Political Thought, International Relations theory and International Political Theory: an interpretation
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117817723062 |
| Author | Chris Brown |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117817723062
International Relations
2017, Vol. 31(3) 227 –240
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117817723062
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Political Thought,
International Relations
theory and International
Political Theory: an
interpretation
Chris Brown
London School of Economics and Political Science
Abstract
The relationship between political theory, including the history of political thought, and
International Relations theory, including the history of international thought, has been, and to
some extent remains, complex and troubled. On both sides of the Atlantic, the mid-twentieth
century founders of International Relations as an academic discipline drew extensively on
the canon of political thought, but approached the subject in an uncritical way, while political
philosophers largely disdained the international as a focus. This changed in the 1970s and 1980s,
with the emergence of the ‘justice industry’ based on critiques of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice and a
consequent recovering of the past history of cosmopolitan and communitarian thought. A new
discourse emerged in this period – International Political Theory – bridging the gap between
political thought and international relations and stimulating a far more creative and scholarly
approach to the history of international thought. However, in a social science environment
dominated by the methods of economics, that is, formal theory and quantification, the new
discourse of International Political Theory occupies a niche rather than existing at the centre of
the discipline.
Keywords
Cambridge School, English School, history of political thought, intellectual history, International
Political Theory, International Relations theory, John Rawls, political science, social choice
theory
Corresponding author:
Chris Brown, Department of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science,
Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: c.j.brown@lse.ac.uk
723062IRE0010.1177/0047117817723062International RelationsBrown
research-article2017
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