International Relations

International Relations is - more or less - the corner I would put myself into. Although I'm not a big fan of corners or like to be pegged as something I'm very glad that in recent years the field of IR has emerged into many neighboring disciplines. A development I very much support. After all, my research interests bridge from "the domestic" into "the international" since, today, if you focus on China, nothing is only a domestic concern anymore. Further the boundaries of domestic, regional, and international are fading as well as the "two-level-games" or the clear-cut distinction between "units" and "systems" - it still strikes me how often we still keep using these notions although the world shows us every day that these fixed ideas and search for objective truths are not of much help and, in the end, only remain an "illusion". Unfortunately, illusions have a very strong and lasting impact.