International Relations Theory Course

Course Philosophy

Three core principles guide this curriculum:

• Systemic Interdependence: Global political outcomes emerge from dense networks of interdependence in which crises, decisions, and norms propagate across institutions, regions, and policy domains.

• Analytical Pluralism: No single theoretical framework fully captures global order; each reveals specific dynamics while obscuring others.

• Epistemological Reflexivity: All models of international relations are historically situated, reflecting distinct intellectual traditions, institutional interests, and geopolitical contexts.

International Relations theory is the intellectual foundation of the discipline. It asks not merely what happens in world politics but why it happens, through what mechanisms, and whether those mechanisms can be understood objectively or are always interpreted through frameworks that carry their own assumptions, interests, and blind spots.

This course introduces students to the major theoretical traditions that have shaped how scholars and practitioners conceptualise global politics: realism, liberalism, the English School, constructivism, Marxism and critical political economy, post-structuralism, postcolonial IR, and feminist IR. It also engages green theory and foreign policy analysis as sites where theoretical debates intersect with urgent practical questions.

The course proceeds on the conviction that theory is not an optional supplement to the study of world politics but its precondition. Every analytical claim about international relations rests on assumptions about what kinds of actors matter, what motivates them, how knowledge is produced, and what counts as an adequate explanation—or what counts as an act of critical deconstruction. Making those assumptions explicit and subjecting them to critical scrutiny is the central intellectual task of the course.

MODULE I: Foundations and Mainstream Paradigms

Week 1: What is International Relations, and how should we theorise global politics?

Week 2: Why does realism continue to dominate explanations of world politics?

Week 3: Can liberalism explain cooperation in an anarchic international system?

MODULE II: The Sociological and Materialist Alternatives

Week 4: What is international society, and how does it differ from international system thinking?

Week 5: Is International Political Economy a theory of capitalism, power, or inequality?

MODULE III: Constructivism and the Social Turn in IR 

Week 6: Does constructivism change what we think power actually is?

Week 7: Do post-structuralist approaches dissolve the possibility of objective IR knowledge?

MODULE IV: Postcolonial Thought, Decolonial Critique, and Digital Power

Week 8: How do postcolonial perspectives reframe the origins of world order?

Week 9: Does the digital revolution change the nature of anarchic survival, or does it merely automate existing structural hierarchies?

MODULE V: Planetary Limits, Applied Theory, and the Future of World Order

Week 10: Can green theory fundamentally reorient international relations around planetary limits?

Week 11: How do IR theories explain concrete global issues: terrorism, development, and globalisation?

Week 12: Is the world moving towards order, fragmentation, or systemic transformation?

Every week of this 12-week course is structured around four distinct learning pillars to ensure you build theoretical knowledge, practical skills, and critical awareness:

• Lecture: Core concepts, theoretical frameworks, and key debates.

• Workshop: Application of concepts to real-world empirical cases.

• Analytical Lab: Hands-on methodological training and data analysis.

• Reflexive Question: A direct challenge designed to unpack hidden systemic assumptions.

Deep Thinking

• Clearly define the case and your ontological starting point. State whether you treat it as objective material reality (events, capabilities, power distributions, causal sequences) or as a constructed site of discourses, archives, and linguistic boundaries. Be explicit about which position you occupy before proceeding. (Empirical baseline)

• Identify who or what genuinely holds power in the case. Move beyond obvious state actors to the deeper structures that produce and constrain outcomes (material hierarchies, capitalist logics, colonial genealogies, gendered orders, or discursive regimes) that determine what counts as legitimate knowledge and whose experience counts as evidence. (Agential mapping)

• Analyse the case using one primary theoretical tradition on its own terms. Honour its preferred analytical logic: causal mechanisms and empirical predictions for positivist theories; constitutive discourses, genealogies, and power/knowledge relations for post-positivist frameworks. Internal consistency is not optional. (Theoretical application)

• Expose your framework's weaknesses without concession. For explanatory theories, confront empirical anomalies and outcomes the theory cannot predict. For critical theories, address the problem of unfalsifiability, policy paralysis, and the absence of actionable guidance in high-stakes crises where decisions cannot be suspended pending deconstruction. (Analytical limitation)

• Re-analyse the same case through a fundamentally opposing theoretical tradition. Show how the problem itself changes shape when the framework changes. Evaluate whose interests are served by each framing, and at what material, political, and ethical cost without retreating into the lazy relativism that treats all perspectives as equally valid and therefore equally inconsequential. (Reflexive critique)

Learning Outcomes

• Command the major theoretical traditions and their meta-theoretical foundations: Explain and critically evaluate the principal traditions in IR (realism, liberalism, the English School, constructivism, Marxism, post-structuralism, postcolonial theory, and feminist IR) and identify the distinct ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions that separate explanatory from interpretive approaches and that determine what each tradition can and cannot ask.

• Apply theoretical frameworks to empirical cases and primary texts: Analyse concrete historical, institutional, and discursive sites using IR theories on their own terms, specifying how different traditions constitute the boundaries of the case itself, and conduct close readings of primary theoretical texts alongside policy documents, official archives, and empirical case material.

• Adjudicate between theoretical claims and evaluate the theory–practice nexus: Assess the competing metrics of theoretical validity (empirical predictive power, falsifiability, internal consistency, and capacity for normative critique) and critically examine the relationship between IR theory and political practice, including the strategic utility or paralysis each framework generates when decisions cannot be suspended pending deconstruction.

• Construct and defend independent analytical positions: Formulate well-reasoned, evidence-based arguments on contested theoretical questions in written and oral form, and defend those positions under adversarial questioning without retreating into relativism or the kind of theoretical eclecticism that mistakes breadth for rigour.

Assessment

Assessment 1: Theoretical Analysis (35% | 2,500 words)
Students select one case studied during the course (drawn from historical events, institutional arrangements, or contemporary crises) and analyse it through a single theoretical tradition. The analysis must begin by stating the ontological starting point clearly: whether the case is treated as an objective material reality to be explained through causal mechanisms and empirical evidence, or as a constructed site of discourses, genealogies, and power relations to be interpreted through a critical or post-positivist lens. Students must then identify the key actors and the deeper structural authorities (material hierarchies, normative orders, capitalist logics, or discursive regimes) that shaped the outcome, and apply the chosen theoretical tradition on its own terms, using its preferred analytical logic consistently throughout. The analysis must conclude by identifying the theory's principal explanatory or interpretive failures: the empirical anomalies it cannot account for, or the actionable guidance it cannot provide when decisions cannot be suspended pending further deconstruction. Submission Deadline: End of Week 7.

Assessment 2: Capstone Applied Theoretical Essay (55% | 5,000–6,000 words)

The primary summative assessment for this course is a comprehensive theoretical essay examining a major puzzle or development in contemporary world politics selected from the approved case list. Students must analyse the case through at least three distinct theoretical traditions spanning both explanatory and interpretive approaches, applying each framework on its own terms before explicitly adjudicating between them. The essay must assess the competing metrics of theoretical validity (empirical predictive power, internal consistency, falsifiability, and capacity for normative or discursive critique) and must critically examine the theory–practice nexus, evaluating what each framework enables and forecloses when confronted with the real-world demands of statecraft or political decision-making under pressure. The essay must reach a defended, reasoned conclusion that goes beyond juxtaposing alternative accounts and does not retreat into the relativism that treats all frameworks as equally useful and therefore interchangeable. Submission Deadline: Sunday of Week 14 (Formal Assessment Period, following the conclusion of Week 12 teaching).

Assessment 3: Seminar Participation and Analytical Engagement (10% | Ongoing)
Participation is assessed continuously throughout the semester. Marks reflect the quality and consistency of engagement across three interconnected dimensions: contribution to seminar and workshop discussions, demonstrating the ability to apply theoretical concepts to empirical cases and to challenge competing interpretations with reasoned argument; performance in the weekly Analytical Labs, showing growing proficiency in applying course methodologies to live data and case material; and conduct in simulation and debate exercises, including the willingness to defend positions under adversarial questioning, respond to new evidence, and revise conclusions accordingly. Attendance is a prerequisite for participation credit, but marks are awarded for the quality and intellectual rigour of engagement rather than for the volume of contribution.

Submission, Formatting Requirements and Academic Integrity

• All written work must be submitted as a PDF file, regardless of the word processor used.

• Use font at 12 points Aptos or Arial. Pages must be numbered. Include your name, student number, course name, assignment title, and word count on the first page; a separate cover page is not required.

• The word count stated in the assignment brief is a guide to scope and depth, not a rigid threshold. Work within 10% of the stated count in either direction. The word count covers the main body of the text, including in-text citations, but excludes the reference list, any tables or figures, and any appendices.

• All written work must follow APA 7th edition throughout. In-text citations use the author-date format: (Yergin, 2020) or Yergin (2020) argues that… For direct quotations, include the page number: (Yergin, 2020, p. 47). The reference list appears at the end of the document, ordered alphabetically by surname. Do not use footnotes for references; footnotes may be used sparingly for substantive clarifications that would otherwise interrupt the argument.

• Formal policies on academic integrity and the use of AI tools vary by institution and will be communicated where applicable. The question beneath those policies does not change: Is the goal to understand, or simply to appear to have understood? A qualification obtained without the knowledge it is meant to represent is a transaction, not an education, and it shortchanges the holder as much as anyone else. I invest genuine effort in connecting students to scholarship, practitioners, and professional networks that extend well beyond any syllabus. Whether that investment meets a reciprocal commitment is, in the end, a question of character rather than compliance.

Literature

• Art, R. J., Crawford, T. W., & Jervis, R. (Eds.). (2023). International politics. Rowman & Littlefield.

• Bukovansky, M., Keene, E., Reus-Smit, C., & Spanu, M. (Eds.). (2023). The Oxford handbook of history and international relations. Oxford University Press.

• Knutsen, T. L. (2016). A history of international relations theory. Manchester University Press.

• Roach, S. C., Barder, A. D., & Griffiths, M. (2024). International relations: The key concepts (4th ed.). Routledge.

• Sandel, M. J. (2010). Justice: What’s the right thing to do? Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

• Shiraev, E., & Zubok, V. (2024). International relations (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.

• Sørensen, G., & Møller, J. (2025). Introduction to international relations & global politics (9th ed.). Oxford University Press.

• Weber, C. (2020). International relations theory: A critical introduction (5th ed.). Routledge.

Research articles do not appear in the bibliography above. This is intentional. Each week, students are expected to identify a peer-reviewed article relevant to that week’s topic, bring it to the seminar, and share it with the group. The lecturer contributes selections alongside the class. This practice develops independent literature-searching habits, exposes the seminar to a wider range of scholarly perspectives than any fixed reading list could provide, and keeps the course in sustained contact with current debates in the field.

Course Structure and Content

MODULE I: Foundations and Mainstream Paradigms

Week 1: What is International Relations, and how should we theorise global politics?

Core Question: What are the proper units of analysis, what methods are appropriate, and what is the purpose of theory itself?

Key Themes: The origins of IR as an academic discipline and the interwar idealist project; theory, meta-theory, and the distinction between positivist and post-positivist approaches; ontology, epistemology, and methodology in IR; the purpose and limits of IR theory: explanation, prediction, and critique; mapping the theoretical landscape: mainstream, critical, and post-positivist traditions.

Case Sites: The Institutional Archive: The League of Nations Covenant and the historical texts of the Carr–idealism debate, examined as the foundational boundary-making moments of the discipline.

Seminar Exercise: Mapping exercise: students position the major IR theories along the axes of positivism/post-positivism and state-centrism/non-state perspectives. Groups discuss what methodological assumptions each position entails, what kinds of questions each can and cannot ask, and how the map itself reflects particular assumptions about the discipline.

Analytical Focus: Introduction to theoretical pluralism; understanding meta-theoretical debates; distinguishing explanation from interpretation.

Additional Literature 

• • Curtis, M. (Ed.). (2008). The great political theories, volume 1: A comprehensive selection of the crucial ideas in political philosophy from the Greeks to the Enlightenment. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

  • Curtis, M. (Ed.). (2008). The great political theories, volume 2: A comprehensive selection of the crucial ideas in political philosophy from the French Revolution to modern times. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

  • Estlund, D. M. (Ed.). (2012). The Oxford handbook of political philosophy. Oxford University Press.

  • Heywood, A. (2021). Political ideologies: An introduction (7th ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.

  • Heywood, A., & Chin, C. (2023). Political theory: An introduction (5th ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.

  • Weber, C. (2009). International relations theory: A critical introduction. Routledge.

Week 2: Why does realism continue to dominate explanations of world politics?

Core Question: What does realism explain well, and how does it defend its claim to objective material structural dominance over interpretive alternatives?

Key Themes: Classical realism: human nature, power, and the national interest; structural realism: anarchy, polarity, and the balance of power; neoclassical realism: domestic variables and foreign policy; security dilemmas and the logic of self-help in the international system; critiques of realism: state-centrism, historical limitations, normative blindness.

Case Sites: The Material-Strategic Site: Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue; the distribution of nuclear capabilities in the Cold War; and the territorial parameters of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, evaluated through a strict causal-explanatory framework of relative gains and structural constraints.

Seminar Exercise: Theoretical application debate: students apply structural realist logic to a contemporary case and then identify the specific empirical anomalies or normative omissions the framework cannot account for. Those gaps are used to motivate the engagement with alternative theories that follows in subsequent weeks.

Analytical Focus: Applying structural realist logic to case studies; identifying explanatory strengths and systematic blind spots.

Additional Literature 

• • Cox, M. (2016). E. H. Carr. Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Donnelly, J. (2000). Realism and international relations. Cambridge University Press.

  • Gilpin, R. (1981). War and change in world politics. Cambridge University Press.

  • Hobbes, T. (2024). Leviathan. Oxford University Press.

  • Korab-Karpowicz, W. J. (2026). Political realism. Taylor & Francis.

  • Machiavelli, N. (1988). The prince. Cambridge University Press.

  • Mearsheimer, J. J. (2001). The tragedy of great power politics. W. W. Norton & Company.

  • Morgenthau, H. J. (2006). Politics among nations: The struggle for power and peace. McGraw-Hill.

  • Niebuhr, R. (2015). Major works on religion and politics. The Library of America.

  • Thucydides. (2009). The Peloponnesian war. Oxford University Press.

  • Walt, S. M. (1987). The origins of alliances. Cornell University Press.

  • Waltz, K. N. (2010). Theory of international politics. Waveland Press.

  • Williams, M. C. (2007). Realism reconsidered: The legacy of Hans J. Morgenthau in international relations. Oxford University Press.

Week 3: Can liberalism explain cooperation in an anarchic international system?

Core Question: How does liberalism address the challenges it now faces from great power competition, democratic backsliding, and the fragmentation of multilateral institutions?

Key Themes: Classical liberalism: Kant, commercial peace, and republican international order; complex interdependence and regime theory; the democratic peace thesis: evidence, mechanisms, and contested implications; liberal institutionalism and the design of international organisations; the crisis of the liberal international order: causes, extent, and implications.

Case Sites: The Legal-Institutional Site: The European Union treaty architecture and the legal texts of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism, evaluated as formal constraint vectors designed to alter state utility calculations.

Seminar Exercise: Structured comparison: students compare liberal and realist explanations of the same international episode (to be selected by the seminar leader), identifying where the frameworks agree, where they diverge, and what evidence would help adjudicate between them.

Analytical Focus: Evaluating institutionalist arguments; comparing theoretical explanations of cooperation; assessing the democratic peace as an empirical and normative claim.

Additional Literature 

• • Church, J. (2022). Kant, liberalism, and the meaning of life. Oxford University Press.

  • Deneen, P. J. (2018). Why liberalism failed. Yale University Press.

  • Freeden, M. (2015). Liberalism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

  • Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. Free Press.

  • Fukuyama, F. (2023). Liberalism and its discontents. Picador.

  • Locke, J. (2002). The second treatise of government and A letter concerning toleration. Dover.

  • Pilkington, P. (2025). The collapse of global liberalism. Polity.

  • Ravi, R., & Steger, M. (2021). Neoliberalism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

  • Rosenblatt, H. (2020). The lost history of liberalism: From ancient Rome to the twenty-first century. Princeton University Press.

  • Sleat, M. (2026). Post-liberalism. Polity.

  • Smith, A. (1998). The wealth of nations (K. Sutherland, Ed.). Oxford University Press.

MODULE II: The Sociological and Materialist Alternatives

Week 4: What is international society, and how does it differ from international system thinking?

Core Question: What is the analytical contribution the English School makes to debates about intervention, legitimacy, and the changing contours of international order?

Key Themes: International system versus international society: the foundational conceptual distinction; the pluralist–solidarist debate: sovereign order versus cosmopolitan justice; institutions of international society: diplomacy, sovereignty, the balance of power, international law, and great power management; world society and the role of non-state actors and global civil society; humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect as normative contestation.

Case Sites: The Sociological-Normative Site: The diplomatic records of the UN Security Council during crises of contested statehood, and the textual shift from sovereign non-intervention to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

Seminar Exercise: Concept application: students examine a specific instance of normative contestation in international politics — intervention, targeted sanctions, or contested recognition — using the pluralist–solidarist distinction, and assess which conception of international society the actors themselves appear to invoke and why.

Analytical Focus: Distinguishing systemic from societal analysis; applying English School concepts to normative debates about intervention, sovereignty, and order.

Additional Literature 

• • Bull, H. (2002). The anarchical society: A study of order in world politics (3rd ed.). Columbia University Press. 

  • Buzan, B. (2004). From international to world society? English School theory and the social structure of globalisation. Cambridge University Press.  

  • Buzan, B., & Gonzalez-Pelaez, A. (Eds.). (2009). International society and the Middle East: English School theory at the regional level. Palgrave Macmillan.  

  • Dunne, T. (1998). Inventing international society: A history of the English School. St. Martin’s Press.  

  • Navari, C. (2021). International society: The English School. Palgrave Macmillan.  

  • Wheeler, N. J. (2000). Saving strangers: Humanitarian intervention in international society. Oxford University Press.  

  • Wight, M. (1991). International theory: The three traditions. Leicester University Press.  

Week 5: Is International Political Economy a theory of capitalism, power, or inequality?

Core Question: What do critical and materialist approaches illuminate that mainstream International Political Economy frameworks do not?

Key Themes: Marxist IR: historical materialism and the capitalist world system; world-systems theory and the core–periphery hierarchy; Gramscian IR: hegemony, historic blocs, and counter-hegemony; dependency theory and underdevelopment in the Global South; the political economy of global financial institutions and structural adjustment.

Case Sites: The Macro-Structural Site: The cross-border architecture of global value chains, and the legal conditionality texts of IMF structural adjustment lending packages, evaluated as material extraction regimes.

Seminar Exercise: Critical reading workshop: students read extracts from a mainstream IPE text and a critical IPE text examining the same phenomenon, identify the assumptions embedded in each, and construct a comparison of the political and ideological stakes of the two analytical approaches. The workshop also asks students to consider which framework their own intuitions about global economic order most closely resemble, and why.

Analytical Focus: Managing cognitive load by isolating the structural macrosystem of materialist thought; identifying the political assumptions embedded in economic theories; applying materialist and structural frameworks to global economic order.

Additional Literature 

• • Frieden, J. A. (2007). Global capitalism: Its fall and rise in the twentieth century. W. W. Norton.

  • Gilpin, R. (1987). The political economy of international relations. Princeton University Press.

  • Hannah, E., & Ravenhill, J. (Eds.). (2024). Global political economy (7th ed.). Oxford University Press.

  • Oatley, T. (2022). International political economy (7th ed.). Routledge.

  • Pevehouse, J. C. W., & Seabrooke, L. (Eds.). (2025). The Oxford handbook of international political economy. Oxford University Press.

  • Polanyi, K. (1944). The great transformation. Beacon Press.

  • Rodrik, D. (2011). The globalization paradox: Democracy and the future of the world economy. W. W. Norton.

  • Strange, S. (1988). States and markets. Continuum.

MODULE III: Constructivism and Post-Positivist Critiques

Week 6: Does constructivism change what we think power actually is?

Core Question: Where does agency stop and structure begin within the social construction of international politics?

Key Themes: Social construction and the critique of rationalist assumptions about identity and interest; identity, interests, and the logic of appropriateness versus the logic of consequences; norm dynamics: norm emergence, entrepreneurship, diffusion, and internalisation; securitisation theory and the social construction of threats; limits and critiques of constructivism.

Case Sites: The Intersubjective-Ideational Site: The diplomatic texts surrounding the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, and the institutional evolution of NATO’s identity discourse after 1991, evaluated as sites of intersubjective socialisation.

Seminar Exercise: Norm-tracing exercise: students trace the emergence and institutionalisation of a specific international norm (to be assigned), using constructivist frameworks to identify the actors, discourses, and turning points that shaped its diffusion, and assessing where material interests complicate the normative explanation.

Analytical Focus: Applying constructivist concepts to norm change and identity formation; distinguishing constructivist from rationalist explanations of international behaviour.

Additional Literature 

• • Fierke, K. M. (2015). Critical approaches to international security (2nd ed.). Polity.

  • Finnemore, M. (1996). National interests in international society. Cornell University Press.

  • Guzzini, S. (2013). Power, realism and constructivism. Routledge.  

  • Katzenstein, P. J. (Ed.). (1996). The culture of national security: Norms and identity in world politics. Columbia University Press.

  • Kratochwil, F. V. (1989). Rules, norms, and decisions: On the conditions of practical and legal reasoning in international relations and domestic affairs. Cambridge University Press.

  • Lebow, R. N. (2008). A cultural theory of international relations. Cambridge University Press.  

  • McCourt, D. M. (2022). The new constructivism in international relations theory. Bristol University Press.

  • Onuf, N. (1989). World of our making: Rules and rule in social theory and international relations. University of South Carolina Press.

  • Wendt, A. (1999). Social theory of international politics. Cambridge University Press.

Week 7: Do post-structuralist approaches dissolve the possibility of objective IR knowledge?

Core Question: How does post-structuralism answer the realist charge that radical scepticism offers no predictive utility or actionable guidance for high-stakes statecraft?

Key Themes: Foucault, discourse, and power/knowledge in international relations; deconstruction and the critique of sovereign identity and territorial boundedness; the inside/outside distinction and the constitution of political community; critical security studies and the politics of threat construction; the ethics and practical limits of post-structuralist critique.

Case Sites: The Adversarial Discursive Site: The texts of national security strategies alongside the material-tactical outcomes of the "War on Terror" and the "migrant crisis." The site tracks both the linguistic production of the threat and the material constraints (kinetic resistance, resource bottlenecks) that complicate purely discursive arguments.

Seminar Exercise: Adversarial Cross-Examination: Half the seminar acts as post-structuralist analysts deconstructing a state crisis document; the other half acts as realist statecraft advisors. The realists challenge the post-structuralists to provide concrete, actionable policy options for a live kinetic crisis, forcing an explicit debate over whether the critical approach causes policy paralysis or reveals systemic blind spots.

Analytical Focus: Balanced Meta-Theory: Evaluating post-structuralism's capacity to expose power dynamics, while explicitly cross-examining it on the metrics of falsifiability, empirical accountability, and strategic operationalisation.

Additional Literature 

• • Ashley, R. K. (1980). The political economy of war and peace: The Sino-Soviet-American triangle and the modern security problematique. Nichols Publishing Company.

  • Campbell, D. (1992). Writing security: United States foreign policy and the politics of identity. University of Minnesota Press.

  • Der Derian, J., & Shapiro, M. J. (Eds.). (1989). International/Intertextual relations: Postmodern readings of world politics. Lexington Books.

  • Dillon, M. (1996). Politics of security: Towards a political philosophy of continental thought. Routledge.

  • Edkins, J. (1999). Poststructuralism and international relations: Bringing the political back in. Lynne Rienner.

  • Hansen, L. (2006). Security as practice: Discourse analysis and the Bosnian war. Routledge.

  • Prozorov, S. (2021). Biopolitics after truth. Edinburgh University Press.

  • Walker, R. B. J. (1993). Inside/Outside: International relations as political theory. Cambridge University Press.

MODULE IV: Postcolonial Thought, Decolonial Critique, and Digital Power

Week 8: How do postcolonial perspectives reframe the origins of world order?

Core Question: What does postcolonial theory reveal about the genealogy of international order, and how does it respond to the positivist critique that it overemphasises historical narratives over contemporary structural power changes?

Key Themes: Eurocentrism and the colonial foundations of IR theory; colonialism, sovereignty, and the standard of civilisation in nineteenth-century international order; epistemic freedom and the decolonisation of knowledge in IR; Pan-Africanism and Third World internationalism as alternative IR frameworks; postcolonial states, structural dependency, and the politics of recognition.

Case Sites: The Imperial-Epistemic Site: The original transcripts of the 1955 Bandung Conference, and the institutional jurisprudence of the International Criminal Court, evaluated to trace how the "standard of civilisation" is legally and epistemically preserved in modern global statecraft.

Seminar Exercise: Comparative reading: students read a mainstream IR account and a postcolonial account of the same historical episode, analyse the differences in framing, evidence, and normative orientation, and articulate what the postcolonial account illuminates that the mainstream account forecloses. The seminar concludes by asking what it would mean to take the postcolonial critique seriously as a methodological commitment, not merely as an additional perspective.

Analytical Focus: Engaging with postcolonial critiques of IR’s theoretical canon; connecting colonial history to the constitution of contemporary international order through alternative archival readings.

Additional Literature 

• • Chowdhry, G., & Nair, S. (Eds.). (2002). Power, postcolonialism and international relations: Reading race, gender and class. Routledge.

  • Death, C. (2026). African climate futures. Oxford University Press.  

  • Fanon, F. (2004). The wretched of the earth. Grove Press. 

  • Mignolo, W. D., & Walsh, C. E. (2018). On decoloniality: Concepts, analytics, praxis. Duke University Press.

  • Nelson, C., & Grossberg, L. (Eds.). (1988). Marxism and the interpretation of culture. University of Illinois Press.

  • Nkurunziza, K. (2025). Decolonizing global governance: African agency and the politics of reform. Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.

  • Seth, S. (Ed.). (2013). Postcolonial theory and international relations: A critical introduction. Routledge.  

  • Young, R. J. C. (2016). Postcolonialism: An historical introduction. Wiley-Blackwell.

Week 9: Does the digital revolution change the nature of anarchic survival, or does it merely automate existing structural hierarchies?

Core Question: How does the weaponisation of the digital domain challenge traditional state-centric models of hard power, and how do critical approaches expose technology as a site of epistemic control?

Key Themes: Cyber warfare, digital deterrence, and the offensive/defensive balance in digital anarchy; technological determinism versus the social construction of digital threats; algorithmic governance, surveillance capitalism, and data colonialism; information warfare, deepfakes, and the deconstruction of empirical truth; the private sector (Big Tech) as a non-state sovereign challenger.

Case Sites: The Digital-Tactical Site: The Stuxnet cyber-attack, the deployment of Pegasus spyware, and the state-sponsored digital disinformation campaigns surrounding modern kinetic conflicts, evaluated to trace where code functions as an empirical material weapon versus a linguistic reality-shaper.

Seminar Exercise: Strategic Attribution Simulation: Half the class acts as rationalist state security advisors demanding verifiable empirical data to attribute a systemic cyber-shutdown to a rival state. The other half acts as post-structuralist analysts mapping how the state uses the inherent ambiguity of the digital space to construct convenient geopolitical threat narratives and expand domestic surveillance.

Analytical Focus: Evaluating the material reality of cyber-weapons against the discursive construction of threat narratives; testing traditional state-centric security models against decentralized network power and algorithmic authority.

Additional Literature 

• • Balbi, G. (2024). The digital revolution: A short history of an ideology. Oxford University Press.  

  • Bjola, C., & Kornprobst, M. (Eds.). (2023). Digital international relations: Technology, agency and order. Routledge.  

  • Giacomello, G., Moro, F. N., & Valigi, M. (Eds.). (2021). Technology and international relations: The new frontier in global power. Edward Elgar Publishing.  

  • Kello, L. (2017). The virtual weapon and international order. Yale University Press.

  • Scharre, P. (2018). Army of none: Autonomous weapons and the future of war. W. W. Norton.

  • Schmidt, E., & Cohen, J. (2013). The new digital age: Reshaping the future of people, nations and business. Alfred A. Knopf.

  • Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs.

MODULE V: Planetary Limits, Applied Theory, and the Future of World Order

Week 10: Can green theory fundamentally reorient international relations around planetary limits?

Core Question: How does the state-centric international system handle the tension between state sovereignty and transboundary ecological interdependence?

Key Themes: Ecological thought and the critique of IR’s anthropocentrism and state-centrism; environmental security and the securitisation of ecological threats; the commons problem and global environmental governance; climate justice and the global equity dimension of ecological crisis; degrowth, planetary boundaries, and the political economy of sustainability.

Case Sites: The Socio-Ecological Site: The institutional architecture of the Paris Agreement, and the sovereignty contestation over the resource borders of the Amazon basin, evaluated as a structural conflict between ecosystem realities and sovereign-capitalist boundary lines.

Seminar Exercise: Multilateral negotiation simulation (Part One): students represent assigned actors in a structured climate governance negotiation, advancing the interests and normative positions of their assigned actor and engaging with competing proposals. Each student has submitted a position paper in advance setting out the theoretical assumptions their actor embodies.

Analytical Focus: Environmental security analysis; engaging with the tension between state sovereignty and transboundary ecological interdependence; evaluating the explanatory and critical limits of state-centric IR frameworks.

Additional Literature 

• • Eckersley, R. (1992). Environmentalism and political theory: Toward an ecocentric approach. Routledge.

  • Eckersley, R. (2004). The green state: Rethinking democracy and sovereignty. MIT Press.

  • Newell, P. (2021). Power shift: The global political economy of energy transitions. Cambridge University Press.  

  • Paterson, M. (2021). In search of climate politics. Cambridge University Press.  

  • Tobin, P., Paterson, M., & VanDeveer, S. D. (Eds.). (2025). Stability and politicization in climate governance. Cambridge University Press.  

  • Vanhala, L. (2025). Governing the end: The making of climate change loss and damage. University of Chicago Press.  

Week 11: How do IR theories explain concrete global issues: terrorism, development, and globalisation?

Core Question: How do the distinct ways actors conceptualise systemic crises determine the policy responses deemed appropriate, and how do we adjudicate between them when material outcomes conflict?

Key Themes: Terrorism: realist, liberal, constructivist, and postcolonial interpretations and their policy implications; development: liberal modernisation, dependency, and capability approaches; globalisation: hyperglobalist, sceptical, and transformationalist perspectives; the politics of knowledge: who defines problems, who determines solutions, and whose experiences count; theory and policy: the feedback between academic frameworks and political practice.

Case Sites: The Inter-Paradigm Applied Site: The metrics and structural indicators of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the transnational flows of global value chains in East and Southeast Asia, evaluated to demonstrate how the choice of paradigm dictates what is visible as an empirical problem.

Seminar Exercise: Multilateral negotiation simulation (Part Two) and reflective presentation: students continue the simulation from Week 10, reaching or failing to reach negotiated outcomes, and then deliver brief individual reflective presentations examining the theoretical assumptions their assigned actor embodied, what those assumptions determined in the negotiation, and what they foreclosed.

Analytical Focus: Anti-Relativist Integration: Presentations must explicitly reject both artificial synthesis and lazy relativism ("all perspectives are partial"). Instead, students must defend why their framework's core metric (e.g., realist survival vs. postcolonial equity) should take precedence when handling a concrete global crisis.

Additional Literature 

• • Dalio, R. (2021). Principles for dealing with the changing world order: Why nations succeed and fail. Simon & Schuster.

  • Dauncey, E., Desai, V., & Potter, R. B. (Eds.). (2024). The companion to development studies (4th ed.). Routledge.

  • Han, B.-C. (2022). Hyperculture: Culture and globalisation. Polity.

  • Lutz, J. M., & Lutz, B. J. (2019). Global terrorism (4th ed.). Routledge.

  • Sprague, J. (2020). Globalizing the Caribbean: Political economy, social change, and the transnational capitalist class. Temple University Press.

  • Stiglitz, J. E. (2018). Globalization and its discontents revisited: Anti-globalization in the era of Trump. W. W. Norton.

Week 12: Is the world moving towards order, fragmentation, or systemic transformation?

Core Question: What is happening to international order, and what analytical resources are available for making sense of it?

Key Themes: Hegemonic stability, power transition, and the politics of order change; the return of great power competition: realist, liberal, and constructivist interpretations; democratic recession and the challenge to liberal international norms and institutions; transboundary crises and the structural inadequacy of state-centric responses; strategic forecasting: methods, assumptions, and the ethics of political prediction.

Case Sites: The Meta-Theoretical Forecast Site: The structural frictions of US–China strategic competition, and the institutional paralysis of the UN Security Council, utilised as sites to trace how paradigms actively construct alternative futures.

Seminar Exercise: Scenario synthesis workshop: students work in teams to construct two contrasting scenarios for the international order in 2050, grounding each scenario in a coherent theoretical framework and specifying the key variables, driving forces, and normative implications. Teams present their scenarios to the full seminar and respond to critical questioning.

Analytical Focus: The Adversarial Synthesis: Eliminating the risk of a quasi-unified epistemic stance by requiring teams to construct mutually exclusive futures. The workshop explicitly forces a clash between a positivist forecast (based on power transition and structural variables) and a post-positivist scenario (based on systemic transformation and discursive breakdown), demanding that each defend its real-world utility.

Additional Literature 

• • Brands, H. (2026). Geopolitics of AI. Johns Hopkins University Press.

  • Gazmararian, A. F., & Tingley, D. (2023). Uncertain futures: How to face the climate crisis. Cambridge University Press.

  • Milanovic, B. (2019). Capitalism, alone: The future of the system that rules the world. Harvard University Press.

  • Milanovic, B. (2026). The great global transformation. University of Chicago Press.

  • Zeihan, P. (2022). The end of the world is just the beginning: Mapping the collapse of globalization. HarperCollins.

*** This course is designed to be adaptable. The weekly structure, assessment components, and reading load can be adjusted to suit the requirements of a particular higher education institution or the context of individual tutoring, and can be scaled to meet the demands of bachelor’s and master’s degree students alike. The analytical framework and intellectual ambitions of the course remain constant; the format is a starting point, not a constraint.

Updated – June 2026

I have done my utmost to ensure everything is correct, but if you spot any mistakes, please let me know, as I am only human after all. Additionally, if you have a recommendation for another excellent book that could enhance this course, please do share your suggestions.

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