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The Global Division of Labor in a Not So Global Discipline

Year 2022, Volume: 11 Issue: 1, 3 - 27, 19.01.2022
https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.1034358

Abstract

Several studies have pointed to an unproductive ‘division of labor’ in the International Relations discipline (IR), notably its publication patterns, in which scholars based in a ‘core’ publish theory-building work while scholars based in a ‘periphery’ publish mainly empirical, area-oriented, or theory-testing work. The latter would thus mainly act as ‘local informants’ feeding empirical material on ‘their own’ country or region into the theorizing efforts of the ‘core’. We investigate this argument empirically using the dataset compiled by the Global Pathways (GP) project that studies the content in both ‘core’- and ‘periphery’-based and edited journals. Overall, our findings corroborate the argument about a core-periphery division of labor. Our main findings are threefold: (1) In terms of theory, we find that ‘core’ journals publish a larger proportion of theory-developing (and statistical) work and a lower proportion of analytical case studies and descriptive work than do ‘periphery’ journals. Scholars based in the ‘periphery’ are rarely published in these more theoretical ‘core’ journals (accounting for just 5.5% of articles in the journals studied here), but the published articles tend to apply theory. The main division of labor is thus not playing out within ‘core’ journals, but across the ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ worlds of publishing. In the ‘periphery’ journals, we actually find that scholars tend to publish a significant proportion of work using theory. (2) In terms of regional focus, we find that all journals and authors tend to have an empirical ‘home bias’, i.e. focus their empirical work on the region in which they are based, but that this is stronger for ‘periphery’-based journals and authors. This provides some confirmation of an unproductive division of labor where ‘core’ authors publish works about all regions of the globe, while 'periphery' authors have a stronger regional orientation. (3) Finally, we find evidence that some journals and authors – particularly those based in Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia – tend to be more policy-oriented, but we find no conclusive evidence of a core-periphery gap in this context.

References

  • Acharya, Amitav. “Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds.” International Studies Quarterly 58 (2014): 647–59.
  • Acharya, Amitav, and Barry Buzan, eds. The Making of Global International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
  • ———. Non-Western International Relations Theory. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.
  • Agathangelou, Anna M., and L. H. M. Ling. “The House of IR: From Family Power Politics to the Poisies of Worldism.” International Studies Review 6, no. 4 (2004): 21–49.
  • Alejandro, Audrey. “Diversity for and by Whom? Knowledge Production and the Management of Diversity in International Relations.” International Politics Review (2021). doi: 10.1057/s41312-021-00114-0.
  • ———. Western Dominance in International Relations?: The Internationalisation of IR in Brazil and India. London; New York: Routledge, 2018.
  • Aydinli, Ersel, and Gonca Biltekin. Widening the World of International Relations: Homegrown Theorizing. London: Routledge, 2018.
  • Aydinli, Ersel, and Julie Mathews. “Are the Core and Periphery Irreconcilable? The Curious World of Publishing in Contemporary International Relations.” International Studies Perspectives 1 (2000): 289–303.
  • ———. “Periphery Theorising for a Truly Internationalised Discipline: Spinning IR Theory Out of Anatolia.” Review of International Studies 34 (2008): 693–712.
  • Buzan, Barry. “How and How Not to Develop IR Theory: Lessons from Core and Periphery.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 11 (2018): 391–414.
  • Capan, Zeynep Gulsah. “Decolonising International Relations?” Third World Quarterly 38, no. 1 (2017): 1–15.
  • Chen, Ching-Chang. “The Absence of Non-Western IR Theory in Asia Reconsidered.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 11 (2011): 1–23.
  • Crawford, Robert, and Darryl Jarvis. International Relations: Still an American Social Science? Albany: SUNY Press, 2001.
  • Colgan, Jeff D. “Where Is International Relations Going? Evidence from Graduate Training.” International Studies Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2016): 486–98.
  • Dunne, Tim, Lene Hansen, and Colin Wight. “The End of International Relations Theory?” European Journal of International Relations 19 (2013): 405–25.
  • Ergin, Murat, and Aybike Alkan. “Academic Neo-Colonialism in Writing Practices: Geographic Markers in Three Journals from Japan, Turkey and the US.” Geoforum 104 (2019): 259–66.
  • Eun, Yong-Soo. “Beyond ‘the West/Non-West Divide’ in IR.” Chinese Journal of International Politics 11 (2018): 435–49.
  • ———. “Opening up the Debate over ‘Non-Western’ International Relations’.” Politics 39 (2019): 4–17.
  • Gelardi, Maiken. “Moving Global IR Forward – A Road Map.” International Studies Review 22, no. 4 (2020): 830–52.
  • Goldmann, Kjell. “Im Westen Nichts Neues: Seven International Relations Journals in 1972 and 1992.” European Journal of International Relations 1, no. 2 (1995): 245–58.
  • Hagmann Jonas, and Thomas Biersteker. “Beyond the Published Discipline: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of International Studies.” European Journal of International Relations 20, no. 2 (2014): 291–315.
  • Hamati-Ataya, Inanna. “IR Theory as International Practice/Agency: A Clinical-Cynical Bourdieusian Perspective.” Millennium 40 (2012): 625–46.
  • Hellmann, Gunther. “Interpreting International Relations.” International Studies Review 19 (2017): 296–99.
  • Hendrix, Cullen S., and Jon Vreede. “US Dominance in International Relations and Security Scholarship in Leading Journals.” Journal of Global Security Studies 4, no. 3 (2019): 310–20.
  • Hoffmann, Stanley. “An American Social Science: International Relations.” Daedalus 106 (1977): 41–60.
  • Holsti, Kalevi. The Dividing Discipline. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1985.
  • Kapoor, Ilan. “Hyper‐self‐reflexive Development? Spivak on Representing the Third World ‘Other’.” Third World Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2004): 627–47.
  • Koeijer, Valerie de, and Robbie Shilliam. “Forum: International Relations as a Geoculturally Pluralistic Field.” International Politics Reviews (2021). doi: 10.1057/s41312-021-00112-2.
  • Kristensen, Peter Marcus. “How Can Emerging Powers Speak? On Theorists, Native Informants and Quasi-Officials in International Relations Discourse.” Third World Quarterly 36 (2015): 637–53.
  • ———. “Revisiting the ‘American Social Science’ - Mapping the Geography of International Relations.” International Studies Perspectives 16 (2015): 246–69.
  • ———. “The South in ‘Global IR’: Worlding Beyond the ‘Non-West’ in the Case of Brazil.” International Studies Perspectives 22 (2021): 218–39.
  • Lohaus, Mathis, and Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar. “Who Publishes Where? Exploring the Geographic Diversity of Global IR Journals.” International Studies Review 23, no. 3 (2021): 645–69.
  • Lohaus, Mathis, Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar, and Olivia Ding. “Bifurcated Core, Diverse Scholarship: IR Research in 17 Journals around the World.” Global Studies Quarterly 1, no. 4 (2021). doi: 10.1093/isagsq/ksab033.
  • Makarychev, Andrey, and Viatcheslav Morozov. “Is ‘Non-Western Theory’ Possible? The Idea of Multipolarity and the Trap of Epistemological Relativism in Russian IR.” International Studies Review 15 (2013): 328–50.
  • Maliniak, Daniel, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael J. Tierney. “International Relations in the US Academy.” International Studies Quarterly 55 (2011): 437–64.
  • Maliniak, Daniel, Susan Peterson, Ryan Powers & Michael J. Tierney. “Is International Relations a Global Discipline? Hegemony, Insularity, and Diversity in the Field.” Security Studies 27, no. 3 (2018): 448–84.
  • Mokry, Sabine. “Chinese International Relations (IR) Scholars’ Publishing Practices and Language: The ‘Peaceful Rise’-Debate.” In Globalizing International Relations - Scholarship Amidst Dives and Diversity, edited by Ingo Peters and Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar, 135–63. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
  • Mosbah-Natanson, Sébastien, and Yves Gingras. “The Globalization of Social Sciences? Evidence from a Quantitative Analysis of 30 Years of Production, Collaboration and Citations in the Social Sciences (1980–2009).” Current Sociology 62, no. 5 (2014): 626–46.
  • Neuman, Stephanie G. International Relations Theory and the Third World. Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.
  • Noda, Orion. “Epistemic Hegemony: The Western Straitjacket and Post-Colonial Scars in Academic Publishing.” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 63, no. 1 (2020): 1–23.
  • Picq, Manuela. “Rethinking IR from the Amazon.” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 59 (2016): 1–17.
  • Puchala, Donald J. “Some Non-Western Perspectives on International Relations.” Journal of Peace Research 34 (1997): 129–34.
  • Qin, Yaqing, ed. Globalizing IR Theory: Critical Engagement. London: Routledge, 2020.
  • Risse, Thomas, Frank Havemann, and Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar. “Theory Makes Global IR Hang Together. Lessons from Citation Analysis.” Freie Universität Berlin Repository (2020). doi: 10.17169/refubium-28510.
  • Shilliam, Robbie. International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of Global Modernity. London: Taylor & Francis, 2010.
  • Smith, Steve. “The Discipline of International Relations: Still an American Social Science?” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 2 (2000): 374–402.
  • Thomas, Caroline, and Peter Wilkin. “Still Waiting after All These Years: ‘The Third World’ on the Periphery of International Relations.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 6 (2004): 241–58.
  • Tickner, Arlene. “Core, Periphery and (Neo) Imperialist International Relations.” European Journal of International Relations 19 (2013): 627–46.
  • ———. “Latin American IR and the Primacy of Lo Práctico.” International Studies Review 10 (2008): 735–48.
  • ———. “Seeing IR Differently: Notes from the Third World.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 32 (2003): 295–324.
  • Tickner, Arlene, and Ole Wæver. International Relations Scholarship Around the World. London: Routledge, 2009.
  • Turton, Helen. International Relations and American Dominance: A Diverse Discipline. London: Routledge, 2015.
  • ———. “Locating a Multifaceted and Stratified Disciplinary ‘Core.’” All Azimuth 9, no. 2 (2020): 177–209.
  • Turton, Helen, and Lucas Freire. “Peripheral Possibilities: Revealing Originality and Encouraging Dialogue through a Reconsideration of ‘Marginal’ IR Scholarship.” Journal of International Relations and Development 19 (2014): 534–57.
  • Valbjørn, Morten. “Dialoguing about Dialogues: On the Purpose, Procedure and Product of Dialogues in Inter-National Relations Theory.” International Studies Review 19 (2017): 291–96.
  • Wæver, Ole. “The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations.” International Organization 52 (1998): 687–727.
  • Wemheuer-Vogelaar, Wiebke, Nicholas J. Bell, Mariana Navarrete Morales, and Michael J. Tierney. “The IR of the Beholder: Examining Global IR Using the 2014 TRIP Survey.” International Studies Review 18 (2016): 16–32.
Year 2022, Volume: 11 Issue: 1, 3 - 27, 19.01.2022
https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.1034358

Abstract

References

  • Acharya, Amitav. “Global International Relations (IR) and Regional Worlds.” International Studies Quarterly 58 (2014): 647–59.
  • Acharya, Amitav, and Barry Buzan, eds. The Making of Global International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
  • ———. Non-Western International Relations Theory. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.
  • Agathangelou, Anna M., and L. H. M. Ling. “The House of IR: From Family Power Politics to the Poisies of Worldism.” International Studies Review 6, no. 4 (2004): 21–49.
  • Alejandro, Audrey. “Diversity for and by Whom? Knowledge Production and the Management of Diversity in International Relations.” International Politics Review (2021). doi: 10.1057/s41312-021-00114-0.
  • ———. Western Dominance in International Relations?: The Internationalisation of IR in Brazil and India. London; New York: Routledge, 2018.
  • Aydinli, Ersel, and Gonca Biltekin. Widening the World of International Relations: Homegrown Theorizing. London: Routledge, 2018.
  • Aydinli, Ersel, and Julie Mathews. “Are the Core and Periphery Irreconcilable? The Curious World of Publishing in Contemporary International Relations.” International Studies Perspectives 1 (2000): 289–303.
  • ———. “Periphery Theorising for a Truly Internationalised Discipline: Spinning IR Theory Out of Anatolia.” Review of International Studies 34 (2008): 693–712.
  • Buzan, Barry. “How and How Not to Develop IR Theory: Lessons from Core and Periphery.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 11 (2018): 391–414.
  • Capan, Zeynep Gulsah. “Decolonising International Relations?” Third World Quarterly 38, no. 1 (2017): 1–15.
  • Chen, Ching-Chang. “The Absence of Non-Western IR Theory in Asia Reconsidered.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 11 (2011): 1–23.
  • Crawford, Robert, and Darryl Jarvis. International Relations: Still an American Social Science? Albany: SUNY Press, 2001.
  • Colgan, Jeff D. “Where Is International Relations Going? Evidence from Graduate Training.” International Studies Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2016): 486–98.
  • Dunne, Tim, Lene Hansen, and Colin Wight. “The End of International Relations Theory?” European Journal of International Relations 19 (2013): 405–25.
  • Ergin, Murat, and Aybike Alkan. “Academic Neo-Colonialism in Writing Practices: Geographic Markers in Three Journals from Japan, Turkey and the US.” Geoforum 104 (2019): 259–66.
  • Eun, Yong-Soo. “Beyond ‘the West/Non-West Divide’ in IR.” Chinese Journal of International Politics 11 (2018): 435–49.
  • ———. “Opening up the Debate over ‘Non-Western’ International Relations’.” Politics 39 (2019): 4–17.
  • Gelardi, Maiken. “Moving Global IR Forward – A Road Map.” International Studies Review 22, no. 4 (2020): 830–52.
  • Goldmann, Kjell. “Im Westen Nichts Neues: Seven International Relations Journals in 1972 and 1992.” European Journal of International Relations 1, no. 2 (1995): 245–58.
  • Hagmann Jonas, and Thomas Biersteker. “Beyond the Published Discipline: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of International Studies.” European Journal of International Relations 20, no. 2 (2014): 291–315.
  • Hamati-Ataya, Inanna. “IR Theory as International Practice/Agency: A Clinical-Cynical Bourdieusian Perspective.” Millennium 40 (2012): 625–46.
  • Hellmann, Gunther. “Interpreting International Relations.” International Studies Review 19 (2017): 296–99.
  • Hendrix, Cullen S., and Jon Vreede. “US Dominance in International Relations and Security Scholarship in Leading Journals.” Journal of Global Security Studies 4, no. 3 (2019): 310–20.
  • Hoffmann, Stanley. “An American Social Science: International Relations.” Daedalus 106 (1977): 41–60.
  • Holsti, Kalevi. The Dividing Discipline. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1985.
  • Kapoor, Ilan. “Hyper‐self‐reflexive Development? Spivak on Representing the Third World ‘Other’.” Third World Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2004): 627–47.
  • Koeijer, Valerie de, and Robbie Shilliam. “Forum: International Relations as a Geoculturally Pluralistic Field.” International Politics Reviews (2021). doi: 10.1057/s41312-021-00112-2.
  • Kristensen, Peter Marcus. “How Can Emerging Powers Speak? On Theorists, Native Informants and Quasi-Officials in International Relations Discourse.” Third World Quarterly 36 (2015): 637–53.
  • ———. “Revisiting the ‘American Social Science’ - Mapping the Geography of International Relations.” International Studies Perspectives 16 (2015): 246–69.
  • ———. “The South in ‘Global IR’: Worlding Beyond the ‘Non-West’ in the Case of Brazil.” International Studies Perspectives 22 (2021): 218–39.
  • Lohaus, Mathis, and Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar. “Who Publishes Where? Exploring the Geographic Diversity of Global IR Journals.” International Studies Review 23, no. 3 (2021): 645–69.
  • Lohaus, Mathis, Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar, and Olivia Ding. “Bifurcated Core, Diverse Scholarship: IR Research in 17 Journals around the World.” Global Studies Quarterly 1, no. 4 (2021). doi: 10.1093/isagsq/ksab033.
  • Makarychev, Andrey, and Viatcheslav Morozov. “Is ‘Non-Western Theory’ Possible? The Idea of Multipolarity and the Trap of Epistemological Relativism in Russian IR.” International Studies Review 15 (2013): 328–50.
  • Maliniak, Daniel, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael J. Tierney. “International Relations in the US Academy.” International Studies Quarterly 55 (2011): 437–64.
  • Maliniak, Daniel, Susan Peterson, Ryan Powers & Michael J. Tierney. “Is International Relations a Global Discipline? Hegemony, Insularity, and Diversity in the Field.” Security Studies 27, no. 3 (2018): 448–84.
  • Mokry, Sabine. “Chinese International Relations (IR) Scholars’ Publishing Practices and Language: The ‘Peaceful Rise’-Debate.” In Globalizing International Relations - Scholarship Amidst Dives and Diversity, edited by Ingo Peters and Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar, 135–63. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
  • Mosbah-Natanson, Sébastien, and Yves Gingras. “The Globalization of Social Sciences? Evidence from a Quantitative Analysis of 30 Years of Production, Collaboration and Citations in the Social Sciences (1980–2009).” Current Sociology 62, no. 5 (2014): 626–46.
  • Neuman, Stephanie G. International Relations Theory and the Third World. Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.
  • Noda, Orion. “Epistemic Hegemony: The Western Straitjacket and Post-Colonial Scars in Academic Publishing.” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 63, no. 1 (2020): 1–23.
  • Picq, Manuela. “Rethinking IR from the Amazon.” Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 59 (2016): 1–17.
  • Puchala, Donald J. “Some Non-Western Perspectives on International Relations.” Journal of Peace Research 34 (1997): 129–34.
  • Qin, Yaqing, ed. Globalizing IR Theory: Critical Engagement. London: Routledge, 2020.
  • Risse, Thomas, Frank Havemann, and Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar. “Theory Makes Global IR Hang Together. Lessons from Citation Analysis.” Freie Universität Berlin Repository (2020). doi: 10.17169/refubium-28510.
  • Shilliam, Robbie. International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of Global Modernity. London: Taylor & Francis, 2010.
  • Smith, Steve. “The Discipline of International Relations: Still an American Social Science?” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 2 (2000): 374–402.
  • Thomas, Caroline, and Peter Wilkin. “Still Waiting after All These Years: ‘The Third World’ on the Periphery of International Relations.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 6 (2004): 241–58.
  • Tickner, Arlene. “Core, Periphery and (Neo) Imperialist International Relations.” European Journal of International Relations 19 (2013): 627–46.
  • ———. “Latin American IR and the Primacy of Lo Práctico.” International Studies Review 10 (2008): 735–48.
  • ———. “Seeing IR Differently: Notes from the Third World.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 32 (2003): 295–324.
  • Tickner, Arlene, and Ole Wæver. International Relations Scholarship Around the World. London: Routledge, 2009.
  • Turton, Helen. International Relations and American Dominance: A Diverse Discipline. London: Routledge, 2015.
  • ———. “Locating a Multifaceted and Stratified Disciplinary ‘Core.’” All Azimuth 9, no. 2 (2020): 177–209.
  • Turton, Helen, and Lucas Freire. “Peripheral Possibilities: Revealing Originality and Encouraging Dialogue through a Reconsideration of ‘Marginal’ IR Scholarship.” Journal of International Relations and Development 19 (2014): 534–57.
  • Valbjørn, Morten. “Dialoguing about Dialogues: On the Purpose, Procedure and Product of Dialogues in Inter-National Relations Theory.” International Studies Review 19 (2017): 291–96.
  • Wæver, Ole. “The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations.” International Organization 52 (1998): 687–727.
  • Wemheuer-Vogelaar, Wiebke, Nicholas J. Bell, Mariana Navarrete Morales, and Michael J. Tierney. “The IR of the Beholder: Examining Global IR Using the 2014 TRIP Survey.” International Studies Review 18 (2016): 16–32.
There are 57 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects International Relations
Journal Section Articles
Authors

Wiebke Wemheuer-vogelaar This is me 0000-0001-9157-9270

Peter Marcus Kristensen This is me 0000-0002-8357-5293

Mathis Lohaus This is me 0000-0002-8081-5781

Publication Date January 19, 2022
Published in Issue Year 2022 Volume: 11 Issue: 1

Cite

Chicago Wemheuer-vogelaar, Wiebke, Peter Marcus Kristensen, and Mathis Lohaus. “The Global Division of Labor in a Not So Global Discipline”. All Azimuth: A Journal of Foreign Policy and Peace 11, no. 1 (January 2022): 3-27. https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.1034358.

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