Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy: The continuing story of a death foretold

Stefano Guzzini's study offers an understanding of the evolution of the realist tradition within International Relations and International Political Economy. It sees the realist tradition not as a school of thought with a static set of fixed principles, but as a repeatedly failed attempt to turn the rules of European diplomacy into the laws of a US social science. Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy concentrates on the evolution of a leading school of thought, its critiques and its institutional environment. As such it will provide an invaluable basis to anyone studying international relations theory.-- 1. Assumptions of a historical sociology of realism -- 2. Classical realism: Carr, Morgenthau and the crisis of collective security -- 3. evolution of realist core concepts during the second debate -- 4. Realism and the US policy of containment -- 5. turning point of the Cuban missile crisis: crisis management and the expanding research agenda -- 6. Epilogue: Soviet theories of International Relations -- 7. policy of detente: Kissinger and the limits of concert diplomacy -- 8. International Relations in disarray: the inter-paradigm debate -- 9. Systemic neorealism: Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics -- 10. International Political Economy as an attempt to update realism: the end of the Bretton-Woods system and hegemonic stability theory -- 11. International Political Economy at the convergence of realism and structuralism -- 12. Realism gets lost: the epistemological turn of the 1980s and 1990s -- 13. Realism at a crossroads.The book is a revised version of EUI Working Paper SPS 1992/2