Lilliputians in Gulliver’s World? Small States in International Relations
Date: 2004
A social science that is worthy of its name must study the universe of its cases in its entirety. If the
states system remains a key component of world politics, then the study of small states is simply
part and parcel of what the discipline of International Relations (IR) is about. In this piece, we want
to demonstrate the importance of studying small states in some detail. We start, in this Introduction,
with an outline of justifications for small states’ studies and with some historical and conceptual
observations on what “smallness” entails. In Section 2 we show how small states studies have
developed. In Section 3 we suggest three different ways to conduct future research on small states
which will benefit the broader IR discipline
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