ABSTRACT
Where is International Relations (IR) going? Almost a century after its foundation, and more than two decades into the so-called ‘post-Cold War era’, it would be hard to look at the landscape of IR and identify a unified direction. Yet the question of where ‘we’ are going is an important one precisely at this juncture. There is little doubt that the broadening of horizons witnessed within IR
since the late 1980s has resulted in a more fragmented conception of its purpose and trajectory. The narrow, if not monolithic dominance of (neo-)realist orthodoxy has gradually given way, at least in Europe, to a cascade of many different ripples. Substantive issues such as terrorism, religion, human rights or global governance have over the past few years drawn the attention of the more reality-conscious IR scholars. Theoretical developments in social and cultural studies, in contrast, have found willing recipients in a number of more philosophically inclined IR journals. Finally, epistemology has provided the ground on which the key battles of the latest IR ‘war’ (the so-called ‘third debate’) were fought out. All these trajectories, and many others, have developed side-by-side, yet often unaware of each other, as if sharing a house but never quite meeting one another. Optimists would call this state of affairs ‘pluralism’. And yet this seems to
us too generous. Pluralism requires an active commitment to acknowledge and embrace diversity, something to which IR has not yet consciously subscribed. Institutional reasons are also at play, of course. IR may well have developed into a mature and respectable member in the ranks of higher education, but this has necessarily implied its subjugation to the academy’s particular political economy, with the adoption of its typical drive towards specialization and fragmentation – all of which has helped in creating a variety of monologues, rather than dialogue. It is clear, therefore, that a reorientation of the discipline is necessary,
although no single idea can achieve this. After all, mainstream constructivism seemed to promise that it would reconcile differences, bridge research communities and deliver a synthesis of great appeal. Yet the growing number of discontents suggests that its promises have been only partially fulfilled.
