The Realist Gambit: Postwar American Political Science and the Birth of IR Theory

Abstract

The study of international relations (IR) took an important disciplinary turn in the 1950s, when a number of scholars sought to develop a distinct theory of international politics. This turn, however, should not be understood as a tendency toward specialization, but rather as a separatist movement, meant to insulate the study of international politics from the behavioral revolution that was transforming the practice of political science in postwar America. Promoted by the Rockefeller Foundation, the “theorization” of IR encapsulated a very specific intellectual and ultimately political agenda at odds with the kind of liberalism dominant at the time.