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This book argues against the traditional understanding of international relations through the study of ideology and introduces four new major paradigms in the study of international relations theory: Marxian, mass society, community building, and rational choice

"This textbook shows how to think about international relations and offers insights into its most important theories and issues. Written from beyond the Anglo-US academic environment, with attention to regional nuances, it teaches students to perceive international politics in an organized and theoretical way, thus helping them grasp the complexity of the subject and see simple ways of making sense of it. Providing a thorough introduction to the main theories and approaches to international relations, the book covers the main dilemmas, concepts and methodological issues alongside a number of neglected theoretical paradigms such as institutionalism, Marxism, critical approaches, feminism and power in world politics. It will be of great use as a main textbook as well as a supplementary guide for related courses, including Foreign Policy Analysis, Conflict Studies, Security Studies, History of International Relations, International Organizations and Global Governance"--

"This textbook shows how to think about international relations and offers insights into its most important theories and issues. Written from beyond the Anglo-US academic environment, with attention to regional nuances, it teaches students to perceive international politics in an organized and theoretical way, thus helping them grasp the complexity of the subject and see simple ways of making sense of it. Providing a thorough introduction to the main theories and approaches to international relations, the book covers the main dilemmas, concepts and methodological issues alongside a number of neglected theoretical paradigms such as institutionalism, Marxism, critical approaches, feminism and power in world politics. It will be of great use as a main textbook as well as a supplementary guide for related courses, including Foreign Policy Analysis, Conflict Studies, Security Studies, History of International Relations, International Organizations and Global Governance"--

International Relations Theory offers a unique approach to help students think conceptually and critically about how our contemporary world of diverse state and non-state actors works, but also the implications of domestic and global changes. The seventh edition covers current IR theory images (realism, liberalism, economic-structuralism, and the English School), interpretive understandings (constructivist, feminist, postmodern, critical theory, and green theory), normative considerations, and intellectual foundations from the ancient world to the modern era.

Classical political theorists such as Thucydides, Kant, Rousseau, Smith, Hegel, Grotius, Mill, Locke and Clausewitz are often employed to explain and justify contemporary international politics and are seen to constitute the different schools of thought in the discipline. However, traditional interpretations frequently ignore the intellectual and historical context in which these thinkers were writing as well as the lineages through which they came to be appropriated in International Relations. This 2006 collection of essays provides alternative interpretations sensitive to these political and intellectual contexts and to the trajectory of their appropriation. The political, sociological, anthropological, legal, economic, philosophical and normative dimensions are shown to be constitutive, not just of classical theories, but of international thought and practice in the contemporary world. Moreover, they challenge traditional accounts of timeless debates and schools of thought and provide new conceptions of core issues such as sovereignty, morality, law, property, imperialism and agency

Covering 1816–2016, this book deals extensively with the international system as well as the territorial outcomes of several key wars that were waged during that time period, providing an instructive lesson in diplomatic history and international relations among global powers. Based on an in-depth review of the leading theories in the field of international relations, International Relations Theory of War explains an innovative theory on the international system, developed by the author, that he applies comprehensively to a large number of case studies. The book argues that there is a unipolar system that represents a kind of innovation relative to other systemic theories. It further posits that unipolar systems will be less stable than bipolar systems and more stable than multipolar systems, providing new insights relative to other theories that argue that unipolar systems are the most stable ones. The first chapter is devoted to explaining the manner of action of the two dependent variables—systemic international outcome and intra-systemic international outcome. The second chapter presents the international relations theory of war and its key assumptions. The third chapter precisely defines the distribution of power in the system. The fourth chapter examines the theory's two key phenomena. The fifth and last chapter presents the book's conclusions by examining the theoretical assumptions of the international relations theory of war.

This innovative assessment of the current state of International Relations theory diagnoses a deep malaise in the field and proposes a reorientation from metatheoretical concerns to the theoretical exploration of central policy issues and dilemmas confronting the 21st century world.

Metaphors constitute a fundamental way in which humans understand the world around them. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of metaphors in theories of international relations. Until recently, conscious attention to metaphors in theories of international relations has been haphazard and sporadic. This book examines the metaphors that inform the major paradigms in international relations theory.

There is a growing realization among international relations scholars and practitioners that religion is a critical factor in global politics. The Iranian Revolution, the September 11 attacks, the ethno-religious conflicts such as the ones in the former Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka are among the many reasons for this increased focus on religion in international affairs. The rise of religious political parties across the world ranging from the Christian Democrats in Europe to Bharatiya Janata Party in India similarly illustrated religion's heightened international profile. Despite all this attention, it is challenging to situate religion within a discipline which has been dominantly secular from its inception. Only a few existent works have ventured to integrate religion into core international relations theories such as Classical Realism, Neorealism, Neoliberalism, Constructivism and the English school. This work is the first systematic attempt to comparatively assess the place of religion in the aforementioned theoretical strands of international relations with contemporary examples from around the world. Written in an accessible and systematic fashion, this book will be an important addition to the fields of both religion and international relations. Nukhet A. Sandal is Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Ohio University. Jonathan Fox is Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University, Israel.

Diplomacy does not take place simply between states but wherever people live in different groups. Paul Sharp argues that the demand for diplomacy, and the need for the insights of diplomatic theory, are on the rise. In contrast to conventional texts which use international relations theories to make sense of what diplomacy and diplomats do, this book explores what diplomacy and diplomats can contribute to the big theoretical and practical debates in international relations today. Sharp identifies a diplomatic tradition of international thought premised on the way people live in groups, the differences between intra- and inter-group relations, and the perspectives which those who handle inter-group relations develop about the sorts of international disputes which occur. He argues that the lessons of diplomacy are that we should be reluctant to judge, ready to appease, and alert to the partial grounds on which most universal claims about human beings are made

Is the world more or less ordered than during the cold war? Are we on the way to a neo-liberal era of free markets and global governance, or in danger of collapsing into a new Middle Ages? This book seeks to offer a general interpretation and critique of both methodological and substantive aspects of International theory.

This book re-evaluates the concept of anarchy in International Relations by drawing on anarchist thought. It is the first scholarly work to draw on historical anarchism to construct an international theory premised on the idea of states as anarchists. It puts forward a constructivist account of state behavior, termed 'polite anarchy', to theorize diplomacy, an area of IR which is increasingly recognized within the discipline as being under-theorized, by drawing on a contextual historical study of the idiom of politeness in the anarchist thought of the late-Enlightenment British radical, William Godwin, generally considered to be the founder of modern philosophical anarchism. The book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students of International Relations, the history of political thought, international political theory and anarchism, as well as historians and practitioners in the field of diplomacy and Godwin scholars.