By: Alfonso García

As someone who has always enjoyed reading about history and the various conflicts and events that have occurred throughout it, I was always curious to understand the reasoning behind the patterns of behaviours of states that would explain why certain issues have developed the way they did across time. Due to the fact that so many of these “conflicts” turned out to be wars waged by states, my main point of interest in understanding international relations has always aligned mostly with finding out the importance that these state actors have in the international system. After taking POLI 260 and having read John Mearsheimer’s “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics”, I started thinking of myself as more of a realist seeing as most of the information that I was learning through history and realist writings all pointed towards the “state” as being the most important actor at the center of discussion. Although, this made sense to me as a result of the lack of mention in history books about the influence that other actors may have had in international affairs, I was aware that these existed and that there were theories that gave these actors greater importance and relevance to world politics.

Registering in a course that seems to offer information about these other theories from such an even or “neutral” perspective (in the sense that no one theory seems to be given greater importance than any other)  which I find quite refreshing as I am hoping to broaden my understanding of IR with a less biased outlook. I believe that the discussion of the wide-ranging types of IR theories in this course and the emphasis being given on the basic differences of their most basic assumptions about the world is a great way of showcasing that IR theory is not like any “science” that we might be familiar with due to the inherently large presence of subjectivity in the way that academics in this field view the world. Even though this at times gives me the sensation that I may never fully understand why international actors behave the way they do, learning about all these unique “lenses” through which to view the world gives me the tools to view the world in various ways and ultimately enable me to take more things into consideration and ultimately allow me to have a more educated understanding of global developments.

I look forward to learning about the assortment of schools of IR and their respective theories so that perhaps, once I have more knowledge about these different outlooks I may find one (or more) that I can more closely agree with and from there be able to develop my own views and interpretations about current events and as well as events from the past.