International Relations and Area Studies

The Global IR research agenda lays emphasis on the marginalised, non-Western forms of power and knowledge that underpin today’s international system. Focusing on Africa, this chapter questions two fundamental assumptions of this approach, arguing that they err by excess of realism—in two different ways. First, the claim that Africa is marginal to IR thinking holds true only as long as one makes the whole of IR discipline coincide with the Realist school. Second, the Global IR commitment to better appreciate “non-Western” contributions is ontologically realist, because it fails to recognise that the West and the non-West are dialectically constitutive of one another. To demonstrate this, the chapter first shows that Africa has moved from the periphery to the core of IR scholarship: in the post-paradigmatic phase, Africa is no longer a mere provider of deviant cases, but a laboratory for theory-building of general validity. In the second part, the Sahel provides a case for unsettling reified conceptions of Africa’s conceptual and geographical boundaries through the dialectical articulation of the inside/outside dichotomy. Questioning the “place” of Africa in IR—both as identity and function—thus paves the way to a “less realist” approach to Global IR.

This chapter investigates the post-2011 changing relationship between International Relations (IR) and Middle Eastern Studies (MES). The chapter departs from the assumption that the reading and writing of security in, on, and from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has historically been trapped between projection of security from abroad and endogenous security narratives. We argue that within the post-Arab uprisings renewed scholarly attention, with studies on security in, on, and from the MENA region expressing an all-time methodological pluralism and the increasing and original application of bottom-up and non-military security understandings to regional security, societal and human security are among the most promising notions for transformative dialogue between IR and MES. In broader theoretical terms, we show how the ongoing debate on post-Weberian notions of statehood and post-Westphalian sovereignty point to an already transformative dialogue between IR and MES. The chapter illustrates this trend with two case studies—Tunisia and Iraq—pointing to changing security concepts reflecting changing security practices.

Regionalisms and regional organizations quickly unfold since the end of the twentieth century and have increased their actorness. The early outlines of a shifting global order have been tainted by an increasing regionalization of international phenomena. Though, regions, regionalisms and regional organizations are constantly put into question as pertinent objects to grab international politics. The difficulties to grasp common ontological and epistemological approximations of the regional phenomena limited the capacity to take those objects into better account. The chapter argues that a middle path approach between International Relations and Area Studies can help overcoming these hurdles. A political sociology approach applied to the study of regions, regionalisms, and regional organizations is useful and meaningful to connect international relations theories and area studies. In this chapter, I apply this approach to a specific world region, Latin America, and to a narrower exploration of the Central American regionalism. This single-case study will be helpful to extend avenues for future comparative research.

International Practice Theory (IPT) has established a new paradigm that puts practitioners’ quotidian doings front and centre of International Relations (IR) theorising. It is proving to be an influential development also for Area Studies (AS) that share much of IR’s scholarship and objects of study. This is certainly the case for European Studies (ES) as the works of IPT scholars have raised attention to situated, mundane and everyday practices of EU institutions. This chapter reviews the contribution of IPT scholars to ES to assess the added value of this research agenda and its potential to become a “trading zone” where IR and AS scholars can advance their understanding of how the local and the global connect. It also identifies two challenges that have not been adequately addressed in the extant literature: (1) finding ways to theorise and empirically observe the transition from situated to global practices (generalisation challenge); and (2) assessing the exact role of interaction in structuring and transforming both the global and the local (challenge of relationism). The chapter ends by calling for a Global Practice Theory (GPT) as a way to tackle these two challenges.

The chapter argues that education is relevant for both domestic and international reasons and without an incorporation of the international within the national it is not possible to understand education’s changes and transformations in post-conflict and conflict-affected contexts. The chapter aims to connect the local to the global by investigating their dynamic interaction through the peculiar lenses of international assistance to education reform in post-conflict Kosovo. It asks two questions: (1) How do global agendas of peace and security affect education reforms in conflict-affected contexts?; (2) How does education reform in conflict-affected contexts interact with and is related to broader, international dynamics, processes and actors? More specifically, the chapter analyses the role of international actors in traditionally national sectors and the multi-layered, hybrid governance of education reform within a broader statebuilding, peacebuilding and stabilisation perspective. The analysis is divided into two empirical instances: (i) education for liberal multicultural peace (1999–2013) and (ii) education against violent extremism and radicalisation (2014–2019). The chapter sheds light on the globalisation and securitisation of education as well as the changing forms and practice of statehood and sovereignty in times of post-war reconstruction and fragility. A threat-containment and security-based logic has dictated priorities and determined choices in education reform and content. The following chapter was partially published in the Special Issue of the Italian Political Science Review titled ‘Reaching for allies? The dialectics and overlaps between International Relations and Area Studies in the study of politics, security and conflicts’), with the title ‘Analysing a non-IR field through IR lenses. Education in post-conflict Kosovo’, https://​www.​cambridge.​org/​core/​journals/​italian-political-science-review-rivista-italiana-di-scienza-politica/​article/​analysing-a-nonir-field-through-ir-lenses-education-in-postconflict-kosovo/​9911711C02362C54​36DE787940126B71​.

This chapter deals with a question foregrounded by historian Willem van Schendel in his seminal 2002 article “Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance”: how do arms and associated regulatory practices reshape the geometries of authority and power in borderlands? The rich literature on borderlands has deployed van Schendel’s insights to respatialise areas and states but has devoted scant attention to such questions. Drawing from “new materialist” scholarship in IR and the concept of scale in political geography, the chapter argues that fluid and fractionally coherent combinations of weapons as technical objects, rationalities, and techniques of arms control reproduce multiple scales of territorial authority and struggles over scaled modes of governing violence in borderlands. Such struggles constantly reconfigure the territorial arenas of authority on violence at the edge of the state. Delving into the processes and practices of “making” and controlling the “landmine”, different socio-political orders confront themselves through rationalities, techniques and practices of humanitarian arms control via which they navigate/jump across scales, forge new ones, or mobilise multi-scalar alliances. Different types of “dead” and “alive” landmines nonetheless defy these attempts at rescaling territorial authority over violence by acting in unforeseen manners at the scale of their own ecologies of violence.

There are two “tribes” that do not communicate very well with each other: these are the quantitative and qualitative scholars in International Relations (IR) (and Political Science in general). The difficult dialogue between these two groups can be extended to the troubled relationship between quantitative IR researchers and Area Studies scholars that, as a rule, prefers qualitative approaches and to draw insights from several disciplines, such as history, cultural studies, economics, geography, literary, and language studies, to elaborate a comprehensive explanation of a single case. The divide is broad and, in many cases, difficult to close. The two groups look at one another with circumspection, attributing the worst negative trait to the opposite party: to produce irrelevant knowledge based on statistical manipulation of trivial (but easily operationalizable) variables without policy relevance (the main accusation to quantitative analysis); to look only at their own backyard, producing not generalizable/cumulative knowledge (the main accusation to Area Studies). Putting aside reciprocal acrimonies, some patterns of cooperation are possible and can be mutually fruitful.

This chapter discusses lessons learned and draws conclusions based on the contributions presented in the previous chapters. It does so while also offering a reflection on how the academic debate between IR and AS applies in the case of the post-Soviet area and what it can tell us to better understand a region currently theatre of the war between Russia and Ukraine. The chapter specifically focuses on dynamics of knowledge production and dissemination about the region, and their relationship with the policy world. On a conclusive note, we discuss some current challenges of the field and some potential avenues for future research.