Don't mention the war or the World Cup. A report on a British German IR conference

In the past, German IR has been compared to a Mercedes: »The technical standard is high, the results are solid, its arguments are smooth, and what would be loud hysterical debates in other parts of the world are reduced to softly growling grumbles« (Goetze 2005: 4f). And, members of that community are content Mercedes drivers who speed along the autobahn without taking notice of what is going on around them. Although some of that criticism does have a point, the car metaphor holds badly if we apply it to the British IR community. British IR would then have to be compared to a Rover, one of the last British car manufacturers and one that has a reputation for producing fairly average cars and which in fact went bankrupt in 2005. Maybe sport provides a better metaphor for the state of the individual disciplines. From a British perspective German IR is a bit like German football: it used to be rather dull and uninspiring, then it started to innovate and to perform in a more appealing way. There is now more cutting-edge theory behind it, but one cannot escape the feeling that the theory is in danger of restricting and compromising the attractiveness of the game. From a German perspective British IR would have to be cricket, as nobody other than those involved actually knows what is going on and what the rules are.