Experts

John M. Owen IV

Faculty Senior Fellow

Fast Facts

  • Recipient of fellowships from the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard, the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford, and the Center of International Studies at Princeton
  • Member of the editorial board of International Security
  • 2015 winner, Humboldt Research Prize (Germany)
  • Expertise on war, regime change, religion, democracy and the international order, and international security

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • War and Terrorism
  • Religion

John M. Owen is a Miller Center faculty senior fellow and Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics. His newest book, The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order (Yale University Press, 2023), received the 2025 Grawemeyer Award for World Order from the University of Louisville. He is also the author of Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Cornell University Press, 1997) and The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change 1510-2010 (Princeton University Press, 2010). He is co-editor of Religion, the Enlightenment, and the New Global Order (Columbia University Press, 2011).

Owen has published work in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, International Politics, International Organization, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, The National Interest, and several edited volumes. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard, the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford, and the Center of International Studies at Princeton. His research has been funded by the MacArthur, Earhart, and Donchian Foundations. He received a Humboldt Research Prize in 2015. He is a member of the editorial boards of International Security and Security Studies and a faculty fellow at the UVA Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. 

John M. Owen IV News Feed

Democracy and authoritarianism are in a worldwide contest—and it is not going well for democracy
John M. Owen IV
Ideas matter to University of Virginia politics professor John M. Owen IV. “Many scholars in the field really don’t talk about ideas,” said Owen, the Ambassador Henry J. and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics, and a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and the Miller Center for Public Affairs. “International relations for them is about material power – weapons, ships, soldiers, technology or money. And ideas really aren’t a part of this picture, except in a trivial way. I’ve always thought that’s wrong. Ideas do matter,” he said. “The notion that politics is just about who has the most guns has never been satisfactory to me – it’s also who’s got the words and the ideas.”
John M. Owen IV UVA Today
The 2022 Ambassador William C. Battle Symposium on American Diplomacy addressed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting shifts in the global geopolitical landscape and featured the University of Virginia's Miller Center faculty Senior Fellow John M. Owen IV.
John M. Owen IV Miller Center Presents
In a round-table discussion, participants including the University of Virginia's Miller Center Faculty Senior Fellow John M. Owen IV addressed the successes and failures of the Biden administration to date, and prospects for the midterm elections in November.
John M. Owen IV RAIOxford
UVA professor John Owen discusses the latest in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
John M. Owen IV The Public Morality
William B. Taylor Jr., former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, joins a panel of Miller Center and UVA experts on war and foreign policy to analyze Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As Taylor wrote recently: “Atrocities and mass civilian casualties, in a Russian assault that President Biden and others have labeled an act of genocide, only heighten the question for democracies of how to respond. Accountability will be vital. But an immediate imperative is to stop this aggression by defeating Putin and supporting Ukrainians’ battle to preserve their own freedom. That battle is crucial to the protection of international rule of law—and, given Putin’s implacability, to any hope for peace.”
John M. Owen IV Miller Center Presents