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Monday, December 10, 2007

Top 25 IR scholars

I was surfing through some blogs and found this interesting list in Roger A. Payne's blog (Under the title Most influential IR scholars) that identifies "the top 25 scholars with the greatest impact on the discipline over the past 20 years".

For the top 10, he included listing of the scholar's most influential IR publication (and date published):

  1. Robert O. Keohane (1941), Princeton, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (1984)
  2. Kenneth N. Waltz (1924), Emeritus California-Berkeley and Columbia, Theory of International Politics (1979)
  3. Alexander Wendt (1958), Ohio State, Social Theory of International Politics (1999).
  4. Samuel P. Huntington (1927), Harvard, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1998).
  5. John J. Mearsheimer (1947), University of Chicago, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
  6. Joseph S. Nye (1941), Harvard, coauthor (with Keohane) of Power and Interdependence: world politics in transition (1977).
  7. Robert Jervis (1940), Columbia, The Logic of Images in International Relations (1970).
  8. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (1946), New York University and Stanford's Hoover Institution, The War Trap (1981)
  9. Bruce M. Russett (1935), Yale, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (1994).
  10. Robert Gilpin (1930), Emeritus Princeton, The Political Economy of International Relations(1987).
Following are the 11~25(with 3 ranking 23):

11. Peter J. Katzenstein (1945), Cornell
12. Stephen D. Krasner (1942), Stanford
13. James N. Rosenau, George Washington
14. John Ruggie (1944), Harvard
15. Michael Doyle (1948), Columbia
16. James D. Fearon, Stanford
17. Immanuel Wallerstein (1930), Yale
18. Robert Cox (1926), Emeritus York (Toronto)
19. Hans J. Morgenthau (1904-1980), Chicago
20. Francis Fukuyama (1952), Johns Hopkins SAIS
21. J. David Singer (1925), Michigan
22. Stephen Walt (1955), Harvard
23. Jack L. Snyder, Columbia
23. Robert Axelrod (1943), Michigan
23. Stanley Hoffman (1928), Harvard

Keohane, Waltz, Wendt, Huntington, Nye, and Gilpin are the names I know of in the top ten list. Of the listed publications, I have only partially read Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order". Right now, I'm reading Gilpin's "Global Political Economy: Understanding the international economic order", and I'm half way through it. It's a great book for students with both political science and economic backgrounds. It guides you through the strengths and weakness of both fields, and suggests an alternative approach which is the studies of International Political Economy(IPE).

Krasner, Rosenau, Cox, Morgenthau, Fukuyama, Walt, Snyder, Axelrod, and Hoffman are the names I know in the following list. In fact, I saw Rosenau last year when he came to NCCU to give a speech, and I even had the chance to ask him a question during the conference. He was an old fellow who could barely walk by himself, but you can still see the glare that flashes in his eyes when talks about his intellectual findings.

I'm specifically interested in Gilpin and Waltz's publications. So here's a book or two to add to my "winter reading list".

3 comments:

Chih-Hsiang Liao said...

This article is quite informative. I like The way you present your material.

Anonymous said...

I am not an IR major, but most names shown in this list are well-known by many graduate students in political science in the US. I have read some of those influential scholars' works, and they are quite impressive! Thanks for your sharing.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the feedback! Maybe you could share with us what students or professors in the US are recently reading. It would be really helpful!