The unending struggle: inside and outside the box

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the different approaches taken by international relations theories to acknowledge religion in their theoretical frameworks. Particularly, it evaluates the theories using the distinction between holistic–individualistic and inside–outside. The classical theories such as Liberalism and Realism are not satisfactory in explaining and understanding religion’s role in international relations. This is mainly because they tend to think and argue ‘inside the box’. This means that they operate in dichotomies, such as Realism versus Idealism. One way of thinking ‘inside the box’ is the traditional, rather antagonistic, distinction between the different theories of international relations. In the immediate years after the Cold War, it was, and in many classrooms still is, common sense to distinguish between the three main approaches: Realist, Liberal and Radical.¹