-
Period: to
The History of the Discipline of International Relations
-
The emergence of the discipline
The establishment of the University Department of International Politics in Wales, Aberystwyth. This was the first department dealing with this topic, which makes it extremely unique and a big step for the study of International Relations.
The Chairman was Alfred Zimmern. He and a lecturer Sydney Herbert were the only two members. -
The first Great Debate - Liberalism
The first Great Debate:
LIBERALISM
The horrible events and consequences of WW1 resulted in a general agreement of the people: War must be avoided in the future. In order to reach this, liberal thinkers wanted to achieve a balance of power, so that no-one can be in a dominating position. Liberal political thought, liberal optimism and idealism were the key goals in the period after WW1. They believed that the establishment of international organisations and order would bring peace. -
The first Great Debate - Realism
The other theoretical school of the first Great Debate was:
REALISM
The emergence of the great economic crisis opened the eyes of scholars: war must be avoided, but why don't we understand the presence and emergence of wars. Realists wanted to dig deeper.
The famous realist, Edward Hallett Carr called liberalism naive and utopian.
The "debate" caused a dichotomy and the double establishment of the discipline. This debate was ONTOLOGICAL. -
The second Great Debate - Traditionalism
The next epistemological clash, the Second Great Debate occurred between traditionalists and behaviourists. The main question was around how international relations should be studied.
Traditionalism relied heavily on history and its patterns as the main deciding factor of the future. So, this approach was mainly theoretical. However, many found Morgenthau, a famous traditionalist, too impressionistic whose mindset lacked of science. -
The second Great Debate - Behaviourism/Scientism
The opponent idea of traditionalism were scholars who wanted to bring in sciences into the field of International Relations. They believed that natural sciences will help to analyse and explain international politics.
Economy played a huge role in this period. It could prove hypotheses and set a general laws and all in all put the field to a better level. Thanks to these sciences, new academic centres appeared in Europe, USA and UK. This brought a rapid proliferation. -
The third Great Debate - Neoliberalism
The important figures of the Neo-liberal approach were : John Burton, Ernst Haas and Robert O. Keohane.
International interdependence played a huge part.
To achieve a deeper cooperation between international politics, economical and technological advancements are needed. -
The third Great Debate - Neorealism
The father of Neo-realism is Kenneth Waltz.
Structure was an important factor for him, the struggle of power and security, the dominance can only be achieved with high politics. Although economics and other natural sciences help a lot, these most be ignored by International Relations. -
The third Great Debate - Neo-Marxism
Robert Cox and Immanuel Wallerstein were the representatives of Neo-Marxism. They tried to set up a global dominance in the world, which resulted in a North-South division. They looked at the causes for inequalities, thus tried to explain the order of world politics. -
The fourth Great Debate - Constructivism
The end of the Cold War opened new questions to the field of International Relations. There was a need for new approaches to explain the dominant world situation.
The main sides of this debate word the post vs post-positivist approaches.
Constructivism belonged to the post-positivist group, claiming that facts in (social) sciences are not objective. We can see that this debate was clearly epistemological.
Alexander Wendt is an important figure to mention. His book contributed to the debate. -
The fourth Great Debate- Positivist approaches
Positivist approaches claim that facts in social science could be objective, and thus measurable, just like in natural science.
This debate itself gave the field of International Relations very deep and difficult questions which are not central to the existence of this field.
