behavioural approaches to IR.

The third – the ‘interparadigm debate’ was meant to be occurring right now in the
The origins of International Relations 1980s, and explained IR theory as a clash of three different paradigms: (neo-)realism, liberalism and structuralism.
As time went on the great debates model expanded to include new paradigms.
Written by Lucian Ashworth. The great debates origins story re-envisioned IR as composed of clearly separate paradigms, and despite minor
changes over the years (textbooks now tend to either include a long list of separate paradigms, or order them under
Origins matter. The stories we tell about when something began are used to define it. When it comes to societies
the three major headings of realism, liberalism and constructivism), it is the orthodox view of the origins of IR. The
this statement would be seen by many as redundant. The United States’ use of the ‘Spirit of 1776’ to define its
First World War leads to the ascendency of liberalism, which is challenged by realism in the 1930s and 1940s in the
politics, of both the right and the left, is a good example of this. Yet, this is not unique to nations, as the deployment
first great debate. Realism then goes through a second methodological debate, before dividing in the third inter-
of ‘founding principles’ in political parties demonstrates. Despite this, it is harder to sell the idea that academic
paradigm debate from the 1980s onwards.
disciplines work under the same logic. After all, logical and rational thought should not be defined by emotive
appeals to an origin moment or to founding principles. Yet, as human societies in the stream of time, disciplines are
Origin stories tell us more about the time in which they are told, and frequently are just plain wrong about the past
no more immune from the appeal of origin narratives as any other society. These stories have their uses: they pull
they use. So it is with the great debates myth. It is already pretty common knowledge that there was no realist-
together an otherwise disparate community spread over both space and time, and help give structure and definition
idealist ‘great debate’, but then again it was never the intention of the great debate story to understand the past.
to the topic in need of explanation. Origin narratives play an important role in helping us understand our world, but
The idea was to explain what was happening to IR in the 1980s. The great debate story, along with the Westphalia
they are also gatekeeping devices that can unnecessarily exclude.
origin story, became the standard story told in IR textbooks, fusing into the standard IR origin narrative of an
emerging system of states after 1648, and then a series of debates in the twentieth century that gave us the
International Relations (IR) has several origin stories, some of which are stronger than others. Each can be linked
discipline of IR. This, in turn, allowed IR courses to lay out IR theory as a series of competing paradigms.
to a particular way of framing the discipline. Yet, there is one origin story that is missing, and our failure to tell that
story is currently hampering our ability to think outside of our particular theoretical box. To a certain degree origin
Yet, there was a cost to this coherence. The paradigmised IR of the Great Debates story was one where the
stories are essential to our definition of what it is that we should be doing. In this sense they are a necessary
complexities of the past were sacrificed, and several approaches found themselves simply written out of the story.
precondition for doing IR. Yet, with a few exceptions, what has been lacking in IR is a critical self-awareness of
Amongst these victims of exclusion was the classical realism of Morgenthau, Herz, and Niebuhr. Instead, these
these stories. From our first textbooks we are told a story of how IR became what it is, and few in the field choose to
major figures in mid-twentieth century IR were reclassified as forebears of a neorealist paradigm that bore little
check to see if the stories have any validity. Yes, we need origin stories, but we also need to maintain a scepticism
relation to classical realism. Paradigmised IR, by setting up clear distinctions between paradigms, often over-
lest a good servant becomes a bad master.
emphasises the similarities of authors classified as part of the same paradigm (the differences between Morgenthau
and Carr for example), while at the same time playing up the differences between authors in competing paradigms
International thought in the last hundred years has toggled through quite a number of origin stories. Perhaps the
(the common ground between Morgenthau and Mitrany is often completely ignored). At one level there is certainly
earliest – emerging in the late nineteenth century, but not gathering a full head of steam until the 1930s and 1940s –
nothing wrong with simplification for the sake of coherence and understanding, as long as we treat the simplification
was the notion of the study of international affairs as a product of late nineteenth century industrialization and
as merely a tool, and not allow it to master us. To do this it helps to understand the origin of these origin narratives
imperialism. Now, out of fashion in IR, this notion of the origin of IR in nineteenth century industrialization has been
that discipline the discipline, and to constantly question them.
given a fresh boost by the work of Barry Buzan and George Lawson. It has also remained a common trope in
International Political Economy. In this origin story the matter of IR revolved around the growth of interdependence,
And it is here that the last of our origin stories comes in: the one that we do not see. In its short history IR has
technological change and the communications revolution. In its later stages it influenced the idea that the
looked to origin stories that root the field in 1648, the later nineteenth century, 1919, 1939, and the late 1940s. If,
technology of weapons of mass destruction had fundamentally altered the nature of IR. It was in this form that this
though, we take IR to consist of the paradigmised field based around the great debate myths then really IR is far
origin story became part of Morgenthau’s view of the obsolescence of the system of states.
younger than that. IR dates from the 1980s. Once we recognise that IR as we currently construct it in textbooks is
only thirty-odd years old, and that the categories and stories we tell first year students were created recently, it
The idea of 1919 as a watershed seems to emerge before the peace treaties were even signed. This ‘Spirit of 1919’
becomes possible to see what has been excluded.
is present in the work of Halford Mackinder, and still had resonance in works written just before and during the
Second World War. Sometimes appeasement and the crisis that led up to the Second World war were incorporated
Lucian M. Ashworth Memorial University of Newfoundland
into this narrative as the final unravelling of the 1919 peace. The idea of 1919 as the origin date was associated
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with the view that IR was designed to understand the nature and causes of war.

Following the 1948 tercentenary of the Peace of Westphalia it became common to also talk about 1648 as an origin
date. Here the emphasis was on the idea of the state system as the primary subject matter for IR. Like the idea of a
1919 watershed, the 1648 one concentrated on the idea of the causes of war as the central issue, but here the
emphasis shifted to understanding war as part of the workings of a system of sovereign states. The long continuity
of the Westphalian system could be praised by conservatives, who mourned its passing, or condemned by radicals
as the source of the ills of the last three centuries.

Finally, in the 1980s the origin story for IR took a further twist when it was worked into the story of the three great
debates. Although the idea of a realist-idealist confrontation had been part of the 1919 origin narrative after the
Second World War (taking its cue from Carr’s brilliant, yet flawed, 1939 polemic), the concept of a formal and
sustained realist-idealist intellectual debate did not really appear until the mid-1980s. In attempting to understand
what seemed to be an increasingly eclectic and ‘dividing discipline’ (to use Kal Holsti’s phrase), two new debates
were added. The second, occurring in the 1960s, was a methodological one that explained the growth of
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