Citing Old and New IR: From Positivism to Post-Colonialism

Using citation data from Google Scholar (GS) this article reveals a picture of IR which contrasts sharply with how the discipline currently understands itself. Over a period of two years, GS citation numbers were collected from major publications across a range of IR theories. What is exposed challenges the core/periphery assumption endemic to the discipline of IR. The data suggests a realignment of discursive power in IR behind the periphery rendering the core increasingly isolated in what has become an inter-discipline. What emerges is a picture of IR which is decidedly internationalized and democratized reaching far beyond its heretofore patrolled gates of the Anglo-American dominated academy and its associated onto-methodology. The citation data situates IR within a much larger field of scholarship which claims a significant stake and contribution to matters pertinent to understanding International Relations. All of this points to a post-colonial moment in the story of the discipline of IR which is increasingly being written far from its assumed ‘core’.