Epistemological Tools

Session 05: What is a Concept? What is a Theory?

Required readings:

• Walt, Stephen M. “The Relationship between Theory and Policy in International Relations.” Annual Review of Political Science 8, no.1 (2005): 23-48.

Recommended readings

• Wight, Martin. “Why is there no International Theory?” International Relations 2, no.1 (1960): 35-48, 62.
• Sil, Rudra and Peter J. Katzenstein. “Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms across Research Traditions.” Perspectives on Politics 8, no.2 (2010): 411-31.

Session 06: Levels of analysis in IR

 Required readings:

• Putnam, Robert D. “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games.” International Organization 42, no.3 (1988): 427-60.

Recommended readings:

• Singer, J. David. “The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations.” World Politics 14, no.1 (1961): 77-92.
• Gourevitch, Peter. “The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics.” International Organization 32, no.5 (1978): 881-912.
• Byman, Daniel and Kenneth Pollack. “Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesman Back In.” International Security 25, no.4 (2001): 107–46.
• Wendt, Alexander E. “The agent-structure problem in international relations theory.” International Organization 41, no.3 (1987): 335-70.