Hello!

When my political science professor Robert Crawford said we would be making blogs for our International Theory class, I was quite excited. Blogging seems so much more engaging than writing an essay that, most likely, only your TA will read.

Blogging is also terrifying, with having the whole wide web being able to read and critique your work.

But here we go! Taking that leap of risk.

My first interaction with IR theory is from previous political theory classes, were we studied the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel and the Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes and other various writers. I enjoyed learning about the different theories and comparing them. It helped me understand how I viewed the world.

Being in Crawford’s class has been different from my previous theory class. Instead of diving into the theories, we are looking at the epistemology of IR theory. In class, we are slowly dissecting the subject and the theory before learning about the different theories.

It seems like political science is hard to define, because, as Crawford states, it’s not a science. From the class discussion, what I understand is science is something we can predict with a theory and measure. With this definition, it seems odd that political is called political science, as politics is so unpredictable. We could say that theories help us predict political events, however, it’s not the same case in science where you can repeat the experiment and get roughly the same result.

It seems to me that the definition of International Theory seems to be constantly changing. One reason seems to be because current events are shaping it’s definition. For instance, September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States is a good example of a single event changing a theoretical response. The change of international theory changed how the US was being run, and why George Bush declared a “War on Terror”. Before 9/11, the Cold War is what shaped the  narrative of international theory.

What I understand from class is that the definition of international theory is fluid. It changes from current events, but also from theorist to theorist. It changes from liberalism, realism, to categories like neoliberalism. It makes sense, as in the social world, there’s always more than one story to tell. For instance, Smith dives world of IR into 8 distinct theories.

As Crawford said, international theory “depends nowhere you are and you’re talking to”.