Review Article: International Political Theory Today
| Author | Chris Brown |
| Date | 01 January 2017 |
| Published date | 01 January 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829816672316 |
| Subject Matter | Solicited Article |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829816672316
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2017, Vol. 45(2) 193 –200
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829816672316
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Review Article: International
Political Theory Today
Chris Brown
Department of International Relations, London School of Economics, UK
Abstract
The four books under review offer very different takes on the nature of International Political
Theory, but still display certain, cross-cutting, similarities. The books under review are:
Jack L. Amoureux, A Practice of Ethics for Global Politics: Ethical Reflexivity (London: Routledge,
2016, 268pp. £90).
Michael W. Doyle, The Question of Intervention: John Stuart Mill & the Responsibility to Protect (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2015, 272pp. £58.99).
Renée Jeffery, Reason and Emotion in International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2014, 252pp. £69.99).
Michael Walzer, The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015, 172pp. £16.99).
Keywords
ethics, cosmopolitanism, nationalism
The founders of the academic study of International Relations (IR) in the early 20th cen-
tury understood what they were doing as involving explanatory, interpretative, norma-
tive, and prescriptive dimensions, and this multi-layered account of the discipline
remained current through the upheavals of the 1930s and during the dominance of
‘realism’ in the post-1945 era. Gradually, however, from the 1960s onwards, explana-
tory theory came to be privileged by the mainstream of the discipline at the expense
of the other three aforementioned dimensions – neopositivist IR became the norm.
Corresponding author:
Chris Brown, Department of International Relations, London School of Economics, Houghton St., London
WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: c.j.brown@lse.ac.uk
672316MIL0010.1177/0305829816672316Millennium: Journal of International StudiesBrown
research-article2016
Solicited Article
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