We propose a sixth edition of our textbook that, since it was first published in 1987, has influenced two generations of IR scholars and practitioners. After four decades of teaching, we have learned to communicate difficult or complex ideas, concepts, and theories succinctly, and without watering down their content. Addressing the complexities of IR theory in particular, our book is written in plain language readily understood by both graduate and undergraduate audiences, as well as English-speaking and English-as-second-language (ESL) international students. Over the years, IR doctoral students-many of whom are now professors or serve in policy-related positions, have approached us at conferences to confide that they found our book helpful in preparing for their doctoral exams. We do not present "laundry lists" of IR theories one finds in other books. By contrast, we employ a framework or taxonomy of alternative images-or world views-that underlie present-day IR theory (i.e., realism, liberalism, economic structuralism, and the English School). Driven by one or another of these images, theorists also wear different interpretive lenses that profoundly influence their theorizing (positivism, feminism and those related to phenomenological understandings-post-modernism, critical theory, and constructivism). Both images and interpretive lenses have their place in our IR theory framework. This taxonomy weaves or integrates diverse and cross-cutting theoretical threads or strands into a meaningful "whole cloth" approach not found in other volumes

About the Author
Paul R. Viotti is Professor, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver and the author of dozens of textbooks, monographs, and anthologies on international relations, U.S. national security, and American Foreign Policy. Mark V. Kauppi has been an associate adjunct professor with the School of Foreign Service since 2000. He has taught and published on a wide range of topics to include the relevancy of Thucydides and Machiavelli to contemporary national security issues, international relations theory, and the role of intelligence in the policymaking process. He is co-author of The Global Philosophers: World Politics in Western Thought (Lexington, 1992), International Relations Theory (5th ed., 2011), and International Relations and World Politics: Security, Economy, Identity (5th ed., 2012).


Book Information
ISBN 9781538115695
Author Mark V. Kauppi
Format Paperback
Page Count 448
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Weight(grams) 671g
Dimensions(mm) 255mm * 183mm * 17mm