International Relations 101
Here we will examine how to read international affairs of states and all the other actors briefly. In fact, we will mention the glasses we need to wear (international relations theories) and objects we are likely to see over this area (states, non-state actors, role of leaders etc.) You can think this article as “International Relations for Dummies”.
Don’t forget to fasten your seat belts and hang on to your seats… ‘Cause Kansas is going bye bye!
When we talk about international relations there are some concepts we are obliged to mention. Such as: Politics, Social Sciences and Interdisciplinarity
Let’s begin!
Politics and International Relations
As we discuss about International Relations, clearly one can claim that we are talking about politics. And that wouldn’t be a mistaken claim. However, as they are two different concepts, the area they cover are also differentiate.
International relations (which time to time being referred as international politics also) covering affairs that contain more than one actor and even though these actors mostly are states, in modern times also non-state actor as being the subject of research.
On the other hand, international relations not only covers politics but different aspects of affairs of nations and actors (like culture, sports, health issues et. al.) are also able to be part of international relations studies. In this regard, one can be interested in cultural diplomacy, mask diplomacy or public diplomacy.
Although these areas are mostly politicised over the process, we can still say that politics are not the only topic of international relations.
Social Sciences and Interdisciplinarity
Encyclopedia Britannica: “Social science, any branch of academic study or science that deals with human behaviour in its social and cultural aspects. Usually included within the social sciences are cultural (or social) anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, and economics.”
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, as you can read above, human behaviour based sciences are classified as social sciences. As International Relations is also categorized under political science and defined (more or less) as the discipline that studies the behaviours of actors over inter-state international system, that classifies international relation studies under social sciences.
When you consider the studies such as “ interaction between leaders’ psychologies and foreign political decisions” or “sociological background of foreign politics” and a lot of similar examples, it’s easy to see the interdisciplinary nature of such studies and international relations in general.
Last but not least, aforementioned definition of social sciences and especially the nature of international relations (or maybe political sciences in general) also reveals some adverse conditions.
As an example, while you can boil a water at sea level and test if it boils at 100 centigrade degree, unfortunately it’s not quite possible to test hypothesis asserted within an international relations study in a test environment. Hence, international relations studies (like some of other social sciences studies) are more dependent on events that are already done or currently on-going than estimative works.
For instance, during the Arab Spring while Tunisia and Algeria experienced a softer transformation process, Libya faced with French sorties, Egypt went through a coup d’etat and Syria is still a mess…
Theories
Even though estimative works are less likely to appear on your search, that does not necessarily mean that there’s not a theoretical or scientific ground in such areas or that they are solemnly based on interpretive efforts.
Obviously, as all the other sciences, also the international relations studies are based on theories. While most of the international relations theories are derived from political science works, also their entity is more likely to be a frame to place the investigated events and concepts rather than absolute rules or norms.
One can see international relations theories as guidelines of reading international and mostly state-based events or as eyeglasses. In the way that you need to use different eyeglasses for myopic and hypermetropia, in international relations also, you need to use different theories to understand (for instance) a war example or collaboration sample.
While there are several different theories, we can mention 3 main topic as; Realist Theories, Liberal Theories and Critical Theory. Of course it would be a big mistake to think that theories only consist of these three “theory” and all the others as “sub-branches”. But we use this classification to make it easier for a beginner in international relations.
No need to prolong the article with boring details of aforementioned theories, for further information about them I would suggest the web site of E-International Relations which is kind of an academic Wikipedia for me about international relations. (Realism, Liberalism, Critical Theory)
Here’s my previous articles in English;
