The Biggest Picture

This chapter makes the case for macro-historical approaches as one of the best examples of ‘big picture’ theorising in International Relations (IR) and argues that Barry Buzan’s work is a great model of this type of theorising in IR. Furthermore, the chapter demonstrates that Buzan and his scholarship played a very significant sociological role in the discipline’s trajectory in terms of legitimising this type of research. During the decades when much of the field of IR had turned away from macro-historical approaches, Buzan was among a handful of scholars who kept advancing them. His connections to IR on both sides of the Atlantic connected Constructivism and the English School, and it is in the intersection of these schools that macro-historical approaches and Weberian style historical sociology have thrived in IR.