Patricia Owens' work in international political theory is inspired by 20th century political thought. She has addressed a number of normative and ethical questions in her research. This includes joining with classical realists to challenge neo-conservative ideological thinking, challenging liberal and critical theory efforts to justify humanitarian military intervention and the post-structuralist blurring of the distinction between politics and war. 

She recently published Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Oxford University Press, 2007). This is the first book length study of war in the thought of one of the 20th Century's most important and original political thinkers. Hannah Arendt's writing was fundamentally rooted in her understanding of war and its political significance. Yet, this element of her work has surprisingly been neglected in international and political theory. 

The book fills an important gap by assessing the full range of Arendt's historical and conceptual writing on war and introduces to international theory the distinct language she used to talk about war and the political world. It builds on her re-thinking of old concepts such as power, violence, greatness, world, imperialism, evil, hypocrisy and humanity and introduces some that are new to international thought like plurality, action, agonism, natality and political immortality.