International Relations Scholarship in Greece

Abstract

Drawing on Felix Grenier’s ‘Reflexive Studies on ir’ schema, this article offers a reconstruction of the search for a disciplinary identity in Greece, mainly through a combination of the geo-epistemic and historiographical perspectives. It begins with an overview of the field’s history and pre-history, followed by a section on the teaching and research framework and is then followed by a section emphasizing the state and status of theory. Since the 1980s, an increasing expansion in Greek ir has been signalled by a noticeable wave of departments devoted to international or regional studies as well as of research institutes. Thus, most of the relevant literature on ir is still focused on regional and thematic aspects of Greece’s foreign relations, with a fairly marginal theoretical impact. Despite theoretical arguments proposed by some Greek scholars on anarchy and sovereignty, a distinct ‘Greek/Hellenic’ school or approach of ir is hardly forthcoming.