Interdisciplinarity and the Emerged Shift in the Study of International Relations

In: Millennium: journal of international studies, Volume 41, Issue 3, p. 669-678

Abstract

International Relations (IR) studies have passed through three phases since 1919, when several interdisciplinary interests combined to make up IR, and that interdisciplinarity was of benefit to some other disciplines as well. The second phase, 1950–80, saw IR become more visible, with its key concepts of power, war and security as a sub-discipline of political science – but IR's autonomy was bought at a high price. The year 1981 brought in the third phase, when some scholars, unconvinced by the traditional concept of IR, launched interdisciplinary studies. Many subsequently emerging issues, such as ethnic conflicts, climate change and energy security, have made it difficult to use traditional IR concepts to create a coherent research agenda. To overcome this difficulty, an agenda for the new millennium is proposed that makes use of the interdisciplinary origins of the study of IR and also develops new interdisciplinary approaches, and Aalto et al.'s works contribute to this line of thinking.