ABSTRACT
Of late it has become increasingly popular to question the existence during the inter-war period of a Great Debate between realism and idealism in the theory of international relations, as had heretofore been the received view among IR scholars. Peter Wilson (1998), for example, ably demonstrates that E. H. Carr both set the terms of the debate as it has since been understood, and yet at the same time ended it. He also shows that Carr was very far from receiving unanimous praise for his arguments. Luke Ashworth (2006) notes that it is very difficult to identify idealism, idealists or utopians in IR during this period of time, if one is using the definition deployed by Carr and subsequently refined by his predominantly American followers in the post-war period. As discussed in the Introduction, Joel Quirk and Darshan Vigneswaran (2005) argue that the debate is not so much a complete myth as a construction of later IR scholars as they have built up their own debates in international relations theory.
