Is International Relations still an American social science discipline in Latin America?

Is International Relations still an American social science discipline in Latin America? Over the last 40 years, investigations have shown the discipline of International Relations to reproduce the American influence on its methods, paradigms, and institutional dynamics. This article explores the case for the Latin American community, based on the survey data from the Teaching, Research, and International Politics project (TRIP) 2014 developed by the Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations of the College of William and Mary, Virginia (USA). TRIP evaluated International Relations communities in 32 countries around the world. The article aims to answer two main questions: (i) is American influence still dominant over epistemological, methodological, paradigmatic, and institutional representative terms in Latin American International Relations communities, as has been considered in the past? (ii) Is there in the region any contestation to this supposed influence? Primarily, the present article shows an affirmative answer for the first issue. Therefore, and most importantly, the data analysis shows upcoming local pressures rooted in American influence, especially on its epistemic and paradigmatic terms. The data strengthens the miscegenation tendency on its epistemological and paradigmatic aspects, which underlines a lack of consensus over the structure of American dominance over the discipline of International Relations in Latin America, especially if one observes the most numerous and structured group in the region: the Brazilian International Relations community.


Introduction
There are few academic articles regarding the way peripheral countries deal with both central production (including the epistemological and paradigmatic) and the perception of American hegemony in the discipline. The main assumption continues to be based on the research of Hoffman (1977), who asserts that the discipline of International Relations is basically an American social science; moreover, it is normally associated with the belief that international knowledge produced in the United States is spread and reproduced around the world, wherever the discipline is practiced.
The compelling consequence of Hoffmann's hypothesis, which was quickly transformed into a firmly rooted belief, is that the positivist epistemology and its paradigms (principally Realism and Liberalism) that are embedded in American social science are the main reference point for the discipline around the world. Smith underlines the fact that ideational thought in the world is "divided between the positivist theory that is practiced in the United States (...) and those, in various parts of the world, who are skeptical about the merits of Positivism" (Smith, 2002, p. 81). Consequently, the global debate appears to hold the epistemology, methods, and paradigms practiced in the United States as its core reference. Tickner and Weaver detect the lack of deeper research with a global perspective in International Relations theory, stating: "a limited number of studies have emerged on the contrast between the field of International Relations in the United States and Western Europe, but within a global perspective this is a ridiculously narrow view" (Tickner & Weaver, 2009, p. 1).
Nevertheless, the question that remains unanswered (and is probably the most neglected) is: to what extent do the epistemology, methods, and paradigms that underlie research in developing countries follow the model of the dominant approach in the United States? It is reasonable to assume that American theoretical contributions, when incorporated into epistemic communities in other parts of the world, are subsumed and turned into invisible concepts and practices produced regionally. The impact that paradigms such as realism and liberalism had on researchers and decision-makers in Latin America seems to be undeniable, but to what extent were such paradigms incorporated in a basic or pure way among International Relations communities in Latin America?
Latin American communities of International Relations scholars in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico were included (Maliniak et al., TRIP 2011). In the 2014 survey, Chile was also included.
The largest communities of international relations are those of Brazil and Mexico (both account for 73% of the total). In total the approximate size of the five communities is 835 researchers. The five communities investigated in Latin America totaled 445 respondents' researchers. This article is divided into two sections: in the first, we analyze data from the last survey, carried out in 2014, which is related to methodological, epistemological, and paradigmatic outcomes, and we present a theoretical discussion based on these outcomes. In the second section, based on the data related to several aspectsinstitution, authors, and journals-we discuss key challenges to Hoffmann's hypothesis of the outcomes among communities of International Relations scholars in Latin America.

Methodological, epistemological and paradigmatic challenges from Latin American scholarly communities
In recent decades, there has been some debate between different scientific communities of Latin American social scientists over whether the strong influence of American quantitative methods would lead to different research designs among new generations of researchers (Barasoul & Silva, 2016;Herz, 2010;Tickner, 2002Tickner, , 2009  American countries, as mentioned above, because they are less trained to deal with analyses that use complex econometric and statistical calculations (Villa & Souza, 2014).
Finally, (iii) the epistemological data tends to strengthen aspects of the westernperiphery relations that the methodological analysis has already shown.
It is not uncommon to find phrases like "Rationalism dominates the mainstream literature of the discipline, especially in the United States" (Smith, 2000, p. 380) in the literature devoted to the theme of epistemological reflections. In epistemological terms, the data show a predominance of positivism. In four Latin American countries-Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico-epistemological positivism is the preference of communities, similar to the findings of TRIP 2011 (Tickner, Cepeda & Bernal, 2012). This means that it is difficult to find consistency in Smith's argument "about the disbelief that prevails in many parts of the world about the merits of show that general epistemological choices are diverse; thus, it may not be said that a category has been epistemologically erased. Second, the data tend to strengthen a certain 'epistemological hybridism:' this is because the positivist prevalence is balanced by the fact that the choices for non-positivism and post-positivism are high (accounting for about 55-60% of epistemological choices).
In fact, there is no epistemological purity, but epistemological diversity, as shown in Chart 1: there is a plurality of epistemological choices in the five Latin American research communities, taking into account that there is a reasonable minimum number of researchers who relate their scientific work exclusively to one of these three categories.
On the other hand, it is true that the average of the choices for non-positivism accounts for slightly more than one third. However, non-adherence to positivism does The tendency to hybridism tends to be reinforced by the question on the assumption of the rationality of the actors. There is a consensus among the five communities in declaring in high rates that their research is based both on assumptions of rationality of the actors as well as alternative approaches that do not assume the rationality of actors. So it is also significant that on average, almost one fifth of the respondents in the five Latin American countries (18%) report that they do not assume the rationality of actors, which also challenges the other academic myth that the Latin American IR community is strongly rationalist.
Still on methodological aspects, one recurrent perception in theoretical studies is the dominance of the international framework of rational choice in the analyses. One of the consequences is that the assumption of rationality of the actors has displaced the third debate, from the dichotomy of positivist versus non-positivists, to the category rationalists versus not rationalists, currently recalled from the second debate. This has focused on the methodological aspects. Thus, the idea that scientific communities assumed rationality of the actors was largely disseminated. As Stephanie Neuman notes: Rational choice theory has roved also problematic to an analytic tool in the Western setting (and to some social scientists in the Western setting too). It assumes that any chosen behavior can be understood as optimizing material self-interest. In class, many of my students and I wondered how can we make the assumption? Could that all decisions and human acts are a means to self-interested, material end in all cultures. How does one know this empirically? (...) Intuitively we felt the strength of a body of theory that ignores cultural variety is suspect (Neuman, 1998, p. 5).
In summary, in what regards epistemological aspects, the five Latin American communities seem to follow a dual pattern, which rests on the rationality of the actors for a lot of researchers, and does not assume rationality for many others. In this sense, they presented an average of 58.5% of respondents that assume the use of both different starting points to develop their research, as shown in Chart 2, and highlighted by Donald Puchala: Contemporary Western thinking about international relations has had little to offer to explain, or to evaluate the significance of, the embittered tone, the complex motivations, the mythological underpinnings, or the historical dynamics of North-South relations. The main reason for this is that for a very long time (…) Western theorists have not been sufficiently concerned with the impact of the culture and ideas upon among states and people (Puchala 1998, p. 150). It is interesting to observe this dual standard in the research developed in the region, since most of it is influenced by critical perspectives and historical approaches;

Chart 2 Percentage of respondents that assume both the rationality of actors and alternative approaches that do not assume the rationality of actors
this is because, whether through French or English influence, or even that of historical materialism, communities eventually merge and blend different perceptions of the actors. This is also because they are sometimes rational and endowed with 'ideal' conditions for the decision making process, or sometimes the actor is circumscribed into a historical and material structure that impels him to act in a certain way and not another, and is considered more 'rational'.
Therefore, there is not a pure positivism (or 'puritan'), but a kind of theoretical syncretism, in which the core is a hegemonic theoretical amalgam according to local characteristics, or as pointed out by Tickner "geocultural epistemologies" that reproduce locally the hegemonic core (Tickner, 2009 This type of theoretical miscegenation that challenges the possibility that 'pure theory' be reproduced beyond the IR core is fairly consistent with what Tickner (2009Tickner ( , 2002, Escudé (1998) and Ayoob (1998) respectively have called "Latin American hybridism", "peripheral theory" and "subaltern realism". As one Turkish scholar points out to Aydinli and Matthews: The different views about paradigms also reinforce some of the trends observed in the methods and their epistemological aspects, as was possible to see here.
In terms of paradigms, with the exception of Mexico and Brazil, the IR communities of Latin America declare themselves to be mainly Constructivist, as can be seen in Chart 3. In Mexico, the preferences for realism are slightly higher than those for constructivism. However, it should be stressed again that these preferences exist within something like a paradigmatic hybridism (Tickner, 2009). With the exception of Chile, realism continues to be popular, and in some cases such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, the percentage of those who utilize this paradigm is not so different from those using the constructivist paradigm. Also, to a lesser extent, Liberalism, the English School and Marxism (the latter with the exception of Chile) also have a reasonable acceptance rate.

Chart 3 Current paradigmatic choices by country (%)
Source: Elaborated by authors based on Maliniak et al., TRIP 2014 Faculty Survey. What could explain this preference for Constructivism? In order to comprehend this finding, it is important to recover the background of epistemological discussion [so] they would remain on the margins of the field, largely invisible to the preponderance of empirical researchers, most of whom explicitly or implicitly accept one or another version of rationalistic premises" (Keohane, 1988 (2013)  World -strengthens that idea: Realism, neorealism, and neoliberalism are under attack from many quarters or many grounds, but the apparent fissure between theory and empirical reality in the Third World remains virtually unexamined. Even the so-called critical theorists, whose assaults on IR theory have been the most vigorous, have all but ignored these issues (Neuman, 1998, p. 2 But the explanations that result are at least wanting in richness if not also in interpretive validity (…) A realistic analysis, for example, would reveal that in the world of states most of those in Asia, Africa, and Latin America are deficient in power and most predominantly Third World societies are therefore inconsequential in world politics (Puchala, 1998, p. 149).

Chart 4 Use of paradigmatic analysis by country (%)
Source: Elaborated by authors based on Maliniak et al., TRIP 2014 Faculty Survey. There seems to be a certain exhaustion of the 'monolithic' use of paradigms, at least in several of those national communities of researchers. And once more, the communities tend to affirm that their analyses are not necessarily tied to a single paradigm. In the four communities (except for Mexico), most respondents indicated in their responses that "My approach to IR is based on more than one paradigm or school of thought" as can be seen in Chart 4. In some cases, such as Argentina and Chile, 100% of the IR community adopts this position, and in cases like Brazil and Colombia, this percentage ranges from 59% to 88%. In Brazil, one part of the community also claims not to adopt any paradigm (36%)-this group represents more than a third of their IR community.
In other words, these data seem to take us far from the conclusion Smith arrived at: "the main debate in the discipline for the next decade will indeed be between rationalism and constructivism." (Smith, 2000, p. 380). According to other authors (Lake, 2013;Dunne, Hansen & Wight, 2013;Brown, 2013) no other 'great debate' has arisen.
The exhaustion and paradigms of debates formulated from the mainstream seems somewhat plausible. Some very relevant information is that, despite this hybridism, there has been a process of migration from traditional schools of thought (realism, liberalism, and Marxism) to alternatives (mainly constructivism and the English school) or "other," researchers who have left the traditional paradigm, but at the same time stating that "I do not use paradigmatic analysis". This migration has moved more strongly away from realism than any other traditional paradigm. Four of the analyzed communities (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Chile) started with a strong reference to realism (actually more than a generation of scholars began in the IR discipline through realism).
Including Mexico, where Marxism and realism were very influential, many of their researchers tend to have the same changing trend as recorded in other countries. In other words, the hybridism was also not a constant but a consequence, because the IR discipline was, in principle, very influenced by realism.
In sum, the Latin American communities surveyed tend to have a great diversity of epistemological perspectives and also tend to accept as many largely postpositivist paradigms as those who tend to migrate from the original paradigm. They move away from the theoretical biases of so-called mainstream debates more frequently than in the United States. Among these reasons we can enumerate: i) a high acceptance of sociological traditions; ii) a less intense involvement in academic intra-paradigmatic Argentina Brazil Chile Colombia Mexico rationalist debate (i.e. neo-realists and neo-institutionalists) and iii) these debates tend to arrive late from almost everywhere to the periphery (Villa & Souza, 2014).

The American influence on the discipline in Latin America
As is well known among researchers of International Relations in the late seventies, Stanley Hoffman wrote a remarkable article in which he argued that International Relations was primarily an American discipline, signaling thereby the broad domain and influence of theories, paradigms, and methods practiced in the United States in regard to the universities of the rest of the world (Hoffman, 1977). This idea of the American prevalence among the discipline of International Relations is reinforced by cyclical production in the literature (Hoffman, 1977;Alker & Bierstekerr, 1984;Holsti, 1985;Waever, 1998;Smith, 2000;Aydinli & Matthews, 2000;Kristensen, 2012) that, since the work of Stanley Hoffman, has been tasked to disseminate and validate with evidence the idea that International Relations is an American science. There is, therefore, a predominance of epistemology, ontology, and methodology produced in the United States, with its strongly positivist and rationalist nature.
This reflection leads again to the following question: is the discipline of International Relations dominated by the United States in the Latin American cases studied. In the results observed from the analyzed data, one can see a dissonance among Latin American countries, particularly regarding Brazil's position, and to some extent in Mexico's position, as can be observed in Table 3:    the United States will have better chances of professional success. Therefore, there is a clear perception of how much value this adds to the student's intellectual development.

IS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS STILL AN AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE DISCIPLINE IN LATIN AMERICA?
However, there is a slight difference in terms of percentage balance among the academics in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico on the one hand, and Chile and Colombia on the other, as observed in Table 6.
For Brazil and Mexico there is a majority who believe there is an increase and value in such experience in the U.S. Nevertheless, there are a significant number of researchers who do not believe this statement. That is, there are some researchers that don't necessarily believe that the young academics who conduct research in the United States will access their own labor market more easily than in other countries. Unlike in Chile and Colombia, the majority of researchers see the academic experience in the United States as an unquestionable gain in terms of comparative advantage to get a placement on return to any of these countries of origin.
How can one explain the difference among perceptions as concerns U.S.
dominance over IR in the training of PhDs, especially when one considers the Brazilian case? It is also frequently assumed that communities outside the U.S. share the same level of training in International Relations. For instance, one thing that should be taken into account is the fact that the acquisition of theory in the developing countries may be filtered due to the inequality among local academic groups and also by the commitment to the theory of these groups. Aydinli and Matthews (2009) have called attention to the fact that in Turkey there is the division between one core group and one "non-elite" group and that this division "operated like a domestic core and periphery." In addition, Tickner has also drawn attention to the same issue in Latin America: The field may be described as a multi-tier structure in which distinct national and regional nodes coexist and sometimes overlap. To begin with, there is a small group of seated scholars primarily in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia at the top-notch universities that are highly integrated with the discipline's core, albeit in a subordinate role (Tickner, 2009, p. 45-46).

For this reason, it is important to note the conclusion reached by Thomas
Biersteker: "the existence of an emerging global discipline of International Relations is contested, given the significance of the differences that remain among its many national and regional variations" (Biersteker, 1999, p. 3).
Conversely, the discussion on the American influence in Latin American communities can be seen from the other angle. It is regarding the most influential authors of International Relations. At this point, scholars in the region also tend to have similar views, as shown in Table 7. This becomes interesting to the extent that it turns out that everyone had and has access to global literature and shares a very close perspective to American and European scholars.  IR theory (Tickner, 2009, p. 42).

IS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS STILL AN AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE DISCIPLINE IN LATIN AMERICA?
Such data mentioned above offset some optimism about the increase of graduate courses in international theory, research and production beyond the U.S. borders. As pointed out by Aydinli and Matthews: The major common underlying factor behind these optimistic assertions has been the understanding that international studies outside the United States are flourishing (Aydinli & Matthews, 2000, p. 291 (Tickner, 2002, p. 92). When analyzing the case of Latin America, Monica Herz adds,

IS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS STILL AN AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE DISCIPLINE IN LATIN AMERICA?
The programs of courses on international relations theory are particularly similar to those found in North American or English-speaking universities.
The inclusion of texts by authors from Latin American or from other regions is extremely rare (Herz, 2010, p. 1-2).
An American influence on Latin American communities can be qualitatively defined by observing the representation of scholars in international journals. Latin American scholars recognize some journals as those that publish articles with the greatest influence on the discipline. This is the reason why it is also important to ascertain which journals are considered the most influential to the IR discipline, in order to determine if the positions are also similar as proven with respect to the most influential authors in the field. In Table 8, we can analyze the percentage of choices for each journal separated by country. International Relations community members strengthen the highlighted finding that the ranking of journals in the international academic world remains insular, focusing on American and European journals. In the pages of these journals, there is a strong dominance of American academics, or at least of academics working at American universities, confirming the results of a survey by Breuning, Bredehoft and Walton (2005). This also applies to some of the so-called "sub-disciplines" of International Brazil or any other country (Breuning, 2010).
By observing the data, we can see that the answers tend to be very similar, which also reflects an affinity in terms of choice of reference material, as well as a similar view about the main specialized publication in each area. From the above journals, the one that obtained more mentions was Foreign Affairs, with an average of 50%. In order, International Organization and International Security obtained highlighted rankings in four of the five countries, averaging 32% and 27%, respectively.
Journals closer to international policy than to theoretical discussions such as  (Biersteker, 1999, p. 6).
Perhaps nowadays it is not accurate to say that most of the discipline of International Relations is divided epistemologically, ontologically, and methodologically, but rather geographically. Much of the academic community is heard of in the 'great journals' only when the topic of the day in the United States is specifically about a country or a region, as Kristensen (2012) addresses. South American academics only tend to be heard when the matter being dealt with is South America itself.
However, it is important to note that parochialism may also be intensified because academics from South America do not communicate enough among themselves.
The TRIP report for Latin America 2011 (Tickner, Cepeda & Bernal, 2012)  Additionally, in some cases, it may not be possible to dismiss the position of a country in the power structure. As for Brazil, the dissident position of its community could be related to the projection of the country in international politics, especially in the last 15 years, as it has become one of the ten largest economies in the world. It also has renewed its military systems and has set up political arrangements, such as the greater 'south-south' approach and the projection of its leadership in South America. Such phenomena may have stimulated the local community to leverage its position as regards American hegemony in the discipline.

Conclusions
In However, it is important to emphasize that the data showed by this article tend to strengthen the Hoffmann (1997)  Certainly the theoretical miscegenation we observe doesn't mean a complete rupture with the U.S. mainstream, but it does mean adaptation to the comprehension of Latin American reality. As an example, some researchers from peripheral countries have been trying to mold core theories to the reality of their own countries.
By thinking of new categories, without renouncing the general premises of core theories, Carlos Escudé (1998, p. 56) assessed the thesis that the international system is not anarchic in peripheral countries; it is, on the other hand, a hierarchical system. To better understand the meaning of the substitution of 'anarchy' to 'hierarchy', Escudé proposed a 'peripheral theory', which he believes to be "the formulation of concepts, explanatory hypotheses, and normative judgments specifically applicable to peripheral states, that is, states relatively devoid of power resources" (1998, p. 56).
Mohammed Ayoob is another scholar who made an important contribution to the list of concepts that summarize the 'melting pot' of the Western perspective of the realities in the periphery, by proposing the concept of 'subaltern realism'. According to Ayoob (1998, p. 44-45), "the experience of the subalterns in the international system is largely ignored by the elitist historiography of the system popularized by neorealists and neoinstitutionalists". responder a duas questões principais: (i) se a influência norte-americana segue sendo dominante, em seus aspectos epistemológicos, paradigmáticos e de representações institucionais na região, tal como pesquisas no passado demonstraram; (ii) se existe contestação a tal influência na região. Em princípio, o artigo evidencia uma resposta positiva à primeira pergunta. Entretanto, e mais importante, a análise dos dados permite revelar a ascensão de questionamentos à influência norteamericana, sobretudo no que se refere aos aspectos epistêmicos e paradigmáticos. Os dados reforçam a tendência à miscigenação epistemológica e paradigmática e evidenciam não haver consenso quanto ao escopo de dominação norte-americana na comunidade latino-americana, especialmente por parte da comunidade epistêmica brasileira de relações internacionais, a mais numerosa e estruturada da região.
Final version approved on March 21, 2017.