Why International Relations has Failed as an Intellectual Project and What to do About it

Buzan, Barry; Little, Richard

doi:10.1177/03058298010300010401

Cited by 164 publications

(65 citation statements)

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“…Moreover, as is evident from a critical reflection of the scope and ambition of Barry Buzan's and Richard Little's famous 2001 article, The Failure of International Relations, the more IR tries to be a discipline, the greater its failure. 8 It is worth being reminded that these are not new issues. Susan Strange once argued that to the extent IR has a focus, it does not stand independently: "I can no longer profess a special concern with international politics if that is defined from other kinds of politics and which takes the state as the unit of analysis, and the international society of states as the main problematic."…”

Section: Ilan Zvi Baron 1 Durham Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

IR has not, is not and will not take place

Baron

2015

International Relations

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Baron, Ilan Zvi (2015) 'IR has not, is not and will not take place.', International relations., 29 (2). pp. 259-263. Further information on publisher's website:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0047117815585888dPublisher's copyright statement: Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.

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Section: Ilan Zvi Baron 1 Durham Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

IR has not, is not and will not take place

Baron

2015

International Relations

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“…If Barry Buzan and Richard Little (2001) are right-and we think that they are-IR has a semipermeable membrane that allows ideas from other disciplines in, but blocks substantive traffic travelling in the opposite direction. As a result, just as politics has gone international, so researchers from outside IR have sought to occupy turf one might expect the discipline to inhabit.…”

Section: Prospectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such a lament is hardly novel (for example, Buzan and Little 2001) and there is little doubt that an increasing range of IR scholarship is aware of the poverty of its core subject matter. One of the principal ways in which IR scholarship has sought to make its subject matter more robust is through concerted engagement with concepts, issues and debates drawn from cognate disciplines.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sociology and international relations: legacies and prospects

Lawson

Shilliam

2010

Cambridge Review of International Affairs

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While sociological concepts have often been implicitly used in International Relations (IR), recent years have seen a more explicit engagement between IR and Sociology. As with any such interdisciplinary assignation, there are both possibilities and challenges contained within this move: possibilities in terms of reducing IR's intellectual autism and opening the discipline towards potentially fertile terrain that was never, actually, that distant; challenges in that interdisciplinary raiding parties can often serve as pseudonyms for cannibalism, shallowness and dilettantism. This forum reviews the sociological turn in IR and interrogates it from a novel vantage point-how sociologists themselves approach IR concepts, debates and issues. Three sociological approachesclassical social theory, historical sociology and Foucauldian analysis-are critically deployed to illuminate IR concerns. In this way, the forum offers the possibility of (re)establishing exchanges between the two disciplines premised on a firmer grasp of social theory itself. The result is a potentially more fruitful sociological turn, one with significant benefits for IR as a whole.

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“…1 Indeed Barry Buzan and Richard Little have argued that 'the Westphalian straitjacket' restricts our ability to grasp the diversity and dynamics of the international system. 2 Similarly, Darrel E. Paul has referred to the 'Westphalian blind alley' that can accommodate only the 'real-state: hierarchical, coercive and sovereign' but not federal or decentralised states. 3 Yet much depends on exactly what is understood by the Westphalian model.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Westphalian Model, Sovereignty and Law in Fin-de-siècle German International Theory

Stirk¹

2005

International Relations

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This article considers the Westphalian model and its supposed origins in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century positivist thought. It shows how three German theorists, Georg Jellinek, Heinrich Triepel and Max Huber, subscribed to a weak version of the Westphalian model that allows for a multilateral international community based on law but not the strong version associated with absolute sovereignty and the exclusion of international community. It further shows how their ideas, especially their rejection of private property and contract law analogies, and their treatment of sovereignty, are of continuing relevance. It also serves as a correction to the all too frequent portrayal of German thought at this time in terms of hyper-nationalism and proto-Darwinian approaches to the international order. The Westphalian state system has long been a central model in international relations. 1 Indeed Barry Buzan and Richard Little have argued that 'the Westphalian straitjacket' restricts our ability to grasp the diversity and dynamics of the international system. 2 Similarly, Darrel E. Paul has referred to the 'Westphalian blind alley' that can accommodate only the 'real-state: hierarchical, coercive and sovereign' but not federal or decentralised states. 3 Yet much depends on exactly what is understood by the Westphalian model. According to one set of interpretations the Westphalian model had little to do with the Peace of Westphalia. It was, rather, a product of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century realpolitik and nationalism. In this version of the Westphalian model, which will be referred to below as the strong model, the actors in international relations are states claiming absolute sovereignty, a congruence between state and society exists, states are centralised and lack 'internal political differentiation', international community is largely excluded and relations between states, including international law, are modelled on the analogy of private contract and property law, insofar as international law is said to exist at all. 4 Against this 'strong' model I set a 'weak' model. 5 According to this model, states are the prime actors in international relations, but not necessarily the only ones. Congruence between state and society does not exist. International community, constituted by common interests and mutual recognition expressed in law, is prominent and, crucially, the analogy of private contract law is rejected. States r i at UNIV OF NORTH DAKOTA on June 4, 2015 ire.sagepub.com Downloaded from

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Why International Relations has Failed as an Intellectual Project and What to do About it

Cited by 164 publications

References 1 publication

IR has not, is not and will not take place

IR has not, is not and will not take place

Sociology and international relations: legacies and prospects

The Westphalian Model, Sovereignty and Law in Fin-de-siècle German International Theory

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