Eclecticism in World Politics: How an African Invention Has Contributed to the Reconstruction of International Relations

This article argues that claims by some international relations (IR) critics that IR rejects ideas, concepts, and theories from Africa and the Global South are ahistorical, exaggerated, and amount to the de-legitimation of non-Western contributions to the discipline. Employing the concept of the social construction of knowledge and an internal discursive method, we suggest that while scholars from the Global North are numerically preponderant and have dominated IR for many years, those from the Global South, including Africans, have also made an impact on its growth. We argue that eclecticism, a key IR approach that focuses on problem-solving, has roots in both the South and North. Therefore, we claim that it is the failure of some scholars both in the North and South to appropriately acknowledge Global South contributions that have helped to enhance the perception of Western-centrism in IR. Accordingly, we conclude that there is a need for IR scholars to acknowledge that ideas and concepts from Africa and the non-Western world have been shared and utilized within the discipline.