After com­pil­ing a few ‘top ten’ lists of clas­sic for­eign affairs books, Stephen Walt—professor of inter­na­tional affairs at Har­vard University—compiles a more digestible ver­sion: the top ten arti­cles in the field of inter­na­tional rela­tions.

The ten arti­cles Walt rec­om­mends are below, but click through to the orig­i­nal to see his rea­son­ing behind each choice and to check out the comments.

  1. Albert Wohlstetter’s The Del­i­cate Bal­ance of Ter­ror (pdf).
  2. Man­cur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser’s An Eco­nomic The­ory of Alliances (pdf).
  3. Ken­neth Waltz’s Inter­na­tional Struc­ture, National Force, and the Bal­ance of World Power.
  4. Robert Jervis’ Hypothe­ses on Mis­per­cep­tion (Sum­mary).
  5. Michael Doyle’s Kant, Lib­eral Lega­cies, and For­eign Affairs (Sum­mary).
  6. John Ruggie’s Inter­na­tional Regimes, Trans­ac­tions, and Change: Embed­ded Lib­er­al­ism in the Post­war Eco­nomic Order (pdf).
  7. Alexan­der Wendt’s Anar­chy is What States Make of It (pdf).
  8. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink’s Inter­na­tional Norm Dynam­ics and Polit­i­cal Change (pdf).
  9. William C. Wohlforth’s The Sta­bil­ity of a Unipo­lar World (pdf).
  10. Alexan­der George’s Case Stud­ies and The­ory Devel­op­ment: The Method of Struc­tured, Focused Com­par­i­son (pdf).

If any­one spots full-text ver­sions of arti­cles 3, 4, 5 and 10, please do let me know and I’ll update the post.