Teleology, Cyclicality and Episodism: Three competing views of change in international relations

Abstract

The discipline of international relations is divided by competing conceptions of change. International relations formed as a modern discipline in response to humanity's growing destructiveness as monarchs, states and societies repeatedly went to war with each other. Twentieth-century scholarship in international relations grew up alongside a hopeful project embodied in an international movement: that if subjected to rational research and the close attention of concerned citizens, inter-state relations could be prevented from descending into the carnage of another world war.