Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen (ZIB) is the flagship journal of the German International Relations community. According to a poll amongst German political scientists across various sub-fields conducted in 2009 it is also considered the best German-language journal in Political Science at large. ZIB publishes articles that make original as well as theoretically and methodically reflected contributions to the study of international relations. The thematic spectrum includes the entire range of IR, including IR theory, foreign policy analysis, international institutions, peace and conflict resolution, security policy, European integration, North-South relations, development policy, and international economic relations. The high quality of articles that are published in ZIB is ensured through double blind peer review. ZIB was the first journal in German Political Science to introduce such a process. Since its founding in 1994 ZIB has greatly contributed to the professionalization of the German IR-community and can be considered a key source for thematic stimuli on theoretical, methodological and empirical levels at the edge of contemporary IR research. Website: www.zib.nomos.de
The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has also challenged the field of International Relations (IR). Core IR concepts such as conflict maturity, escalation dominance, or balance of power have gained popularity. The war has also implications...
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has caught not only politics but also the discipline of International Relations (IR) off guard. The IR debate has been characterised either by inter-theoretical speechlessness or know-it-all attitudes....
This article comments on the main article by Thomas Diez and Andreas Hasenclever in this special issue. I am making three arguments. First, in times of severe international crises – like Russia’s current war against Ukraine – theory debates in...
In their main article, Diez and Hasenclever argue in favour of a heterologue between multiple theories of International Relations (IR) to comprehensively explain the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. In this forum article, I argue that a...
The relationship between peace research and security studies has changed. The conceptual distinction is blurred. Peace research can be divided into critical peace research and peace and conflict research, while security studies can be divided into...
On the surface, the reference text deals with the critique of both strategic studies and so-called critical peace research. In its deeper structure, however, it is about a disciplinary reorientation favouring the peace and security research...
How can peace and conflict research, security studies and social science research on Eastern Europe be better linked in order to satisfy the demands and complexity of the current global (in)security phenomena? How can these research areas be...
Since the Russian war in Ukraine and with the widespread presence of IR scholars in the media, complaints about the presumed „irrelevance“ of the discipline have been resolved. Yet the need for reflecting about IR‘s position as a scholarly...
This article first looks back at past German debates on the relationship between the theory and practice of international relations (IR). In a three-step process, it then critically examines the self-image of academia in the context of media work,...
This article addresses the argument of the main article that science should explain and categorise, but not draw conclusions or take positions; and that researchers should place more emphasis on the justification of their research contributions in...
This essay presents a Ukrainian point of view on the ongoing public and scholarly discourse in Ukraine regarding Russia’s war of aggression against the country, while also responding to the German discourse. The essay presents the state of the...
The war on Ukraine and the bifurcated discourses (political and academic) around it across different geographies are just one of the myriad manifestations of hierarchies, postcolonial continuities and contestations guiding global politics. The...