Overview
Where did the main theories of international relations come from, and whose history do they privilege? The discipline developed largely through Euro-American institutions and cases. Its standard concepts include anarchy, sovereignty and the balance of power. The lecture asks whether these concepts describe general political processes or elevate particular histories into universal theory.
Asian historical orders and non-Western intellectual traditions supply other starting points. The Chinese tributary system and Southeast Asian mandala politics are two examples. Amitav Acharya sets out three responses to this broader evidence. Scholars can extend established theories, defend regional exceptionalism or build Global IR by tracing how ideas are localized. The final approach seeks to broaden the discipline while guarding against a new regional parochialism.
Questions guiding the lecture
- In what sense has IR theory been shaped by Western institutions and historical experience?
- Can a theory be universal when the cases from which it was built are regionally narrow?
- What distinguishes non-Western theory-building from simply applying existing theory to a different region?
- How do hierarchy, engagement, and institutional binding complicate balance-of-power accounts of Asian order?
Lecture map
The universality problem begins with IR as a Western, especially American, disciplinary project. Its standard history rests on a limited body of evidence.
Tribute and hierarchy offer alternatives to a Westphalian baseline. Mandala politics and relational authority do the same.
Three possible routes follow. Scholars may extend established theory, assert Asian exceptionalism or build Global IR through deprovincialization and localization.
Rivalry and engagement help explain “double-binding” in Asia. The section closes with the institutional constraints on theory-building in postcolonial South Korea.
Readings
Acharya, Amitav. 2003–04. “Will Asia's Past Be Its Future?” International Security 28(3): 149–164.
Questions the importation of European rivalry, balancing, and bandwagoning frameworks into the study of Asian regional order.
Acharya, Amitav. 2014. “International Relations Theory and the ‘Rise of Asia.’” In The Oxford Handbook of the International Relations of Asia, edited by Saadia M. Pekkanen, John Ravenhill, and Rosemary Foot, 120–138.
Evaluates how Asia can test and extend theory. Acharya also asks how the region might generate concepts instead of serving only as a setting for Western frameworks.
Recommended extensions
The syllabus recommends Jungmin Seo and Young Chul Cho on postcolonial South Korean IR, David C. Kang's “Getting Asia Wrong,” and Kang's later work on hierarchy in historical East Asia. These texts deepen the institutional and historical alternatives introduced in the lecture.
Classroom study
Randomized survey experiment
Historical analogies and strategic advice
The study asks whether a European balance-of-power analogy or an Asian institutional-engagement analogy changes recommendations for smaller states in a fictional regional-security problem.
Qualtrics evenly presented a European brief, an Asian brief or a control. Participants answered five items on 1–5 scales. Two items were reverse-coded before the responses were combined into an Engagement Orientation Score.
The analogies came with different substantive claims, and the control contained information absent from both treatments. The comparison therefore concerns each brief as a whole. It does not isolate regional history as a single treatment ingredient.
The public record describes the implemented design without presenting student responses or asserting that the exercise confirmed Acharya's argument. Its pedagogical value lies partly in asking whether the instrument itself reproduces the simplifications it is meant to examine.
Takeaways
- Theories reflect the histories and institutions from which they are built. Their origins matter when evaluating their scope.
- Hierarchy and relational authority complicate accounts that assume sovereign equality and anarchy as universal starting points.
- Global IR aims to expand and recombine the discipline while avoiding the substitution of one regional canon for another.
- Asian cases can generate concepts and mechanisms in their own right as well as test theories developed elsewhere.
- Knowledge production takes place within institutions. Security dependence and language affect which theories travel, as do publication incentives and academic networks.
Course record checked against the 2025–2026 syllabus and the lecture slides, speaker notes and assigned Acharya chapter. The fielded Qualtrics instrument and analysis workflow were used to verify the classroom study.