This article examines how the discipline of international relations (IR) engages with the policy process by investigating the discipline’s responsiveness to world events. To this end, the article deploys a mixed-methods approach using historical data of journal articles in twelve top IR journals covering 1980 to 2012 from the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project as well as a series of interviews with scholars to show how four major world events, or benchmark events, influence the discipline of international relations. The paper finds that benchmark events do cause a shift in the subject areas in which IR scholars publish, as well as a shift in the popularity of theoretical approaches in which scholars ground their research. Benchmark events do not, however, cause a significant shift in where in the world IR scholars study. A series of elite interviews with IR professors is used to elaborate a causal mechanism for these correlations.

中文翻译：

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与时俱进：国际关系学科如何应对基准事件

本文通过调查国际关系学科对世界事件的响应，来研究其如何与政策流程互动。为此，本文采用了一种混合方法，利用了教学，研究和国际政策（TRIP）项目中涵盖1980年至2012年的12种顶级IR期刊中期刊文章的历史数据，以及对学者的一系列访谈，以期展示四个主要的世界事件或基准事件如何影响国际关系的纪律。本文发现基准事件确实导致IR学者发表的学科领域发生变化，也导致学者开展其研究的理论方法的流行发生变化。但是，基准事件并不会导致世界范围内IR学者的研究方向发生重大变化。