Realism In International Relations The Making Of A Disarrayed Tradition Mehmet Tabak by Mehmet Tabak 9783031832260, 3031832264 instant download after payment.

A pervasive view in the discipline of International Relations (IR) makes two related claims: 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. Tabak critiques both aspects of this pervasive view by illustrating that realism is both a relatively recent tradition and a disarrayed one. In other words, he argues that the realist tradition entails conscious membership and participation in a common "realist" discourse that has produced fundamentally different, even opposing, methodologies and theories about the same or related phenomena in international politics. In order to illustrate this argument, Tabak critically explores a variety of seminal statements of, and debates about, realism. This exploration reveals that the conceptual and theoretical shortcomings of the major statements of realism significantly explain why realism evolved as a disarrayed tradition. Overall, this book makes an important contribution to the understanding of realism in particular and IR in general. The comprehensive and critical analysis of many facets of realism Tabak's book offers also yields a rich body of didactic elements, which can significantly benefit the students and teachers of international politics.