Alexander Wendt: (1) Social Theory of International Politics; (2) "Anarchy is What States Make of it"; (3) "The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory"

Hedley Bull: (1) The Anarchical Society and (2) Intervention in World Politics

Robert Keohane: (1) After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy; (2) Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition, with Joseph S. Nye, Jr.; and (3) Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, with Gary King and Sidney Verba

John Mearsheimer: (1) The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and (2) "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War"

Steve Smith: (1) Explaining and Understanding International Relations, with Martin Hollis and (2) "Singing our World Into Existence: International Relations and September 11"

Hans Morgenthau: (1) Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace

That's a high bar, Steve. How about Tom Schelling? Strategy of Conflict, Arms and Influence, and whatever third work you want to choose. If the guy can get a Nobel Prize, surely he can get into the IR hall of fame.

Thomas Schelling: Arms & Influence, Strategy of Conflict, and more.

Oh, I would also add, George Kenan, but now read entirely for their historical value. Also, Albert Wohlstetter.

Stephen! don't play so humble Mate! count yourself in as well, maybe you have written one but it may lead you to open the Pandora's Box with a little bit more effort and much daring;->>

Grand Sen~or

In 10 years, which of today's established or up-and-coming IR scholars will have written more than one (or more than two) classic works?

Like the sports halls of fame have special wings for writers and broadcasters, the IR hall of fame needs a special wing for historians.

John Lewis Gaddis:
Strategies of Containment
The Long Peace
We Now Know
(Among others)

I'd argue that Gaddis has had more influence on the study of post-World War II international relations than most explicitly IR scholars.

Morgenthau: (1) Scientific Man vs. Power Politics; (2) Politics Among Nations; and (3) The Purpose of American Politics.

Hedley Bull: (1) The Control of the Arms Race; (2) The Anarchical Society; and (3) International Theory: The case for a classical approach.

Martin Wight: (1) Power Politics; (2) Why is there no international theory?; and the posthumous (3) International Theory: The Three Traditions.

Alex Wendt: (1) The Agent-Structure Problem; (2) Anarchy is What States Make of It; and (3) Social Theory of International Politics. [I count both the 1992 article and the 1999 book, because although the book is largely an evolution of the article, they both had different impacts on the debate and the book has novel insights, both in terms of epistemology and IR per se).

Bob Keohane: (1) Power and Interdependence; (2) After Hegemony; and (3) Designing Social Inquiry (which is not on IR per se, but figures in almost every methodology syllabus).

Kissinger: (1) Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy; (2) Diplomacy; (3) Does America Need a Foreign Policy?

Joseph Nye: (1) Power and Interdependence; (2) The Paradox of American Power; and (3) Nuclear Learning (not as famous as the other two, or as Soft Power, but highly influential in the field of security studies).

Less familiar to IR students in general, but, in my mind, one of the most deserving is Bernard Brodie: (1) The Absolute Weapon, a quasi-prophetic book that basically set the tone for most of the work on the subject, to which both Waltz's "The Spread" and Jervis' "The Meaning" owe a high debt; (2) Escalation and the Nuclear Option, a refreshing take on one of the most dangerous misconceptions in US nuclear strategy; and (3) War and Politics, a wonderfully written book on the many pitfalls in the "intellectual no-man's land where military and political problems meet" (to take a quote from another one of his books).

Jack Snyder: (1) The Soviet Strategic Culture, which is one of the (actually THE) founding works on strategic culture; (2) Myths of Empire, another "pioneerish" work; and (3) Electing to Fight (with Ed Mansfield), an important and serious contribution to a debate dominated by ideologues.

I would also include as "almost there":
Stephen Walt (not to be a suck-up, but to give credit where credit is due): (1) Origins of Alliances, both an important development of Realism and a great case study of Middle East Politics; (2) Renaissance in Security Studies, a decent assessment of the field and, most importantly at the time, a much-needed call to Earth; (3) Rigor or Rigor Mortis?, a somewhat consequential and controversial (but in my opinion, much needed) attack on one of the most dangerous threats to social science, and one that just won't die.

Peter Katzenstein: "The Culture of National Security" (ed.); "A World of Regions"; earlier work on IPE and domestic structure; his work on anti-Americanisms with Keohane.

John Ruggie: "What Makes the World Hang Together?"; "The Past as Prologue? Interest, Identity, and American Foreign Policy"; "Territoriality and Beyond"

Stanley Hoffmann: A number of his collections of essays, such as "The State of War"; "Janus and Minerva"; and "Chaos and Violence"

Others Who Deserve Serious Consideration:

G. John Ikenberry (will almost surely belong in the very first tier in another 10-15 years)

Ernst Haas, esp. for his "The Uniting of Europe" and his 1953 article on the balance of power.

Karl Deutsch

Stephen Kraser for "Sovereignty" and "Defending the National Interest"

Moravcsik will also be in the first group in another 10-15 years.

Almost a crime to forget about Rosenau, one of the most senior scholars in the field, and one of the most productive too.

On a constructivist vein:

Ole Waever with Barry Buzan and Jaap de Wild for "Security: A New Framework for Analysis".

I don't think that it's famous in North America, but it's a must-read in Europe.

I think Buzan should almost count, since he co-authored three relatively big ones. (1) The Logic of Anarchy (with Jones and Little); (2) Security: A new Framework for Analysis; and (3) Regions and Powers (with Ole Waever).

Gilping produced several classic books, most notably
1) War and Change in World Politics; 2)The Political Economy of International Relations; and 3)US Power and the Multinational Corporation.

1. Chalmers Johnson, Jr. for MITI and the Japanese Miracle and the Blowback trilogy.
2. E.H. Carr, IF - and it's a big "if" - one includes both The Twenty Years' Crisis AND What Is History?, a classic in history, not IR.
3. Immanuel Wallerstein, IF one counts all three volumes of The Modern World-System as one separate work - OK...stretching.
4. Victor D. Cha for Alignment Despite Antagonism and Nuclear North Korea (with David Kang).

Otherwise I agree with all the other nominations above. There are plenty more one-hit wonders I hate not to include.

11:42 PM

PE is a subset of everything - American, Comparative, and IR (theory don't count cuz it aint polisci). So what's wrong with IPE scholars? You're not going to count (say) Katzenstein cuz he doesn't only study bombs and rockets?

Walt said IR, not international security, if I read correctly. So Keohane is fair game, as is Katzenstein, as is...

Fearon--rationalist expectations for war, audience costs, and the civil war stuff.

Up and comer: Bratislav Slantchev. First three articles all published in the APSR and the AJPS, over a two year period (2003-4).

Why not just cut and paste from the Foreign Policy poll that was done?

And I say, Walt does best, when he says, "Fearon yes!"

RK Betts for his work on intelligence, or "Soldiers, Statesmen," and the rest of his corpus of work.

I distinctly remember Professor Waltz at some point saying "I only write good things."

I also remember his long explanation of all the critical marks he applied to papers and somebody eventually bursting out with what was on everyone's mind, "dont you have any good marks!?" ... and his response -- he kind of laughed, thought about it for a bit, and then said "well, sometimes i write 'good'". and you definitely got the sense that "sometimes" was not so often.

Waltz also had a number of good aphorisms which you'ld immediately take as sort of obvious but would over the years internalize and realize they were pretty deep. The one that immediately comes to mind is "facts are not theories." [another good one from a different source is "stupidity is a description, not an explanation."]

Rymond Aron wrote more books which could be consider as "classics". But lets choose three: (1) Peace and War; (2) The Great Debate and (3)The Opium of the Intellectuals

Stephen Krasner: (1) Defending the National Interest; (2) Structural Causes and Regime Consequences; and (3) Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy.

I might been out of the game for awhile, but it was a live question whether IPE was its own discipline, or not, back in my youth. One might even find those who think IPE is the parent of both political science and economics!

Anyway, how far into the economics department do you want to go?

Many of the best already taken, but still need more international figures (beyond Hedley Bull, Martin Wight and Raymond Aron, as great as they were) and cross-disciplinary (including strategic studies) and practitioner-scholars. Here are a few:

Philip Bobbitt (The Shield of Achilles; Terror and Consent)
Sir Herbert Butterfield (The Statecraft of Machiavelli; History and Human Relations; Moral Judgments in History; Diplomatic Investigations—a classic IR edited volume)
Bernard Brodie (Strategy in the Missile Age; War and Politics)
Sir Michael Howard (translation and editing of ‘On War’; War and the Liberal Conscience; Restraints on War; The Invention of Peace; etc.)
Zbigniew Brzezinski (Power and Principle; Grand Failure; The Grand Chessboard; The Choice; etc.)
George F. Kennan (X Article; Soviet Foreign Policy; Memoirs; The Fateful Alliance; Cloud of Danger; etc.)
Lester B. Pearson (The Crisis of Development; Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age)

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita: The War Trap, War and Reason, and the Logic of Political Survival are a pretty strong set of major publications.

Graham Allison: "Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis", Essence of Decision.

1-Zbigniew Brzezinski- should definitely be in the hall of fame for not only being a brilliant academic before serving in govt. But also being in the halls of power as one of the most influential National Security Adviser's. Plus his book the Grand Chess Board is a classic, in addition to his Power and Principle.
2- John Mearsheimer- The Tragedy of Great Power Politics is most definitely a classic as he lays to rest defensive realism and makes the ultimate case for offensive realism.
( I am disappointed Obama didn't chose Mearsheimer for National Security Adviser)
3-Kenneth Waltz- The 20th century face of realism the Theory of International Politics is an all time classic.

I absolutely second RK Betts. As far as intelligence goes, in the UK probably the top guy on the subject is Michael Herman (with Christopher Andrew a close second).

And I nominate Sir Lawrence Freedman for his contributions to the strategy field--particularly where nuclear strategy/deterrence is concerned.

I'd challenge Chalmers Johnson, though, because his stuff is pretty tinfoil-y and is generally bad political science literature (at least as concerns the Blowback trilogy).

Many of the above list Keohane for Power and Interdependence, for After Hegemony, and for KKV.

But if you want three very influential IR contributions, the third one would be Keohane's 1980 piece defining Hegemonic Stability.

RO Keohane, 'The Theory of Hegemonic Stability and Changes in International Economic Regimes, 1967-1977' in O Holsti, R Siverson and AL George (eds) Change in the International System (Westview, Boulder, CO 1980) 131-162

You guessed right, I will include "Constitution" into SATFP, however the bloggers deny that Constitution has nothing to do with FP. Please read the New Axiom 10, who knows maybe it makes you change your mind;->
Now the number of axioms increased to 13, I know some of you have concerns about this not so lucky number but don't worry, it looks like the numbers will grow;->>

Salvare Apparentias Theory of FP (SATFP).

1. There exist states.

2. A State composed of a nation, a national leadership, national interests and power (economic, military, population, land, etc? ..(any others? pls feel free to add, it is the Blog's theory, not mine).

3. There exists a competitive arena where states acts as they do.

4. There exists no central authority in that arena that can enforce moral or legal constraints.

5. States commit morally dubious acts (dubious according to what? The Blog knows) (see axiom 4)(Why this is here? Didn't the Blog declare that SATFP is essencially amoral?)

6. A State's foreign and defense policy reflects national interest of the state.

7. A State can take deterrent action against other State(s) if the Leadership of the State decides so. (see axiom 11 & 12).

8. A State seeks to increase her national interests when her existence is threatened.

9. A State's power is a potential threat to other states. A state is by definition paranoid of other states.

10. States to increase their National Interests, to decrease potential threat of other States, to assimilate them and to dominate them, impose their Constitutions to other States. (But of course this degenerates all constitutions to a mono-constitution which prepares the Competetive Arena to the favour of the State whose Constitution became the one and only dominant Constitution to pave the ground for so called Globalization - Global Dominance - Ein STAAT, ein LAND (the GLOBE), ein FUERER und ein VOLK where there exists NO THREATt, NO COMPETITIVE ARENA, NO WORRIES and bsst of all NO NEED TO FP - a Paradise on Earth if you believe;->>)

11. A State talks sweet but carries her power peeping under her cloak to deterre the potential threats of other states. (McCain the Presidential Candidate 2008)

12. A States can suspend her constitution if the National Intersts dictates so. Soley the Leadership decides whether the National Intersts dictates that or not and their decision is final, cannot be challenged based on the articles of the Constitution of the State. In such cases the leadership for the sake of the National Interests is not required to disclose the reasons how they reached to a certain decision.

13. Salvare Apparentias Foreign Policy is the art of keeping the threats of states in Balance besides saving the foreign policy related phenomena. (How? By shuffling and mixing nations/races/cultures?!, subjecting them to prototype secularo-fascist laws to reduce their multiplicity to singularity? the Blog knows).

End of axioms of SATFP

Grand Sen~or

Note: If you are not happy with the Blog's SATFP, you can always come up with an alternative theory and see if the Blog will adopt it in place of SATFP. For me with such a Constitution in circulation SATFP is a perfect theory, so I don't bother to invent a better one;->>

Note 2: Do you see the similarities between your system and ex-Soviets? I hope you Guys be more _prudent_ than ex-Soviets to break this loop by rewriting your constitution.
Beleive me I wouldn't waste a minute here and put all my energy and time to rewrite it, if I have not already done so;->>

Wallerstein
Thucydides

If you're going to include Huntington, you might as well include his greatest work, even if it's comparative: Political Order in Changing Societies.

Charles Krauthammer

It depends on what you are trying to get at: Impact on the policy community? Impact on other academics? Longevity of ideas, i.e. does their work hold up over time?

Huntington clearly has to be #1 on this list. Several different works (and you should add Political Order in Changing Societies as well as his article on arms races, which was one of the first and arguably still the best piece on that topic).

Beyond that, it might depend on the extent to which you think books matter and how you interpret movements in the field over the last two decades. For example, while realism was king in the late 70s, now the overwhelming majority of IR scholars and especially new PhDs are well versed in the way regime type and political institutions influence international conflict. And more generally, I think if you surveyed IR scholars under the age of 35 or 40, more people would probably identity as liberal institutionalist or some variant than realist. For better or worse.

A lot of people above have been naming the people more famous to a broader audience, but what if you frame the question in terms of impact on political scientists and the way the majority of international relations scholars do their research today, i.e. less realist/more accepting of the role political regimes play in influencing international politics, often more quantitative? It seems like the following 3 names then pop up:

Therefore, there has to be some representation for what has become the most important intellectual current in the study of international conflict. Based on that, here are some ideas:

-Robert Keohane: Nearly all liberal institutionalist work is traced back to him. Given that liberal institutionalist concepts are at the heart of a huge plurality of research and thinking in IR today, this seems pretty important. He's got After Hegemony as well as Power and Interdependence.
-James Fearon: While others have written in the bargaining and war area, his work is probably the most influential for IR conflict scholars not going to graduate school at the two remaining realist hubs (MIT and Chicago). He's got Rationalist Expectations of War, Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes, Signaling Foreign Policy Interests, and many others. His work is the basis for the audience costs literature. If you have served on an IR job search committee over the last 5 years you know the audience costs work is what an enormous number of top graduate students are working in these days. He also has all the ethnic conflict work with David Laitin.
-Bruce Russett: A lot of his stuff gets beat up -- then again whose does not -- but he made contributions in several different areas and across several different decades. And it seems like if this list is an honest appraisal of the last generation or two of international relations theorizing, you have to include someone that was part of the democratic peace debate, even if you don't agree with the democratic peace. He has No Clear and Present Danger, Grasping the Democratic Peace, and many other work including some defining work on extended deterrence and the relationship between trade and conflict.

I think everyone would appreciate if you chimed in at this point and told us what you think about some of these comments. . .

Waltz's "More may be better" is probably only a classic for realists. Most people seem to recognize that nuclear proliferation is dangerous. . . .

Regarding the previous comment on Waltz, the criteria for inclusion surely can't be whether or not others agree. It's whether people continue to read it and debate it. The nuclear optimist-pessimist debate had pretty good "legs" as these debates go. . .

I think Kathryn Sikkink would qualify with:

Keck and Sikkink "Activists Beyond Borders"

Finnemore and Sikkink "International Norm Dynamics and Political Change" International Organization

Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink "Power of Human Rights"

I agree with a lot of the suggestions here and am particularly pleased to see the likes of Wendt and Waever. I would throw in a couple of others though that I think have yet to be mentioned:

Mary Kaldor "New and Old Wars: Organised violence in a global era" and possibly "Human Security". Important in understanding 4th generation warfare.

EU integration theorists such as Ernst Haas "The uniting of Europe" (Neofunctionalism) and Andrew Moravcsik (Liberal Intergovernmentalism) should also be considered.

Finally a controversial one: Mao Zedong "On Guerilla Warfare" and his quotations. Certainly in his own mind he could be classed as a scholar and I think that his contribution to assymetric and protracted warfare still helps us understand a lot in this sphere.

John G. Ruggie should be on this list. As far as American constructivists, he is one of the most important. I would second Katzenstein simply because he is such a wonderful scholar.

In the same hybrid comparative/ IR vein as Huntington, I'd nominate Eric Nordlinger's _Soldiers in Politics_, _Conflict Regulation in Divided Societies_, and _ Isolationism Reconfigured_.

Martha Finnemore has at least two that are regularly put on syllabi:

National Interests in International Society

The Purpose of Intervention. Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force.

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change
(with Kathryn Sikkink)

The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations
(With Michael Barnett)

Aron: (1) Peace and War among Nations
(2) The Anarchical Order of Power (!!!)

Hoffmann: (1) Obstinate or Obsolete
(2) An American Social Science, IR
(3) Janus and Minerva

Wight: (1) Power Politics
(2) Diplomatic Investigations (with Bull)
(3) Systems of States
(4) International Theory: The Three Traditions

Gilpin: (1) War and Change
(2) "No One Loves a Political Realist"
(3) US Power and Multinational Corporation

Krasner: (1) Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy
(2) Defending the National Interest
(3) State Power and the Structure of Intl. Trade

Mearsheimer: (1) The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
(2) Back to the Future
(3) The False Promise of Intl. Institutions

Schweller: (1) Neorealism's Status Quo Bias
(2) Deadly Imbalances
(3) Unanswered Threats (the book!)
(4) Bandwagoning for Profit