Reminiscent of an earlier era of political science, the wide-ranging work grapples with intellectual ideas that will have direct impact on the worlds of politics, policy, and government — such as the likely future of international order, with an emphasis on the competition between democracies and autocracies. Historically rich and sophisticated, its breadth spans international relations, political theory, and comparative politics.

“Political scientists have tended to analyze democratic longevity and crises in domestic terms,” said University of Louisville professor of political science and University Scholar Charles E. Ziegler, director of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. “They generally look at internal economic structure, income levels, and a society’s cultural traits. Owen’s exposition of the role of the international ecosystem marks a major contribution to our understanding of world order.”

The Grawemeyer Award for World Order has been given annually since 1988. Professor Owen appreciates the influence of a number of past Grawemeyer Award winners, particularly 1989 winner Robert Keohane, whose “After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy” inspired Owen, then a Keohane advisee, to investigate the way international institutions work. In addition, 1992 winner Samuel Huntington, one of Owen’s graduate-school mentors, prompted Owen to attend to the waxing and waning global fortunes of democracy, as well as to international contagion. The work of Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, winners in 2000 for “Activists beyond Borders,” showed Owen how transnational groups carry ideas and practices across national boundaries.

Owen will accept his award at a ceremony in Louisville on April 10.

About the Grawemeyer Awards

Each year the Grawemeyer Awards honor the power of creative ideas to improve our culture via music composition, education, religion, psychology, and world order. Business executive and family man H. Charles Grawemeyer established the awards in 1984 at the University of Louisville in collaboration with Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Academics and community members choose among nominees from around the world to ensure that each winning idea is relevant to society at large. The University of Louisville announces the winners in December and presents the awards at a ceremony the following April. Each award winner receives $100,000, which they may use, if they choose, to develop and accelerate the spread of their powerful ideas. Learn more at .

Neta Crawford, an international relations professor at the University of Oxford in England, received the prize for the ideas in her “The Pentagon, Climate Change and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of Military Emissions” published by MIT Press in 2022.

The U.S. military is the world’s largest single institutional producer of greenhouse gases, Crawford found. Between 1975 and 2022, its emissions averaged 81 million metric tons of greenhouse hydrocarbons a year—more than most countries. After it reduced operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, its emissions dropped to an annual average of 51 million metric tons, a level that still poses more risk to human existence than most military conflicts, she found.

“The Pentagon looks at the world in terms of threats but doesn’t see its own emissions as part of the problem,” she said. “If it’s going to successfully switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy, it must stop defending oil-rich countries and develop a different approach to national security.”

is the first scholar to thoroughly assess the U.S. military’s global emissions profile and weigh its implications, said Charles Ziegler, who directs the world order award.

“She convincingly explains how the military’s dependence on fossil fuels and consequent need to defend the sources of those fuels leads to a cycle of demand, consumption, militarization and conflict,” Ziegler said. “She also explains how the Pentagon can do more to make life on our planet sustainable.”

Crawford, Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Oxford since 2021, also codirects the Costs of War Project, a non-partisan effort at Brown University assessing the human and financial costs of U.S. wars. She was inducted into the British Academy and American Academy of Arts and Sciences earlier this year and won an International Studies Association distinguished scholar award in 2018.

Recipients of next year’s are being named this week pending formal trustee approval. The annual, $100,000 prizes also honor seminal ideas in music, psychology, education and religion. Winners will visit Louisville in the spring to accept their awards and give free talks on their winning ideas.