Studying Effectiveness In International Relations

The question of how effective political tools actually are is among the most hotly debated in contemporary IR theory. There is no unanimity how to even measure the effectiveness and impact different political measures produce. This book comprehensively introduces social science students and scholars to the various fields of effectiveness and impact research in the study of international relations.

SCOTT (Copy 1): From the John Holmes Library Collection.

Publisher Description

This book examines how regimes influence the behavior of their members and those associated with them.

This book provides a resource for political science faculty wanting to increase their research productivity and/or teaching effectiveness in a time and resource efficient way. Faculty from various subfields and institution types offer examples of how they align their research and teaching activities to “get more bang for their buck.” While some contributors discuss projects within the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research tradition, others go beyond this approach and integrate their teaching and research in other ways. As a result, this volume offers diverse, innovative, and practical ways faculty can leverage the teaching/scholarship connection to both improve scholarly productivity and ground political science instruction in pedagogical literature.

This comprehensive guide captures important trends in international relations (IR) pedagogy, paying particular attention to innovations in active learning and student engagement for the contemporary International Relations IR classroom.

The book is written for active learners – those keen on cutting their own path through the complex and at times hardly comprehensible world of THEORY in International Relations. To aid this process as much as possible, this book employs the didactical and methodical concept of integrating teaching and self-study. The criteria for structured learning about IR theory will be derived from an extensive discussion of the questions and problems of philosophy of science (Part 1). Theory of IR refers to the scientific study of IR and covers all of the following subtopics: the role and status of theory in the academic discipline of IR; the understanding of IR as a science and what a ""scientific"" theory is; the different assumptions upon which theory building in IR is based; the different types of theoretical constructions and models of explanations found at the heart of particular theories; and the different approaches taken on how theory and the practice of international relations are linked to each other. The criteria for the structured learning process will be applied in Part 2 of the book during the presentation of five selected theories of International Relations. The concept is based on ""learning through example"" – that is, the five theories have been chosen because, when applying the criteria developed in Part 1 of the book, each single theory serves as an example for something deeply important to learn about THEORY of IR more generally.

A 'Day 0' introduction to International Relations. Written by a range of emerging and established experts, the chapters offer a broad sweep of the basic components of International Relations and the key contemporary issues that concern the discipline. The narrative arc forms a complete circle, taking readers from no knowledge to competency.