This course provides a foundation in the theoretical and historical analysis of core ideas in International Relations. It introduces and critically surveys the normative and analytic development of modern International Relations in its enquiry into the making of modern world orders.


Addressing the five different historical expressions of world order in the modern period – classical imperialism, liberal internationalism, totalitarian internationalism, Cold War, and globalisation – this course examines the development of different traditions of thinking and conceptualisation about the nature of the international.  Thus the major schools of international theory - including realism, neo-realism, systems theory, world systems theory, liberal institutionalism, cosmopolitanism, communitarianism, marxism and neo-Gramscian, constructivism and post-structuralism – will be examined for their theoretical merits and in relation to their historical emergence. In addition the relationship between international theory and broader social theory will be considered through reference to the debates in idealism and realism, traditionalism and behaviouralism, and positivism and post-positivism.


In so doing, these various theories of international relations will refer to the history of inter-state practices; account for the emergence, consolidation and dissipation of states, nations, and other social forces; identify and explain the notion of structures in international relations; debate the role of ideas and values in social scientific investigation; and examine the abiding international themes of war, conflict, cooperation and peace.

Course Outline

• Political theory, social theory and international theory
• Classical international relations theory
• International society and the state of nature
• Republicanism and universalism
• The law of civilised nations
• New imperialism and the rise of nationalism
• World war and inter-imperial rivalry
• Liberalism and the new internationalism : idealism in IR
• The end of peace and the resurgence of Realism
• International Relations as a system and a science
• Cold War and exterminism
• Neo-realism : Realism and its discontents
• Marxism and IR
• Post-structuralism in a globalising world

Key Readings

• Blaut, J. The coloniser’s model of the world :  geographical diffusionism and eurocentrism. Guilford Press, New York. 1993.
  
  
• Brown, W., Bromley, S., &  Athreye, S. (eds) Ordering the international : history, change and transformation. Pluto, London. 2004.
  
  
• Burchill, S. et. al., Theories of international relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. 2005. [3rd ed]
  
  
• Fieldhouse, D. K. The west and the third world. Blackwell, Oxford. 1999.
  
  
• Halperin, S. War and social change in modern Europe : the Great Transformation revisited. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2003.
  
  
• Jahn, B. The cultural construction of international relations : the invention of the state of nature. Macmillan, Basingstoke. 2000.
  
  
• Jahn, B. (ed) Classical theory in International Relations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2006.
  
  
• Keohane, R. Neorealism and its critics. Columbia University Press, New York. 1988.
  
  
• Kolko,  G. A century of war : politics, conflicts and society since 1914. New Press, New York. 1995.
  
  
• Rosenberg, J. The empire of civil society.  : a critique of the realist theory of International Relations. Verso, London. 1994.
  
  
• Teschke, B. The myth of 1648 : class, geopolitics and the making of modern international relations. Verso, London. 2003.