Bustamante, Kevin E. 2024. Waltz with Me: Structural Realism and Structural Racism in International Politics. Security Studies 33 (5): 742–767.

ABSTRACT: A chasm separates International Relations (IR) scholars interested in race and racism. Conventional scholars treat the topic in a reductionist manner, choosing to focus on unit-level factors such as racial attitudes and identities. Critical scholars are more structural in their approaches but reject traditional causal explanations. I argue that Waltzian theory is a bridge between these two approaches, offering structural causal arguments with wider policy relevance. The essay reckons with critical critiques of Waltzian theory and outlines structural realist approaches to structural racism.

Find the manuscript here or email me for a copy.

Bustamante, Kevin E. Racial Hierarchy and the Balance of Power: Race War in Merze Tate's International Thought (Forthcoming at Journal of Race, Ethnicity, & Politics)

This article recovers the international thought of Merze Tate, the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in government from Harvard’s Radcliffe College. I reconstruct Tate’s classical realist approach and show how she applies it to the causes of disarmament failure and views race war as a challenge to global racial hierarchy. Tate’s realist approach highlights an alternative approach to racism in international politics that centers the international distribution of power. I make my argument through a close reading of Tate’s early writings in the 1930s and 1940s and compare it to contemporary writings by W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, and E.H. Carr. The article makes three contributions: it recovers Tate’s intellectual legacy and advances recognition of early twentieth-century black women thinkers; it develops the Howard School of International Relations’ contributions to IR theory; and it enriches our understanding of racism in the international system.

Working paper available here. 

Direct Democracy, Political Awareness, and Identity (Revise & Resubmit at Political Behavior)

This article examines how identity shapes political awareness of ballot propositions. I argue that political awareness is jointly structured by identity and proposition content which produce distinct incentive and opportunity structures and differential rates of awareness. I test this argument using over 120 surveys in California (1970-2014) capturing awareness of more than 220 propositions with over 350,000 observations. I find gender and racial awareness gaps in traditional propositions but no sexuality gap. These gaps disappear or reverse on identity-salient initiatives addressing immigration, carceral policy, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ issues. I probe a potential mechanism behind the White-Latino awareness gap by comparing proposition coverage in leading English and Spanish newspapers (1992-2006). I show how La Opinión covers immigration measures at nearly twice the rate as the Los Angeles Times. These findings advance our understanding of the kinds of politics that people of color, women, and the LGBTQ community are aware of.

Working paper available here.

The Myth of Nuclear Prestige (Book Project)

Why Do States Go Nuclear? Ethnocentrism and Racism in Predictions of Proliferation

Race and Support for Nuclear Weapons Use (w/ David Ebner)

Competition and Racial Equality in Elite International Clubs