Realism

Often described as the dominant worldview in the study of International Relations (IR) (Forde 1992: 373), political realism has been implicated in every major debate in IR over the last 50 years. In describing and appraising the realist worldview, it is customary to differentiate realism from other worldviews and to separate realist theories into distinct subgroups. In this chapter, I first describe the contested antiquarian and classical roots of realism, before moving on to describe six varieties of twentieth-century realist scholarship. Despite their differences, they largely share the view that the character of relations among states has not fundamentally altered. Where there is change, it tends to occur in repetitive patterns. State behavior is driven by leaders’ flawed human nature or by the preemptive unpleasantness mandated by an anarchic international system. Selfish human appetites for power, or the need to accumulate the wherewithal to be secure in a self-help world, explain the seemingly endless succession of wars and conquest. Accordingly, most realists take a pessimistic and prudential view of IR (Elman 2001).