International, Political, Sociology Revisited

Abstract On the basis of a review of forces shaping the initial publication of International Political Sociology in 2007, we explore how some of the challenges to which it responded remain unresolved and may now be even more pressing. We focus initially on the need to internationalize the study of international relations and then on the principled difficulties of combining social, political, and international analysis. We argue that these two challenges are closely related, partly in terms of claims about history and temporality and partly in terms of a fallacy of simple addition. We then explore some implications of this relationship. We note the need for but also dangers of more temporally oriented modes of analysis. We also note a tendency to minimize the significance of both “international” and “political” in favor of “sociology.” On these and related grounds, we argue that international political sociology names a site of profound problems more than it does a coherent project or vocation, and that the strength of the journal lies in the heterogeneity of contributions it has attracted. Finally, we speculate that international political sociology offers insight into problems confronting interdisciplinary scholarship more generally.