Michael Desch highlights the current pressures American academics are facing to ensure that their research is policy relevant. Despite recent efforts from funding bodies, research councils, university deans, and other actors, Political Science in the United States, and security studies in particular, is not achieving the desired levels of policy relevance. Whilst others have argued that the reason for the widening gap between practitioners and IR scholars is the increased role of think tanks, ^{Footnote 1} the different organizational cultures/modus operandi of each sphere, ^{Footnote 2} or even the “limited interest on the part of the policy community in reaching beyond the Beltway to connect with scholars and consume academic research,” ^{Footnote 3} Desch claims the lack of policy relevance is due to academic research becoming too technical, the methods used too complex, and therefore inaccessible. In this short response I will show Desch’s claim to be correct regarding IR scholar’s tendency to focus on an “internally-oriented research agenda”(378)—however I disagree with his reasoning. Whilst IR scholars might not be focusing on issues pertaining to U.S. foreign policy or elite demands, this is not the result of professionalization but of the broadening of the ontological scope of the discipline and the fairly static nature of foreign policy concerns. Furthermore, whilst the explanations of methodological sophistication might account for why American Political Science and Security Studies struggle to be policy relevant, this explanation cannot be applied to other academic communities, such as the UK for example. By illustrating the methodological trends in UK IR, I argue that Desch's explanation is only part of the story of the “Cult of Irrelevance.” ^{Footnote 4}

A recent study into intellectual trends in the global discipline of IR revealed that only 21.9 percent of IR scholarship published from 1999–2009 in 12 prominent IR journals ^{Footnote 5} could be counted as addressing areas or issues of international politics that are “policy relevant” to the American foreign policy agenda ^{Footnote 6} —meaning that 78.1 percent of IR scholarship during this time period was focusing on other issues outside of the ontological scope defined by the United States and its foreign policy elites. ^{Footnote 7} This study empirically supports Desch’s claims regarding the declining relevance of Political Science, for it shows that IR scholarship is not predominantly focused on providing policy prescriptions to pressing American foreign policy and security concerns. Instead the body of scholarship that was reviewed in the study revealed that IR scholars are exploring a wide range of other issues and debates, of which some are theoretical, but the majority were critical of or prescriptive to a wide range of international realities and phenomenon. ^{Footnote 8}

Despite a seeming “new” range of threats and foreign policy concerns, the agenda of American security practitioners has remained largely static and state-centric. ^{Footnote 9} IR scholarship has sought to go beyond this narrow remit and examine a range of other issues arguably to become “more relevant” to other actors. ^{Footnote 10} Whilst such research may not be relevant to certain security practitioners (and therefore labelled “insula”’), it arguably is relevant to a wide range of other actors. The question then becomes one of who IR research should be relevant to. According to some scholars, speaking to policy makers is only one very small part of IR’s vocation, and we should be focused on making our research more relevant to civil society organisations and other actors. ^{Footnote 11}

Scholars such as John Mearsheimer have argued that the move away from policy-relevant research is not an ontological expansion but actually a narrowing of the discipline (a sentiment seemingly shared by Desch), born out of self-interest to ensure professional success in a climate dictated by publication records. ^{Footnote 12} Whether one views the decline in policy-relevant IR research positively or negatively, this explanation serves to provide only a small part of the explanation for the widening gap. According to Desch, another prominent reason is the methodological proclivities of the U.S. IR community. Yet this rationale cannot be used outside of the United States to explain similar levels of “irrelevance” in other IR communities. For example, the British IR academy experiences the same gap between the Ivory Tower and the Beltway, ^{Footnote 13} but Desch’s explanation does not suffice in this context.

The way that universities in the UK are financed has changed over the past few decades, which has resulted in British IR scholars being encouraged to become more policy focused and to strive for an “impact” upon policy and politics more broadly speaking. ^{Footnote 14} Despite incentives to become more policy relevant, there is still a large gap between the two worlds of academia and policymaking. ^{Footnote 15} However, this gap cannot be explained by Desch's arguments regarding the use of overly technical mathematical methods because in the UK British scholars have a clear proclivity for qualitative methods. ^{Footnote 16}

A brief look at published research in the British journals the Review of International Studies and International Relations shows the lack of quantitative research being undertaken and published in the UK. From 1999–2009 only 0.4 percent of the published content in the Review of International Studies was quantitative, meaning that out of 493 articles only two used methodological approaches that could be designated as quantitative. ^{Footnote 17} In International Relations, 4.3 percent of research published in the time frame under review was quantitative; which meant 11 out of 255 articles employed some type of quantitative analysis. ^{Footnote 18} Considering that the majority of scholars published in this period were from British institutions this insight highlights that the British IR community favours qualitative methods and that scholars in the UK tend to not embark upon the sort of quantitative endeavours noted by Desch.

Similarly, in a study into the state of British IR, Wayne Cox and Kim Nossal noted that “there are virtually no professors of IR in the British academy who embrace methodologies popular in American IR, such as rational choice and formal modelling,” ^{Footnote 19} and furthermore that “there is a marked absence of any indication of followers of rational choice or quantitative approaches at UK universities,” ^{Footnote 20} with the University of Essex being the only exception to the norm. If the UK experiences a noticeable absence of quantitative IR research being conducted then the gap between British academics and policy makers cannot be explained using Desch’s claims, meaning that methodology is only part of the story both inside and outside of the United States.

The widening gap is more likely to be explained by other factors such as the growth of think tanks and other actors, and ingrained perceptions about academic research held by policy makers. ^{Footnote 21} This means that even if the methods used were less complex and more accessible in the United States, and if IR scholars in the United States and UK were focusing on policy relevant issues, there would still likely be a gap. Therefore instead of trying to ‘bridge the gap’ through changing our methodologies or substantive focus, perhaps we as IR scholars need to focus our efforts on redefining what it means to be relevant and to seek novel ways of engaging with broader audiences.