  In sum, global democrats would do well to tackle more directly issues of power politics and engage with core debates in IR. This may allow for insights to be shed on both topics. IR schools—such as realism, neo-realism, neo-liberalism, constructivism, and communicative action—have traditionally been concerned with social-scientific, historical, and explanatory analysis. These camps have been less willing or able to question their own normative underpinnings or offer critical prescriptions for future design. Inversely, global democrats have had a predominantly normative orientation, but neglected to engage rigorously with social-scientific methodology or make full use of the empirical analysis offered by IR scholars. As such, fruitful cross-fertilization may be possible as we seek to understand how normative values can be pursued under existing conditions of material differentials where the threat of international and civil war, climate change disaster, financial crises, and many other issues still loom large.