An International Relations thesis names its variables from a named theory — realism, liberal institutionalism or constructivism, most often — and its hypotheses predict a measurable relationship between them, exactly like a general Political Science thesis, but scoped to state behavior, foreign policy or international institutions rather than domestic governance. A Philippine IR thesis commonly tests perceptions of ASEAN centrality, alliance commitment, or the relationship between OFW remittance flows and foreign-policy alignment, each variable defined by the theory the researcher has chosen and each hypothesis stated as a testable, falsifiable prediction.
This is the sub-field-specific companion to the general hypotheses-and-variables pattern already on this site, built for the specific cases where a group’s assigned track, elective or adviser expertise is International Relations rather than domestic Political Science, Public Administration or Criminology. Everything below assumes the reader already knows how a hypothesis is structured in general and wants to know what changes once the subject is a state, an alliance or an international institution.
What Makes International Relations a Sub-Field of Political Science Rather Than Its Own Course?
Most Philippine universities that offer International Relations do so as a track or specialization within a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science — De La Salle, Ateneo de Manila and the University of the Philippines all run this pattern, alongside a smaller number of stand-alone International Studies programs. This is why this site’s general Political Science hypotheses-and-variables guide covers the shared foundation — how a hypothesis is stated, how a variable is operationalized — while this article covers what changes once the unit of analysis becomes a state, an alliance or an international institution instead of a barangay, a city council or a national agency.
Which Theories Actually Supply IR Variables?
Three theoretical families dominate undergraduate Philippine IR theses, each defining its variables differently:
| Theory | Key Theorist | What It Treats as the Core Variable |
|---|---|---|
| Realism / Structural Realism | Hans Morgenthau (1948); Kenneth Waltz (1979) | Relative power and security — military capability, alliance strength, balance-of-power positioning |
| Liberal Institutionalism / Complex Interdependence | Robert Keohane & Joseph Nye (1977) | Institutional cooperation and interdependence — trade volume, treaty compliance, institutional participation |
| Constructivism | Alexander Wendt (1992, 1999) | Identity, norms and shared understanding — how a state’s self-perceived role shapes its behavior, independent of raw power |
A hypothesis has to stay inside one theoretical family’s logic — a realist hypothesis about the West Philippine Sea dispute predicts behavior from relative naval capability and alliance backing; a constructivist hypothesis about the same dispute predicts behavior from how the Philippines and its neighbors have historically defined their national identity and territorial claims. Mixing the two without acknowledging it is the single most common theoretical-framework error an IR panel flags.
What Do Worked IR Variables and Hypotheses Look Like?
Three illustrative examples, each anchored to a real, currently active Philippine foreign-policy issue and a named theory:
| Topic | Theory | Independent Variable | Dependent Variable | Illustrative Hypothesis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ASEAN centrality in the South China Sea dispute | Liberal Institutionalism | Perceived strength of ASEAN’s collective diplomatic response | Perceived Philippine confidence in a multilateral (versus bilateral) approach to the dispute | H1: There is a significant positive relationship between perceived ASEAN collective-response strength and respondent confidence in a multilateral approach. |
| The Philippines-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty and regional alliance behavior | Structural Realism | Perceived credibility of U.S. security commitment | Perceived Philippine deterrence posture toward external territorial pressure | H1: Perceived alliance-commitment credibility is significantly related to perceived national deterrence confidence. |
| OFW labor migration and Philippine foreign-policy alignment toward host countries | Constructivism | Strength of diaspora identity narratives in public discourse | Public support for a host-country-accommodating foreign policy stance | H1: Stronger diaspora identity narratives are significantly associated with greater public support for accommodating foreign policy toward major OFW host countries. |
Each illustrative hypothesis above is stated as a directional, testable relationship — not a research question restated as a sentence, which is the second most common error after mixing theoretical families. Every number a real version of these studies reports should come from a survey instrument the researcher has actually built and piloted, never assumed.
How Is an IR Variable Operationalized Differently From a Domestic Political Science Variable?
The conceptual definition still traces to the named theorist, exactly as it does for a domestic-politics topic, but the indicators shift toward things measurable at the level of public perception rather than administrative record — since an undergraduate researcher cannot access a state’s actual diplomatic cables or classified defense assessments. A perception-based operational definition (a Likert-scale survey of how confident, how credible, how supportive respondents feel) is the realistic, achievable path for an undergraduate IR thesis, which is why every worked example above uses perceived strength, perceived credibility or public support rather than a state-level outcome the researcher has no way to verify independently. The general column structure for laying this out — conceptual definition, operational definition, indicators, instrument, statistical tool — follows the same operationalization-table pattern used across every course on this site; an IR matrix simply fills each column with theory-derived, perception-based content instead of an administrative-record-based one.
Defining terms conceptually and operationally in Chapter 1 works the same way for IR as for any other course — this site’s definition-of-terms guide covers the general two-part pattern a Philippine panel expects, which an IR thesis applies to its theory-specific vocabulary (alliance credibility, institutional legitimacy, diaspora identity) rather than a domestic-policy term.
What Respondent Group Does an Undergraduate IR Thesis Actually Use?
Since IR variables are typically perception-based, the respondent group is usually a purposively selected sample of people with informed opinions on the topic — international-studies or political-science students and faculty, OFW families for a migration-and-diplomacy topic, or residents of a coastal province for a maritime-dispute topic — rather than actual diplomats or foreign-service officers, who are largely inaccessible to an undergraduate researcher. Naming this respondent group precisely in the statement of the problem, and being honest in the limitations section about what a perception-based sample can and cannot say about actual state behavior, is what separates a defensible undergraduate IR thesis from an overreaching one.
Does an IR Hypothesis Need a Null Hypothesis Stated Separately?
Yes — the same convention covered in the general Political Science guide linked above applies without modification: a null hypothesis (no significant relationship) is stated alongside the alternative for every quantitative IR hypothesis, since the statistical test run in Chapter 4 formally tests the null, not the alternative directly.
What Goes in the Significance of the Study for an IR Thesis?
The same two-audience pattern used across this site applies here: an IR significance section names a genuine institutional audience — the Department of Foreign Affairs, a university’s international-studies program, an OFW advocacy organization, ASEAN-watching civil-society groups — rather than only the generic future-researchers paragraph a panel already expects to be trimmed. A significance section that can point to one real office or organization that would plausibly read the finished thesis reads as considered; one that cannot usually reveals a topic that was chosen for its theoretical interest alone rather than for any practical stake in the outcome.
How Should an IR Thesis State Its Scope and Delimitation?
An IR scope-and-delimitation paragraph needs to do more work than a domestic-politics one, because the subject matter itself — a state, an alliance, an international dispute — is inherently broader than anything an undergraduate respondent group can speak to in full. A defensible scope statement names three boundaries explicitly: the specific issue or relationship studied (the West Philippine Sea dispute, not “Philippine foreign policy” broadly), the specific respondent group and locale (residents of one coastal province, students of one international-studies program), and the time period the perception data covers, since public sentiment on an active foreign-policy issue can shift within a single semester. Stating what the thesis does not attempt to measure — actual diplomatic decision-making, classified assessments, the views of foreign nationals — is as important as stating what it does, since a panel reads an unstated boundary as an implied overreach rather than an oversight.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can an IR thesis use a qualitative, case-study design instead of a quantitative hypothesis-testing one?
Yes — a qualitative IR thesis analyzing a single case (one treaty negotiation, one diplomatic episode) through document analysis or key-informant interviews with subject-matter experts does not need a statistically tested hypothesis at all; it states research questions and a theoretical proposition instead, a legitimate and common alternative for this sub-field.
Is realism or constructivism the “correct” theory to use for a Philippine IR thesis?
Neither is inherently correct — the theory should be chosen because it fits the specific research question, not because it is more fashionable; a security-and-alliance question typically fits realism more naturally, while an identity-and-narrative question fits constructivism more naturally, and a panel expects the researcher to justify the choice rather than default to whichever theory was covered most recently in class.
Can a single IR thesis use more than one theory?
A hybrid or eclectic theoretical framework is possible at the graduate level but is generally discouraged for an undergraduate thesis on a semester timeline, since defending two theoretical logics simultaneously in Chapter 2 and keeping the variables internally consistent in Chapter 3 is significantly harder than a single, well-justified theoretical choice.
Where can international-relations-specific literature be found beyond the general databases this site already covers?
Foreign Affairs, International Security, and the Pacific Review are the field’s most commonly cited international journals; locally, the Philippine Institute for Development Studies and university-based centers such as the UP Asian Center publish IR-relevant working papers, a useful supplement to the general Philippine research databases already covered in this site’s literature-database guide.
Does an IR thesis on the West Philippine Sea dispute need to take an official position on the dispute itself?
No, and it generally should not — the thesis studies perceptions, policy behavior or institutional responses to the dispute using a stated theoretical lens, not advocate for a particular resolution; a panel expects academic distance from the substantive political question even while studying it rigorously.
How many hypotheses does a typical undergraduate IR thesis test?
Most descriptive-correlational IR theses on a semester timeline test one to three hypotheses, matching the number of specific research questions in Chapter 1 — testing more than three within a single undergraduate semester usually strains both the instrument’s length and the group’s data-collection capacity.
Should an IR thesis use RCEP or free-trade-agreement participation as a variable?
Yes, where the theory fits — the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which the Philippines ratified in 2023, is a genuinely current and well-documented institutional-participation variable that suits a liberal-institutionalist framework particularly well, since treaty ratification and institutional participation are exactly the kind of measurable cooperation Keohane and Nye’s framework treats as its core evidence.
Is the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) still a usable topic anchor, given its on-and-off termination history?
Yes, though the thesis should state the VFA’s current status as of the semester the proposal is written, since it has been the subject of repeated termination notices and reversals — checking the agreement’s live status via the Department of Foreign Affairs or a recent news source immediately before finalizing Chapter 1 avoids anchoring a background section to a status that has since changed.
Does an IR thesis need to cite the actual text of a treaty, or is a secondary source enough for Chapter 2?
Where the treaty or agreement is central to the topic, citing the primary text itself (via the Department of Foreign Affairs, the ASEAN Secretariat or a similar official source) strengthens Chapter 2 considerably over a secondary news summary alone — reserve secondary sources for context and expert interpretation, and go to the primary document for any specific provision the thesis relies on.
Can an IR thesis pair a quantitative hypothesis with a qualitative key-informant interview in the same study?
Yes — a mixed-methods design that runs the quantitative perception survey covered above alongside a small number of key-informant interviews (a professor, a retired diplomat, an NGO program officer) is common where the researcher wants the statistical relationship and an explanation of why it might exist; the hypothesis is still tested with the quantitative data alone, while the qualitative interviews are reported separately to add interpretive depth rather than folded into the same statistical test.
Building your own IR thesis’s theoretical framework, variables and hypotheses — cited to the actual theorist, scoped to what an undergraduate respondent group can realistically answer — is exactly the section-by-section drafting work Tesify is built to walk a Political Science or International Relations group through.