One reason for the academic-policy debate is doubts whether the study of IR is all that useful if one wants a career in international affairs policymaking. This is unfounded.

One does not have to look far to find that many prominent foreign policy practitioners have been trained in IR. Many have not only been trained in but have taught IR at leading universities. For example, Henry Kissinger was a Harvard professor, Madeleine Albright taught at Georgetown, Zbigniew Brzezinski at Columbia and Condoleezza Rice at Stanford. In Asia, former South Korean Foreign Minister Han Sung-Joo, former ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan, current Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa and its former ambassador to US Dino Patti Djalal all hold doctorates in IR.

Although no direct correlation can be established, and there are many examples of good ministers and diplomats without a PhD or masters in IR, these illustrious examples show that such training is not irrelevant or unrelated to performance in policymaking.

Training in IR offers a unique vantage point from which to address policy issues. IR is a truly open and inter-disciplinary field. One can come from science, technology or any social science background and do a higher degree in IR. IR tolerates few unnecessary barriers to entry. For example, it is very difficult for an art historian or a mechanical engineer to gain entry into an economics master program, but he/she would not face the same difficulty gaining entry into IR.

With such diversity, the study of IR is vital to managing globalisation — the most important trend of our time — in all its complexity. No other discipline does this so comprehensively. Economics comes closest to capturing and explaining globalisation, since globalisation is to a large extent driven by commercial transactions and economic (trade, investment, finance, production) flows. But it is also about the diffusion of democracy, human rights, culture and security.

IR covers all these areas.

Another reason for the academia-policy gap is that to obtain tenure and promotion international relations scholars in the initial stages of their careers must publish in top level academic journals, such as International Organization and International Studies Quarterly, and university presses, such as Cornell, Princeton, and Stanford. While most academics draw upon media reports and commentaries and policy briefs, the reverse is not the case. Media and policymakers tend to ignore academic writings, put off by the academic jargon and especially the theory within which academic publications need to be framed in order to get published. Academic writings also take longer to appear in print due to the peer review process. So policymakers turn to quickie policy magazines like Foreign Affairs or Foreign Policy and books published by commercial or ‘trade’ publishers.

But ignoring the ideas and approaches to international relations developed in academia can be detrimental to good policy analysis and policymaking. Contrary to general perceptions, international relations academics are often — if not always — ahead of the curve when it comes to analysing trends and developments, while also providing important long-term historical context. For example, much of the best work and debates on the rise of China, Asian security and regional architecture has come from academics writing in academic journals (such as International Security and Pacific Review) and books published by academic presses.

International relations is one of the fastest growing subjects of study and training in social sciences around the world today. Nowhere is this growth more striking than in Asia, especially in China where there is an attempt to develop a ‘Chinese School’ of IR to compete with the existing Western schools.

In Asia, the academic community has been seriously involved in shaping policy. One example is the ‘ASEAN Security Community’ idea (which is now called the ASEAN Political-Security Community). When first proposed by Indonesia in 2002, it drew conceptually from my 2001 book Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia. Track-II academics, including Peter Drysdale of the East Asia Forum, developed the ideas and modalities of APEC. Similarly, the concept of Asia Pacific ‘cooperative security’ that underpinned the ASEAN Regional Forum was developed by academics from Asia, Australia and Canada. And South Korea and Taiwan have a tradition of closely consulting academics and giving them policy positions.

Policy relevant work and public affairs commentary is not everyone’s cup of tea and it has its dangers. In authoritarian countries, and Asia still has plenty of them, policy writings and advice from think-tanks and academics tend to be uncritical, and often geared toward rationalising a regime’s preferences and positions. In some cases, the function of think-tanks is to provide background information, rather than genuine policy alternatives — especially alternatives that challenge current government policy.

Close proximity between academics and government officials leads to ‘entrapment’. Entrapment happens when scholars, after having offered intellectual input at an early stage of policy-making, remain beholden to the choices made by officials on the basis of their advice. Therefore they become unwilling or incapable of challenging officially-sanctioned pathways and approaches for the fear of losing their access and influence.

Often the problem of an ‘academia-policy gap’ in Asia and others parts of the world is the reverse of the West (although the West is hardly immune to this). Far from being the exception, policy-oriented writings and op-eds are the norm for many IR scholars in Asia (an increasingly strategic region and hence an important test of this academia-policy nexus), not least because it supplements meagre academic salaries and gives academics a prominence in society that is otherwise unavailable to them. Yet the problem of entrapment can undermine the interest of scholars in serious academic research — especially theoretical work — and potentially lead to the loss of academic freedom.

The challenge is to find a balance, encourage both types of work and, especially, work that straddles both the academia and policy worlds.

While the blame for the academia-policy gap often goes to the academics, I have been struck by how often media and public affairs pundits miss out on cutting edge, informative, easily available and fairly accessible writings on current international issues appearing in academic outlets well before the media wakes up to the latest episodes. Bridging the academic-policy divide should be a mutual effort at engagement for the benefit for both.

Amitav Acharya is UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance at Amercan University, Washington, D.C. and currently the President of the International Studies Association (ISA). He is the author of The End of American World Order (Polity 2014). The views expressed in this article are strictly the author’s own and do not in any way reflect the views of ISA or UNESCO. Follow his Twitter @AmitavAcharya

A different version of this article appeared here, on World Policy Blog.