Comparison of Intranational and International Politics

1963 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 406-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chadwick F. Alger
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cross Fertilization

The study of international relations has been considerably advanced in recent years by the application of findings from other areas of the social sciences. These have included decision-making, game theory, conflict, bargaining, communication, negotiation, systems, geography, attitudes, and simulation. International relations scholars such as Morton Kaplan, Charles McClelland, Richard C. Snyder, and Harold Sprout have built important bridges between international relations and other disciplines. It has been fortunate that such innovators have often found men from other disciplines, such as Kenneth Boulding, Harold Guetzkow, Charles Osgood, and Anatol Rapoport, in the middle of the bridge. The volumes of the Journal of Conflict Resolution offer one example of how far this remarkable effort at cross-fertilization has gone.

scholarly journals Réflexion sur la prévision en relations internationales

2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-222
Author(s):  
Philippe Braillard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Game Theory ◽  
Graph Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Operations Research ◽  
Systems Analysis ◽  
Delphi Technique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Qualitative Evolution ◽  
Research Decision

In the study of international relations, as indeed in all of the social sciences, reflections about the future are becoming increasingly numerous. They indicate frequently moreover a desire for systemization through recourse to rigourous techniques and procedures: the Delphi technique, the construction of scenarios, Systems analysis, operations research, decision matrices, graph theory, game theory, etc. This leads us to conclude often that the forecasting approach in international relations is undergoing a major quantitative and qualitative evolution. We seek to show however in this analysis that, contrary to appearances, forecasting research in international relations is characterized above all today by great epistemological weakness and by a remarkable incoherence, and that it is not therefore, for the most part, equal to its pretensions. We will attempt to determine why this is the case and if this situation is likely to change. In doing so, we will seek to identify both the possibilities and the limits of forecasting in this field.

Theory of Games and Theory of International Relations

2011 ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
D. Degterev ◽  
A. Degterev
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Game Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Game Theory ◽  
Theory Application ◽  
Multilateral Regimes

The author proposes a historiographical study of the game theory application to the analysis of international negotiations, conditions for modification of multilateral regimes, mechanisms of decision-making in the international organizations. Game theory is a mathematical theory for analysis of strategic behavior (interaction) and it is widely used in the social sciences. It explains the logic of rational behavior of individuals in situations of conflict of interest. Game theory is used by foreign researchers as a method of analysis of international relations. The domestic researchers, however, do not often resorts to it. The “golden age” of game theory was the era of global confrontation between the USSR and the United States.

Do We Need a Postmodern Anthropology for Mission in a Postcolonial World?

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Rynkiewich
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
World War ◽  
Fields Of Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cross Fertilization

Abstract There was a time when mission studies benefitted from a symbiotic relationship with the social sciences. However, it appears that relationship has stagnated and now is waning. The argument is made here, in the case of cultural anthropology both in Europe and the United States, that a once mutually beneficial though sometimes strained relationship has suffered a parting of the ways in recent decades. First, the article reviews the relationships between missionaries and anthropologists before World War II when it was possible to be a ‘missionary anthropologist’ with a foot in both disciplines. In that period, the conversation went two ways with missionary anthropologists making important contributions to anthropology. Then, the article reviews some aspects of the development of the two disciplines after World War II when increasing professionalism in both disciplines and a postmodern turn in anthropology took the disciplines in different directions. Finally, the article asks whether or not the conversation, and thus the cross-fertilization, can be restarted, especially since the youngest generation of anthropologists has recognized the reality of local Christianities in their fields of study.

International Relations an a World of Revolutionary Change

1949 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Easton Rothwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
New York ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Revolutionary Change ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Carnegie Corporation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wartime Experience

A PROJECT of collaborative research concerning major world trends affecting international relations has been launched this year at the Hoover Institute and Library. This project has been made possible by a three-year grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.1Beneath the original planning for the project lay the conviction born of wartime experience, that a deeper understanding of the dynamics of international relations could be obtained by pooling the contributions of the social sciences and related disciplines and by taking account of practical experience in the international field. The need for new and more penetrating approaches to international relations had been put by Arnold Toynbee in a few challenging words: “There is nothing to prevent our Western Civilization from following historical precedent, if it chooses, by committing social suicide. But we are not doomed to make history repeat itself; it is open to us through our own efforts, to give history, in our case, some new unprecedented turn.” Natural scientists, as well as social scientists are agreed that any “new unprecedented turn” must be sought in deeper understanding of relations among people and among nations.

The Edwards' Report and the International Relations profession

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Science Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science Community

The Economic and Social Research Council recently published a Report commissioned from a committee chaired by Professor Edwards, a psychiatrist, so that the Council, and the social science community in general, might know what was good and bad in British social sciences, and where the promising future research opportunities lie over the next decade. Boldly called ‘Horizons and Opportunities in the Social Sciences’, the Report condensed the wisdom of social scientists, both British and foreign, and concludes with a broadly but not uncritically favourable picture of the British scene.

Local Institutions at the Crossroads of Environmental Regionalism in Southeast Asia: State-Civil Society Interplays and Tensions

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Antonio P. Contreras
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The State ◽  
Local Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Interactions ◽  
Civil Societies

This paper inquires into the implications of the different discursive imaginations on civil societies and the state from the perspective of the social sciences, particularly political science and international relations. It focuses on some interfaces and tensions that exist between civil society on one hand, and the state and its bureaucratic instrumentalities on the other, particularly in the domain of environment and natural resources governance in the context of new regionalisms and of alternative concepts of human security. There is now a new context for regionalism in Southeast Asia, not only among state structures, such as the ASEAN and the various Mekong bodies, but also among local civil societies coming from the region. It is in this context that issues confronting local communities are given a new sphere for interaction, as well as a new platform for engaging state structures and processes. This paper illustrates how dynamic are the possibilities for non-state domains for transnational interactions, particularly in the context of the emerging environmental regionalism. This occurs despite the dominance of neo-realist political theorizing, and the state-centric nature of international interactions.

Relations, Human and Non-human

2020 ◽  
pp. 106-135
Author(s):  
Milja Kurki
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Social

This chapter argues for an extension of how we think relationally via relational cosmology. It places relational cosmology in a conversation with varied relational perspectives in critical social theory and argues that specific kinds of extensions and dialogues emerge from this perspective. In particular, a conversation on how to think relationality without fixing its meaning is advanced. This chapter also discusses in detail how to extend beyond discussion of ‘human’ relationalities towards comprehending the wider ‘mesh’ of relations that matter but are hard to capture for situated knowers in the social sciences and IR. This key chapter seeks to provide the basis for a translation between relational cosmology, critical social theory, critical humanism and International Relations theory.

1. The history and evolution of foreign policy analysis

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie M. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Foreign Policy Analysis ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Large Groups

This chapter traces the history and evolution of foreign policy analysis (FPA) as a subfield of international relations (IR) from its beginnings in the 1950s through its classical period until 1993. It begins with a discussion of three paradigmatic works that laid the foundation of FPA: Decision Making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics (1954), by Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin; ‘Pre-theories and Theories of Foreign Policy’ (1966), by James N. Rosenau; and Man–Milieu Relationship Hypotheses in the Context of International Politics (1956), by Harold and Margaret Sprout. These three works created three main threads of research in FPA: focusing on the decision making of small/large groups, comparative foreign policy, and psychological/sociological explanations of foreign policy. The chapter also reviews classic FPA scholarship during the period 1954–1993 and concludes with an assessment of contemporary FPA’s research agenda.

Understanding and Classifying Constructivisms

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
J. Samuel Barkin ◽  
Laura Sjoberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
The Social

The chapter discusses various ways that constructivism might be defined, and finds in them a tendency to make constructivisms into at once more than they are (by imbuing them with “naturally” associated politics) and less (by divorcing them from their roots as social theory). The chapter builds an argument that what constructivisms have in common is the ontological assumption of the social construction of international politics as expressed in methodology for doing International Relations research. This assumption should not be understood as taking specific ontologies, let alone methods, methodologies, or politics, as definitional of constructivism. Work can reasonably be described as constructivist if it builds on an ontology of co-constitution and intersubjectivity in the context of a particular set of methodological claims underlying a research exercise about global politics. This brackets what work might be called constructivist but does not associate constructivism either with any specific ontology or with any specific methodology.

scholarly journals Teach a Student to Fish? International Relations Scholars in the Classroom

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (01) ◽  
pp. 214-220
Author(s):  
Nina Srinivasan Rathbun ◽  
Brian C. Rathbun
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Practical Skills ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
The Social

ABSTRACT American higher-education institutions are under increasing pressure to prepare their students with practical skills for the workplace, and the social sciences—including political science—are not immune. Political figures have suggested—sometimes seconded by academics themselves—that research distracts academics from imparting practical skills to undergraduate students. Using a survey of international relations (IR) scholars, this article shows that this is not the case. Those who spend more time on research actually devote more time to policy-relevant research in their courses than more abstract and theoretical work, and they incorporate more contemporary issues. Research seems to encourage academics to teach their students to fish.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document