The Realism-Idealism Debate in the International Studies Conference, 1933–1937

Abstract

International Relations (IR) long reproduced a mythical account of how the discipline was born out of a “first great debate” in the 1930s between a dominant group of naïve appeasing idealists versus a group of firm scientific realists. Thorough revisionist historical work has since challenged the mythical narrative and introduced two major revisions to disciplinary history: Interwar IR was not dominated by idealism and the first great debate never happened. We contend that a ­realism-idealism debate did take place but took different forms and included a different cast than in the mythical account. We conceptualize debates as fractal position-taking, rather than clashes between two or more self-identified camps of scholars. We explore how realism-idealism was used for position-taking in the oral debates at the International Studies Conference during the 1930s. Our post-revisionist story has surprising implications for the discipline, especially for the self-­understanding of realists, since we find pro-fascist scholars as central advocates for realism. The first great debate was a decisive, formative moment that structured IR with enduring effects, including exclusionary ones that suppressed alternative origin stories.