A Nation that Dwells Alone? Israel in the Discipline of International Relations

Abstract

The discipline of International Relations (IR) is dominated by American and American-trained scholars, who transmit American priorities, theories, methodologies, and approaches throughout IR departments around the world. Under these conditions, Israel has been used only infrequently as a case study for the development of IR theory. But Israel is rich in variables that can be used to generate new theoretical explanations and comparisons. Doing this requires Israel scholars to give more attention to newer theoretical and epistemological developments in the discipline. To illustrate this, the article discusses a survey of seven IR journals, coded for how Israel was used in the discussion of IR topics, theories, and cases. It then suggests some avenues for future research that Israel scholars who work in IR can use to bring Israel into IR theory development and knowledge generation.