Anti-Climacus

I'm in the process of teaching the development of legal institutions related to human rights since 1945. It's forced me to confront some of the more important changes in the way I understand the IR literature. My default position on entering grad school was a kind of realism: most of the political world is bound by power and relative status and the distribution of power in the world system is highly determinative of what actually happens. With respect to international relations proper, I've slid into a kind of institutionalism (realist complaints notwithstanding, there are an awful lot of them, and progressively more); in international law, I've cautiously thrown in my lot with the CLS people (if ever there were anything that has consciously been constructed by human design, it's international law after 1945).

And, of course, the neat paradigmatic and disciplinary boundaries rarely hold up in the actual world, which is why my students will be reading ur-realist Hans Morgenthau talking about various attempts of the UN to use institutional resources to capture more power, and liberal institutionalist par excellence Anne-Marie Slaughter arguing that the UN is the United States' attempt to remake the world in its own image. But Slaughter's piece is written in a very typical political science-y style, whereas Morgenthau--well, as I kept reading it, I thought "my students are going to love this." Realism wins a lot of converts because, at its best, it's much better written. For example:

"The United Nations is like a building designed by two architects who have agreed upon the plans for the second floor but not upon those for the first."

It might be wrong, but it's memorable.