Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP)

In the Spotlight: TRIP

TRIP Launches New Survey

September 2011

TRIP researchers are currently surveying international relations scholars in the US and 19 other countries regarding the field of International Relations and their opinions on pressing public issues. This is the 4th such survey that TRIP has conducted since 2004 and the first to break the language barrier, including Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Turkish speaking scholars in the survey. The TRIP survey will ask scholars’ views on current events, research methods, teaching, and scholarly works. By providing a better understanding of how scholars both view and interact with one another in the international arena, TRIP hopes to improve the overall knowledge of the field and improve coordination with policy makers.

Update: Complete Survey Results for the U.S. Version of the 2011 TRIP Scholar Survey

International Relations in the U.S. Academy

June 2011

TRIP researchers recently published an article in the June 2011 issue of International Studies Quarterly that addresses a number of questions about the nature and trajectory of the IR field within the United States.

Using two new data sources to describe trends in the international relations (IR) discipline since 1980—a database of every article published in the 12 leading journals in the field and three surveys of IR faculty at US colleges and universities—we explore the extent of theoretical, methodological, and epistemological diversity in the American study of IR and the relationship between IR scholarship and the policy-making community in the United States.

We find, first, that there is considerable and increasing theoretical diversity. Although US scholars believe and teach their students that the major paradigms—realism, liberalism, Marxism, and constructivism—define and divide the discipline, most peer-reviewed research does not advance a theoretical argument from one of these theoretical traditions. There is no evidence, moreover, that realism and its focus on power relations among states dominate, or since 1980 ever has dominated, the literature. Second, although three times as many IR scholars report using qualitative methods as their primary approach, more articles published in the top journals currently employ quantitative tools than any other methodological approach. Third, there exists little epistemological diversity in the field: American IR scholars share a strong and growing commitment to positivism. Finally, there is a disjuncture between what American scholars of IR think about the value of producing policy-relevant work and the actual research they generate: few articles in top journals offer explicit policy advice, but scholars believe that their work is both prescriptive and useful to policymakers. Download.

TRIP and AidData Research Presented at ISA Conference in Montreal

March 29, 2011

Two weeks ago, Professors Mike Tierney, Brad Parks, Christopher Marcoux and undergraduate researcher Alena Stern travelled to Montreal to attend the ISA conference. On Tuesday, March 15, the TRIP project hosted a data vetting workshop where 23 scholars from around the world used TRIP data in order to explore questions about the IR discipline and the relationship between theory and practice within the field of IR. The actual ISA conference started on the March 16th and research papers from both the TRIP project and the AidData project were presented on panels at the conference.

Chris Marcoux and William and Mary Alum Christian Peratsakis presented a paper that outlines AidData’s new environmental aid database. The paper describes broad trends in environmental aid from 90 donors over the past three decades and shows that trends first identified in the book Greening Aid have been magnified over the past decade. With some interesting exceptions, donors are giving less “dirty aid,” more “environmental aid” and much more “neutral aid” than they have in the past.

During a panel that highlighted four TRIP papers, Stern and Parks explained whether and to what extent exposure to the policy-making process affects the publication patterns of leading International Relations academics. The study used the TRIP Journal Database to define their sample of leading IR scholars, those who had published two or more articles in the top 12 IR journals from 1980-2008. Publication patterns were understood as whether an author chooses to publish in an academic journal, such as International Organization or APSR, or a policy journal, such as Foreign Policy or Foreign Affairs. One interesting finding from this study was that temporarily leaving academia to occupy a full-time policy making position does have a significant effect on the publication patterns of scholars, while holding a part time position while simultaneously working in the academy has no discernible effect. Similarly, and surprisingly according to Parks and Stern, tenure has no discernible effect on whether a scholar will choose to publish in policy journals.

Stern was the only undergraduate who participated in the TRIP workshop and she gave the formal presentation on the ISA panel. According to Professor Tierney, both the research and the presentation were excellent. “Alena wowed the discussant and the audience. She presented the paper like a pro. Following the panel I was approached by a professor who asked me ‘when she was going to finish’ and whether she would be going on the market soon. This made me smile for two reasons. First, Alena is only 19 and studying for her BA, rather than her PhD, which is what the professor assumed. Second, in the fall of 2003 at the APSA conference I had a very similar experience when someone asked me whether Brad Parks, Alena’s mentor and co-author on this paper, would be going on the academic job market. He had just graduated from W&M a few months earlier.”

As a Murray Scholar, Alena has been working on both TRIP and AidData since her freshman year. Alena reflects, “My personal experience performing undergraduate research has enhanced my undergraduate career and has provided me with skills that will certainly prove invaluable beyond graduation.”

To read Alena and Brad’s paper, click here.

To view Chris and Christian’s presentation, click here.

One Discipline or Many? 2008 TRIP Survey of International Relations Faculty in Ten Countries

By Richard Jordan, Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael Tierney

To what extent is there national variation in how scholars teach IR, think about the discipline,view their role in the policy process, and approach critical contemporary foreign policy debates? Conversely, to what extent is there a single-perhaps American-driven-IR discipline? To begin to answer these questions, the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) project has conducted the first cross-national survey of IR faculty in ten countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. This report provides descriptive statistics and top line results for all 90 questions asked on the 2008 survey. Download | Mark Lynch Blog | Daniel Drezner's Blog | Duck of Minerva Blog | Think Progress

Foreign Policy: Inside the Ivory Tower 2009

By Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael Tierney

To what extent is there national variation in how scholars teach IR, think about the discipline,view their role in the policy process, and approach critical contemporary foreign policy debates? Conversely, to what extent is there a single-perhaps American-driven-IR discipline? To begin to answer these questions, the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) project has conducted the first cross-national survey of IR faculty in ten countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, Israel, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. This report provides descriptive statistics and top line results for all 90 questions asked on the 2008 survey. Read More

The American School of IPE

By Daniel Maliniak and Michael J. Tierney

This paper uses the results of the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) project: a multi-year study of the international relations (IR) field in order to discern the major characteristics of international political economy scholarship in the United States today. It finds that, like Benjamin Cohen’s depiction of the American school, IPE in the United States is increasingly positivist, quantitative, and liberal in orientation. It employs data from a journal article database that tracks trends in publication patterns. It also analyzes data from two surveys of IR scholars in the US and Canada that were conducted in the fall of 2006. Download

Foreign Policy: Inside the Ivory Tower 2007

By Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael J. Tierney

Professors of international relations shape future policy debates and mold the next generation of leaders. So who are these dons of diplomacy, and what do they believe? In the most comprehensive survey of its kind, we unlock the door to the academy, examining what these scholars write and think about international politics, and what they are teaching tomorrow’s leaders. The view from the academy allows scholars to reflect dispassionately on vexing foreign-policy problems, discern underlying patterns in state behavior, anticipate future threats, and forecast the consequences of different policy options. Read the Full Article

2006 TRIP Survey Report: The View from the Ivory Tower

By Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael J. Tierney

In this report, we describe the results of the 2006 TRIP survey of IR faculty. In the fall of 2004 we conducted the most extensive and systematic survey to date of IR scholars in the United States. Two years later, in the fall of 2006, we followed up that survey to track changes in views and practices of IR scholars. The 2006 survey contained 36 new questions that were not included in the prior survey, and we expanded the geographic scope of our survey to include scholars at both U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities. This report contains descriptive statistics for every question in the 2006... Full Survey Report