Mohammed Ayoob (born 1942) is a Distinguished Professor of International Relations at Michigan State University's James Madison College and the Department of Political Science.
He is also Coordinator of the Muslim Studies Program at Michigan State University.
The theory emphasizes the divergence of Third World conditions from those of industrialized core states, and has gone on to criticize mainstream International Relations theory for excluding the Third World.
It proposes an alternative conceptualization of security and emphasizes the inequality in IR theorizing.
The subaltern realism theory advocates that third world states are generally weak, and are often economically and militarily dependent on external benefactors, mostly industrialized states.