Political Science: International Relations Theory in Time and Space

The course is only offered as a single subject course for incoming exchange students.

International Relations Theory is a time-honoured approach to the social world. Texts that are clearly recognizable as dealing with international relations date back to the ancient Greeks. Still, most textbooks in the field take a geographically and historically very parochial stance towards its own field. It is easy to get the impression that IR theorizing is a fundamentally Western (or US) activity, that has taken place over the last 100 years or so. This course explores if this is true. The course begins with a discussion of IR theory as a social science, followed by a survey of contemporary Western IR theory. The course then expands our temporal and spatial horizon in search for IR theory elsewhere in history and geography. Examples include India, China, Africa, and European rennaisance and enlightenment thinking.