The history of the discipline of International Relations

By Yerkezhan

  • Classical phase

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    - before 1919
    - not part of the discipline
    - before institutionalization
    - Representatives:
    1. Thucydides
    2. Plato
    3. Machiavelli
    5. Thomas Hobbes
    6. Immanuel Kant
    7.John Locke
    8. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  • The First establishment of the discipline after the WW1

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    - First University was established in 1919 (University of Wales)
    - Academic journals and professional associations
    - Think tanks
    Representatives of the "Plans for perpetual peace" in the 18th century:
    1. Abbe Saint Pierre
    2. Immanuel Kant
  • Period: to

    The "First Great Debate"

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    - Logical debate
    - Ontological
    1. Liberalism(1919)
    - Liberalists say that war was partly the result of the balance of power and partly the result of misunderstanding, miscalculations, and recklessness.
    2. Realism (1939,1948)
    - Carr says: "Liberalism is utopia. Utopians are "naivety". "
    - In 1940-1950 criticism was continued by Morgenthau in the ​USA

  • The second establishment of the discipline after WW2

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    - Two foundational Texts:
    1. E.H.Carr: "The Twenty Years of crisis" in 1939
    2. Hans Morgenthau: "Politics among nations" in 1948
    • Carr's​ criticism of the: defining book liberalism failed to take into account power Ignored Machiavelli's injunction (what out to be the case and what is the case) - led to the "First Great debate"
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    The "Second Great Debate"

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    - logical debate
    - epistemological
    1. Behaviouralism
    - scientific approach
    - methods of natural sciences
    2. Traditionalism (classical way)
    - interpretive, more historical and better attuned to normative judgments​
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    The "Third Great Debate"

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    - ontological
    - also called "Neo-neo debate" or "Interparadigm debate"
    - the rapid development of IRs
    1. Neo-realism
    - Waltz neo-realist theory
    2. Neo-liberalism
    - 1970: the rise of the study of international interdependence
    -Robert O. Keohane "After Hegemony Cooperation and discord in the World Political Economy" in 1984
    3. Neo-marxism
    - Global dominance and dependence divided the world between "North" and "South"
    - Robert Cox and Immanuel Wallerstein
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    The "Fourth Great Debate"

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    - logical debate
    - post-positivist debate
    - epistemological
    - is about how should we study IR
    - the most adequate tools of analysis of methods
    1. Constructivism
    - the central question of today's discipline
    - constructivist​: Alexander Wendt
    2. Rationalism
    - positivist approaches