Circulation, not Cooperation: Towards a new understanding of intelligence agencies as transnationally constituted knowledge providers

Theoretical approaches to international intelligence relations primarily rely on the inadequate concept of cooperation. I offer an alternative analytical framework based on the concept of knowledge circulation. Knowledge circulation highlights that intelligence agencies are not highly bounded, national actors, butconstituted by transnationally circulated knowledge. Knowledge circulation draws attention to an autonomous realm of transnational intelligence relations, and thus offers insights for scholars, policy makers and practitioners. The article references understudied examples of intelligence relations and closes with an example of how the story of US-WestGerman intelligence relations could be retold via a knowledge circulation framework.