dc.description.abstract
This dissertation revolves around questions of how diverse the International Relations (IR) discipline is and what patterns of dominance are shaping it. I approached these questions through an in-depth study of IR scholarship in eight IR journals published in North America, Latin America, and Europe, and findings from the 2014 TRIP faculty survey as a point of reference. I based my study of the journals’ geographical, thematic, and theoretical diversity on a threefold definition of the term, which distinguishes between the three properties variety, evenness, and dissimilarity. The first refers to the number of regions, theories, and topics studied by a journal and the number of countries of affiliation on which its authorship is based. Evenness refers to the relative intensity with which each of the present regions, theories, and topics are studied and the relative presence of each of the countries of affiliations in the journal. In the context of this dissertation, dissimilarity refers to the relative mix of critical and non- critical theories, the mix of regions under study and the authors based in the Global South and the Global North. The latter has special relevance to the debate on Global IR to which this dissertation contributes.
On the whole, the level of diversity is at a medium level for the journals under study. The published scholarship is rather diverse due to a relatively broad variation of theory and themes as well as regions across the journals under study, but the values do not match the numbers displayed by the survey respondents across the globe which suggest a higher degree of diversity. The values tend to be lower for the individual journals. This is especially the case when looking beyond the standard property variety. In fact, while some of the journals cover a wide range of theories (FI, ISQ, and EJIR), topics (APSR and ISQ), and regions (all journals), none of the journals scored a high level of evenness or dissimilarity for any of the areas of investigation. Following my definition of dominance as low evenness and/or dissimilarity, I can conclude that there are a number of cases of dominance with a potential impact on the discipline at large.
The strongest pattern in regard to geographical authorship diversity is the dominance of US-based authors in IO, ISQ, APSR, and BJPolS that is accompanied by a strong presence of US-based authors in FI and EJIR. The dominance of US-based authors in the three North American journals speaks of high insularity, confirming a number of earlier studies on this subject. Overall, authors based at Western institutions dominate the field as they demonstrate a relatively strong presence in all journals under study, even in Latin American EI and FI. These two journals are also strongly characterized by a local authorship but there is an important difference in terms of authorship insularity between these two journals and those edited in North America. Despite the large number of Latin American authors in the Latin American journal, there are also many articles by authors based in Europe and North America, while the opposite cannot be said for the rest of the journals. The stream of authors based in the West, and especially the US, to other regions of the world seems to be a one-way street. On the other hand, it is this strong presence of authors based in the West that leads to the formation of a probably unintended island of diversity at EI and FI. The relatively high level of authorship dissimilarity they display seems impossible to create in any of the other regions and journals under study. The findings on Western dominance in regard to geographical authorship and content dissimilarity are in line with the perceptions of a majority of IR scholars according to the 2014 TRIP survey.
The case study on German IR demonstrated that the German IR community has a distinct profile characterized by a strong preference for theoretical pluralism and empirical diversity, which is visible in both the 2014 TRIP survey data and the analysis of ZIB. The case study confirmed that the German IR community is strongly internationalized and rather comfortable in its position as a strong national research community with firm connections to the global and the U.S. community. This is in line with the relatively strong presence of Germany-based authors in almost all of the journals under study included the comparative case study. In addition, the German profile is relatively close to what is published in EJIR.
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