On learning from Wendt

Abstract

Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics is so impressive an achievement that it has a good chance to become a standard text of the mainline, American-oriented, professional International Relations literature. Composing what Morgenthau and Carr provided for my teachers, Morton Kaplan's System and Process in International Politics was for my peers, and Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics (especially in Robert Keohane's reader, Neorealism and its Critics) has been for many North Americans a bit younger than myself, is a remarkable achievement. It suggests a disciplinary mode of review.