"Ruben Zaiotti provides a fascinating, comprehensive, and intelligent analysis of the role of culture in the evolution of international borders. This exceptionally crafted piece of theoretical and empirical work will be a must read for anyone interested in how nature and nurture combine to construct international reality.”

Emanuel Adler | University of Toronto

“This book succeeds in making a convincing case for a cultural evolutionary approach to study changes in international regimes, focusing on variation, selection, and retention of cultures of practice. As a welcome alternative perspective to the field of regime analysis, it makes important contributions to international relations theory, the study of communities of practice, and the meaning of borders in a changing world.”

Antje Wiener | University of Hamburg

“Cultures of Border Control offers a full-scale academic analysis of the development of the Schengen area, a zone of countries within Europe that have removed most of their border controls and now allow free movement of persons across their national boundaries. Timely and well-written, it takes up a set of issues that cut across a wide variety of scholarly and public affairs arenas, and raises questions about broader transformations in boundaries and borders in the twenty-first century.”

Kathleen McNamara | Georgetown University

“Ruben Zaiotti takes on the intergovernmental reading of the development of Schengen and, instead, offers a cultural evolutionary framework that highlights how background assumptions and practices of border control changed via mechanisms of variation and selection. . . . [Zaiotti] makes an important contribution to the field and international security more generally that is too often neglected by scholars of International Relations and comparative politics.”

International Affairs