IR theory and Area Studies: a plea for displaced knowledge about international politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Kaczmarska ◽  
Stefanie Ortmann
Keyword(s):  
International Politics ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Area Studies

A useful dialogue? Habermas and International Relations

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Diez ◽  
Jill Steans
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
New Research

It is now more than twenty years since Jürgen Habermas's work was first referred to in International Relations (IR) theory. Along with many other continental philosophers and social theorists, Habermas was initially mobilised in the critique of positivism, and in particular neorealism, in IR theory. As such, the interest in Habermas and IR must be located in the first instance within the context of the fourth debate. This Forum section of the Review provides us with the opportunity to take stock and ask whether the dialogue between Habermas and IR has, thus far, been useful in providing new conceptual and methodological tools to analyse international politics and in inspiring new research agendas in IR. We also ask whether the role that dialogue plays within Habermas's work has been useful in formulating a critical theory of international relations.

Mind the gap: IR and the challenge of international politics

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-101
Author(s):  
Sonia Lucarelli ◽  
Francesco N. Moro ◽  
Daniela Sicurelli ◽  
Carla Monteleone ◽  
Eugenia Baroncelli
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Selection Of

The discipline of International Relations (IR) for a long time of its history has developed in the form of Great Debates that involved competing paradigms and schools. More recently, it has been described as a cacophony of voices unable to communicate among themselves, but also incapable to provide keys to understand an ever more complex reality. This collection aims at evaluating the heuristic value of a selection of traditional paradigms (realism and liberalism), schools (constructivism), and subdisciplines (security studies and international political economy) so as to assess the challenges before IR theory today and the ability of the discipline to provide tools to make the changed world still intelligible.

2. International law and international relations theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-47
Author(s):  
Nicole Scicluna
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Domestic Law

This chapter discusses international law (IL) and international relations (IR) theory. It studies legal theory in order to better understand what law is, and how IL compares with domestic law. The chapter then introduces the major schools of IR theory, with a focus on how they conceptualize IL and its role in enabling and constraining the conduct of international politics. The disciplinary estrangement between IR and IL began to ease at the end of the 1980s. By that time there were already important strands within IR, including the English School, that were seeking to explain the prevalence of cooperation in an anarchical international system. New generations of IR scholars began theorizing the role of IL in structuring international politics, particularly from the perspectives of liberalism and constructivism, as well as from a range of critical approaches.

Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth

2001 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Osiander
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International System ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
European System ◽  
350Th Anniversary

The 350th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia in 1998 was largely ignored by the discipline of international relations (IR), despite the fact that it regards that event as the beginning of the international system with which it has traditionally dealt. By contrast, there has recently been much debate about whether the “Westphalian system” is about to end. This debate necessitates, or at least implies, historical comparisons. I contend that IR, unwittingly, in fact judges current trends against the backdrop of a past that is largely imaginary, a product of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century fixation on the concept of sovereignty. I discuss how what I call the ideology of sovereignty has hampered the development of IR theory. I suggest that the historical phenomena I analyze in this article—the Thirty Years' War and the 1648 peace treaties as well as the post–1648 Holy Roman Empire and the European system in which it was embedded—may help us to gain a better understanding of contemporary international politics.

scholarly journals Is IR Theory White? Racialised Subject-Positioning in Three Canonical Texts

2020 ◽  
pp. 030582982097168
Author(s):  
Meera Sabaratnam
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
International System ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Global Power ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Subject Positioning ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Canonical Texts

Racism is a historically specific structure of modern global power which generates hierarchies of the human and affirms White supremacy. This has far-reaching material and epistemological consequences in the present, one of which is the production and naturalisation of White-racialised subject positions in academic discourse. This article develops a framework for analysing Whiteness through subject-positioning, synthesising insights from critical race scholarship that seek to dismantle its epistemological tendencies. This framework identifies White subject-positioning as patterned by interlocking epistemologies of immanence, ignorance, and innocence. The article then interrogates how these epistemological tendencies produce limitations and contradictions in international theory through an analysis of three seminal and canonical texts: Kenneth Waltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979), Robert Keohane’s After Hegemony (1984) and Alexander Wendt’s Social Theory of International Politics (1999). It shows that these epistemologies produce contradictions and weaknesses within the texts by systematically severing the analysis of the international system and the ‘West’ from its actual imperial conditions of possibility. The article outlines pathways for overcoming these limitations and suggests that continued inattention to the epistemological consequences of race for International Relations (IR) theory is intellectually unsustainable.

Role-playing and identity affirmation in international politics: Britain's reinvasion of the Falklands, 1982

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 1599-1621 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID M. McCOURT
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
The World ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Complete Interpretation

AbstractDid Britain reinvade the Falklands because of its ‘identity’? Or was reinvasion instead required by its ‘role’ in international politics? In this article I show that a complete constructivist explanation of Britain's response must consider both its identity affirmation, which constructivist International Relations (IR) theory would certainly draw attention to, but also the role it played on the world stage at the beginning of the 1980s, which would very likely be overlooked. I show that a solely identity-based explanation is incomplete and ultimately unpersuasive since identities are affirmed by playing social roles, which give identity meaning. In 1982, a number of roles could have fulfilled this function for Britain; it is important then that Britain chose and was able to play the role of astatus quooriented power rather than that of a colonial power. Beyond offering a more complete interpretation of the events, the article clarifies the links between roles, identity, and action in international politics, and the type of theory appropriate to such analysis.

Culture, Identity, and Grand Strategy

2021 ◽  
pp. 302-321
Author(s):  
David M. McCourt
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
International Politics ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Grand Strategy ◽  
Constructivist Approach ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
The World ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Grand Strategies

What do culture and identity have to do with grand strategy—the task of matching broad national security aims to capabilities? Is grand strategy not the preserve of politics and power, and the timeless wisdom of realpolitik? This chapter argues that culture and identity are essential components of any realistic account of grand strategy, since grand strategies tell a story of who or what a country is, and should be, in world politics. Grand strategies are performative, making the world at the same time as speaking of it, and fashioning an identity for an international actor. The centrality of culture and identity in international politics are key insights from the constructivist approach to IR theory. The chapter outlines the constructivist challenge to mainstream approaches that emphasize material conceptions of power and interests. It then illustrates the ubiquity of culture and identity in the formulation of UK and US grand strategy. It explores recent developments in culturalist theorizing that caution against taking culture and identity as stable entities rather than often contradictory processes. This serves to connect the insights from this chapter to others in the volume on practice, discourse, legitimation, power, and expertise.

A world of their making: an evaluation of the constructivist critique in International Relations

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 575-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
RONEN PALAN
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

IR constructivism maintain that a proper understanding of the way subjects interact with the world and with each other alerts us to the fallacy of conventional IR theory. And yet, for a theory that is so obviously dependent upon a rigorous working of the relationship between social theory and its IR variant, it is curious that, with one or two exceptions, IR constructivists often advance incompatible theories. I argue that the confused manner by which, in particular, ‘soft’ constructivism relates to social theory is not accidental but a necessary component of a theory that asserts, but never proves, the primacy of norms and laws over material considerations, in domestic and international politics.

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