US Dominance in International Relations and Security Scholarship in Leading Journals

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 310-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cullen S Hendrix ◽  
Jon Vreede
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
English Language ◽  
Large Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Language Bias ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractThis article investigates the factors that affect scholarly attention on particular countries in four major international relations (IR) journals: International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, International Security, and World Politics for the period 1970 to the present. The analysis supports three basic conclusions. First, the United States receives the most scholarly attention in leading IR journals by a large margin. Second, a baseline model of scholarly attention, including just population, gross domestic product (GDP), and a dummy for the United States fits the data rather well. Additional factors such as membership in prominent international organizations or involvement in armed conflicts improve model fit, but only marginally, with little evidence of regional or English-language bias. And third, there is only weak evidence that countries with stronger economic and security linkages with the United States receive more attention. However, Israel and Taiwan—two countries with unique security relationships with the United States—receive more scholarly attention than either the baseline or augmented models would predict. Our analysis of bibliometric data from leading IR journals indicates the United States is the three-hundred-thousand-pound blue whale of IR scholarship. However, this emphasis is not particularly outsized when its large population, economy, and its extensive history of participation in interstate wars are taken into account.

The Study of International Relations in Great Britain: Further Connections

1986 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 626-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gene M. Lyons
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Political Experience

Aside from language, students of international relations in the United States and Great Britain have several things in common: parallel developments in the emergence of international relations as a field of study after World War I, and more recent efforts to broaden the field by drawing security issues and changes in the international political economy under the broad umbrella of “international studies.” But a review of four recent books edited by British scholars demonstrates that there is also a “distance” between British and American scholarship. Compared with dominant trends in the United States, the former, though hardly monolithic and producing a rich and varied literature, is still very much attached to historical analysis and the concept of an “international society” that derives from the period in modern history in which Britain played a more prominent role in international politics. Because trends in scholarship do, in fact, reflect national political experience, the need continues for transnational cooperation among scholars in the quest for strong theories in international relations.

How geopolitical becomes personal: Method acting, war films and affect

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Evren Eken
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
War Films ◽  
Method Acting ◽  
Performance Arts ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Emotional Level

This article is about weaponisation of emotions through visual culture. It interrogates how geopolitics trickles down to everyday life and becomes personal through the embodiment of screen actors. While International Relations is attempting to move beyond the limits of existing disciplinary methods and methodologies to better grasp the emotional depths of world politics, this article delves into the ‘method’ in performance arts to understand how visual culture diffuses emotional narratives of the state to the population and affectively enables people to experience the international from the perspective of the United States. In this sense, focusing on ‘method acting’ which revolutionised performance arts in the United States from the 1950s, the article examines the mundane encounters in visual culture through which screen/state actors emotionally situate the audience to make them viscerally experience geopolitics, personally feel like a state/warrior and embody a commitment to the war effort at an emotional level.

scholarly journals Formation of the Chinese School of International Relations: Analytical Approaches and Research Methods

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-200
Author(s):  
Evgeny Nikolayevich Grachikov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
World Community ◽  
Chinese School ◽  
Analytical Approaches

In 1987, the first All-China Conference of international scholars took place in Shanghai, which is associated with the beginning of the process of creating the Chinese School of International Relations. Over these decades, a vast array of scientific literature has accumulated, exploring the interaction China with other countries and world community. The article is devoted to the study of analytical approaches prevailing in the Chinese academic environment in the study of foreign policy and world politics of the PRC, and specifically, in relation to the United States. Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and openness” policy contributed to the revival of the discipline of “international relations” and the intensification of international research in academic institutions and universities in China. A deep and systemic influence on these processes was exerted by several factors: uncritical borrowing of western international political knowledge, full-scale training of Chinese scholars in Western, mainly American, universities, and the translation into Chinese of most theoretical works of Western scientists. Methodological tools which include the analytical approaches used by Chinese scientists are taken from publications on realism, liberalism and constructivism. In realism, the emphasis is done on the balance of power, which is investigated in the framework of foreign policy analysis. The interdependence of China and the United States, primarily economic, the subject of study from the point of view of neoliberalism. The socialization and involvement of China in the world community and the liberal world order led by the United States are constructivist studies of bilateral relations. Yan Xuetong’s “theory of moral realism”, Qin Yaqing’s “theory of relations”, the Shanghai school’s “international symbiosis”, and Tan Shiping’s “social evolution of world politics” did not go beyond these paradigms, but are already used as their own innovative methods in a study of China’s relations with external actors. The article pays special attention to the dual identity of the Chinese state, as a developing country and a global power, which is publicly voiced by its representatives. This duality imposes regulatory restrictions on the use of analytical tools and, of course, affects the results of research.

Implications for American Leadership

2020 ◽  
pp. 213-224
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
World Politics ◽  
New Era ◽  
Innovative Economy

This chapter reviews the central arguments of the book and its findings about a democratic advantage in international politics. It then discusses the implications for international relations theory and for U.S. foreign policy. This book advances international relations theory by providing a novel theoretical explanation that traces the origins of power in world politics to domestic political institutions. It makes a “hard power” case for democracy. The chapter then lays out a competitive strategy for the United States in this new era of great power rivalry. It urges the United States to strengthen its democratic form of governance domestically. Washington should also ensure it maintains an innovative economy, a robust financial sector, strong alliances, and a favorable military balance of power in Europe and Asia. Internationally, the chapter urges the United States to revitalize, adapt, and defend the rules-based international system. The chapter concludes with a challenge to Russia and China. If these countries wish to be true leading global powers, then they must adopt democratic forms of government.

The Empirical, Normative, and Theoretical Foundations of International Studies

1967 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Studies ◽  
World War ◽  
Theoretical Foundations ◽  
The Way

International relations have been the object of widespread study and review in the United States since World War I. Attention has focussed alternately on the flow of events, the goals and standards, and the underlying principles of world affairs. Primary emphasis has been directed to empirical, normative and theoretical problems. Along the way, scholars, statesmen and observers have singled out certain factors from the myriad dimensions of international society. Students have looked for concepts and methodologies by which order and meaning could be derived in this as in other complex fields.

The Contribution of Nicholas John Spykman to the Study of International Politics

1952 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edgar S. Furniss
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Front Page ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Political Realism

Ten years ago Harcourt, Brace and Company published America's Strategy in World Politics. It was written by Nicholas John Spykman, Professor of International Relations at Yale University from 1928 until his death in 1943, and first director of the Institute of International Studies at Yale. Critics recognized that the book was important, but agreed on little else. One reviewer hailed it as “brilliant, incisive, provocative, well-reasoned, well-written, and altogether admirable as an analysis of American foreign policy from a point of view all too long neglected in the United States.” On the other hand, a second reviewer bitterly asked, “What were those eminent scholars at Yale thinking about when they let such an idea loose [that the United States might need German and Japanese power after the war]? … Such guessing and surmising is not objective political science, it is not anything but the expression of mental discomfort that the learned gentleman feels in a world that, despite his own cold-blooded cult of political realism, does not appear to be moving in the direction suggested by his own wishful thinking.” And there was more, much more, both pro and con. Despite a laudatory, front-page review, complete with picture, in the New York Times Book Review, Professor Spykman probably, if the score were totaled, did no better than break even.

(Im)possible universalism: reading human rights in world politics

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 663-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
VÉRONIQUE PIN-FAT
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Large Role ◽  
Universal Human Rights

Tony Evans (ed.), Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998)Robin Holt, Wittgenstein, Politics and Human Rights (London: LSE/Routledge, 1997)Peter Van Ness (ed.), Debating Human Rights: Critical Essays from the United States and Asia (London: Routledge, 1999)Questions concerning the linkage, or lack of it, between theory and practice are perennial in International Relations (IR). This is particularly acute in the case of studies of universal human rights in world politics. Problems associated with universal human rights are familiar; what are their foundations?, what are their origins?, do they exist in all cultures?, why, when it comes to implementation, do we see such failure and inconsistency across the globe and the persistence of human wrongs?, why does power seem to play such a large role in stifling ‘progress’? All these questions appear in one form or another in the books under review here and readers will, perhaps, take comfort from their familiarity as old, difficult friends.

Vicarious Identity in International Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Browning ◽  
Pertti Joenniemi ◽  
Brent J. Steele
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
Interstate Relations ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
The Uk

This book theorizes and problematizes the politics of vicarious identity in international relations, where vicarious identity refers to processes of “living through the other.” While prevalent and recognized in family and social settings, the presence and significance of vicarious identification in international relations has been overlooked. Vicarious identification offers the prospect of bolstering narratives of self-identity and appropriating a sense of reflected glory and enhanced self-esteem, but insofar as it may mask and be a response to emergent anxieties, inadequacies, and weaknesses it also entails vulnerabilities. The book explores both its attraction and potential pitfalls, theorizing these in the context of emerging literatures on ontological security, status, and self-esteem, highlighting both its constitutive practices and normative limits and providing a methodological grounding for identifying and studying the phenomenon in world politics. Vicarious identification and vicarious identity promotion are shown to be politically salient and efficacious across a range of scales, from the international politics of the everyday evident, for instance, in practices associated with (militarized) nationalism, through to interstate relations. In regard to this latter the book provides case analyses of vicarious identification in relations between the United States and Israel, the UK–US special relationship, and between Denmark and the United States, and it develops a framework for anticipating the conditions under which states may be more or less tempted into vicarious identification with others.

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