IR 501 Lecture Notes (8) Overview & the Future of IR Theories

IR 501 Lecture Notes (8)Overview & the Future of

IR Theories

Dr. Bezen Balamir Coş[email protected]

Text

Lecture plan

• Overview of the course

• Future of IR Theories

A Retrospective of IR & Theories

“The starting point of international relations is the existence of states, or independent political communities, each of which possesses a government and asserts sovereignty in relation to a particular portion of the earth’s surface and a particular segment of the human society” (Hedley Bull 1977:8)


The study of International relations as a an academic

discipline traced back to E.H. Carr's The 20 Years Crisis

(1939) and to Hans Morgenthau's Politics among

Nations (1948). International relations as a discipline is

believed to have emerged after the First World War.

Early international relations scholarship in the Interwar

years focused on the balance of power system which to

be replaced with a system of collective security. These

thinkers were later described as "Idealists". The leading

critique of this school of thinking was the “realist”

analysis of Carr.


International relations theories provides conceptual frameworks for analyzing international relations. International relations theories are divided as positivist/rationalist theories which focus on state-level analysis, and post positivist/reflectivist theories which incorporate levels other than the state ranging from class, to gender, etc.

There exists conflicting ways of thinking among IR theories. Ole Holsti describes international relations theories act as a pair of colored sunglasses, allowing the wearer to see only the salient events relevant to the theory.


Why do we need theories of international relations?

To what extend these theories help us to explain international events?

Realism

Raison De’tat of Realism

The state as the key actor in international politics

States must pursue power to perpetuate the life of the state in a hostile and threatening environment

Sceptical of the idea that universal moral principles exis

3 Ss= Statism - Survival - Self-help

Distinction between domestic and international politics

Realism

“international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power” (Morgenthau 1948:25)

• Realists argue that the basic structure of international politics is one of anarchy in that each of the independent sovereign states consider themselves to be their own highest authority and do not recognize a higher power above them.

Realism

• Classical Realism

• Structural Realism

• Neo-classical realism

• Rational Choice Realism

Realism

• Statism is the centerpiece of Realism.

Criticism: Statism is flawed both on empirical (challenges to state power) and normative grounds (the inability of sovereign states to respond to collective global problems)

Realism

• Survival is the primary objective of all states. All other goals are secondary or low politics.

Criticism: Are there no limits to what actions a state can take in the name of necessity?

Realism

• Self-help: no other state or institution can be relied upon to guarantee your survival. In international politics, the structure of the system does not permit friendship, trust and honour.

Criticism: Self-help is not an inevitable consequence of the absence of a world government. There are historical and contemporary examples of where states have preferred collective security systems, or forms of regional security communities.

LiberalismCore Ideas in Liberalism

•Free trade

•harmony of interests

•primacy of international organizations

•collective security systems

•integration

•transnational actors

•interdependence

•less state autonomy

Liberalism

• Neo-liberals conceded that the core assumptions of neo-realism were indeed correct: the anarchic international structure, the centrality of states, and a rationalist approach to social scientific inquiry.

• Where they differed was apparent in the argument that anarchy does not mean durable patterns of cooperation are impossible.

Liberalism

• The pattern of conflict and insecurity that we have seen in 21st Century suggest that liberal democratic values continue to lack traction in practice. In many parts of the world anti-liberal values are common.

• the fragmented nature of the political community, which is expressed as ethnic, linguistic, or religious differences

Neo-Neo Debate

Neo-realism and neo-liberalism do not offer totally contrasting images of the world. Neo-realists stated that they are concerned with the issues of survival. They claim that neo-liberals are too optimistic about the possibilities for cooperation among states. Neo-liberals counter with claims that all states have mutual interests and can gain from cooperation.

Neo-Neo Debate

• Both are problem solving theories (see Cox) - neither theory propose major reform or radical transformations in the international system, they are system maintainer theories.

• They are progeny of realism and liberalism

• biased towards the state, the capitalist market and the status quo

• The process of globalization have forced them to consider similar issues & address new challenges to international order.

Neo - Neo Debate• The debate between neo-realists and

neo-liberals has dominated mainstream IR scholarship since mid 1980s.

• Two major journals “International Organization” and “International Security” led the debate by publishing articles that address the relative merits of each theory and its value in explaining the international politics.

Neo - Neo Debate• The neo - neo debate is not a debate between

two polar opposite worldviews. They share an epistemology, focus on similar questions, and agree on a number of assumptions about international politics

• Neo-liberal institutionalism and neo-realism study different worlds of international politics. Neo-realists focus on security and military issues (high politics issue-area). neo-liberals focus on political economy, environmental issues, human rights issues (low politics).

Neo - Neo Debate• Neo-realists are more cautious about cooperation and

remind us that the world is still a competitive place where self-interest rules.

• Neo-liberals believe that the states and other actors can be persuaded to cooperate if they are convinced that all states will comply

• This debate does not discuss many important issues that challenge some of the core assumptions of each theory. Fex., neo-realism cannot exğlain foreign policy behaviour that challenges the norm of national interest over human interests. Neither theory addresses the impact of learning on the foreign policy behavior of states.

Post Cold War, Globalization & IR Theory• Globalisation is often portrayed as an

effect of the end of the cold war because this led to its further geographical spread.

• At the same time globalisation had to be understood as one of the factors that caused the end of the cold war.

• Accordingly, globalization is an element of continuity between the cold war and post-cold war orders.

Post Cold War, Globalization & IR TheoryLiberals tend to see globalisation as the end product of a long-running transformation of world politics. For liberals globalization fundamentally undermines realist accounts of world politics since it shows that states are no longer such central actors as they once were. In their place are numerous actors, of differing importance according to the issue-area concerned.

Post Cold War, Globalization & IR TheoryRealism’s strongest point lies not so much in challenging a liberal interpretation of the end of the cold war as in questioning the extent to which liberals’ optimism in the spread of democracy, in the growth of free trade, and the general pacification of world politics will have traction in the future.

Post Cold War, Globalization & IR TheoryRealists do not have situate their theory of world politics in opposition to globalisation per se, rather, what they offer is a very different conceptualisation of the process. What is important about a realist view of globalisation is the claim that rudimentary transnational governance is possible but at the same time it is entirely dependent on the distribution of power that the USA holds, given the core values of globalisation espoused by the US.

Constructivist Theories of IR

• The term Constructivism was coined by Nicholas Onuf in his book ‘The World of Our Making’ (1989).

• By drawing from critical and sociological theory these scholars opened a space for an alternative research program in IR.

• Constructivism is a social theory which is broadly concerned with how to conceptualize the relationship between agents and structures

• Constructivism is defined as being “about human consciousness and its role in international life” (Ruggie 1998:56). the world is defined by material and ideational forces. these ideas are social.

Constructivist Theories of IR

• Social construction of reality: - emphasis on socially constructed nature of actors and their identities

- knowledge, that is, symbols, rules, concepts, categories, and meanings shapes how individuals constructs and interpret their world.

- reality is historically produced, and culturally bound knowledge enables individuals to construct and give meaning to reality.

Alternative Approaches to IR

Theory• Theories can be distinguished according to whether they are explanatory or constitutive and whether they are foundational or anti foundational.

• Since the late 1980s there has been a rejection of positivism, with the main new approaches tending more towards constitutive and anti-foundationalist assumptions

• The current theoretical situation is one in which there are three main positions, first Rationalist theories, alternative theories (post-positivist) and social constructivist theories


Theory• An explanatory theory is one that sees the world

as something external to our theories of it. In contrast, a constitutive theory is one that thinks our theories actually help construct the world. In IR the more structural realist and structuralist theories tend to be explanatory theories, which explain the social world in much the same way as a natural scientist might explain the physical world.


Theory• A foundationalist approach is the one that thinks

that all truth claims can be judged true or false. An anti-foundationalist thinks that truth claims cannot be so judged since there are never neutral grounds for so doing. Instead each theory will define what counts as the facts and so there will be no neutral position avaliable to determine between rival claims.


Theory• Historical sociology

• Normative theory

• Feminist theory

• Post-modernism

• Post-colonialism


Theory• The main theme of historical sociology is the way in which societies develop through history. It is concerned with the underlying structures that shape the institutions and organizations into which human society is arranged, including violence, economy and gender (Hall 1992, Skocpol 1992)

• Normative theory was out of fashion for decades because of the dominance of positivism, which portrayed as value-laden and unscientific. Main areas of debate in normative theory include the autonomy of the state, the ethics of the use of force and international justice


Theory• Post-modernism then is essentially concerned with deconstructing and distrusting any account of human life that claims to have direct access to the truth. 3 central themes in post-modern work are: the power-knowledge relationship, the performative nature of identity, and various textual strategies used by post modern thinkers.

• Post-colonialism essentially focuses on the persistence of colonial forms of power in contemporary world politics, especially how the social construction of racial, gendered, and class differences uphold relations of power and subordination.

Marxist Theories of IR

• Marx himself provided little in terms of a theoretical analysis of IR

• His ideas have been interpreted and appropriated in a number of different and contradictory ways, resulting in a number of competing schools of Marxism.

• World System theory

• Gramscianism

• Critical theory

• New Marxism

Future of IR Theories

The revolutionary power of technology to change reality forces us to re-examine our understanding of the international political system. The erosion of sovereignty goes hand in hand with the burgeoning Information Age’s seemingly unstoppable mechanism for breaking down physical boundaries and the conceptual systems grounded upon them.


Classical realism fails because of its fundamental assumption of the traditional sovereignty of the actors in its system. Liberalism cannot adequately quantify the connection between prosperity and freedom, which it assumes as an inherent truth, in a world with lucrative autocracies like Singapore and China.


• Instead, we have to accept the transformative power of ideas or, more directly, the technological, social, economic and political changes they bring about.


The most important aspect of new technology, information, has revolutionised every aspect of society as it has diplomacy - the new definition of wealth and power, it is superseding everything traditional sovereignty is based on. Companies like Microsoft or AOL Time Warner possess relatively little in terms of physical assets, yet enjoy far more wealth and power than many traditional nation-states.2 With a change in societal values comes a shift in national interests, and it comes as no surprise that more than twice as many people judge a country’s strength in economic terms instead of military might.


If diplomacy is fundamentally a means of facilitating communications between two entities, it is hardly surprising that the field has been most affected by revolutions in communications technology.


• The effect of democratisation on the field was only extended by the development of mass media and real-time satellite links to virtually every corner of the globe. Even the most minor incident has the power to become a major policy issue if it catches the eye of news corporations - the so-called ‘CNN-effect’

• The proliferation and multilevel involvement of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) in every aspect of international negotiations has revitalised many debates with new approaches and new options, but also stifled the ability of traditional sovereign actors to operate unimpeded in their own system. In almost every instance, the state must "share the stage with sovereignty-free actors", as Lewis Rasmussen negatively defines them.

• Commerce has moved to the foreground as a primary foreign policy objective


• The Internet is the strongest force eroding our traditional sense of sovereignty. On the one hand, the spread of a digital lifestyle and a digital future, have acted as one of the most effective exercises of ‘soft’ power in history. Its power to mobilise support will prove even greater than television due to the ubiquitous functionality of e-mail and the interactive nature of the medium.

• These fundamental societal changes have created a new set of expectations for international relations. Just as the procedures have changed, so have the players and their motives.

• The field of international relations is in a similar turmoil as some experts, like Wriston, argue that technology will fundamentally change the nature of diplomacy and governance.


Realism, in the sense of a system of sovereign, self-interested entities interacting in a rule-less atmosphere of diplomatic realpolitik, is not a concept that will disappear. Globalisation and the advent of the Information Age are acting as catalysts to accelerate a process of redefinition of sovereignty. As Richard Barnet and John Cavanagh outline in Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order, globe-spanning corporations are developing super-national networks of wealth and information that grant them a new kind of sovereignty. Kofi Annan’s advocacy of a new, more limited understanding of national sovereignty is an official articulation of the frustration the international community


This trend will only continue as more, non-traditional actors become involved with the global scene. What this implies, to use Gilpin’s terminology, is not merely systemic change (the mechanisms of which both realism and liberalism mainly focus on), but a systems change in which the nature of the actors is changing and, with it, the underlying structure in which they compete. The

growing interdependence of sovereign states in different

fields has left them beholden to the force of public opinion both at home and abroad.


• As David Korten introduces The Post-Corporate World, "In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy." The strongest uniting factor between these two projections is their unconditional acceptance of constructivism. The world is going to be revolutionised by ideas, whether they be for corporate empires or technological emancipation. In terms of international relations, it seems more likely to accept at least an increased corporate presence in shaping foreign policy. Already the influence of lobbying and campaign contributions has shaped our China policy, to name just one salient example. Just as democracy revolutionised diplomacy a century ago, increasing corporate influence is going to bring a whole new set of issues and constraints to negotiating tables.


As the international community diversifies with non-profit organisations and corporations with governmental ties, the necessity for effective diplomatic communication will become paramount. In a world of real-time access to countless streams of information, there is no substitute for a direct exchange of ideas with the other side. In terms of realism and liberalism, the power of ideas is going to engender a new capitalist power structure based on the acquisition and interpretation of information - this does not spell the end of the nation-state, at least not in the next few decades, as successful states have always needed to maintain an exceptional ability to process information in just such a manner.

Many regional academic communities in International Relations find themselves as passive recipients of ideas and theories developed elsewhere. Shedding off the role of simple ‘ideas-taker’ and becoming an autonomous voice in International Relations, academic communities need to develop the conditions for independent theorising. Steffano Guzzini discusses the potential intellectual and institutional obstacles to autonomous theory formation.

Guzzini argues that the primary obstacle lies within Western IR itself, namely the particularly damaging tradition which denies the very need for more theoretical reflection, at best some day-to-day adaptation of a truth we already know. This position comes in two often combined forms, stating either that IR knowledge is all in historical experience, not fancy theory, or that such theory has been developed long time ago and cannot be superseded (for the unchanging character of world politics). Only if the unfoundedness of this position is shown, can we really tackle the issue of proper IR theorising: ‘which theory?

His second claim is that the peculiar confusion of IR theory with foreign policy paradigms (often wrapped into the infamous realism-idealism divide), and a topical approach to IR theorising are further obstacles to the understanding of the role and significance of IR theory. Guzzini argues that it neglects the constitutive function of theories and hence the value of a theoretical enterprise that assesses assumptions at the theoretical and meta-theoretical level, as well as a conceptual analysis which is self-reflective to the context, regional and historical, within which such concepts have been evolving.

Finally, He addresses the institutional obstacles IR theorising can encounter. Those, or so I will argue, are at least of three kinds. Some obstacles have to do with the intellectual legitimacy of theoretical research in IR within the national academic division of labour, where IR is often relegated to an inferior position, its theory being handled by the ‘real’ subject-matters. Then, IR theorising, as all research, needs a certain material autonomy. Yet, since the type of theorising he stresses in his paper is usually connected to basic research, a claim with little legitimacy in the social sciences, the obstacles are far higher. Finally, the way the field of expertise is organised in a country can contribute to undermine the social legitimacy of the theoretical expert which is looking long-term and might not come to sound-bite ready conclusions. And yet, as I will show in the conclusion, for moving out of the periphery, independent theorising is crucial.

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IR 501 Lecture Notes (8) Overview & the Future of IR Theories