevent elite dissent. Delegating early policy development to technocratic and nonpartisan experts can set a depoliticized tone. Later integration of opposition elites into the process can create powerful advocates that expand support to a consensus. We assess contrasting fates of the United Nations (UN) and International Trade Organization (ITO). Haunted by Woodrow Wilson’s failure to win approval for the League of Nations, leaders outsourced early planning for a UN to the Council on Foreign Relations. Later, Franklin D. Roosevelt and top aides tapped moderate Republicans for the US delegation to San Francisco, creating powerful Republican advocates. In contrast, leaders developed the ITO in-house and excluded legislative elites in final negotiations, provoking elite dissent. These tactics shed new light on leaders, elites, and the domestic politics of international order and hegemony.

  PublisherDOI

• More than a Number: Aging Leaders in International Politics

  International Studies Quarterly · 2022-12-20 · 22 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract How does leader age affect international politics? Challenging the existing literature's focus on chronological age, we argue that leaders do not age the same in the eyes of their beholders. Combining insights from gerontology on age-related stereotypes and studies of face-to-face diplomacy, we show that judgments about age informed by high-level personal encounters have profound consequences for how elderly leaders are appraised and treated by their counterparts. A leader who betrays indicators of “senility” during face-to-face encounters will elicit harsh judgments by activating negative stereotypes about aging. Older leaders can also surprise their interlocutors: those long thought to be senile may show themselves as mentally and physically fit. Perceptions of age, in turn, shape how observers understand a leader's agency and shape decisions to “engage” or “bypass” the leader in the context of interstate cooperation. We draw on declassified primary documents to compare American views of three elderly leaders in Cold War Asia—Syngman Rhee, Mao Tse-tung, and Chou Enlai—and how such views informed Washington's approach to these leaders, finding powerful support for our arguments. Our findings suggest new insights for the IR research program on leaders as well as lessons for statecraft in an era of aging decision makers.

  PublisherDOI

• UN Peacekeeping After the Pandemic: An Increased Role for Intelligence

  Survival · 2021-03-04 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  Increasing peacekeepers’ access to information derived from intelligence sources could help compensate for their reduced physical presence due to COVID-19.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Allison Carnegie

  Columbia University

  93 shared

• Daniel K. Benjamin

  Duke University

  16 shared

• Steve Fetter

  University of Maryland, College Park

  16 shared

• Adam Levine-Weinberg

  University of Chicago

  16 shared

• Jennifer Erickson

  Ball State University

  16 shared

• Jeffrey Friedman

  Dartmouth Hospital

  16 shared

• Ahsan Butt

  Cornell University

  16 shared

• Michael C. Desch

  16 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Political Science

  The Ohio State University

  2013

Awards & honors

• Lepgold Prize for Book of the Year
• Robert O. Keohane Award
• ISA’s Best Security Article Award
• Best Book Award from APSA’s International Collaboration sect…