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International Relations Must-Read List

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At the request of frequent commenter God, and because I promised to do so some time ago, here is an international relations reading list. Some of these books are accessible to anyone, and some are only accessible to professionals in the field. Most of the books are written by late twentieth century political scientists, but some are not. Several of the books should be read by anyone who purports to claim themselves as an educated person. I would include Thucydides, Hobbes, Schmitt, Carr, and Waltz MSW in this category.

My bias should be apparent from the list. Although it would be tough to call me a realist, I like realist theories of international politics. In terms of modern scholarship, I don’t care for rational choice or excessively quantitative work. Ask a different political scientist, you’ll get a different list. Also, this list focuses on international relations theory and not on foreign policy, which is an entirely different subject. I won’t waste your time detailing my recommendation of all these books, but will give an account of some of them:

General Interest:
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War: If you haven’t read this, drop what you’re doing and find a library or bookstore. It’s long, but it’s readable, and includes just about every trick that statemen have ever come up with to justify foreign policy actions. Thucydides’ purpose is still a matter of hot debate within the international relations field. While he has typically been regarded as THE proto-realist, other have argued that he is, indeed, a constructivist. I’m inclined toward the former interpretation. Thucydides was an Athenian general, fired for incompetence, who became a historian and theorist.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: See above for procedure if you haven’t read this. Hobbes purpose isn’t to discuss international politics, but his distinction between hierarchy and anarchy has structured how we think about international politics for 350 years.

Carl Schmitt, Concept of the Political: Schmitt was a Nazi sympathizer, and eventually a Nazi himself. Later in his life, he became bizarrely popular with elements of the left. Schmitt’s purpose in this book is to develop a definition of the political. He argues that what defines the political is the friend-enemy distinction, in the same way that the ugly-beautiful distinction defines aesthetics, or the good-evil distinction defines morality. To understand how realists (and Republicans) see the world, read this book.

E.H. Carr, Twenty Years Crisis: Like Thucydides, Carr continues to be hotly debated by international relations scholars. I like to think of him more as a theorist of power politics than as realist. He spends most of this book dismantling the Wilsonian conception of international politics, a project that is as important now as it has ever been.

Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War
Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics: I’ve discussed these two books at length, herehere, and here. Note that Theory of International Politics is difficult.

Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed: This is a nice little book on nuclear proliferation. Waltz argues for, Sagan against.

Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics: Gilpin lays out an argument about the role of hegemonic states in the international system. His argument is, unsurprisingly, much better than the one made by Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.

Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration: This is a collection of essays by Arnold Wolfers. In includes the article National Security as an Ambiguous Symbol, which I believe is the most important piece written on foreign policy in the last half of the twentieth century. I talk about the article more here.

Specialist, but Accessible:
Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics
Jon Mercer, Reputation and International Politics
Arthur Stein, Why Nations Cooperate
John Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War
Yuen Khong, Analogies at War
Stephen Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military
Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War

Specialist, Difficult:
Hedley Bull, Anarchical Society
Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics
Friedrich Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions
Nicholas Onuf, A World of Our Making
Ted Hopf, Social Construction of International Politics: Identities & Foreign Policies, Moscow, 1955 and 1999
John Gerard Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalization
Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition

Good hunting.

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