Evolutionary Tendencies in Realist and Liberal Theory

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Advanced copies of text will be available one week prior to this event. Abstract: The paper examines realist and liberal IR theory from an evolutionary theoretical perspective. It argues that evolutionary themes, concepts, and concerns inform each theory's assumptive frameworks and the research agendas pursued by its practitioners. In making this argument, it challenges the equation of realism, liberalism, and rationalism which is currently popular within the field, and it does so by underscoring the substantive assumptive differences which continue to separate these two paradigms. Chief among these differences is the alternative assumptions each paradigm makes with regards to the relationship between human beings and their environment (a difference which, as the paper notes, continues to inform debates in the study of biological evolution as well). From these differences, alternative explanations for world political adaptation and historical change are derived, and the EU is utilized as an illustration in this regard.