IPE's Split Brain

IPE today looks a lot like a split brain. The discipline (or at least our current perception of it) displays the characteristics of a patient whose corpus callosum has been severed. In a nutshell, the American school is deeply committed to the norms of science, carefully selecting and testing '...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:New political economy 2009-09, Vol.14 (3), p.337-346
Main Author: Weaver, Catherine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic profession
Cohen, Benjamin Jerry
Comparative analysis
Great Britain
History
Intellectual History
International political economy
International relations
Methodology
Political Economy
Political Science Education
Political Science Theories
Political theory
Scholarship
Social construction
United States of America
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Summary:IPE today looks a lot like a split brain. The discipline (or at least our current perception of it) displays the characteristics of a patient whose corpus callosum has been severed. In a nutshell, the American school is deeply committed to the norms of science, carefully selecting and testing 'hard' data to provide persuasive causal explanations about the way the world does work. The British school is both more creative and risk-taking, aspiring to interpret political history and structures to say something powerful about the way the world should work. This 'monoculture' of American IPE (McNamara 2009), based upon a tripartite adherence to paradigm-driven research, positivism and quantitative methods (Maliniak & Tierney 2009), is the possible result of two social processes: the way in which US institutions now train and socialise graduate students (Farrell and Finnemore 2009; McNamara 2009; and Cox this issue); and the control over the field exercised by the editors of the leading international relations journals.
ISSN:1356-3467
1469-9923
DOI:10.1080/13563460903087474