Show Notes
Scholars of international relations don't agree on much, but they at least agree that anarchy (the lack of a common authority to make and enforce rules) is the defining feature of international politics, right?
Not exactly. There's a long history of research that emphasizes the hierarchical character of international relations. Now a new wave of scholarship argues that international-relations theory should move beyond anarchy. Some advocate giving it a downgrade. Others want to banish the concept entirely.
What drives the new hierarchy studies? Why is it gaining steam? In this episode, David Lake, Dani Nedal, and Ayşe Zarakol join a "Whiskey Optional" roundtable on the subject of international hierarchy.
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Pauline Sophie Heinrichs, Nina Krickel-Choi, Jennifer Mitzen, and Brent Steele join Dan and Patrick for wide-ranging discussion of the theory, practice, disagreements, and citation practices that define ontological security studies.
Robert Cox's landmark article, "Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory," appeared in the journal Millennium in 1981. Among other things, it introduced the distinction between "critical" and "problem-solving" theory to international-relations scholars.
Back in 2019, Uri Friedman wrote that we "find ourselves—as you will have heard in the corridors of power and conference rooms of think tanks, and read in the government’s strategy documents and the media’s coverage of international relations—in an era of “great-power competition." "As Friedman noted, "great-power competition" has even" achieved hallowed acronym status—GPC..."