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Bridges and Boundaries offers a conversation between what might loosely be described as traditionalist diplomatic and military historians, and political scientists who employ qualitative case study methods to examine international relations. The book opens with a series of chapters discussing differences, commonalities, and opportunities for cross-fertilization between the two disciplines.To help focus the dialogue on real events and research, the volume then revisits three empirical topics that have been studied at length by members of both disciplines: British hegemony in the nineteenth century; diplomacy in the interwar period and the causes of World War II; and the origins and course of the Cold War. For each of these subjects, a political scientist, a historian, and a commentator reflect on how disciplinary "guild rules" have shaped the study of international events. The book closes with incisive overviews by Robert Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder. Bridges and Boundaries explores how historians and political scientists can learn from one another and illustrates the possibilities that arise when open-minded scholars from different disciplines sit down to talk.
Bridges and Boundaries offers a conversation between what might loosely be described as traditionalist diplomatic and military historians, and political scientists who employ qualitative case study methods to examine international relations. The book opens with a series of chapters discussing differences, commonalities, and opportunities for cross-fertilization between the two disciplines.To help focus the dialogue on real events and research, the volume then revisits three empirical topics that have been studied at length by members of both disciplines: British hegemony in the nineteenth century; diplomacy in the interwar period and the causes of World War II; and the origins and course of the Cold War. For each of these subjects, a political scientist, a historian, and a commentator reflect on how disciplinary "guild rules" have shaped the study of international events. The book closes with incisive overviews by Robert Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder. Bridges and Boundaries explores how historians and political scientists can learn from one another and illustrates the possibilities that arise when open-minded scholars from different disciplines sit down to talk.
All academic disciplines periodically appraise their effectiveness, evaluating the progress of previous scholarship and judging which approaches are useful and which are not. Although no field could survive if it did nothing but appraise its progress, occasional appraisals are important and if done well can help advance the field. This book investigates how international relations theorists can better equip themselves to determine the state of scholarly work in their field. It takes as its starting point Imre Lakatos's influential theory of scientific change, and in particular his methodology of scientific research programs (MSRP). It uses MSRP to organize its analysis of major research programs over the last several decades and uses MSRP's criteria for theoretical progress to evaluate these programs. The contributors appraise the progress of institutional theory, varieties of realist and liberal theory, operational code analysis, and other research programs in international relations. Their analyses reveal the strengths and limits of Lakatosian criteria and the need for metatheoretical metrics for evaluating scientific progress.
The Realism Reader provides broad coverage of a centrally important tradition in the study of foreign policy and international politics. After some years in the doldrums, political realism is again in contention as a leading tradition in the international relations sub-field. Divided into three main sections, the book covers seven different and distinctive approaches within the realist tradition: classical realism, balance of power theory, neorealism, defensive structural realism, offensive structural realism, rise and fall realism, and neoclassical realism. The middle section of the volume covers realism’s engagement with critiques levelled by liberalism, institutionalism, and constructiv...
A wide-ranging discussion of factors that impede the cumulation of knowledge in the social sciences, including problems of transparency, replication, and reliability. Rather than focusing on individual studies or methods, this book examines how collective institutions and practices have (often unintended) impacts on the production of knowledge.
"This book puts forward a point of view about advancement for International Relations in general and realism in particular. If borne out, the arguments contained in this study could have far-reaching consequences for International Relations and even beyond. Effective debate among realists and those who identify with other schools of thought has diminished dramatically over time. International Relations scholars have become dissatisfied with results from exchanges in words alone. Translation of the vast amount of information in the field into knowledge requires a greater emphasis on communication beyond the use of text. Given the challenges posed by existing and intensifying information overl...
This book explores all aspects of an important scholarly debate that has widespread implications for the political world, including the making of foreign policy--i.e., a debate over whether the contemporary theory of the balance of power as presented by Kenneth Waltz is a scientifically acceptable theory. It allows readers to examine and analyze the different views (in their original form) by all those in the debate and to come to their own conclusions. An Introduction gives an overview of the debate, defines and clarifies in simple language some of the major concepts used in philosophy of science, sets the historical context of the debate, and explains why it is important for both internati...
Security Studies is the most comprehensive textbook available on security studies. It gives students a detailed overview of the major theoretical approaches, key themes and most significant issues within security studies. Part 1 explores the main theoretical approaches currently used within the field from realism to international political sociology. Part 2 explains the central concepts underpinning contemporary debates from the security dilemma to terrorism. Part 3 presents an overview of the institutional security architecture currently influencing world politics using international, regional and global levels of analysis. Part 4 examines some of the key contemporary challenges to global security from the arms trade to energy security. Part 5 discusses the future of security. Security Studies provides a valuable teaching tool for undergraduates and MA students by collecting these related strands of the field together into a single coherent textbook.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Causal Inquiry in International Relations defends a new, philosophically-informed account of the principles which must underpin any causal research in a discipline such as International Relations. Its central claim is that there is an underlying logic to all causal inquiry, at the core of which is the search for empirical evidence capable of ruling out competing accounts of how specific events were brought about. Although this crucial fact is obscured by the 'culture of generalizati...
The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations first edition was winner of the ISA-Northeast’s Yale H. Ferguson Award, and the ISA Theory Section’s Best Book of the Year award. The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations provides an introduction to the philosophy of science issues and their implications for the study of global politics. The author draws attention to the problems caused by the misleading notion of a single unified scientific method, and proposes a framework that clarifies the variety of ways that IR scholars establish the authority and validity of their empirical claims. Jackson connects philosophical considerations with concrete issues of research design within ...