Description
In recent years calls for a more global, inclusive, and diverse IR have become more prominent and vocal, leading to the creation of new agendas and trajectories such as the Global IR research programme and the decolonisation of the curriculum. The discipline of comparative regionalism has progressively incorporated insights and contributions from these broader changes in IR, although much of it still relies on ontological, epistemological, and methodological Eurocentric and Western-centric assumptions. In this paper, it is argued that an English School approach to comparative regionalism can facilitate more dialogue and synergies between comparative regionalism and other disciplines, thus widening the horizons of IR. By proposing what I call “comparative cosmology”, i.e. the comparative study of different orders, the paper seeks to discuss the value that an emphasis on primary institutions, interdisciplinarity, and a renewed commitment to interpretivism and to local meanings and practices can bring to comparative regionalism and, more broadly, a more complex, inclusive, and diverse IR.
