MACMILLAN Resources and Applied Methods in International Relations (The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy)

Product Description This book constitutes an up-to-date methodology reference work for International Relations (IR) scholars and students. The study of IR calls for the use of multiple and various tools to try and describe international phenomena, analyze and understand them, compare them, interpret them, and try to offer theoretical approaches. In a nutshell, doing research in IR requires both tools and methods―from the use of archives to the translation of results through mapping, from conducting interviews to analyzing quantitative data, from constituting a corpus to the always touchy interpretation of images and discourses. This volume assembles twenty young researchers and professors in the field of IR and political science to discuss numerous rich and thoroughly explained case studies. Merging traditional political science approaches with methods borrowed from  sociology and history, it offers a clear and instructive synthesis of the main resources and applied methods to study International Relations. Review “This volume brings together a very rich collection of chapters on methods of IR. Most chapters were 'tried' on various generations of astute students at Sciences Po. As a result, authors have provided us with one of the most convincing introductory statements of how IR scholars actually do research.” (Thierry Balzacq, Francqui Research Chair, University of Namur, Belgium) “An essential―and rare―instrument for achieving empirical research in International Relations, combining the common expertise of the discipline with the distinctive characteristics of the French approach.” (Bertrand Badie, Full Professor, Sciences Po, Paris, France) “Building on the rich tradition of French international political sociology, Guillaume Devin and his contributors do a real service to students of International Relations, by combining a set of clear ‘how-to’ guides with lucid discussions of the merits and limits of a variety of methods, ranging from interviews to archival research, from cartography to statistics, and from the analysis of discourse to that of images.” (Vincent Pouliot, Professor and William Dawson Scholar, McGill University, Canada) About the Author Guillaume Devin is Professor of Political Science at CERI Sciences Po, Paris, France.