De-globalising IR

In the last decade, Acharya’s project on global IR raised a hot debate in the IR discipline itself. Scholars have been working on the Global IR for decades. However, it seems that there are achievements with limitations from this initial “Global IR”. Moreover, many non-western IR theories and schools have been attracting more and more attention, such as the Chinese IR school. Unfortunately, there is still a gap between these non-western IR schools and mainstream IR. Although many scholars have addressed why there is no global IR or why non-western IR failed, this paper tries to give an alternative answer and provide potential solutions. We may have been taking a turbulent route to seek the so-called “global IR”. We may need to de-globalise the IR discipline rather than globalise it. In other words, we need to see the world and the evolution of the IR discipline as a whole, rather than emphasising the western dominant and non-western IR theories. To be clear, “de-globalising” IR asks the discipline to initially accept those concepts and ideas less IR-ised. The paper will take the Chinese IR school as an example. This paper shows the problems of globalising IR and suggests de-globalising IR. It is not saying that the existing achievements of global IR are wrong or in vain, rather it provides a new perspective and even a research agenda for the IR discipline itself.