ABSTRACT
Revolutions in sovereignty imply revolutions in political theology. Political theology is a somewhat surprising concept to find in foreign policy and international relations, not least for the perception that 'political theologies' are usually about embedding exclusivist divine revelations into an increasingly fractious politics. The perception runs that political theology is the kind of concept that might be relevant to Iran, or the Islamic State, but hardly to mainstream foreign policy. Political theology was once more commonplace in international theory, and has only slowly been reintroduced into the conversation on international relations since September 11, 2001. Carl Schmitt's Political Theology was one of the first, and arguably the most controversial, contemporary articulations of political theology. Vendulka Kubálková deliberately contrasts international political theology (IPT) with other sub-disciplines, like International Political Economy (IPE). To complicate political theology further still, Schmitt's original treatises suffer enormously from their obscurity.
