What is international relations?

 

International relations is a centenary social science, and it’s still important in a global world where any event in one place affects the rest of the world. What it is and how it evolved is what we’re going to see.

 

Introduction

 

Today, I want to speak to you about the discipline of international relations.

Usually, international relations refer to those interactions that happen between nations. But it might refer to the discipline that studies these interactions. And that’s what I want to address here. What it is and what its scope is.

To do so, I’m going to talk about the origins of the discipline, and later I’ll discuss what this discipline deals with. This last part of the discussion will be an introduction to the theoretical debates.

First of all, it’s essential to make clear that depending on the academic institution international relations may be either a field of political science; an interdisciplinary academic field similar to global studies; or an entirely independent academic discipline in which students take a variety of courses in social science and humanities disciplines with an international approach.

Here, I’m going to consider it a specific discipline.

Its origins began in the UK, where it emerged as a formal academic discipline in 1919 with the founding of the first international relations professorship, the Woodrow Wilson Chair at the University of Wales. In the US is the second oldest international relations faculty, the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, at Georgetown University and founded in 1919 too. In the 1920s, the London School of Economics founded its department of international relations. It started to offer a wide range of degrees in this field. Other universities rapidly followed that in the US.

Moreover, the creation of posts at LSE and Oxford boosted the development of this discipline. By 1927 there was the first university entirely dedicated to the study of IR, and it was the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Switzerland. In 1928 the University of Chicago was the first to offer a graduate degree. Later, in 1933, the Tufts University and Harvard founded the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy as the first graduate-only school of international affairs in the US. These examples were just the beginning. In 1965 there were similar initiatives in Canada as the Glendon College and the Norman Peterson School of International Affairs.

You might wonder why this steady and quick development of a new discipline?. The answer is in the Great War. That experience was traumatic for the world. Because of this, the leaders of different western countries acknowledged the need for new education for the members of the elite to avoid another carnage in the future. For this reason, they encouraged these initiatives. They thought it was a good means to promote a peaceful world.

However, they failed when the outbreak of WWII destroyed the liberal’s aspirations.

Now it’s time to see what international relations are all about.

 

What international relations are

 

International relations have to do with the study of those interactions that take place in the foreign realm of political unities. Insofar as there is a specific sphere beyond States’ borders, which is the international field, we call it international relations the contacts that happen there.

Naturally, this distinction between an inner and external realm is related to the birth of the State system and the Peace of Westphalia. Something that I spoke about on another occasion.

The organization of the world in nation-States as the main political unit transformed the interactions and created the international sphere. So, the importance of the State is critical because it became the central political unit that articulates and defines the nature of the foreign environment.

States with their respective jurisdictions demarked by their borders determined how relations evolved in modern history. Despite the crucial role of States in this realm, there are other relevant actors, and we can’t overlook them. I refer to individuals, transnational corporations, special interest groups, NGOs, international organizations, and so on. They all develop their interactions in the international realm.

The international sphere, with the multiple relations it includes, has many different dimensions. For this reason, many theories explain this reality from a specific point of view. They consider essential a particular side of international reality, and from that angle, they develop their interpretations.

International relations, like politics in general, is an ambiguous reality that doesn’t admit an ultimate definition. On the contrary, it admits multiple interpretations and explanations. So, there are theories that try to provide the best account to understand international relations. They also have different levels and units of analysis to address reality. And they compete between them to be dominant in their field.

We find different schools of thought in this realm because they base their interpretations on contradictory assumptions. As a result, there is an intellectual fight between them that reflects on the several great debates that have developed the discipline.

 

Great debates in IR

 

There are four great debates. Yes, four. The first one, between realists and liberals. The second one, between behaviorists and traditionalists. The third one, between realism, transnational, and neo-Marxist paradigms. And the fourth one is a free-for-all.

Let’s take a quick look at them.

 

The first debate

 

The first debate was between advocates of the League of Nations, and for a peaceful resolution of conflicts through international organizations and treaties. And those who didn’t trust in the assumption that good faith can prevail in international relations. The latter group gathered realist authors, who believed power politics rules international affairs. The former group gathered liberal authors.

 

The second debate

 

The second great debate revolved around methodological issues. There were those authors who advocated for a new methodology in the study of international relations. They vindicated methods similar to natural sciences to systematize the discipline. In front of this group, there were advocates of history as the primary source of knowledge and information to study international relations. For this reason, this debate is known as an intellectual fight between behaviorists and traditionalists.

 

The third debate

 

The work of Thomas Kuhn about scientific revolutions had a profound impact on the discipline. It occurred when realism started to show its weakness to explain some phenomena. So, there was a favorable context for a new debate. In this case, the concept of paradigm was brought into this field, and scholars began to use it regarding the three main thought schools at that moment: realism, interdependence, and neo-Marxism. They all based their interpretations on conflicting assumptions. Realists think the State is the main actor, and all relations revolve around it and its security concerns. Interdependence authors think international relations are broader, and the economy is their most important aspect, as well as relations based on interdependence. They include in their analysis other actors such as transnational corporations, NGO’s, international organizations, and so on. And neo-Marxists focus on exploitation and dependence relations between southern and northern countries. For these authors, economy, capitalism, class structure, and so on, are their primary concern, and social classes, besides corporations, social movements, and so forth, are the most important actors.

 

The fourth debate

 

The last debate is hard to explain due to its complexity. Indeed, it would deserve a whole series of articles and videos. For now, I’m going to set out some basic ideas.

In general, it was a fight between rationalists and reflectivists. What does it mean? During the 1980s, there was a blend of neorealism and neoliberalism. They merged in a new intellectual trend that had in common its rationalism. They shared the common assumption that international relations are based on the interest of actors. However, at the beginning of the 1990s, a new trend of constructivist and postmodern authors arose in the discipline. Their approach focused on the process of theorization, and they put under question the object of study of the subject, besides its foundations.

 

The current situation in the IR

 

I don’t want to finish this discussion without mentioning the current situation in the discipline. After the end of the fourth debate, it was accepted a peaceful coexistence of different theories. None of them could achieve the hegemony, and the long fight of the fourth debate led most scholars to acknowledge the current pluralism. So, in IR, many different theories are living together. Despite this situation, this pluralism is confined to theory. However, in the epistemological and methodological realms, there is a positivist hegemony that some authors criticize. Why? Because they fear it can destroy the existing pluralism in the long run. But, who knows what the future is holding in store?

 

Question of the day

 

Question of the day! Are you a student of IR? If so, let me know your opinion on the discipline in the comments section below, and I’ll check it out.

Bibliography used:

Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Jackson, Robert and Georg Sorensen, Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches

Burchill, Scott et alii (eds.), Theories of International Relations

Carlsnaes, Walter et alii (eds.), Handbook of International Relations

Lundestad, Geir (ed.), International Relations Since the End of the Cold War: New and Old Dimensions

Shilliam, Robbie (ed.), International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of Global Modernity

Steans, Jill et alii (eds.), An Introduction to International Relations Theory: Perspectives and Themes

Dolan, Luchas M., “Three Pluralisms: Theories, Methodologies, and Levels of Analysis in the Study of World Politics” in Departmental Honors Projects Paper 27, 2014

Checkel, Jeffrey T., “Theoretical Synthesis in IR: Possibilities and Limits” in Simons Papers in Security and Development No. 6, 2010, pp. 2-34

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