International Relations Theory

International relations (IR) theory is a scholarly discipline established after World War I that brings together complementary and competing theories, ontologies, and conceptual and critical (rather than mainstream) frameworks to understand and explain events and phenomena existing in world politics, including domestic and international security. IR is used to explain how the international system is constructed and works, and it is a social science and a dimension of functioning world politics. Debates in IR, the result of methodological and theoretical approaches, are important for the development of social science overall. This entry focuses on the levels of analysis and theories of state behavior in IR.