Divided discipline? Comparing views of US and Canadian IR scholars

International Journal

Volumn 62, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 327-343

  Lipson, Michael ^a   Maliniak, Daniel ^b   Oakes, Amy ^b   Peterson, Susan ^b,c   Tierney, Michael J ^b,c  

^a Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science   (Canada)

^b The College of William and Mary   (United States)

^c College of William and Mary ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34547179294     PISSN: 00207020     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002070200706200208     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. We follow the convention of using the abbreviation "IR" when referring to the academic study of international politics. On the disproportionate influence of American scholarship in IR, see Stanley Hoffmann, "An American social science: International relations," Daedalus 106, no. 3 (summer 1977): 41-60;
2. Ole Waever, "A not so international discipline: American and European developments in international relations," International Organization 52, no. 4 (autumn 1998): 687-727.
3. Marci Macdonald, "The man behind Stephen Harper," Walrus 1, no. 8 (October 2004);
4. John lbbitson, "Educating Stephen," The Globe and Mail, 26 June 2004, F4.
5. For a copy of the entire 2006 TRIP survey report, see www.wm.edu/trip.
6. The terminology used to describe institutions of higher learning differs between Canada and the United States. In the US, institutions granting bachelors degrees are referred to as "four-year" colleges and universities, because standard undergraduate degree programs take four years to complete. In Canada, non-honours bachelors degree programs typically take three years. In the United States, the term college is used as shorthand for "liberal arts college," to describe four-year undergraduate institutions specializing in undergraduate education, and lacking graduate programs. The term university, in the United States, refers to institutions placing greater emphasis on faculty research relative to undergraduate teaching, and offering graduate, including doctoral, programs. In Canada, both teaching and research-focused institutions are called universities. This article employs the Canadian usage, employing the term university to refer to institutions granting bachelors degrees, whether they specialize in undergraduate teaching or research and graduate education.
7. For more information and the complete TRIP surveys, see www.wm.edu/trip. Selected results from the 2004 survey were published in the November/December 2005 issue of Foreign Policy. US Results from the 2006 survey appear in the March 2007 issue of Foreign Policy.
8. Both the US and Canadian surveys were conducted by a research team at the College of William and Mary. Questions were updated in the 2006 survey, and some questions were modified slightly for the Canadian context.
9. To identify the population of IR scholars in Canadian colleges and universities, the survey organizers contacted all IR faculty at the 93 Canadian universities identified by MacLeans Magazine. IR faculty were identified through web searches that were supplemented by emails and phone calls. After those who identified themselves as not belonging in the population were removed from the sample, the survey included a 40 percent response rate; 110 of the 275 IR scholars at Canadian institutions answered the survey.
10. Susan Peterson, Michael J. Tiemey, and Daniel Maliniak, "Inside the ivory tower," Foreign Policy 151 (November/December 2005): 60.
11. The available responses were liberal, middle of the road, or conservative, with "very" and "slightly" options for both liberal and conservative. The "very liberal" category (28 percent of Canadian respondents) may also capture non-liberal leftist respondents. Also, as noted below, Canadian IR scholars are less likely than Americans to work primarily within the framework of liberal international relations theory, but are much more likely to adopt Marxist, constructivist, critical, and feminist approaches.
12. The larger percentage of Canadian scholars with IR as their primary subfield may help to explain the greater theoretical orientation and the relative lack of any specific geographical focus in their teaching and research. We develop these ideas below.
13. Overall, 48 percent of Canadian respondents reported that they used no country or region-specific case studies in their intro IR courses. Only 38 percent of US instructors reported using no area-specific case studies.
14. The largest "other" responses were neo-Gramscian/critical theory (five percent) and post-structuralism (four percent).
15. Basic research is defined as "research for the sake of knowledge, without any particular immediate policy application in mind."
16. As previously noted, this literature is largely American.
17. US scholars report their primary methodologies thusly: 69 percent qualitative; 22 percent quantitative; four percent legal and ethical; two percent formal; two percent pure theory; and one percent for both experimental and counterfactual analysis. No scholars at Canadian universities reported that their primary methodologies were formal, experimental, counterfactual, or pure theory.
18. The Canadian top 25 includes 32 names, dueto a five-way tie for 20th and a sevenway tie for 25th. The US survey has 26 names, due to a tie for 25th. Kathryn Sikkink is in a tie for 25th in both surveys. Canadian respondents also ranked Susan Strange (seventh), Cynthia Enloe (tie for 14th), J. Ann Tickner (tie for 17th), and Martha Finnemore (tie for 20th).
19. US respondents ranked Princeton ahead of Cornell.
20. US and Canadian respondents listed Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and Stanford as the top four, with Americans ranking Princeton above Columbia. Canadians ranked Cornell fifth, while Americans listed Chicago.
21. This finding is somewhat surprising, given the conventional view of American political culture as liberal. See Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1955).
22. Realists thinkers such as Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, and more recently John Mearsheimer in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: WW Norton, 2001), have long argued that the innate liberalism of the American people complicates US efforts to practice realist foreign policies. Apparently, American IR scholars disagree. For a prescient analysis that supports these data see Daniel W. Drezner, "The realist tradition in American public opinion," presented at the 2007 International Studies Association, Chicago, IL, March 2007.
23. More Canadians answered neither (23 percent) or "do not know" (13 percent) to this question.
24. To a question asking whether infectious diseases posed a direct or indirect security threat, Canadians expressed greater uncertainty. Thirty-nine percent (vs. 36 percent in the US) said direct; 33 percent (vs. 47 percent in the US) said indirect. Twenty-eight percent (vs. 17 percent in the US) were unsure. It is unclear whether the uncertainty pertains to whether infectious diseases pose a security threat, or to whether that threat is direct or indirect in nature.