The IR of the Beholder: Examining Global IR Using the 2014 TRIP Survey

Abstract

This article presents findings from the 2014 Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project’s worldwide faculty survey that speak to recent claims in the Global International Relations (IR) Debate. The expansion of the 2014 TRIP faculty survey to thirty-two countries, including more than a dozen non-Western IR communities, enables an initial empirical assessment of some key questions raised by advocates and detractors of “Global IR.” This contribution describes and analyzes scholars’ own perceptions of the IR discipline and adds to the empirical literature on the Global IR Debate. In particular, we address three claims: that IR is a Western/American dominated discipline, that geography is the core dividing line in IR, and that there is a division of labor within IR wherein scholars in the West are responsible for theory production while the non-West supplies data and local expertise for theory testing. We believe that these findings shed light both on how the discipline came to be divided between dominant and marginalized discourses and in which areas this division is most embedded and/or ready to be dismantled.