5 Chapter 7: International Relations
It is a large and comprehensive area of study that in some academic contexts is a separate discipline from political science. As a separate discipline, international relations (or what is sometimes called international studies, international affairs, area studies, global affairs, or global studies) is a rich interdisciplinary field of study that draws direct connections to other disciplines such as geography, psychology, demography, history, economics, and feminism, among others. In academia outside the UK and the US, the study of political science is often exclusively the study of international relations. In American academia especially, international relations is typically considered a sub-discipline of the broader field of political science, and for our purposes here, we will view international relations in this context. The academic study of international relations has been traditionally dominated by positivist inquiry—it seeks a descriptive and objective understanding of our global world and the forces and relations that shape the international context. Positive statements, in this sense, are contrasted with normative statements: the former are statements that describe what is, whereas the latter are statements that directions for what ought to be (see the normative basis of political theory in Chapter Six for more discussion on this matter).
But from a public policy perspective, international relations is normative in its inquiry, directing policy shapers toward actions that can better the world. Broadly speaking, public policy are a set of directions for how executive bureaucracy acts in the execution of law, and so defines what “should be” in terms of state action, not what is. Take, for example, the issue of nuclear weapons. An academic and positivist approach may objectively determine the number of nuclear weapons in the world and which countries possess them. From a policy perspective, however, international relations provides a field from which a number of policy proposals are presented—how nuclear weapons proliferation should be curtailed, how to keep certain rogue actors from obtaining nuclear weapons, or how to limit the threat of nuclear weapons in the international environment. International relations theory (theories that govern relations in an international environment) have traditionally been positive (realist, liberal, and regime theory all have positivist foundations), but post-positivist theories (such as constructivist, Marxist, feminist IR theories) have emerged as a significant field of inquiry in the sub-discipline. Below, we will discuss four prominent international relations theories, three positivist (realism, liberalism, and institutionalism) and one post-positivist (feminist IR theory). But before we do, a discussion of foreign policy and its tools and objectives is warranted.
Foreign Policy
Foreign policy can be defined as a country’s national interest pursued abroad. Central t