ABSTRACT
Since its relatively recent and vaguely defined origins,2 International Relations (IR) has seen endless cycles of debates and compromises. The earlier debates were known as “inter-paradigm,” and pitted idealists against realists, traditionalists against behaviouralists (“classical” versus “scientific”), and positivists against post-positivists.3 More recent debates have been between neorealists and neoliberals4 and between rationalists and constructivists, although these have resulted in compromises (the neo-neo and rationalist-constructivist syntheses). Whatever the contribution of these debates to the progress of IR, they have by and large left out the ideas, voices and experiences of the non-Western world. The aim of this book is not to start a new grand debate, and certainly not to make the pitch for a new theory of IR. Rather, the intent here is to underscore the long-term and ethnocentric neglect of the non-Western world in IR theory, the limitations and distortions that this inflicts on our understanding of world politics as a whole, and to make the case for a more inclusive, truly global IR.
