I Have Been Disciplined

Yesterday, the McGill Poli Sci dept held a roundtable on the State of the Discipline.  Apparently, the grad students wanted to get us to talk about where the lines blur or divide the sub-fields and such.  As an invitee, I saw it as an opportunity to compare and contrast International Relations (my subfield) and Comparative Politics (where I often stray).  The other folks did a better job than I could of defining their subfields and the need for discipline--knowing what one is and with whom is one having a conversation. 

I thought I would post some of what I said here.  Certainly going to be obscure for non-political scientists, but at least 3% of my readership are poli sci types, so here you go:

• Focus:
• IR:  Central questions center on War, Peace, Trade, Cooperation.  Not all stuff fits into those boxes but few IR types entirely ignore them.
• Comp: No central focus.  The balkanization is not as extreme as it used to be, but there are no central concerns, I think.  If one says something like governance, well, that is so broad as to be meaningless.  
• Variables to separate the fields:
• IR: There must be at least one variable (dependent or independent--effect or cause for those playing at home) that resides outside of a country or countries.  But a key hedge--violence internal to countries has become fair game for IR types--civil war, ethnic conflict.
• Comparative: The variables cannot be exclusively international.  Causes or effects can be international, but if both, then not comparative.
• Language Skills:
• IR: Language can be statistics or formal modeling.  Foreign language is useful, but not a requirement.
• Comp: Lack of language will make it hard, but not impossible to get a job.
• Fieldwork:
• IR: Research can be done without leaving town.  If one leaves town, then fieldwork can be a week or two in a capitol somewhere.
• Comp: Is six months a minimum?  Some kind of extensive time in another place is required to be seen as serious.  
• Major Divides:
• IR:  
• Paradigms--Are you a realist, liberal or constructivist?  Or are you paradigm-less?  (Brother, can you sparadigm joke has already been made).
• Big theory vs middle range stuff.
• Coastal vs. midwestern, where Chicago and Northwestern are essentially coastal while South Carolina is midwestern. This has to do with a contrast between styles of thinking and the use of numbers.  I can play with this some other time.
• Comparative: Area studies vs. generalist.  This war is still on-going.  I was very much raised in a thematic place, but there is still a key tension here.
• Too much of an outsider to remember others that are specific to the subfield (rat cho vs everyone else is not just a comparative debate)

There are important overlaps between the subfields so that poaching or crossing boundaries is not just ok but actually required: civil war, civil-military relations (yes, two of my areas) and political economy.  Figuring out the differences between comparative political economy people and IPE is probably not worth the headache.

The best way to figure out the differences, besides preparing for the comps (IR is relatively easy, Comp is quite hard), is to look at the major journals of each subfield and see what are the main questions and approaches.

Why should we care?

• First, and, foremost, nearly every poli sci department in North America* (and elsewhere too) divide up their teaching and .... their hiring into subfields.  So, once you start teaching IR, forever it will rule your destiny.  Yes, folks do crossover in their teaching, especially in smaller places where folks need to have at least two subfields they can teach.  But for larger places, what you get hired to do is what you end up doing--teaching courses in a specific area--a subfield.
• Second, I have been teasing my theory colleagues for years now about the relative size of IR and Theory, and this matters for a bunch of reasons, but particularly because our identities do get wrapped up in this.  And institutions do as well.  There are bureaucratic politics, social dynamics, and more that reinforces the divisions.  I faced some grief for teaching a course on civil war because it was not seen as IR, wasting precious resources (my teaching time) on another subfield.  Funny that they didn't say the same about civil-military relations....
• Third, our profession is organized this way, so it matters for jobs, for conferences, etc.
• Finally, some disciplining is required.  We cannot study everything all the time, but rather slices of it.  And the boundaries might be somewhat arbitrary but nearly all boundaries are (why is Pakistan put in Petraeus's Central Command map while India is in Pacific Command?).

Why we should not care so much?  Good work is good work, regardless of whether it spills over a sacred boundary or not.  If the work is interesting--asks an interesting question, considers an important puzzle, comes up with a new answer, then where it is located across subfields does not matter.

Of course, I am biased in all of this as my work has repeatedly strayed across boundaries--using comparative theories to answer IR questions (who takes sides in other countries' disputes; how do political institutions at home influence military operations in Afghanistan) and IR theories to address comparative questions (can we apply the theory of deterrence to understand ethnic conflict and civil war).  I have published in both IR and Comparative outlets.  I used to blame my early job placement (6 years in TTU) on my cross-boundary-ness, but as I admitted yesterday, that is an over-determined question (lots of causes).  And now?  Now it is the CV that matters, and neither IR nor comparative outlets have denied my work for its boundary-violating.

What do the Poli Sci readers of this blog think?



* Yale is the obvious exception as their hiring ads have been explicitly thematic over the past several years.