The «Great Debates» in the theory of International Relations

A Historiographical Analysis

Bibliographic Data

ID6461771
AuthorsO Ferman (Independent Researcher, Istanbul, Turkey, corresponding author)
Year2025
Issue6
Pages131-142
Publication date2025-11-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueПолис Политические исследования (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1026-9487 • E-ISSN: 1684-0070
PublisherPolitical Studies (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.17976/jpps/2025.06.10
OpenAlexW4416723131
LanguageEN
References cited18

This article analyses the concept of “Great Debates” in the history of International Relations Theory. It pays special attention to the discussion in Russian academia, which focuses on the “factuality” and “criteria” of the concept, as well as the intellectual evolution of the discipline. The initial assumption of this article is that the “Great Debates” as a concept has two main dimensions. First, “Great Debates” themselves are historical events, and second, there can be a historiographical model formed out of the concept. Models serve as conceptual tools which help to simplify and generalise different cases by presenting them via clusters of traits or attributes. The concept is used for modelling the intellectual exchanges that redefine the mainstream of the discipline in parallel with the general trends in social sciences. Such a model is both a historiographical and a metatheoretical tool for evaluating traditions, schools, or theories of international relations (IR) as a discipline. The main goal of this article is to put forward the historiographical criteria in accordance with the previous metatheoretical findings and the history of the discipline. Two criteria for the “Great Debates” are proposed, which are “change in the dominant school of thought in the mainstream of the IR theory” and “parallelism between the ‘Great Debates’ and the three stages of social sciences, as “The Differentiation” from History, “The Dismissal of the Past”, and “The Convergence” with History. Based on this model, the author draws two conclusions about the course of the IR discipline. First, IR theory has been following intellectual developments in social sciences. Second, the current situation of world politics, which is the study object of the discipline, also affects how schools of thought replace each other in mainstream IR

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