Comparative Political Theory and International Relations: A Call for Partnership

Over the last decades, critical scholarship in International Relations (IR) has grown, highlighting the Eurocentric, positivist, and hegemonic knowledge-making practices. These critiques have not only highlighted the shortcomings of IR practice but also established their own standpoints, frameworks, and approaches in the discipline, such as Global IR, pluriverse, relationality, and others. While central in imagining alternate IR and its practices, the critiques have ignored the methodological concerns and questions surrounding scholarship, particularly how to do non-Western research in IR and through what means? To address this, this study turns to Comparative Political Theory (CPT), a subfield of political theory, to reflect on questions of methodology and methods in IR. This research proposes espousing the comparative label from CPT and thinking about IR through CPT’s method of ‘dialogue’ and ‘three-step hermeneutics’. ‘Dialogue’ and ‘three-step hermeneutics’ offers critical tools for pursuing non-Western scholarship in IR, emphasising practices of empathetic listening and interpretation led by immersion within the field. By foregrounding methods and methodological discussions in IR, this research aims to reconcile the demands of intelligibility, policy, and practice of non-Western approaches within the discipline.