A History Of International Relations Theory

Torbjorn L. Knutsen introduces ideas on international relations expressed by thinkers from the High Middle Ages to the present day and traces the development of four ever-present themes: war, peace, wealth and power. The book counters the view that international relations has no theoretical tradition and shows that scholars, soldiers and statesmen have been speculating about the subject for the last 700 years. Beginning with the roots of the state and the concept of sovereignty in the Middle Ages, the author draws upon the insights of outstanding political thinkers - from Machiavelli and Hobbes to Hegel, Rousseau, and Marx and contemporary thinkers such as Woodrow Wilson, Lenin, Morgenthau and Walt - who profoundly influenced the emergence of a discrete discipline of International Relations in the twentieth century. Fully revised and updated, the final section embraces more recent approaches to the study of international relations, most notably postmodernism and ecologism.

This introduction to International Relations shows how discussions of war, wealth, peace and power stretch back well over 500 years. It traces international ideas from medieval times, through the modern ages up to the collapse of the Soviet empire. It shows how ancient ideas still affect the way we perceive world politics. This is the 3rd edition of an accessible and popular text. It introduces the ways theologians like Augustine and Aquinas wrestled with the nature of the state and laid down rules of war that are still in use. It shows how Renaissance humanists like Machiavelli and Bodin developed our secular understanding of state sovereignty. The book argues that contract philosophers like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau introduced concepts that laid the basis for the scholarly field of International Relations, and that Enlightenment thinkers followed up with balance-of-power theories, perpetual-peace projects and visions of trade and peaceful interdependence. These classic international theories have been steadily refined by later thinkers by Marx, Mackinder and Morgenthau, by Waltz, Wallerstein and Wendt who laid the foundation for the contemporary science of International Relations (IR). The book places international arguments, perspectives, terms and theories in their proper historical setting. It traces the evolution of IR theory in context. It shows that core ideas and IR approaches have been shaped by major events and that they have often reflected the concerns of the Great Powers. Yet, it also makes clear that the most basic ideas in the field have remained remarkably constant over time.

Theory and History in International Relations is an eloquent plea to scholars of global politics to turn away from the "manufacture" of data and return to a systematic study of history as a basic for theory. While the modest use of empiricism will always be important, Puchala rejects the logical positivism of the so-called "scientific revolution" in the field in favor of a more complex, even intuitive, vision of global politics. He addresses the potential uses of history in studying some of the major debates of our time-the Cold War as a struggle between empires, the collision of civilizations, cultural encounters and colonies in the ancient world, and liberal approaches to the understanding of history and ethical contributions to the dialogue over theory.

The 1954 Conference on Theory, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, featured a 'who's who' of scholars and practitioners debating what would become the foundations of international relations theory. Assembling his own team of experts, the editor revisits a seminal event in the discipline.

Existing textbooks on international relations treat history in a cursory fashion and perpetuate a Euro-centric perspective. This textbook pioneers a new approach by historicizing the material traditionally taught in International Relations courses, and by explicitly focusing on non-European cases, debates and issues. The volume is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the international systems that traditionally existed in Europe, East Asia, pre-Columbian Central and South America, Africa and Polynesia. The second part discusses the ways in which these international systems were brought into contact with each other through the agency of Mongols in Central Asia, Arabs in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, Indic and Sinic societies in South East Asia, and the Europeans through their travels and colonial expansion. The concluding section concerns contemporary issues: the processes of decolonization, neo-colonialism and globalization – and their consequences on contemporary society. History of International Relations provides a unique textbook for undergraduate and graduate students of international relations, and anybody interested in international relations theory, history, and contemporary politics.

In honour of Prof. Kalevi Holsti’s 80th birthday, this collection presents 15 of the renowned Political Scientist’s major essays and research projects. It also offers a collection of his writings and essays on theories of international relations, foreign policy analysis, security and the world order. These previously published works address issues that remain “hot topics” on the international agenda, such as the changing nature of warfare and the causes of failed states; major essays also evaluate the current search for international order. Prof. Holsti is the author of a major textbook that has been translated into Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, and Bahasa Indonesian. Thousands of undergraduates around the world are acquainted with his work.