How does the “English School” of international relations differ from American approaches?
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date published 09/02/2008
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SummaryAccording to Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time, "a theory is a good theory
if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on
the basis of a model which contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite
predictions about the results of future observations". This definition is of course one that
comes from a scholar of physics, a science where the ability of a theory to predict is a
fundamental element ensuring its survival. It nevertheless demonstrates the rigorous scrutiny
a claim carrying the label of a "theory" undergoes independent of the discipline it belongs to.
The field of international relations (IR) has thus been subjected to the same strict
requirements and demands for empirical proof and outcome prediction. These demands,
could be argued, have been the main challenge the discipline has brought upon itself once it
crossed into the "science" realm and established departments of "political science" in major
research universities across the West. Perspectives on what IR really stands for, its direction
and aim are now ideologically and geographically divided and frozen in a state of
"isolationist dogmatism". This is mainly due to the peculiar situation the IR field has gotten
itself into - while attempting to explain world dynamics on a grand scale and provide answers
to questions pertaining to the nature of human actions and behavior, it has become victim to
those very subject matters it tries to understand. "Human nature" and "science" are two
concepts which are difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile, and in its attempt to do so IR has
produced some very interesting debates, such as the one between the English and American
approaches to deciphering global patterns of human behavior.
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