International Relations Theory, International Law, and the Regime Governing Atrocities in Internal Conflicts

1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Abbott
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Cross Fertilization

Over the last ten years, international relations (IR) theory, a branch of political science, has animated some of the most exciting scholarship in international law.1 If a true joint discipline has not yet emerged,2 scholars in both fields have clearly established the value of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. Yet IR—like international law—comprises several distinct theoretical approaches or “methods.” While this complexity makes interactions between the disciplines especially rich, it also makes them difficult to explore concisely. This essay thus constitutes something of a minisymposium in itself: it summarizes the four principal schools of IR theory—conventionally identified as “realist,” “institutionalist,” “liberal” and “constructivist”—and then applies them to the norms and institutions governing serious violations of human dignity during internal conflicts (the “atrocities regime”).

Rationalizing Politics: The Emerging Synthesis of International, American, and Comparative Politics

1998 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen V. Milner
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
International System ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Strategic Interactions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cross Fertilization ◽  
Separate Discipline

International relations has often been treated as a separate discipline distinct from the other major fields in political science, namely American and comparative politics. A main reason for this distinction has been the claim that politics in the international system is radically different from politics domestically. The degree of divergence between international relations (IR) and the rest of political science has waxed and waned over the years; however, in the past decade it seems to have lessened. This process has occurred mainly in the “rationalist research paradigm,” and there it has both substantive and methodological components. Scholars in this paradigm have increasingly appreciated that politics in the international realm is not so different from that internal to states, and vice versa. This rationalist institutionalist research agenda thus challenges two of the main assumptions in IR theory. Moreover, scholars across the three fields now tend to employ the same methods. The last decade has seen increasing cross-fertilization of the fields around the importance of institutional analysis. Such analysis implies a particular concern with the mechanisms of collective choice in situations of strategic interaction. Some of the new tools in American and comparative politics allow the complex, strategic interactions among domestic and international agents to be understood in a more systematic and cumulative way.

Challenges and Possibilities of Empirical International Relations Theory: Evidence From Research in Brazil

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernanda Barasuol ◽  
Andre Reis da Silva
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
General Trend ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theoretical Approaches

Much of the debate in international relations (IR) theory in the past decades has concerned epistemological matters and the possibility of empirical research in the field. Most of this debate happened either within the United States or between Americans and Europeans, translating the general trend of keeping the theoretical core of the discipline centered around its geographical (developed) core. Brazilian international relations provides an additional peripheral view to IR theory (IRT). It is worth analyzing how theory has been used in Brazilian teaching and research, with the aim of understanding how Brazilian academics have used different theoretical approaches to understand their objects of study. With this objective, it is important to look into teaching syllabi, PhD dissertations, and articles published in academic journals in the field of international relations. There are considerable differences between teaching and research in Brazil, with the first following traditional American textbook standards. Research, however, shows considerably different theoretical and methodological bases.

2. International law and international relations theory

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-47
Author(s):  
Nicole Scicluna
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Domestic Law

This chapter discusses international law (IL) and international relations (IR) theory. It studies legal theory in order to better understand what law is, and how IL compares with domestic law. The chapter then introduces the major schools of IR theory, with a focus on how they conceptualize IL and its role in enabling and constraining the conduct of international politics. The disciplinary estrangement between IR and IL began to ease at the end of the 1980s. By that time there were already important strands within IR, including the English School, that were seeking to explain the prevalence of cooperation in an anarchical international system. New generations of IR scholars began theorizing the role of IL in structuring international politics, particularly from the perspectives of liberalism and constructivism, as well as from a range of critical approaches.

Domestic–External Linkages and the Cold War in 1953 and 1989: Using International Relations Theory and Comparative Politics to Explain the End of the Cold War

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-224
Author(s):  
Mark Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

Drawing on theories of international relations (IR) and comparative politics, this article explains why the cold war ended in 1989 rather than 1953. Numerous scholars have used IR theory to discuss the end of the cold war, but most of the circumstances they highlight were also present in the spring of 1953, right after the death of Joseph Stalin. This article presents three broad theoretical approaches that deal with the connection between domestic politics and international relations, and it then shows how these approaches can help us understand the similarities and differences between 1953 and 1989. In particular, the article emphasises the importance of time. In the spring of 1953, the window of opportunity was very brief—only a few months, which was insufficient for the two main cold war antagonists to overcome their deeply entrenched suspicions and make far-reaching adjustments in their policies. In the latter half of the 1980s, by contrast, the sweeping reorientation of east–west relations occurred over several years, giving policy-makers on both sides sufficient leeway to adapt and to ‘learn’ new ways of interacting.

Whose international is it anyway? Women’s peace activists as International Relations theorists

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura J Shepherd
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Peace Activists

This essay draws on insights from feminist scholarship to complicate the image presented of International Relations theory in Justin Rosenberg’s article ‘International Relations in the Prison of Political Science’. I suggest that Rosenberg’s careful and persuasive analysis proceeds from a number of assumptions about where ‘IR theory’ resides intellectually, and in whose bodies ‘IR theory expertise’ accrues.

scholarly journals International Law and International Relations Theory: A New Generation of Interdisciplinary Scholarship

1998 ◽  
Vol 92 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Slaughter ◽  
Andrew S. Tulumello ◽  
Stepan Wood
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Regime Theory ◽  
Joint Research ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
American Society ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship ◽  
United Nations System ◽  
Year 2000

Nine years ago, Kenneth Abbott published an article exhorting international lawyers to read and master regime theory, arguing that it had multiple uses for the study of international law. He went as far as to call for a “joint discipline” that would bridge the gap between international relations theory (IR) and international law (IL). Several years later, one of us followed suit with an article mapping the history of the two fields and setting forth an agenda for joint research. Since then, political scientists and international lawyers have been reading and drawing on one another’s work with increasing frequency and for a wide range of purposes. Explicitly interdisciplinary articles have won the Francis Deák Prize, awarded for the best work by a younger scholar in this Journal, for the past two years running; the publication of an interdisciplinary analysis of treaty law in the Harvard International Law Journal prompted a lively exchange on the need to pay attention to legal as well as political details; and the Hague Academy of International Law has scheduled a short course on international law and international relations for its millennial lectures in the year 2000. Further, the American Society of International Law and the Academic Council on the United Nations System sponsor joint summer workshops explicidy designed to bring young IR and IL scholars together to explore the overlap between their disciplines.

THE FIRST MODERN REALIST: FELIX GILBERT'S MACHIAVELLI AND THE REALIST TRADITION IN INTERNATIONAL THOUGHT

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 681-711 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICOLAS GUILHOT
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
Global Power ◽  
The Us ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
International Thought

In the disciplines of political science and international relations, Machiavelli is unanimously considered to be “the first modern realist.” This essay argues that the idea of a realist tradition going from the Renaissance to postwar realism founders when one considers the disrepute of Machiavelli among early international relations theorists. It suggests that the transformation of Machiavelli into a realist thinker took place subsequently, when new historical scholarship, informed by strategic and political considerations related to the transformation of the US into a global power, generated a new picture of the Renaissance. Focusing on the work of Felix Gilbert, and in particular hisMachiavelli and Guicciardini, the essay shows how this new interpretation of Machiavelli was shaped by the crisis of the 1930s, the emergence of security studies, and the philanthropic sponsorship of international relations theory.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Power Analysis ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
The Third ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The One

This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of the importance of the concept of power in political science. It then sets out the book's three main purposes. The first is to clarify and explicate Robert Dahl's concept of power. This is the concept of power most familiar to political scientists, the one most criticized. The second purpose is to examine twelve controversial issues in power analysis. The third is to describe and analyze the role of the concept of power in the international relations literature with particular reference to the three principal approaches—realism, neoliberalism, and constructivism. It is argued that a Dahlian perspective is potentially relevant to each of these theoretical approaches.

14. Green Theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 262-284
Author(s):  
Robyn Eckersley
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Issues ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Green It ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status

This chapter examines how environmental concerns have influenced International Relations theory. It first provides a brief overview of the ecological crisis and the emergence of green theorizing in the social sciences and humanities in general, along with the status and impact of environmental issues and green thinking in IR theory. It then investigates green theory’s transnational turn and how it has become more global, while critical IR theory has become increasingly green. It also considers the different ways in which environmental issues have influenced the evolution of traditional IR theory. It concludes with a case study of climate change to illustrate the diversity of theoretical approaches, including the distinctiveness of green theories.

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