Realism in International Relations: The Making of a Disarrayed Tradition

According to a pervasive view in the discipline of International Relations (IR): a) realism is a historical tradition, stretching all the way back to Thucydides; b) despite the important theoretical differences among themselves, realists uphold the same set of core beliefs about the workings of international politics. Together, these two claims amount to the perspective that realism is a sui generis scholarly tradition with ancient origins. The author critiques both aspects of this view by ...