Encyclopedia of International Relations and Global Politics

The study of international relations has changed rapidly in recent years. Firstly as a consequence of major political and economic change – the end of the cold war and the fall of communism, the resurgence of nationalism, terrorism and forms of fundamentalism, globalization – and secondly, linked with these developments, because of the vitality of the discipline, with ongoing debates on the fundamental paradigms for the understanding of international relations and the emergence of the persp...