The discipline of international relations has been influenced strongly by a Western, industrial perspective (Pirages 19). This has developed into an exclusionist view of global politics, the familiar "us versus them" bipolarity.
IR is rife with Western, and particularly Anglo-American self-references (Holsti 146). We need to incorporate Third World, Australian, and other viewpoints too, in order for international relations to be truly an international discipline.
IR has also been a state-centered politics. The emphasis has been on the nation-state as the fundamental unit of analysis, as opposed to the individual or to a political concept.
In this paradigm, international affairs are construed as struggles for power among competing nations.
Now, faced with a fragmented international order, we need to build a more inclusionist approach to hold countries and ideas together.
