Political Theories of International Relations
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David Boucher uses the ideas of western philosophy's most significant thinkers to trace the history of political theory in international relations. He examines current conceptions, offering an alternative thematic interpretation of how the most significant thinkers in the Western tradition perceived relations between communities, nations, states, and the discovery of the new world. His organizing principle centres on the idea that the great philosophers were searching for a criterion of state conduct associated with different theories of human nature and which were used for justificatory, appraisive, and injunctive purposes. The author asserts that great thinkers from Thucydides to Marx formulated and applied these criteria to interpret the changing international system and concludes by showing how contemporary theories compare with and extend the themes addressed by their predecessors.
David Boucher was educated at the universities of Wales, London and Liverpool. He was a lecturer at the University of Wales, Cardiff, and a senior lecturer at La Trobe University, Melbourne, and the Australian National University, Canberra. He is currently a Reader in Political Theory and Government at the University of Wales, Swansea. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Senior Fellow of the Collingwood Centre, University of Wales, Swansea, and has held fellowships at Cardiff and the History of Ideas Unit, Australian National University. He was a Senior Associate of Pembroke College, Oxford in 1996 and a visiting fellow of New College, Oxford 1998. He is the chairman of the Trustees of the R.G. Collingwood Society and joint editor of the journal Colingwood Studies. He has published widely in the History of Thought in International Relations and has taught the subject for twelve years.