David M Mccourt
Biographic Data
| ID | 297863 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David M Mccourt |
| GIVEN NAMES | David M |
| FAMILY NAME | Mccourt |
| SIGNATURE | MCCOURT D M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Davis |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6946-6173 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 232 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 35 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Managing interdependence
This paper presents an explanation for globalization centred around a relatively-novel area of inquiry in the study of the phenomenon: American foreign policy. We trace the transformation in how American foreign policy makers approached globalization from the late 1960s to the early 1990s; from a multilateral strategy called ‘Trilateralism’ in the 1970s, to a strategy called ‘Enlargement’ in the early 1990s, based around American dominance. Where…
On Global Learning and the politics of the New Constructivism
Jason Ralph’s On Global Learning is a powerful scholarly achievement that deserves the sustained engagement afforded leading international political theorists such as Cynthia Enloe, Friedrich Kratochwil, Nicholas Rengger, J. Ann Tickner, and RBJ Walker. This forum represents a welcome start. By way of a limited contribution, my aim is to push forward an ongoing debate with Ralph on the politics of Constructivism in IR theory. The question on the …
Author Response
How Is the American Foreign Policy Establishment Structured? A Multiple Correspondence Analysis of the US China Field
Challenging visions of the US national security “Establishment” as either hamstrung by ideological homogeneity bordering on groupthink, or riven by irreconcilable party political divisions, we deploy multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) to uncover empirically the structure of the China segment of the US national security community. MCA—a form of geometric data analysis—finds latent structures in categorical datasets. Using an original dataset o…
Anything but Inevitable
Historians typically explain the Marshall Plan (1948-52) as an effect of a bipartisan embrace of liberal internationalism, which became the dominant ideology of US foreign policy. However, predominant accounts downplay interpretive contention, historical contingencies, and counterfactual possibilities that are very much in evidence. There was no bipartisan liberal internationalist consensus immediately after World War II; indeed, there were no 'l…
The New Constructivism in International Relations Theory
In this engaging book, David M. McCourt makes the case for New Constructivist approaches to international relations scholarship. The book traces constructivist work on culture, identity, and norms within the historical, geographical, and professional contexts of world politics, and reflects on recent innovations in fields including practice theory, relationalism, and network analysis. Copiously illustrated with real-world examples from the rise o…
The New Constructivism in International Relations Theory
Recent developments in Constructivist theorizing add up to a qualitatively new approach: the New Constructivism. Central to the New Constructivism are novel theoretical perspectives and vocabularies, like practice theory, relationalism, and actor-network theory; new empirical interests, like affect and emotions; and methodological innovations like network analysis and multiple correspondence analysis. While many proponents of these approaches hav…
New Constructivism in International Relations Theory
New Constructivism in International Relations Theory
The Changing U.S. China Watching Community and the Demise of Engagement with the People’s Republic of China
Recent years have seen the rapid descent of relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China ( prc ). Hopes for cooperation in places of common concern like climate change gave way to strains in almost all areas. In place of “engagement,” the administration of Donald J. Trump adopted a tougher approach of “strategic competition” that its successor so far has continued. This article explores the relationship between the demis…
Knowledge Communities in US Foreign Policy Making
The United States’ long-standing approach to the People’s Republic of China—“engagement”—is at an end, replaced by a tougher approach, labeled “strategic competition.” Foregrounding the role of knowledge communities in the making of US foreign policy, I show that engagement’s demise followed less a rational process responding to shifts in Chinese behavior and the balance of power, and more a paradigmatic turnover in key individuals’ views of Chin…
Culture, Identity, and Grand Strategy
What do culture and identity have to do with grand strategy—the task of matching broad national security aims to capabilities? Is grand strategy not the preserve of politics and power, and the timeless wisdom of realpolitik? This chapter argues that culture and identity are essential components of any realistic account of grand strategy, since grand strategies tell a story of who or what a country is, and should be, in world politics. Grand strat…
Domestic contestation over foreign policy, role-based and otherwise
Foreign policy role theorists have recently placed domestic role contestation central to their accounts of foreign policy continuity and change. Yet, contestation over national role conceptions is only one aspect of domestic competition over political power that can impact the roles states play in world politics. Frequently, foreign policies are an outgrowth of political struggle over matters only indirectly related to a state’s international rol…
Framing China's rise in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom
Optimism about China's rise has in recent years given way to deep concern in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Drawing on an original set of interviews with China experts from each country, and an array of primary and secondary sources, I show that shifting framings of China's rise reflect the dynamics of the US, Australian and UK national security fields. The article highlights three features specifically: first, the US field …
Hegemonic Field Effects in World Politics
This paper casts American influence over the Schuman Plan of May 1950 as a hegemonic field effect, pushing forward recent attempts to develop more dynamic models of hegemonic ordering in world politics. Far from an automatic enactment of US preferences for European unification by French policy-makers, as prevailing macro-level theories imply, the Schuman Plan—French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman's proposal to pool French and German coal and ste…
Great Expectations
Through the case of EU foreign and security policy we reconsider the concept of great power. According to common wisdom, the EU cannot be a great power, whatever the pronouncements of its top officials may be. We argue that ‘great power’ has been miscast in IR theory as a status rather than as a social role, and, consequently, that the EU can indeed be viewed as playing the great power role. Such a conceptual shift moves analytical attention away…
The domestic resonance of geopolitical competition in American foreign policy
Revisiting the Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on International Theory, 1953–54
Across seven months in 1953 and 1954, the prestigious foreign policy think tank the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) brought together a set of prominent scholars and practitioners of international affairs to discuss the topic of the theory of international relations. In this special section, a distinguished group of historians of international thought assess the significance of this recently-uncovered set of meetings. In this introduction, I si…
American Hegemony and International Theory at the Council on Foreign Relations, 1953–1954
This paper tells the story of a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) study group on the theory of international relations held in 1953–1954. The study group took place at a time of intense struggle over the nature and value of international relations as an academic and policy field, with theory a key stake. Funded by the Carnegie Corporation, organized by the CFR, and held at the same time as another theory conference at the Rockefeller Foundation,…
Living Up to a New Role in the World
International audience
Why Does Pluralism Matter When We Study Politics? A View from Contemporary International Relations
Pluralism has become a buzzword in International Relations. It has emerged in a number of linked literatures and has drawn the support of an unusual coalition of scholars: advocates of greater methodological diversity; those who feel that IR has degenerated into a clash of paradigmatic “-isms”; those who favor a closer relationship between academics and policy-makers; and those who wish to see greater reflexivity within the field. Perhaps unsurpr…
The Inquiry and the Birth of International Relations, 1917–19
The centenary approaches of the establishment of the first chair in International Relations (IR) at Aberystwyth in 1919. In this paper, I argue that while revisionist historians are correct to claim that IR did not emerge in a “Big Bang”, 1917–19 was nevertheless an important moment in the history of IR — particularly in the US — which should be appreciated a century later. 1917 saw the creation of “The Inquiry”, a secret organization composed of…
Practice Theory and Relationalism as the New Constructivism
In this theory note, I address two new approaches in international relations theory gaining adherents and producing insightful applications: practice theory and relationalism. Practice theory draws attention to everyday logics in world politics. It stresses how international actors are driven less by abstract notions of the national interest, identities, or preferences than by context-dependent practical imperatives. Relationalism rejects the ide…
Britain and World Power since 1945
?Though Britain's descent from global imperial power began in World War II and continued over the subsequent decades with decolonization, military withdrawal, and integration into the European Union, its foreign policy has remained that of a Great Power. David M. McCourt maintains that the lack of a fundamental reorientation of Britain's foreign policy cannot be explained only by material or economic factors, or even by an essential British inter…
Has Britain Found its Role
The question is not whether Britain is a great power, but whether it does what greatpowers do. In the absence of wider changes, Britain will continue to play this role
Practice Theory and Relationalism as the New Constructivism
In this theory note, I address two new approaches in international relations theory gaining adherents and producing insightful applications: practice theory and relationalism. Practice theory draws attention to everyday logics in world politics. It stresses how international actors are driven less by abstract notions of the national interest, identities, or preferences than by context-dependent practical imperatives. Relationalism rejects the ide…
The roles states play
Why Does Pluralism Matter When We Study Politics? A View from Contemporary International Relations
Pluralism has become a buzzword in International Relations. It has emerged in a number of linked literatures and has drawn the support of an unusual coalition of scholars: advocates of greater methodological diversity; those who feel that IR has degenerated into a clash of paradigmatic “-isms”; those who favor a closer relationship between academics and policy-makers; and those who wish to see greater reflexivity within the field. Perhaps unsurpr…
Domestic contestation over foreign policy, role-based and otherwise
Foreign policy role theorists have recently placed domestic role contestation central to their accounts of foreign policy continuity and change. Yet, contestation over national role conceptions is only one aspect of domestic competition over political power that can impact the roles states play in world politics. Frequently, foreign policies are an outgrowth of political struggle over matters only indirectly related to a state’s international rol…
What’s at Stake in the Historical Turn? Theory, Practice and Phronēsis in International Relations
Taking issue with Hobson and Lawson’s rejection of the historical turn, this article argues that what is at stake in the turn is the type of knowledge of politics International Relations scholars should produce, and the relationship between theory and practice. The relevant issues are not, then, exhausted by answering the question ‘What is history in International Relations?’; instead, the turn forms part of a wider movement in the social science…
Living Up to a New Role in the World
International audience
Rethinking Britain's Role in the World for a New Decade
Debate over the future of British foreign policy will doubtless invoke Britain's ‘role in the world’, but the interconnection between Britain's role as an analytical concept within the academic field and as a category within the political field renders this starting point problematic. It underpins a tendency to take descriptive statements for objective analysis, leaving the language of British foreign policy saturated with clichés and tropes—like…
Role-playing and identity affirmation in international politics
Did Britain reinvade the Falklands because of its ‘identity’? Or was reinvasion instead required by its ‘role’ in international politics? In this article I show that a complete constructivist explanation of Britain's response must consider both its identity affirmation, which constructivist International Relations (IR) theory would certainly draw attention to, but also the role it played on the world stage at the beginning of the 1980s, which wou…
Embracing Humanitarian Intervention
This article employs the interpretive approach to show that Britain's embrace of humanitarian intervention in Kosovo in 1999 was less a result of the election of New Labour or the psychology of Tony Blair, as conventional wisdom suggests, and more a consequence of a change in belief among policy-makers in the UK and beyond regarding the use of force for humanitarian ends, which originated prior to 1997 in American intervention in Bosnia in the su…
Debating the Sources and Prospects of European Integration
In "Europe's Troubles," Sebastian Rosato argues that the high water mark of European integration has passed and that the fate of the European Union (EU) is increasingly uncertain. The European project, he claims, had a geostrategic imperative during the Cold War: unable to match Soviet power individually, the small and medium powers of Western Europe sought to balance the Soviet Union through economic integration. The Soviet collapse and the end …
What was Britain's “East of Suez Role”? Reassessing the Withdrawal, 1964–1968
Although often considered an objective fact, Britain's “East of Suez role” was actually a rhetorical construction. As such, it was dependent on the continued ability of Britain to “make” that role and other important players to “cast” Britain into it. But the Wilson government's initial support for East of Suez had the paradoxical effect of bringing its coherence into question. Without a British future in Aden, East of Suez was increasingly linke…
Great Expectations
Through the case of EU foreign and security policy we reconsider the concept of great power. According to common wisdom, the EU cannot be a great power, whatever the pronouncements of its top officials may be. We argue that ‘great power’ has been miscast in IR theory as a status rather than as a social role, and, consequently, that the EU can indeed be viewed as playing the great power role. Such a conceptual shift moves analytical attention away…
Anything but Inevitable
Historians typically explain the Marshall Plan (1948-52) as an effect of a bipartisan embrace of liberal internationalism, which became the dominant ideology of US foreign policy. However, predominant accounts downplay interpretive contention, historical contingencies, and counterfactual possibilities that are very much in evidence. There was no bipartisan liberal internationalist consensus immediately after World War II; indeed, there were no 'l…
Framing China's rise in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom
Optimism about China's rise has in recent years given way to deep concern in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Drawing on an original set of interviews with China experts from each country, and an array of primary and secondary sources, I show that shifting framings of China's rise reflect the dynamics of the US, Australian and UK national security fields. The article highlights three features specifically: first, the US field …
The Changing U.S. China Watching Community and the Demise of Engagement with the People’s Republic of China
Recent years have seen the rapid descent of relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China ( prc ). Hopes for cooperation in places of common concern like climate change gave way to strains in almost all areas. In place of “engagement,” the administration of Donald J. Trump adopted a tougher approach of “strategic competition” that its successor so far has continued. This article explores the relationship between the demis…
Hegemonic Field Effects in World Politics
This paper casts American influence over the Schuman Plan of May 1950 as a hegemonic field effect, pushing forward recent attempts to develop more dynamic models of hegemonic ordering in world politics. Far from an automatic enactment of US preferences for European unification by French policy-makers, as prevailing macro-level theories imply, the Schuman Plan—French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman's proposal to pool French and German coal and ste…
The domestic resonance of geopolitical competition in American foreign policy
Has Britain Found its Role
The question is not whether Britain is a great power, but whether it does what greatpowers do. In the absence of wider changes, Britain will continue to play this role
Rethinking International History, Theory and the Event with Hannah Arendt
This paper reconsiders the event in International Relations (IR) through the writings of Hannah Arendt. The event has for too long been neglected in IR; international events are overwhelmingly conceived as mere happenings that have meaning only within the process and temporal structure of the theory from which they are understood, and as holding no or only limited meaning in and of themselves. In her work on political theory and her reflections o…
Securing Waltz's Legacy
What was Britain's “East of Suez Role”? Reassessing the Withdrawal, 1964–1968
Although often considered an objective fact, Britain's “East of Suez role” was actually a rhetorical construction. As such, it was dependent on the continued ability of Britain to “make” that role and other important players to “cast” Britain into it. But the Wilson government's initial support for East of Suez had the paradoxical effect of bringing its coherence into question. Without a British future in Aden, East of Suez was increasingly linke…
Rethinking International History, Theory and the Event with Hannah Arendt
This paper reconsiders the event in International Relations (IR) through the writings of Hannah Arendt. The event has for too long been neglected in IR; international events are overwhelmingly conceived as mere happenings that have meaning only within the process and temporal structure of the theory from which they are understood, and as holding no or only limited meaning in and of themselves. In her work on political theory and her reflections o…
Rethinking Britain's Role in the World for a New Decade
Debate over the future of British foreign policy will doubtless invoke Britain's ‘role in the world’, but the interconnection between Britain's role as an analytical concept within the academic field and as a category within the political field renders this starting point problematic. It underpins a tendency to take descriptive statements for objective analysis, leaving the language of British foreign policy saturated with clichés and tropes—like…
The roles states play
Role-playing and identity affirmation in international politics
Did Britain reinvade the Falklands because of its ‘identity’? Or was reinvasion instead required by its ‘role’ in international politics? In this article I show that a complete constructivist explanation of Britain's response must consider both its identity affirmation, which constructivist International Relations (IR) theory would certainly draw attention to, but also the role it played on the world stage at the beginning of the 1980s, which wou…
The “Problem of Generations” Revisited
Karl Mannheim is a ubiquitous reference in scholarly work on generations, yet the usefulness of his essay "The Problem of Generations" as a basis for social scientific research is highly contested.2 For some, it is an "undervalued legacy," one that demonstrates the importance of generations in social life and offers invaluable guidance to their proper conceptualization.3 But for others, Mannheim fails to define the generation with any great preci…
Embracing Humanitarian Intervention
This article employs the interpretive approach to show that Britain's embrace of humanitarian intervention in Kosovo in 1999 was less a result of the election of New Labour or the psychology of Tony Blair, as conventional wisdom suggests, and more a consequence of a change in belief among policy-makers in the UK and beyond regarding the use of force for humanitarian ends, which originated prior to 1997 in American intervention in Bosnia in the su…
What’s at Stake in the Historical Turn? Theory, Practice and Phronēsis in International Relations
Taking issue with Hobson and Lawson’s rejection of the historical turn, this article argues that what is at stake in the turn is the type of knowledge of politics International Relations scholars should produce, and the relationship between theory and practice. The relevant issues are not, then, exhausted by answering the question ‘What is history in International Relations?’; instead, the turn forms part of a wider movement in the social science…
Debating the Sources and Prospects of European Integration
In "Europe's Troubles," Sebastian Rosato argues that the high water mark of European integration has passed and that the fate of the European Union (EU) is increasingly uncertain. The European project, he claims, had a geostrategic imperative during the Cold War: unable to match Soviet power individually, the small and medium powers of Western Europe sought to balance the Soviet Union through economic integration. The Soviet collapse and the end …
Britain and World Power since 1945
?Though Britain's descent from global imperial power began in World War II and continued over the subsequent decades with decolonization, military withdrawal, and integration into the European Union, its foreign policy has remained that of a Great Power. David M. McCourt maintains that the lack of a fundamental reorientation of Britain's foreign policy cannot be explained only by material or economic factors, or even by an essential British inter…
Has Britain Found its Role
The question is not whether Britain is a great power, but whether it does what greatpowers do. In the absence of wider changes, Britain will continue to play this role
Practice Theory and Relationalism as the New Constructivism
In this theory note, I address two new approaches in international relations theory gaining adherents and producing insightful applications: practice theory and relationalism. Practice theory draws attention to everyday logics in world politics. It stresses how international actors are driven less by abstract notions of the national interest, identities, or preferences than by context-dependent practical imperatives. Relationalism rejects the ide…
The Inquiry and the Birth of International Relations, 1917–19
The centenary approaches of the establishment of the first chair in International Relations (IR) at Aberystwyth in 1919. In this paper, I argue that while revisionist historians are correct to claim that IR did not emerge in a “Big Bang”, 1917–19 was nevertheless an important moment in the history of IR — particularly in the US — which should be appreciated a century later. 1917 saw the creation of “The Inquiry”, a secret organization composed of…
Living Up to a New Role in the World
International audience
Why Does Pluralism Matter When We Study Politics? A View from Contemporary International Relations
Pluralism has become a buzzword in International Relations. It has emerged in a number of linked literatures and has drawn the support of an unusual coalition of scholars: advocates of greater methodological diversity; those who feel that IR has degenerated into a clash of paradigmatic “-isms”; those who favor a closer relationship between academics and policy-makers; and those who wish to see greater reflexivity within the field. Perhaps unsurpr…
Great Expectations
Through the case of EU foreign and security policy we reconsider the concept of great power. According to common wisdom, the EU cannot be a great power, whatever the pronouncements of its top officials may be. We argue that ‘great power’ has been miscast in IR theory as a status rather than as a social role, and, consequently, that the EU can indeed be viewed as playing the great power role. Such a conceptual shift moves analytical attention away…
The domestic resonance of geopolitical competition in American foreign policy
Revisiting the Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on International Theory, 1953–54
Across seven months in 1953 and 1954, the prestigious foreign policy think tank the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) brought together a set of prominent scholars and practitioners of international affairs to discuss the topic of the theory of international relations. In this special section, a distinguished group of historians of international thought assess the significance of this recently-uncovered set of meetings. In this introduction, I si…
American Hegemony and International Theory at the Council on Foreign Relations, 1953–1954
This paper tells the story of a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) study group on the theory of international relations held in 1953–1954. The study group took place at a time of intense struggle over the nature and value of international relations as an academic and policy field, with theory a key stake. Funded by the Carnegie Corporation, organized by the CFR, and held at the same time as another theory conference at the Rockefeller Foundation,…
Hegemonic Field Effects in World Politics
This paper casts American influence over the Schuman Plan of May 1950 as a hegemonic field effect, pushing forward recent attempts to develop more dynamic models of hegemonic ordering in world politics. Far from an automatic enactment of US preferences for European unification by French policy-makers, as prevailing macro-level theories imply, the Schuman Plan—French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman's proposal to pool French and German coal and ste…
Culture, Identity, and Grand Strategy
What do culture and identity have to do with grand strategy—the task of matching broad national security aims to capabilities? Is grand strategy not the preserve of politics and power, and the timeless wisdom of realpolitik? This chapter argues that culture and identity are essential components of any realistic account of grand strategy, since grand strategies tell a story of who or what a country is, and should be, in world politics. Grand strat…
Domestic contestation over foreign policy, role-based and otherwise
Foreign policy role theorists have recently placed domestic role contestation central to their accounts of foreign policy continuity and change. Yet, contestation over national role conceptions is only one aspect of domestic competition over political power that can impact the roles states play in world politics. Frequently, foreign policies are an outgrowth of political struggle over matters only indirectly related to a state’s international rol…
Framing China's rise in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom
Optimism about China's rise has in recent years given way to deep concern in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. Drawing on an original set of interviews with China experts from each country, and an array of primary and secondary sources, I show that shifting framings of China's rise reflect the dynamics of the US, Australian and UK national security fields. The article highlights three features specifically: first, the US field …
The New Constructivism in International Relations Theory
In this engaging book, David M. McCourt makes the case for New Constructivist approaches to international relations scholarship. The book traces constructivist work on culture, identity, and norms within the historical, geographical, and professional contexts of world politics, and reflects on recent innovations in fields including practice theory, relationalism, and network analysis. Copiously illustrated with real-world examples from the rise o…
Political science (30 works) · Politics (29 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Law (26 works) · Law (21 works) · International relations (19 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (18 works) · Political economy (16 works) · Foreign policy (14 works) · Epistemology (10 works)