Theories and Theorists in International Relations 

 

Course Description

This course provides an overview of major approaches in the field of International Relations with a particular focus on individual theorists and their interventions. The purpose is to familiarize students with central concepts and field-defining debates. The course is organized as a reading seminar, i.e. the emphasis is on giving students broad exposure to a wide range of readings and on facilitating an active engagement with these readings in the form of class debates, presentations and essays.

Requirements

 The course requires students to participate in class discussion in an informed manner. This means that I expect you to have read assigned materials BEFORE class. In addition, students are expected to lead class discussion at least once. This involves providing SHORT summaries of assigned readings and offering discussion questions. Finally, students will be required to complete two take-home exams. I will provide questions a week before the exams are due. Your grade will consist of the following:

 

Class presentation                        20 percent

 

Take-home Exam I                       30 percent

 

Take-home Exam II                      30 percent

 

Participation                                 20 percent

 

Readings
 

• E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919-1939. Palgrave 2001. Excerpts.

 

• Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics. McGraw-Hill 1979. Excerpts.

 

• Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace. Any version. 

 

• Robert Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005. Excerpts.

 

• Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century. London: Verso, 1994. Excerpts.

 

• Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press, 1999. Excerpts. 

 

• David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. University of Minnesota Press, revised ed. 1998. Excerpts.

Articles as listed –  online and in course pack.
 

Course Outline
 

September 21 – Introduction and Organization
 

September 28 – Classical Realism 
 

• E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919-1939. Parts I, II, III.

Recommended:
 

• Machiavelli, The Prince.

 

• Thucydides, The Melian Dialogue. From Thucydides, History of Peloponnesian War.

 
 

October 5 – Structural Realism
 

• Waltz, Theory of International Politics, chapters 1-5

Recommended:
 

• Ken Booth, ed., The King of Thought: Theory, the Subject, and Waltz. Special Issues of International Relations 23, Nos. 2 and 3 (June 2009).

 

• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan. (Especially section On the Natural Condition of Mankind.)

 

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe and The State of War.

 

October 12 – Interdependence, Globalization, Governance
 

• Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence. Parts I, V, VI

 

• Kenneth N. Waltz, Globalization and Governance. PS: Political Science and Politics 32, 4 (December 1999): 693-700.

Recommended:
 

• Michael Hart and Antonio Negri, Empire. Harvard University Press, 2000.

 

October 19 -- International Regimes
 

• Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer, and Volker Rittberger, Interests, Power, Knowledge: The Study of International Regimes. Mershon International Studies Review, Vol. 40 (October 1996).

 

• Kenneth A. Oye, Hypotheses and Strategies. World Politics 38, 1 (October 1985): 1-24.

 

• Lisa L. Martin, Interests, Power, and Multilateralism. International Organization 46, 4 (Autumn 1992). 

 

• John G. Ruggie, International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982). 

 

• Friedrich Kratochwil and John Ruggie, International Organization: A State of the Art on an Art of the State.” International Organization 40 (Autumn 1986).

 
 
Recommended:
 

• Peter Haas, Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination. International Organization 46, 1 (Winter 1992): 1-35. 

 

October 26 – Institutionalism 
 

• Keohane, After Hegemony, Part II

 

• March, James G. and Johan P. Olsen, The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders. International Organization 52, 4 (Autumn 1989): 943-969.

 

• John G. Ruggie, Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution. International

Organization 46,3 (1992): 561-598.

Recommended:
 

• Douglas C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press, 1990. 

 

November 2 – Democratic Peace
 

• Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace. Any version. 

 

• Michael Doyle, Liberalism and World Politics. American Political Science Review 80, 4 (December 1986): 1151-69.

 

• Zeev Maoz and Bruce Russett, Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, 1946-1986. American Political Science Review 87, 3 (September 1993): 624-638.

 

• Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, The Imperial Peace: Democracy, Force and Globalization, European Journal of International Relations 5, 4 (1999): 403-434.

Recommended:
 

• Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, eds. Democracy, Liberalism and War: Rethinking the Democratic Peace Debate, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Press, 2001.

 

• Erol Henderson, Disturbing the Peace: African Warfare, Political Inversion and the Universality of the Democratic Peace Thesis. British Journal of Political Science 39, 1 (2009): 25-58.

 

• Erik Gartzke, The Capitalist Peace. American Journal of Political Science 51, 1 (January 2007): 166-191.

 

November 9 – World Systems
 

• Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century. London: Verso, 1994. Chapters 1 and 4.

Recommended:
 

• Immanuel Wallerstein, World Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Duke University Press, 2004.

 

• Göran Therborn, After Dialectics: Radical Social Theory in a Post-Communist World. New Left Review 43 (January/February 2007): 63-114.

 

• Giovanni Arrihi and Beverly J. Silver, eds., Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. 

FIRST EXAM DUE
 

November 16 – Gramscian IR
 

• Robert Cox, Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 10, 2 (Summer 1981): 126-155. 

 

• Robert Cox, Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations: An Essay in Method. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 12, 2 (Summer 1983): 162-155. 

 

• Stephen Gill, Globalization, Market Civilization and Disciplinary Neo-Liberalism. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 24, 3 (1995): 339-423.

 

• Randall D. Germain and Michael Kenny, Engaging Gramsci: International Theory and the New Gramscians. Review of International Studies 24, 1 (1998): 3-21.

 

• Craig N. Murphy, Understanding IR: Understanding Gramsci. Review of International Studies 24 (1998): 417-425.

Recommended:
 

• Craig N. Murphy, International Organization and Industrial Change: Global Governance since 1850. Oxford University Press, 1994.

 

• Sandra Whitworth, Feminism and International Relations: Towards a Political Economy of Gender in Interstate and Non-Governmental Institutions. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

 

November 23 – Constructivism – The Middle Ground?
 

• Emanuel Adler, Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism and World Politics. European Journal of International Relations 3, 3 (1997): 319-363.

 

• Alexander Wendt, Anarchy is What States Make of It. International Organization 46, 2 (Spring 1992): 391-425.

 

• Alexander Wendt, Three Cultures of Anarchy. In A. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press, 1999. 

 

• John G. Ruggie, What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-Utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge. International Organization 52, 4 (Autumn 1998): 855-885.

 

• Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, International Norm Dynamics and Political Change. International Organization 52, 3 (Summer 1998): 887-917.

Recommended: 
 

• Peter Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

 

• Birgit Locher and Elisabeth Prügl, Feminism and Constructivism: Worlds Apart or Sharing the Middle Ground? International Studies Quarterly 45 (2001) : 111-129.

 

November 30 – Pragmatist IR
 

• Symposium: Kratochwil’s ‘Tartu Lecture’ and Its Critics.” Journal of International Relations and Development 10, 1 (March 2007). Including articles by Kratochwil, Lebow, Suganami, and Wight. With response by Kratochwil. 

Recommended:
 

• Friedrich Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs. Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

 

• Nicholas G. Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1989. 

 

• Maya Zehfuss, Constructivisms in International Relations: Wendt, Onuf, and Kratochwil, in Constructing International Relations: The Next Generation, eds. Karin M. Fierke and Knud Erik Jorgensen, pp. 54-75. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 2001. Also in German in Zeitschrift für Internationale Politik 5, 1 (1998): 109-137.

 

• Colin Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations : Politics as Ontology. Cambridge 2006. 

 

• Richard Ned Lebow, A Cultural Theory of International Relations. Cambridge 2008.

 

December 7 – Feminism
 

• Jacqui True, Feminism. In Theories of International Relations, 4th ed., Scott Burchill et al., Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

 

• Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women, the State, and War. International Relations 23, 2 (June 2009): 289-303.

 

• Carol Cohn, Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12, 4 (1987): 687-718.

 

• Cynthia Enloe, Margins Silences, and Bottom Rungs. In C. Enloe, The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire, pp. 19-42. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

 

• J. Ann Tickner, What is Your Research Program? Some Feminist Answers to International Relations Methodological Questions. International Studies Quarterly 49: 1-21.

Recommended:
 

• J. Ann Tickner, Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.

 

• Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

 

• Marysia Zalewski and Jane Parpart, eds., The ‘Man’ Question in International Relations. Boulder, Co.: Westview 1998.

 

• Christine Sylvester, Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey. Cambridge, 2002.

 
 

December 14 – Post-structuralism
 

• Richard Ashley, The Poverty of Neorealism. In Neorealism and Its Critics, pp. 255-300. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.

 

• Richard K. Ashley, The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Towards a Critical Social Theory of International Politics. Alternatives 12, 4 (October 1989): 403-434. 

 

• David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. University of Minnesota Press, revised ed. 1998. Introduction, Chapter 1, and Epilogue.

 

• Roxanne Doty, Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-Positivist Analysis of US Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines. International Studies Quarterly 37, 3: 297-320. 

 

• Kennan Ferguson, Three Ways of Spilling Blood. In Language, Agency, and Politics in a Constructed World, ed. François Debrix, pp. 87-100. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe.

Recommended:
 

• RBJ Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge University Press 1993. 

 

• James Der Derian, ed., International Theory: Critical Investigations. New York University Press, 1995. 

 

• Cynthia Weber, Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State, and Symbolic Exchange. Cambridge University Press, 1995. 

 
 
 
 

Course Syllabus

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