Resources and Applied Methods in International Relations

To describe is also to represent and interpret. All three concepts may stand one for the other. The object of this book is therefore to single out each of these moments of research, without providing any other meaning than a didactic one. Indeed, behind those three concepts (description, representation, and interpretation) are research practices that, however different they may be, are complementary and raise specific questions and difficulties. This chapter explores them and serves as an introduction to a careful research. The favorite approach is both empirical and inductive: it starts with fieldwork and then seeks to find a general logic. It strives to solve a specific puzzle without losing track of the matter of general interest it raises. The scientific debate is open to discussion and may hence go forth.

The purpose of this contribution is to steer between the idiographic and nomothetic poles, and to present in action the method of structured, focalized and controlled comparisons that are liable to produce “contextualized” “intermediary” theories. I will outline the explanative potential of “chrono-logics” and specific contexts. The emphasis will at first be put on the merits and limits of “particularistic” conceptions of social phenomena, then on underlining the advantages and problems of “covering law,” an ambition of the dominant approaches. Finally, I will demonstrate the focalized and controlled comparison method and will show how it provides a way of analyzing international crises between times of war and peace without misrecognizing the particularity of “cases.”

This chapter explains the possibilities that the use of archival sources opens for the advancement of international relations research. It gives an overview of the structure and modus operandi of French and US Diplomatic archives and explains the legal procedures that should be undertaken in order to obtain access to still-classified documents. In the conclusion some practical tips for the first steps in primary source research are given.

The democratization of digital technologies and the proliferation of pictures and videos have forced researchers to adopt new frameworks to study how societies and media take part in international politics. This chapter shows how images can be taken into account in political science and international relations analysis. To do so it presents various methodologies and concepts that can be used individually or together and details different approaches. It firstly looks at why and how to build up corpuses of images dealing with traditional questions of political science. It then shows how a researcher can deal with the question and the policies behind the production of images. The core of the analysis focuses on the issue of how to analyze images themselves, using aesthetics and visual concepts in political analysis. Finally, the chapter deals with the questions of the circulation and reception of these images.

Like statistics, maps are pictures designed by their author or contracting organization, and as such these visualizations come to serve a particular practice or discourse. The various historical uses of maps (discoveries, administration, interstate sovereignty, etc.) show how effective they have been in serving specific purposes and also why they have been taken up so late by science. In the context of international relations research, designing a map should be considered a continuous process in which each choice—source, base map, statistical and graphic processing—has repercussions for the final image and thus its interpretation. This chapter uses two examples to illustrate these issues: international migration allows us to address certain issues concerning the nature of data (stocks/flows) and scales (global/regional/national); then, the case of France’s arms exports provides an opportunity to question data producers (think tanks), units of account (values/percentages and chronology) and synchrony/diachrony. Finally, the last section evokes the multiple uses of maps in international relations research.

This chapter guides readers in their exploration of the “virtual” United Nations (UN) and invites them to follow intuitive navigation and explore undiscovered resources. After putting things in context to grasp the difficulty of finding one’s bearings within the labyrinth of the UN digital galaxy, it provides some useful keys for conducting more methodical research by identifying a small portion of the resources available and by indicating where to find them. Lastly, it questions them by considering the portal not just as a mere tool but as a subject of research.

Drawing upon the work of anthropologists and sociologists, scholars in political science and international relations (IR) increasingly rely on ethnographic methods. Based on multiple fieldwork experiences, within secretariats of international organizations and on the field of international interventions, this chapter addresses the relevance of such methods and the challenges of their concrete application in IR. It provides a series of concrete practical tricks to anticipate, prepare and conduct a fieldwork. It considers the different types of participation a researcher can adopt and stresses the various dimensions of observation. Finally, it draws attention to the daily challenges of ethnographic methods and suggests solutions to overcome issues of confidentiality and to deal with the effects of immersion. Ethnographic methods are relevant to cover a wide variety of fields and objects and therefore, as the chapter shows, are appropriate to the study of IR. More precisely, this chapter suggests different ways to adapt ethnographic methods to the specificities of international configurations. Doing fieldwork is required not only to study the relationships that structure the processes of internationalization and globalization but also to test the relevance of academic and indigenous categories produced to understand these configurations.

An interview is a social relationship involving the researcher in an immediate and interpersonal rapport with an individual who becomes both an object of research and an interacting subject. While the methodology of international relations (IR) interviewing borrows techniques traditionally used in political science and sociology, it also involves a number of structural constraints. The latter may pertain to the relationship between the researcher and her interviewees (often marked by asymmetry in elitist settings), the types of subjects they address (frequently characterized by an imperative of discretion or even secrecy) or the location and material conditions of the interviews (which may take place in imposing institutional settings and involve the use of foreign languages). The methodological, practical and reflexive tools introduced in this chapter are designed to help aspiring researchers to identify and get access to relevant respondents. They will facilitate their handling of situations which may otherwise interfere with interview relationships and thus with research results. The chapter also provides a reflection on the ethics of interviewing and on the uses of interviews in IR research.

Quantitative methods are increasingly used in research on international relations. The present chapter documents this increased use and highlights with three examples how such methods allow to address important research questions in international relations. In addition, it emphasizes that the use of these methods relies on various assumptions that are quite explicit, many of which are also necessary to use qualitative methods to make causal inferences.

The chapter showcases the benefits of resorting to multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) in enquiring international relations (IRs). To do so, it recounts how I investigated the aid that Central Asian States receive, usually in the form of projects, from international organizations (IOs) in the area of border security. I first turned to qualitative interviews with actors working “in the field” to deliver this assistance directly in contact with Central Asian beneficiaries. Those revealed a set of heated struggles over who is the most legitimate actor of border security in this region of the world. But, simultaneously, no one agreed on the hierarchy resulting from those struggles. MCA helped solving this conundrum by mapping out the positions that actors occupy in their operational environment, and from which they talk. They show which actors are more autonomous than others, and how some IOs remain heavily development-driven while others implement security-oriented projects. As such, MCA provides a promising venue for scholars who try to work through those complex socio-bureaucratic transnational settings that make the bread and butter of IR research.

This chapter introduces two types of methods of textual analysis by dealing with an empirical case (the state of the union discourses of the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations). The first part demonstrates the interest of using statistical textual analysis to explore voluminous corpus of texts, test assumptions, identify major lexical worlds and increase methodological rigor of textual data analysis. The second set of methods comes from political theory, with a focus on specific textual dimensions: classical or Straussian approach (the exegesis of texts), neo-Marxism (the linguistic structure of hegemony), Cambridge school or Skinnerian perspective (the usage of linguistic conventions in conceptual and historical contexts). By linking these two kinds of methods, the chapter intends to show the advantages of cross-fertilization between quantitative and qualitative tools for understanding political discourses.

Data is useful for classifying, ordering and quantifying international phenomena. The practical dimension of representing reality through figures and the power of objectification of data explain why databases are numerous and data is often used in international relations research. However, one cannot use figures rigorously without also embracing a qualitative approach to data, taking into account the way data is constructed. Knowing who has put together the data, how and for what purpose is an essential prerequisite for all research. Attention to the definitions chosen and the methodologies employed is crucial, as illustrated through the focus on databases and composite indicators dealing with conflict and peace. More generally, this chapter demonstrates the value of a critical “de-constructivist” stance toward data.