This volume draws on the work of international scholars from diverse perspectives to provide a timely, focused debate on the future of realist theory in international relations. Part I presents novel contributions to realist theory building, including suggested elaborations of Mearsheimer's offensive realist variant, a reconsideration of the role of revisionism in structural realist theory, a bridge to the English School of international relations, and a critique of trends in realist theorizing since the end of the Cold War. In part II, structural and neoclassical realists provide empirical analyses of foreign policy behavior, the role of geopolitics, and the grand strategies of major powers. The chapters in part III assess the viability of the ways forward for realism from realist, critical, and feminist perspectives. This tightly integrated intellectual exchange presents a transnational overview of the evolution and potential future of the realist paradigm. The volume editors conclude with an assessment of the current state of realism and suggest ways for the debate to progress.

Realism and constructivism, two key contemporary theoretical approaches to the study of international relations, are commonly taught as mutually exclusive ways of understanding the subject. Realist Constructivism explores the common ground between the two, and demonstrates that, rather than being in simple opposition, they have areas of both tension and overlap. There is indeed space to engage in a realist constructivism. But at the same time, there are important distinctions between them, and there remains a need for a constructivism that is not realist, and a realism that is not constructivist. Samuel Barkin argues more broadly for a different way of thinking about theories of international relations, that focuses on the corresponding elements within various approaches rather than on a small set of mutually exclusive paradigms. Realist Constructivism provides an interesting new way for scholars and students to think about international relations theory.

In this thought-provoking book, Bertrand Badie argues that the traditional paradigms of international relations are no longer sustainable, and that ignorance of these shifting systems and of alternative models is a major source of contemporary international conflict and disorder. Through a clear examination of the political, historical and social context, Badie illuminates the challenges and possibilities of an ‘intersocial’ and multilateral approach to international relations.

International Relations (IR) theorists have ceaselessly sought to understand, explain, and transform the experienced reality of international politics. Running through all these attempts is a persistent, yet unquestioned, quest by theorists to develop strategies to eliminate or reduce the antinomies, contradictions, paradoxes, dilemmas, and inconsistencies dogging their approaches. A serious critical assessment of the logic behind these strategies is however lacking. This new work addresses this issue by seeking to reformulate IR theory in an original way. Arfi begins by providing a thorough critique of leading contemporary IR theories, including pragmatism, critical/scientific realism, rationalism, neo-liberal institutionalism and social-constructivism, and then moves on to strengthen and go beyond the valuable contributions of each approach by employing the logic of deconstruction pioneered by Derrida to explicate the consequences of taking into account the dilemmas and inconsistencies of these theories. The book demonstrates that the logic of deconstruction is resourceful and rigorous in its questioning of the presuppositions of prevailing IR approaches, and argues that relying on deconstruction leads to richer and more powerfully insightful pluralist IR theories and is an invaluable resource for taking IR theory beyond currently paralyzing ‘wars of paradigms’. Questioning universally accepted presuppositions in existing theories, this book provides an innovative and exciting contribution to the field, and will be of great interest to scholars of international relations theory, critical theory and international relations.

Stunning shifts in the worldviews of states mark the modern history of international affairs: how do societies think about—and rethink—international order and security? Japan's "opening," German conquest, American internationalism, Maoist independence, and Gorbachev's "new thinking" molded international conflict and cooperation in their eras. How do we explain such momentous changes in foreign policy—and in other cases their equally surprising absence?The nature of strategic ideas, Jeffrey W. Legro argues, played a critical and overlooked role in these transformations. Big changes in foreign policies are rare because it is difficult for individuals to overcome the inertia of entrenched national mentalities. Doing so depends on a particular nexus of policy expectations, national experience, and ready replacement ideas. In a sweeping comparative history, Legro explores the sources of strategy in the United States and Germany before and after the world wars, in Tokugawa Japan, and in the Soviet Union. He charts the likely future of American primacy and a rising China in the coming century. Rethinking the World tells us when and why we can expect changes in the way states think about the world, why some ideas win out over others, and why some leaders succeed while others fail in redirecting grand strategy.

This book provides an important reappraisal of the concept of human nature in contemporary realist international-political theory. Developing a Freudian philosophical anthropology for political realism, he argues for the careful resurrection of the concept of human nature in the wider study of international relations.

Beer and Hariman provide a coherent set of essays that trace and challenge the tradition of realism which has dominated the thinking of academics and practitioners alike. These timely essays set out a systematic investigation of the major realist writers of the Post- War era, the foundational concepts of international politics, and representative case studies of political discourse.