Developments in International Relations

Abstract

This article offers a concise, though not exhaustive, intellectual history of International Relations (IR) as a formal academic discipline. It begins with the backdrop of the discipline's emergence in the aftermath of World War I, and a critical account of the 'first wave' of theoretical activity, that is, idealism. This entailed a sharp onslaught in the form of the rise of realism which arguably transformed IR into an 'American' discipline which, the author feels, was good for neither realism nor IR as a discipline. This brings us to the methodological debate-known as the second great debate in IR-between the traditionalists and the behavioralists, and the author asks if it was only a 'phoney war'. The period between the 1960s and early 1990s witnessed a bewildering multiplicity of theoretical developments and analytical concerns which ranged from game theory and decision-making models; through integration theory and 'world society' approaches; to the birth of neo-or structural realism. Meanwhile, the Marxist school of IR focused on the vital issue of the relations between the weak and strong in international politics-left unaddressed by the 'American discipline'-and stimulated the literature on dependency and world system. The final sections of the article deal with the post-positivist tradition in IR (which sparked off the 'third debate') and the level-ofanalysis problem (which highlighted the issue of macro-and micro perspectives in the study of IR). It concludes with the observation that this phenomenal diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches poses a major obstacle to agreeing on any grand definition of discipline of IR.

Bringing the individual back in

“…At a macro level, it is represented in the international system. At a micro level, it is represented at the level of nation state and the level of individual (Chatterji, 2013, p. 34).…”