Tradition and Change in the Study of International Relations in Australia

Abstract

Addressing international relations in Australia through the eyes of the scholar rather than the policymaker, this paper presents a partial and personal contribution to a growing sociology of knowledge of the discipline in general and in one country in particular. It outlines the centrality of a power politics realism to the Australian discipline, the central element of which has traditionally been the identification of "threats" and "protectors." From this historical introduction the paper moves to discuss one major change that is coming about in the nature of Australian threat perception, the essence of which is a growing sense of economic, as opposed to politico-strategic, vulnerability in an increasingly unpredictable economic order. The 1980s have seen the search for national economic well-being become as—if not more—salient an issue as is the search for politico- strategic security for scholars of international relations in Australia.