Abstract
The introductory chapter situates Chris Brown’s work in relation to wider themes in International Political Theory (IPT). It provides some context to Brown’s development as a scholar, looking to the ways in which his ideas emerged in relation to different debates and ideas in both political theory and international relations. It first provides a brief intellectual biography and then explores the idea of IPT through an engagement with three books through which Brown has defined the field. The following sections of the introduction look at Brown’s engagement with the predominant liberal international order and the theme of political judgement.
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- 1.
The books include much more than these simple dichotomies, and Brown has sought to resist the ‘cosmopolitan vs communitarian’ framework as the defining feature of his work and IPT.
- 2.
At the time of this writing, Brown is working on a revised fifth edition of this textbook.
- 3.
See Brown’s description of his intellectual trajectory in Brown (2010: 1–16).
- 4.
- 5.
It’s like not being a FC Southampton fan, but still favouring it over all the others (if it’s not Chelsea, that is).
- 6.
One of Brown’s early publications is in Ethics & International Affairs, an effort to redefine Hegel for a generation of theorists who saw him as a foundation for German militarism; Brown (1991), reprinted in Brown (2010).
- 7.
To call Walzer communitarian rather than liberal, though, distorts his views to some extent. While his work clearly has a strong communitarian orientation, he defends liberal ideas and practices in much of his writing and in his role as long-time editor of Dissent magazine.
References
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Lang, A.F., Albert, M. (2019). Introduction: The Politics of International Political Theory. In: Albert, M., Lang Jr., A. (eds) The Politics of International Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93278-1_1
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