A Master’s in International Relations Can Deepen Your Understanding of Global Systems, Politics and History
The study of international relations is a multidisciplinary field, encompassing areas such as political science, geography, history, economics and law. It’s also a subject that often intersects with a range of other disciplines, including sociology, philosophy and psychology. IE’s masters in international relations offers you the chance to become a professional in the field, and to deepen your understanding of global systems, politics and history.
Regardless of how you approach the discipline, all forms of IR share certain fundamental assumptions. First, that states are rational actors that act to advance their own preferences, and second, that states know themselves and the power they possess and can order this information to inform their decisions. Finally, that there are different levels of analysis, and that the domestic state as a unit, the foreign policy realm of transnational and intergovernmental affairs, and the global level of world politics all have their own unique dynamics.
For example, the United States’ unquestioned military and economic power makes it uniquely suited to addressing many international problems, but this doesn’t make it invulnerable. Moreover, America’s unquestioned power can cause resentment among its friends and allies, especially when it is used to impose cultural and moral values on them that they find retrograde. Cooperation with others can help mitigate this risk by limiting the extent to which Washington must use hard power. This is the logic behind institutions like NATO and the WTO. It’s a logic that also underpins theories of dependency, such as standard dependency theory and neo-Marxist dependency theory.
