A Sociological Analysis of the Decline of American IR Theory

In recent years the centrality of grand, paradigmatic theory in American IR has eroded, with the vacuum being filled by largely atheoretical “hypothesis-testing” research. Although a heated debate has emerged on whether it is good or bad for IR, hardly anyone has tried to analyze this trend. I offer an analysis grounded in a conceptual framework elaborated by sociologist Richard Whitley. In the 1980s and 1990s IR approximated the type of social...