The Oxford handbook of international political theory

The Oxford handbook of international political theory's primary virtue lies in the fact that it manages to strike a delicate balance: it serves as an introduction to and an overview of the field of international political theory (IPT) on the one hand, and as an original contribution to this field, with its own distinctive voices, on the other. The end result of this carefully compiled collection is not, of course, a clear picture of what IPT ultimately is or where the discipline is going. It is, rather, a panoply of sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting, visions of the nature, the purpose and the future of the discipline. In Chris Brown and Robyn Eckersley's introductory chapter, the editors authoritatively set the tone for the handbook. They introduce IPT as ‘the point where two fields of study meet—International Relations and Political Theory’ (p. 1). From the discipline of International Relations (IR), IPT takes a ‘central concern with the “international” broadly defined’ and from the field of Political Theory, IPT takes its ‘normative identity’, which accounts for the discipline's interest in the ‘ought questions’ that are often sidelined by IR scholars (p. 1). Having thus characterized the nature of IPT, Brown and Eckersley formulate two closely related research questions for the contributors to the handbook. First, how does IPT connect with real-world politics? Second, what is the relationship between IPT and empirical research on international relations? These two questions, obviously, reflect the editors' desire to establish links between IPT and the realities of international political life.