Evolutionary Interpretations of World Politics - William R. Thompson

The field of international relations has stagnated with only realist, liberal, Marxist and constructivist paradigms to work with. Groundbreaking and guaranteed to sir debate, Evolutionary Interpretations of World Politics will move the field of international relations beyond its current, and often inadequate assumptions. The contributors describe how states, ideologies, and other areas of analysis evolve, conquer others, or disappear entirely. Change and the fluid nature of history -- though so clearly a part of historical reality -- are not so deeply embedded in other paradigms as they are in the variation and selection model of evolutionary international relations. In this outstanding collection, some contributors lay out the various controversies inherent to the new theory, while others apply the paradigm to specific problems in IR theory.