IR as an American Social Science
International Relations is known as an American Social Science. What are the implications of this for studying and understanding international relations?
IR may be attributed as an American Social Science because of the dominance of United States both in International Relations as an academic discipline, and international relations as a reference to the foreign policy. IR had chance to shine in United States because United States has been a world power since the establishment of such a scholarly discipline. Simply because US is a hegemonic world power, studying US foreign policy is more or less similar to studying world politics. That is why scholars in North America were lucky enough to influence the development of the field. On the other hand, some scholars argue that IR developments in Europe are also as significant as United States contributions to IR. However, these arguments will not be covered in this essay.
The effects of United States on IR as an academic discipline are of great importance because the discipline have been simply dominated by scholars in North America. Not only the scholars who were of American origin, but also many European scholars who conducted their studies in America, such as Morgenthau, contributed a lot to the developments in the field. The result is the Western centric approach to International Relations which we study today. It will not be wrong to argue that liberal democratic values promoted by United States and their reflections in the development of foreign policy are overwhelmingly dominant over the other approaches to the IR.
The US dominance on IR also has some methodological implications on the development of theories of IR. In the US, there is a tendency towards an evidence-based science both for social sciences and natural sciences. The reflection of this in the scholarly discipline of IR is the general tendency towards a realistic outlook to the international relations instead of a utopian idealism (liberalism).
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IR may be attributed as an American Social Science because of the dominance of United States both in International Relations as an academic discipline, and international relations as a reference to the foreign policy. IR had chance to shine in United States because United States has been a world power since the establishment of such a scholarly discipline. Simply because US is a hegemonic world power, studying US foreign policy is more or less similar to studying world politics. That is why scholars in North America were lucky enough to influence the development of the field. On the other hand, some scholars argue that IR developments in Europe are also as significant as United States contributions to IR. However, these arguments will not be covered in this essay.
The effects of United States on IR as an academic discipline are of great importance because the discipline have been simply dominated by scholars in North America. Not only the scholars who were of American origin, but also many European scholars who conducted their studies in America, such as Morgenthau, contributed a lot to the developments in the field. The result is the Western centric approach to International Relations which we study today. It will not be wrong to argue that liberal democratic values promoted by United States and their reflections in the development of foreign policy are overwhelmingly dominant over the other approaches to the IR.
The US dominance on IR also has some methodological implications on the development of theories of IR. In the US, there is a tendency towards an evidence-based science both for social sciences and natural sciences. The reflection of this in the scholarly discipline of IR is the general tendency towards a realistic outlook to the international relations instead of a utopian idealism (liberalism).
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