International relations theory: a peripheral perspective. Part 1

Abstract

In an article first published in 1977, Stanley Hoffmann callad international relations a "(North)American social science". His diagnosis regarding the national origina of the discipline as a field of social-scientific enquiry, and the causes for the predominant role of u.s. academia in its development are, in my modest view, very much on target. What Hoffmann did not perceive, nonetheless, is that however understandable the causes of this phenomenon may be, the uncritical importation into the Third World of theories of international relations coined mainly in the United States has done a lot of damage. This is notan expression of a naive nationalism, anti-Americanism or anti-imperialism. In the following five theoretical chapters I shall attempt to show that the ethnocentric quality of u.s. international relations theory, misread and ill-applied to the foreign policies of peripheral states, has sometimes seriously misguided Third World governments. I will be focusing on the case of Argentina, but my argumente can be applied to several other Third World examples.