L ; ? C G C L ; 0 4 ; 5 : A O A G M 5 G 5 O A L 0 > 5 ? C G · 17 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE perspectives on how best to understand and explain international processes

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Kurki, M. and C. Wight (2007) “International Relations and Social Science” in T. Dunne, M. Kurki and S. Smith, eds. International Relations Theories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2. : , ,

Furlong, P. and Marsh, D. (2010) “A Skin not a Sweater: Ontology and

Epistemology in Political Science”, in Marsh, D. and Stoker, G. (eds) Theory and Methods in Political Science, 3rd ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

3. Schmidt, B. C. (2002) “On the History and Historiography of International

Relations”, in Carlsnaes, W., Risse, T. and Simmons, B. A. (eds) Handbook of International Relations. London: SAGE.

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de Carvalho, B., Leira, H. and Hobson, J. (2011) “The Big Bangs of IR: The Myths that Your Teachers Still Tell You About 1648 and 1919”, Millennium: Journal of International Relations, 39(3):735- 758.

5. Wæver, O. (1998), “The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline:

American and European Developments in International Relations”, International Organization, 52 (Special Issue): 687–727.

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Büger, C. (2007) Paradigms, Cultures, and Translations: Seven Ways of Studying the Discipline of International Relations.

, . (2014) “ Hans J. Morgenthau”, . , ( .)

: . : .

International Relations and Social ScienceMILJA KURKI AND COLIN WIGHT

1

Chapter Contents

● Introduction

● The philosophy of social science in IR: an historical overview

● Contemporary IR theory: science and the fourth debate

● Exploring the key implications of meta- theoretical differences in IR theory

● Conclusion

Reader’s Guide

This chapter provides an overview of the key philosophy of social science debates within International Relations (IR) theory.1 Often IR theorists do not address the philosophy of social science explicitly, but nevertheless philosophical issues are implicit in their claims. Since the mid-1980s ‘meta-theoretical’ debates surrounding the philosophy of social science have played an important and highly visible role in the discipline. This chapter explores both the implicit and explicit roles played by meta- theoretical assumptions in IR. It begins with a brief historical overview of the philosophy of social science within IR. We then examine the contemporary disciplinary debates surrounding the philosophy of social science. The fi nal section highlights some of the key ways in which meta- theoretical positions shape theoretical approaches to the study of world politics.

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IntroductionThe philosophy of social science has played an important role in the formation, develop-ment, and practice of IR as an academic discipline. Often issues concerning the philoso-phy of social science are described as meta- theoretical debates. Meta- theory does not take a specifi c event, phenomenon, or series of empirical real world practices as its object of analysis, but explores the underlying assumptions of all theory and attempts to under-stand the consequences of such assumptions on the act of theorizing and the practice of empirical research. One way to think about this is in terms of theories about theories.

The role of meta- theoretical debates is frequently misunderstood. Some see meta- theorizing as nothing more than a quick precursor to empirical research. Others see it as a distraction from the real issues that should concern the discipline. However, it is impossible for research to proceed in any subject domain in the social sciences in the absence of a set of commitments embedded within positions on the philosophy of social science. In this sense, meta- theoretical positions direct, in a fundamental way, the manner in which people theorize and, indeed, ‘see’ the world.

To put this in philosophical terminology, all theoretical positions are dependent upon particular assumptions about ontology (theory of being: what is the world made of? what objects do we study?), epistemology (theory of knowledge: how do we come to have knowledge of the world?), and methodology (theory of methods: what methods do we use to unearth data and evidence?). On the basis of these assumptions researchers may literally come to ‘see’ the world in different ways: ontologically in terms of seeing different object domains, epistemologically in terms of accepting or rejecting particular knowl-edge claims, and methodologically in terms of choosing particular methods of study. Meta- theoretical positions have deep, if often unrecognized, consequences for social anal-ysis. Being aware of the issues at stake in meta- theoretical debate, and of their signifi cance in terms of concrete research, serves as an important starting point for understanding IR theory and facilitates a deeper awareness of one’s own meta- theoretical orientation.

Meta- theoretical debates surrounding the philosophy of social science in IR have tended to revolve around two interrelated questions. Is International Relations a science or an art? What does the ‘scientifi c’ study of world politics entail? A position can be taken on the question of whether IR can be a science only on the basis of some or other account of what science is, and an account of what we think IR is. Hence, the questions of what science is, and what IR is, are prior to the question of whether IR can be a science. This inevitably takes the discussion into the terrain of the philosophy of science. This seems a long way from the concerns of a discipline focused on the study of international political processes, and the frustration of some within the discipline concerning meta- theoretical debate is understandable. Yet, there is no way to avoid these issues and at a minimum all contribu-tors to the discipline should understand the assumptions that make their own position possible; as well as being aware of alternative conceptualizations of what IR theory and research might involve.

For a large part of the history of the fi eld a particular philosophy of science has domi-nated. The infl uence of positivism as a philosophy of science has shaped not only how we theorize about the subject, and what counts as a valid question, but also what can


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16 count as valid forms of evidence and knowledge. Such is the infl uence of positivism on the disciplinary imagination that even those concerned to reject a scientifi c approach to IR tend to do so on the basis of a general acceptance of the positivist model of science. There are two points worthy of note in this respect. First, despite the acceptance of the positivist model of science by both advocates and critics alike, it is clear that the account of positivism that dominates the discipline is rudimentary. Second, within the philosophy of science positivism was long ago discredited as a valid account of scientifi c practice. Had the discipline been prepared to take the philosophy of social science, and by extension the philosophy of science, more seriously, a long and potentially damaging commitment to positivism might have been avoided. This does not mean that all research underpinned by positivist principles is invalid. Indeed, we believe that scholars, who might be consid-ered to be working in the positivist tradition, have made some of the most important and lasting contributions to the discipline. Nonetheless, this view of science is highly contested and there is no reason to insist that all research should fi t this model. Equally, a rejection of the positivist model of science need not lead to the rejection of science.

This chapter argues that social science debates within the discipline can be moved forward by a comprehensive re- examination of what science is. Hence, besides reviewing the his-torical and contemporary philosophy of social science debates in IR, the chapter also points towards new accounts of science that have been introduced to the discipline in the last decade or so; accounts that hold the promise of reformulating our understanding of the aims and methods of IR as a social science. Science, we argue, is not based on a dogmatic insistence on the certainty of its claims but, rather, rests on a commitment to constant critique.

The philosophy of social science in IR: an historical overviewThe discipline of IR, in common with all the social sciences, has been deeply divided on many issues throughout its history. A common way of narrating this history is in terms of the great debates surrounding these key issues. In many respects debate is the wrong term to use, since in some of them a group of theorists situated their own approach as a direct coun-ter to previous ways of thinking, without generating a substantial set of responses (Schmidt 1998). Some of the debates, however, were genuine and scholars within the discipline have often been prepared to engage with one another over substantial areas of disagreement. Although there is no consensus on the exact number of great debates, four are generally accepted to have played an important role in shaping the discipline (Wæver 1996).

The fi rst debate refers to the exchanges between the realists and idealists before, during, and immediately after the Second World War. This was primarily waged over the role of international institutions and the likelihood that the causes of war might be ameliorated. The second debate emerged in the 1960s. It pitted the traditionalists, who were keen to defend a more humanistic methodology, against the modernizers, who aimed to introduce a greater level of methodological rigour to the discipline. The interparadigm debate of the 1970s and 1980s focused on disagreements among the realist, pluralist, and Marxist


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perspectives on how best to understand and explain international processes. Finally, the most recent debate, which some IR theorists call the fourth debate, has centred on deep- seated disagreements about what the discipline should study and how it should study it. While these debates have often highlighted the paradigmatic divisions between different and distinct IR theoretical schools of thought, an often- unrecognized issue has cut across and underpinned all the debates. This is the issue of whether or not International Relations can be, or should be, a form of inquiry based upon scientifi c principles.

Science and the fi rst debate

The fi rst great debate in the discipline is said to have taken place between the idealists and the realists. The idealists were driven by a desire to develop a set of institutions, pro-cedures, and practices that could eradicate, or at least control, war in the international system. They were motivated by the horrors of the First World War and they sincerely believed that there must be a better way to organize international affairs. The most vis-ible, and historically important, aspect of their programme cohered in Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen- point Plan for a new postwar order. However, the most enduring contribution of the idealists in terms of disciplinary development was the idea of an academic dis-cipline constructed to study the world of international politics. For the idealists, igno-rance and lack of understanding was a primary source of international confl ict. A better understanding of international processes was required if control of the system was to be achieved. The idealists believed progress was only possible if we could develop and use reason to control the irrational desires and frailties that infect the human condition. The pinnacle of human reason in the service of effective control was science. This think-ing led to the establishment of an academic department of international politics located in Aberystwyth, Wales. The aim of this new discipline was the production of a body of knowledge that could be used in the furtherance of peace. Although the idealists never clearly articulated what they meant by science, they were committed to producing knowl-edge that was scientifi c.

The absence of a clear account of science in the early years of the discipline is under-standable given that the philosophy of science was itself not yet fully established as an academic fi eld of study. Science, to the Enlightenment mind, was self- evident. Yet the real-ist critique of the idealists was to challenge the extent to which the knowledge produced by the idealists was scientifi c. In particular, realists challenged the ‘unsystematic’ and value- driven idealist approach to IR. Both E. H. Carr (1946, 1987) and Hans Morgenthau (1947, 1948a; discussed in more detail in Chapter 3) accused the idealists of focusing their attention on how the world ‘ought’ to be, as opposed to dealing with how it objectively was. In a scathing attack Carr famously concluded that the difference between realism and idealism was analogous to that between science and alchemy (1946: 1–11).

Neither Carr nor Morgenthau, however, can be said to have uncritically embraced a naive view of science. Carr was only too well aware of the problematic status of facts and associated truth claims. His celebrated notion of the ‘relativity of thought’ and his sophisticated treatment of historical method can hardly be said to constitute an uncriti-cal commitment to science. Likewise, Morgenthau went to great lengths to distance his approach to political science from attempts to construct ‘iron laws’ comparable to those


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18 discovered in the natural sciences (Morgenthau 1947). Despite his belief that international politics was governed by ‘objective laws’ rooted in human nature, Morgenthau articulated a series of telling objections to any attempt to construct a science of international politics modelled on the natural sciences. After all, if international politics was governed by ‘objec-tive laws’ rooted in human nature, then the true causes of war were to be found in biology, and any nascent science of IR could provide only suggestions for dealing with a realm of human activity that was to a great extent predetermined. Morgenthau’s account of IR was not concerned to provide a series of in- depth explanations of the workings of the world but, rather, aimed at articulating a series of techniques and modes of operation for dealing with a world on the basis of a simple, but enticing, explanation. Nonetheless, despite these caveats, and the limited nature of debate surrounding understandings of science within the discipline, the status of science was clearly important in the early period of the devel-opment of the subject. In the second great debate, however, it was to take centre stage.

Science and the second debate

The second debate took the ‘rhetorical’ arguments about science and gave them method-ological substance. Drawing on the behaviourist revolution in the social sciences, a new breed of ‘scientifi c’ IR scholars, such as David Singer and Morton Kaplan, sought to defi ne and refi ne systematic scientifi c methods of inquiry for the discipline of IR. The behav-iourist research instigated fi erce resistance from those committed to a more historicist, or interpretive, form of IR.

For the proponents of the behavioural revolution, IR could move forward only if it consciously modelled itself on the natural sciences. By the time the second debate had emerged in IR the philosophy of science was a well developed and institutionally located academic discipline. Moreover, within the philosophy of science one view had come to dominate; although ironically just as IR was to formalize its vision of science the con-sensus within the philosophy of science had already begun to unravel. The model of sci-ence that had dominated was called positivism, and the behaviouralists in IR embraced it enthusiastically. There are many versions of positivism and such was its promotion and reception in IR that it has come to be a synonym for science. This is a regrettable move since it effectively closes down all debate on what kind of science IR might be; if IR is to be a science, it must be modelled on positivist principles.

Positivism suggests that scientifi c knowledge emerges only with the collection of observable data. The collection of suffi cient data, it was presumed, would lead to the identifi cation of patterns that would in turn allow the formulation of laws. The impor-tance of observable data for this approach cannot be over- stressed. The inscription on the Social Science Research Building façade, at the University of Chicago, reads, ‘If you cannot measure it, your knowledge is meagre and unsatisfactory’. This stress on observ-able data and measurement led the proponents of the new scientifi c model to engage in a series of sharp criticisms of the account of science adhered to by many realists and other IR scholars. Many of the core concepts of ‘classical’ realism were deemed to be lacking in specifi city and were not susceptible to measurement. Power and the national interest, for example, if they were to be studied according to the principles of the new science, needed increased levels of clarity and specifi cation; anything that could not be rigorously


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measured and subject to testing was to be purged from the new ontology. New methods were developed and the mathematical modelling of international processes took pride of place. The behaviouralists hoped that through the relentless accumulation of data, knowl-edge would progress and control would follow.

The behaviouralist criticisms of the traditional approach did not go unchallenged. Many argued that the core concepts of the discipline were simply not susceptible to the kind of austere data collection procedures advocated by the new model of science. Chief among them was the English school theorist Hedley Bull, but the traditionalists also included some of the initial defenders of science in IR such as Morgenthau (see exchanges in Knorr and Rosenau 1969). For these theorists, systematic inquiry was one thing, the obsession with data collection and manipulation on positivist lines was another. Study of IR for Bull and Morgenthau involved signifi cant conceptual and interpretative judge-ments, something that the behaviourist theorists in their focus on systematic data collec-tion and scientifi c inference seemed not to adequately recognize. The dispute over science also developed a geographical aspect. Although there were some advocates of the new science in Britain and Europe it was largely a US- led development. Despite the fact that the austere version of science advocated by the behaviouralists was signifi cantly watered down over the passage of time, the underlying principles of that approach remain deeply embedded within the account of science that continues to dominate the discipline. It was also to have a lasting affect on the methodological techniques taught in graduate schools, with hypothesis testing, statistical analysis, and data manipulation becoming indispens-able requirements of all methodological training.

Science and the interparadigm debate

In the 1970s and 1980s the so- called interparadigm debate ostensibly moved IR away from the ‘methodological’ issues of the 1960s. The question of science was not an explicit component of this debate because to a large extent a consensus had emerged around a commitment to positivism. Indeed, it could be argued that this debate could take the form it did only as a result of a general shared commitment to the principles of sci-ence. All parties to the interparadigm debate accepted the validity of a broadly conceived positivist account of science. Certainly, the fascination with data collection, the insistence on measurement, hypothesis testing, and the statistical analysis of the early behavioural-ists had been modifi ed and toned down but, nonetheless, no one seriously attempted to argue that these were not important aspects of the study of international phenomena. Despite the consensus on science, however, issues surrounding the nature of scientifi c inquiry quickly resurfaced; in particular, the problem of theory choice and the alleged incommensurability of differing theoretical perspectives.

Much of this was indebted to Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) ground- breaking study of the history of science. Kuhn had argued that science developed through two distinct phases. In its ‘revolutionary’ phase, science was marked by theoretical fragmentation. New modes of thought would arise and challenge traditional ways of thinking. Although the revolu-tionary phase ensured that theoretical innovation was always possible, Kuhn argued that such phases did not lead to a progression in terms of a body of cumulative knowledge. In a revolutionary phase, the theoretical protagonists expend their energy on attempting to


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20 gain theoretical dominance as opposed to increasing the overall stock of knowledge sur-rounding a subject domain. Knowledge could only progress, Kuhn argued, in periods of what he called normal science. In an era of normal science one theoretical school, or what Kuhn called a paradigm, would dominate. In such periods knowledge could progress because everyone was in agreement on the validity of the chosen paradigm and hence the vast majority of scholars were working in a particular subject using agreed methods and techniques and could compare their fi ndings.

Kuhn’s model of scientifi c development was enthusiastically embraced by the dis-cipline. Since its inception the discipline had been attempting to develop a body of cumulative knowledge surrounding international processes. Yet, after decades of study there was still very little agreement on key issues. Despite the disagreements between them, the realists and behaviouralists had suggested that progress could be achieved only by adopting a more scientifi c mode of study. Kuhn’s model suggested a different, more conservative, conclusion. The discipline needed the adoption of a single para-digm around which research could converge. In the mid-1970s three paradigms vied for theoretical dominance; realism, Marxism, and pluralism. The question was how to compare them. Which paradigm should the discipline adopt in order to move forward? Kuhn provided no answers. Indeed, he suggested that there was no answer; paradigms were incommensurable; they simply could not be compared. Theory choice became largely a matter of aesthetics; or what one of Kuhn’s critics was to call ‘mob psychology’ (Lakatos 1970: 178).

It is ironic that although the interparadigm debate did not directly involve disputes over the nature of science it was the period of disciplinary development in which the phi-losophy of science began to play a substantial and explicit role. The conservative nature of Kuhn’s model, and the fact that theory choice becomes a matter of taste, ensured that some scholars would look to alternatives. Karl Popper (1959) became an important infl u-ence, but it was the importation of Imre Lakatos’s (1970) model of research programmes that was to have the greatest impact, and it is his model that is generally adopted by the more scientifi cally orientated ‘positivist’ wing of the discipline.

Contemporary IR theory: science and the fourth debateWhat we call the ‘fourth debate’ emerged in the mid-1980s. (Note that this debate is some-what confusingly also referred to as the ‘third debate’ by some IR theorists.)2 This debate has most explicitly focused on the issue of science in the disciplinary history of IR. Since the discipline is still largely in the middle of this debate we will deal with it as a contempo-rary issue and discuss it in terms of the cleavages and divisions around which the discipline is currently organized. There are many ways to characterize the ‘fourth debate’; as a debate between explaining and understanding, between positivism and postpositivism, or between rationalism and refl ectivism. This section will examine these different terms and through them the key philosophical positions in contemporary IR.


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Explaining and understanding

The terms explaining and understanding come from Max Weber’s distinction between Erklären and Verstehen, and were popularized in IR by Hollis and Smith in the early 1990s (see Featured Book box). Another way of describing this distinction is in terms of a scientifi c approach versus an interpretive or hermeneutic approach. While explana-tory theorists seek to emulate the natural sciences in following scientifi c methods and in seeking to identify general causes, advocates of understanding focus on the analysis of the ‘internal’ meanings, reasons, and beliefs actors hold and act in reference to (Hollis and Smith 1990). For the advocates of understanding, social meanings, language, and beliefs are said to constitute the most important (ontological) aspects of social existence. Explanatory theorists do not generally disagree with this claim; however, they do not see how such objects can be incorporated into a scientifi c framework of analysis. Scientifi c knowledge, for the explanatory theorist, requires empirical justifi cation; and meanings, beliefs, and ideas are not susceptible to validation by such techniques. Without such justi-fi cations, knowledge claims can be nothing more than mere speculation. Advocates of an interpretive approach, on the other hand, argue that we should be guided in our analytical procedures by the most important factors impacting on human behaviour (beliefs, ideas, meanings, reasons), not by an a priori commitment to something called science.

FEATURED BOOK

Martin Hollis and Steve Smith (1990), Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

Steve Smith and Martin Hollis were in many ways responsible for the rise of the meta- theoretical turn in International Relations scholarship. Their book is a classic text which explicates how assumptions about science permeate the study of international relations. Martin Hollis, a highly respected philosopher had specialized in the analysis of hermeneutics, Wittgenstenian philosophy, and philosophies of action and Steve Smith, a theorist of international relations and foreign policy, at the University of East Anglia jointly taught a course exploring philosophical underpinnings of IR. It was this course that provided the motivation for their co- authored book, and which refl ected, in a highly productive manner, not only the coming together of different specialisms, but also a dialogical approach to the discussion of philosophi-cal matters. The conclusion to this text is especially effective in demonstrating how deep philosophical debates are embedded in debates about world politics as well famously claiming always at least ‘two stories to tell’ about world political events, which cannot easily be combined into one single overall ‘truth’. Hollis and Smith characterized these stories as Explaining and Understanding. While the intrica-cies of people’s motivations and reasoning (e.g. the reasons a leader might have for starting a war) could be understood through an interpretive research agenda, this approach runs the risk of leaving out what others can consider the most crucial ‘explanatory’ factors, such as the role external factors have in directing thoughts, actions, and options (e.g. state leader’s positioning within military alliances, actors’ positioning in market structures). When we consider world political issues, whether it be the causes of the Iraq war or the causes of global poverty, debates about the role of agency and structure, internal understanding and external explanation, are key to how we approach the debates.

Hollis and Smith also powerfully demonstrated that how we debate the causes of international political developments is highly dependent on, and refl ective of, the philosophical underpinnings we adopt—whether implicitly or explicitly. This is an interesting implication to highlight for one might consider that Hollis and Smith’s own argument—that there are always (at least) two mutually irreconcilable stories


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Clearly, a particular vision of what science is frames this debate. The explanatory the-orist reduces the ontological complexity of the social world to those aspects of it that can be observed and measured. Thus the ontology adopted by this approach is shaped by epistemological and methodological concerns. This leads to a sharp split between these two approaches in terms of methodology. Explanatory theorists privilege quan-titative methods, or attempt to quantify qualitative data. Supporters of understanding adopt interpretive methods (qualitative, discursive, historical), shunning the generalizing approach of the explainers. This debate also has epistemological consequences insofar as explanatory theory emphasizes observation as perhaps the only way of generating valid knowledge, whereas the understanding side of the debate concentrates attention on the interpretation of unobservable, and hence immeasurable, contexts of action.

Positivism and postpositivism

Underpinning the explanatory framework is a positivist vision of science. This account of science has its roots in an empiricist epistemology. Often the terms positivism and empiricism are confused in the discipline. Positivism is a theory of science, and generally most positivists adopt an empiricist epistemology. However, not all empiricists embrace positivism, so it is important to maintain the distinction between the two terms. Equally, it is possible to accept the validity of empirical data without adopting a positivist account of science. As an epistemology, the empiricist approach to the acquisition of knowledge is premised on the belief that the only genuine knowledge we can have of the world is based on those ‘facts’ that can be experienced by the human senses. The implication of this empiricist epistemology for science is that scientifi c knowledge is secure only when based on empirical validation. This is why positivists privilege observation, empirical data, and measurement; what cannot be an object of experience cannot be scientifi cally validated.

The key assumptions of the positivist view of science and social explanation can be summarized as follows. First, for positivists, science must be focused on systematic obser-vation. The aim of the philosophy of science is to produce a set of logically rigorous guidelines concerning appropriate methodological techniques and criteria for ensuring that knowledge claims are grounded in appropriate observations. Indeed, for positivists the validity of science rests on these rigorous methodological guidelines; it is these guide-lines that allow us to distinguish between scientifi c knowledge and mere ‘belief ’. Second, all positivists believe that the collection of suffi cient data, generated through repeated instances of observation, will reveal regularities, which are indicative of the operation of general laws. These general laws are only the expression of relationships between patterns among observable events and there is nothing more going on behind the data.

to tell about international relations—as an important political move in the study of IR. By arguing that not all stories could be reduced to a scientifi c agreement on a single truth, the text can be seen as an important ‘political’ defence of, fi rst, the integrity of refl ectivist IR research and, second, of political as well as theoretical pluralism. Yet this argument is not without its problems. First, why only two stories? Second, are academic accounts of global politics really little more than stories? Third, if the stories we tell about international realtions are not in some sense comparable, and hence we cannot judge between them, are all stories equally valid?


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Any attempt to introduce non- observable processes, mechanisms, and events as explana-tions of the data are considered inadmissible. This belief in the importance of regular pat-terns when linked to the insistence on empirical validation becomes important in terms of how positivists conceive of causal analysis. For the positivists, causal relations are dis-covered through the detection of regular patterns of observable behaviour.

Third, because positivists emphasize the importance of observation, they avoid talk-ing about ‘realities’ that cannot be observed. This directs them away from developing ‘deep ontological’ conceptual systems that aim to grapple with unobservable entities such as ‘discourses’ or ‘social structures’. This insistence on observation means that positivists are not, as they are sometimes described, naive realists.3 Positivists do not believe in an external world independent of humanity (Kolakowski 1969). The positivist motto was esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived), which makes existence logically dependent upon perception (Hollis 1996). When non- observable entities are referred to, they are treated in wholly instrumental terms. These non- observables are useful fi ctions that help explain the data, but positivists refrain from giving them ontological signifi cance. It follows that positivists emphasize the instrumental function of knowledge. Knowledge has to be use-ful not truthful (Waltz 1979). It is partly this commitment to the instrumental validation of knowledge that makes positivists some of the most vehement critics of the role of meta- theory within IR.

The positivist approach to social explanation has been modifi ed in signifi cant ways since the 1960s as the positivist philosophy of science has adapted itself as a result of a range of criticisms. The so- called ‘soft’ postbehaviourist form of positivism is still signif-icant in contemporary IR. It underpins, for example, the infl uential contribution to social analysis of King, Keohane, and Verba (1994). They aim to build a unifi ed logic of infer-ence for both quantitative and qualitative inquiry, and foreground the role of observation and measurement. Indeed, they aim to rescue social science from speculative and unsys-tematic social inquiry by showing that the ‘scientifi c logic of inference’ can be applied in qualitative studies. By demonstrating how qualitative analysis can become ‘scientifi c’, King, Keohane, and Verba hoped to force qualitative approaches to ‘take scientifi c infer-ence seriously’, hence allowing these approaches to start making ‘valid inferences about social and political life’ (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994: 3, ix).

Against the positivist insistence on a ‘science’ of human behaviour, a diverse range of postpositivist positions has emerged. It is tempting to categorize these postpositivists as articulating a version of the interpretive understanding position detailed above. However, whilst many postpositivists draw inspiration from interpretive thinkers, the term ‘post-positivist’ can be used to refer to approaches that draw on a wider range of intellectual traditions; what unites them all is a commitment to reject positivism as a valid approach to the study of social processes.

Some postpositivists are infl uenced by developments from within the philosophy of science and attempt to use these to articulate a non- positivist version of science (see the later section on scientifi c realism for more detail). These postpositivists reject both the positivist account of science and the hermeneutic alternatives. Importantly, for these postpositivists it is only a particular version of science that is rejected, not the idea of science itself. Many feminist theorists (discussed in more detail in Chapter 10), who would rightly be considered postpositivists, are also keen to develop more sophisticated


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24 versions of science. And many postpositivists are keen to repudiate the positivist account of science that has dominated the discipline and accept the importance of meanings, beliefs, and language without adopting a hermeneutic perspective. This is particularly the case in relation to postmodern, or poststructuralist, theories (discussed in more detail in Chapter 11). The interpretive approach rests on the conviction that meanings and beliefs are the most important factors in the study of social processes and that social inquiry could play an important role in uncovering the deep meanings that exist beneath the surface appearance of observed reality. This conviction relies on the belief that there are hidden meanings to be had. Poststructuralist theorists are sceptical of this viewpoint and have no wish to return to what they term the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. Poststructuralists are also sceptical of the validity of all knowledge claims and reject the idea that science produces anything like true knowledge, even in terms of the natural sciences.

In many respects, the positivist/postpositivist designation represents a particular moment in the history of the discipline. It marks a particular period in time when the positivist orthodoxy had begun to crumble in the philosophy of science, and the effect of this was felt throughout the social sciences. It is an accident of history that this collapse occurred at the same time as a range of new social theories, and philosophies, was emerg-ing. These new theories all rejected the positivist vision of science and, in particular, its application to the social sciences. Yet in many respects this rejection of positivism was all they shared in common and it is incorrect to infer that this necessarily requires them to adopt an interpretive philosophy and methodology.

Rationalism and refl ectivism

The rationalist/refl ectivist divide takes the explaining/understanding divide and the posi-tivist/postpositivist debate and encapsulates them both under a single label. This termi-nology, utilized by Robert Keohane (1988) in his address to the International Studies Association, can be associated with the explanation/understanding and positivist/post-positivist divides, but also has particular additional connotations. Keohane takes his label of rationalism directly from rational choice theory. Rational choice theory is essentially a methodology constructed from a commitment to a positivist account of science. The rational choice theorist accepts the general complexity of the social world but ignores the majority of it in order to produce predictions based on a particular understanding of individuals. According to rational choice theorists we should treat individuals, and by extension states, as utility maximizers, and ignore every other aspect of their social being. This does not mean that rational choice theorists actually believe this is a correct description of what an individual is. However, they do believe that if we treat individuals in this manner we may be able to generate a series of well grounded predictions con-cerning behaviour on the basis of observed outcomes. Keohane accepts the limitations of this approach, but argues that it has been spectacularly successful in terms of knowl-edge production (Keohane 1988). This approach is deductive as opposed to the inductive bias of previous forms of positivism but, nonetheless, observation, measurement, and the attempt to specify general universal laws are still at the heart of this form of analysis. The approach is deductive because it begins with a theory of the individual and then uti-lizes observation and hypothesis testing to substantiate, or falsify, a set of claims relating


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to behaviour on the basis of this view. It is an approach to explanation that is compatible with the wider positivist tradition in IR, but it is not synonymous with it. It is for this reason that the term rationalism has been associated with both the explanatory and the positivist tradition in IR.

In his now (in)famous speech, Keohane (1988) also noted the emergence of a ser-ies of theories that were sharply critical of mainstream rationalist approaches to the discipline—critical theory, constructivism, poststructuralism, and feminism. He called these approaches refl ectivist, due to the fact that they rejected the classical positivist/explanatory approach to IR theory and research, emphasizing instead refl exivity and the non- neutral nature of political and social explanation. He noted the potential of these approaches to contribute to the discipline but, in a direct reference to Lakatos’s account of science, suggested that they could be taken seriously only when they developed a ‘research programme’. This was a direct challenge to the new theories to move beyond criticism of the mainstream and demonstrate, through substantive research, the validity of their claims. Many of the so- called refl ectivists have seen this as nothing other than a demand that they adopt the model of science to which Keohane and the mainstream are commit-ted. On the other hand, the mainstream has been reluctant to take the knowledge claims of refl ectivist scholars seriously, because they challenge the very status of the ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions upon which the mainstream depend.

Beyond the fourth debate? Rethinking International Relations as a science

The debates between explaining and understanding and rationalism and refl ectivism have produced a dichotomous logic that has fashioned two wings of the discipline: a ‘pro- science’ viewpoint versus an ‘anti-science’ position. Typically, this debate has been framed around positivism as the dominant account of what science is. While positivism and its debate with the anti- science faction of the discipline has been the dominant issue in IR, recent developments in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of social science suggest that this way of framing the issues is unproductive. Signifi cant strides have been taken in the philosophy of science to move beyond positivism: positivism is no longer seen to be a valid account of science and has been replaced by scientifi c realism. A com-prehensive account of scientifi c realism is beyond the scope of this chapter; however, the important contribution it makes in terms of social science is to reject any attempt to arrive at a set of clearly defi ned procedures that fi x the content of the scientifi c method. For scientifi c realists, each science must arrive at its own mode of operation on the basis of the object domain under study (see, for example, Roy Bhaskar 1978, 1979). Because object domains differ in fundamental ways, scientifi c realists claim it would be inappro-priate to expect methods deployed in one science to have a universal application. Hence the social sciences should not be attempting to copy the natural sciences, not least because given the immeasurable distinctions within the various natural sciences it is impossible to identify a set of procedures and techniques that are adopted by all.

For scientifi c realists, what makes a body of knowledge scientifi c is not its mode of generation, but its content. Contra a positivist account of science, a body of knowledge is not declared scientifi c because it has followed a particular set of procedures based upon


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26 empirical ‘facts’ but, rather, because it constructs explanations of those facts in terms of entities and processes that are unknown and potentially unobservable. For scientifi c realists, scientifi c knowledge goes beyond appearances and constructs explanations that often run counter to, and even contradict, observed outcomes. Social science involves the study of the complex and interacting social objects that produce the patterns we observe. Because of their unobservable nature, most social objects have to be ‘got at’ through care-ful conceptualization. This is always a complex process that involves mutually constituted processes between agents and the objects of knowledge; yet social knowledge, however imperfect and embedded in conceptual and discursive frameworks, is knowledge of something—something called social reality.

Epistemologically, scientifi c realists are relativists; they argue that no epistemological posi-tion has priority in the acquisition of knowledge for there are always many ways in which to come to know the world. But this does not mean that all views are equally valid and they believe in the possibility of rationally adjudicating between competing knowledge claims. What is important to science is that any and every claim is open to challenge and, moreover, that all claims require epistemological support. This does not mean that these epistemologi-cal supports are always predicated on facts, or other such empirical data, but it does mean that those concerned to challenge particular claims make clear the evidential basis on which the challenge is made. Science, it is argued, rather than being committed to a dogmatic insistence on the certainty of its claims, rests on a commitment to constant critique.

Methodologically, it follows that scientifi c realists adopt a pluralist approach: contrary to the positivist emphasis on quantitative methods and the interpretive emphasis on qualitative methods, scientifi c realists emphasize methodological pluralism. Because the social world is ontologically highly complex, and there are many ways to come to know the world, it is better that one does not restrict methods a priori. A student of demo-cratic peace, for example, should not study only regular patterns in history (positivist approach), nor simply interpret particular decision-makers’ perceptions (‘understanding’ approach), but should make use of multiple ways of obtaining data. Because the social world is ontologically complex, it is better that one does not take an a priori position on either methodology or epistemology.

Scientifi c realism has already made major contributions to social theory and the devel-opment of research techniques in other social sciences, and it is now beginning to make an impact in IR. It has played a major role in the development of constructivism, although not all constructivists have embraced it. Alexander Wendt (1999) is perhaps the most notable theorist to embed his theory explicitly in a scientifi c realist framework, and it underpins his attempt to construct a via media, or middle ground, between rationalism and refl ectivism. However, Wendt’s adoption of scientifi c realism has been criticized by other scientifi c realists on the grounds that he has failed to move suffi ciently beyond the parameters of the current debate and that he remains basically locked into a modifi ed commitment to positivism. Another version of scientifi c realism has emerged which uses the label critical realism to differentiate itself from Wendt’s account. Critical realists such as Patomäki and Wight (2000) take scientifi c realist ideas further in important respects. Notably, they argue that the dichotomy between rationalism and refl ectivism is mirrored in the distinction between an approach that focuses on materialist issues, and one that concentrates on ideas. For critical realists, both ideas and material factors are important


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in producing social outcomes, and both need to be integrated into the research process. According to critical realists, the question of whether material factors or ideational issues are the most important in determining outcomes is an empirical matter that can be decided only on the basis of research that examines the relationship and interplay of both. So while critical realists agree that meanings and ideas matter they insist that ideas always emerge in a material context, and that the meanings we give to events are, in part, a conse-quence of how these events were materially constructed, composed, and represented.

The emergence of scientifi c and critical realism in IR is an important new trend in the discipline. It has opened up new potentially constructive avenues for meta- theoretical and theoretical debate in IR. By refusing to juxtapose explaining and understanding and causal and non- causal analysis, by rejecting an a priori commitment to either material or ideational factors, and by refusing to endorse either the positivist model of science, or the rejection of science advocated by some refl ectivists, it has enabled the discipline to move forward from the fourth debate and allowed the non- positivist theoretical perspectives to be appreciated in a new light; as scientifi c contributors to the discipline.

Exploring the key implications of meta-theoretical differences in IR theoryIn this fi nal section we examine how meta- theoretical assumptions infl uence the manner in which IR theorists formulate different understandings of certain issues: such as the nature of theory, the possibility of objectivity, the criteria to be used in theory- testing, and the relationship of theory and practice. In many respects these issues emerge out of the debates considered above, and in some cases they are constitutive of them. In the chapters that follow many of these issues will re- emerge, even if only implicitly. In highlighting the often implicit role of meta- theory we hope to alert students to the multiple ways in which meta- theoretical assumptions infl uence IR theory and research.

Types of theory

It is reasonable to assume that a book dealing with IR theory would provide a clear account of what theory is. Unfortunately there is not one but many. This makes a direct comparison between theoretical claims often diffi cult if not impossible; being aware of the many different types of theorizing means that comparison is not always possible and alerts us to the fact that different types of theories have different aims.

One of the most common types of theory is what we will term explanatory theory. This is probably the type of theory most students initially think of when they use the term theory. Explanatory theory attempts to ‘explain’ events by providing an account of causes in a temporal sequence. Thus, for example, we can think of theories that attempt to explain the end of the Cold War in terms of a series of connected events occurring over time. For positivists, this type of theory must produce verifi able (or falsifable) hypotheses which can be subject to empirical test. Another common type of explanatory theory does


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28 not attempt to link particular events in causal sequences but, rather, attempts to locate the causal role played by particular elements in the chosen object domain and, on the basis of this analysis, draw conclusions and predictions aimed at exercising control. A good example of this type of explanatory theory is neo- or structural realism (see Chapter 4). According to neorealists such as Waltz (1979) theory can be considered a simplifying device that abstracts from the world in order to locate and identify key factors of inter-est. Once these factors are identifi ed this type of theory aims at predicting a large range of outcomes on the basis of a few important causal factors. For this type of explanatory theory it is not important that the theory provides a realistic model of the world but, rather, that the theory is ‘useful’ in terms of its predictive capacity.

Explanatory theories are sometimes said to be ‘ problem- solving theories’. This dis-tinction comes from Robert Cox (1981) who claims that this type of theory is con-cerned only with taking the world as given and attempting to understand its modes of operation. As such, problem- solving theories are often said to be concerned only with making the world work better within clearly defi ned, and limited, parameters. In oppo-sition to explanatory theories, Cox identifi ed another type of theory which he called ‘critical theory’. Cox’s category of critical theory is confusing since the content of the term critical is dependent on a political context. What one theorist considers critical may be considered dogmatic by another. However, there is a form of theorizing that we think does merit the label ‘critical’. By critical theory we mean that type of theory which begins with the avowed intent of criticizing particular social arrangements and/or out-comes. Hence a theory might be considered critical in this sense if it explicitly sets out to identify and criticize a particular set of social circumstances and demonstrate how they came to exist. We want to phrase it in this manner since it is highly probable that this type of critical theory builds its analysis on the basis of an examination of the causal factors that brought the particular unjust state of affairs about. On this account of criti-cal theory there is no necessary confl ict between the identifi cation of an unjust state of affairs and a consideration of the causes of that state of affairs. Hence it is possible for a theory to be both explanatory and critical. Many feminist theories fi t this model. They identify a particular set of social arrangements that are considered unjust and locate those social conditions in a set of particular causal circumstances. Interestingly, many feminists also take the additional step of indicating how an eradication of those causal factors might make the world better in some or other way.

Once a theorist takes the step of indicating alternative futures or social modes of opera-tion that do not currently exist, but might be brought into being, they have entered the realm of normative theory. This will be discussed in more detail in the following chapter but generally speaking it is fair to say that normative theory examines what ‘ought’ to be the case. Normative theory comes in strong or weak versions. In the weak version the theorist is concerned only to examine what ought to be the case in a particular domain of interest. Theories of justice for example can be considered normative in that they debate not only what justice is, but also what it ought to be. The strong version of normative theory is often called ‘utopian’ in that it sets out to provide models of how society ought to be reorganized. Marxist theory can be considered strongly utopian in this manner. This type of theorizing has been neglected for some time now, mainly because the term utopian has negative connotations associated with ‘unrealistic’ expectations.


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Another common type of theory is known as constitutive theory. Constitutive theory does not attempt to generate, or track, causal patterns in time, but asks, ‘How is this thing constituted?’ This type of theory can take many forms. In one sense constitutive theory entails the study of how social objects are constituted. State theory, for example, does not always ask how the modern state came to be, but can focus solely on questions, such as, ‘What is a state?’, ‘How is a state constituted?’, ‘What functions does the state play in soci-ety?’. However, the term constitutive theory is also used in the discipline in another sense: to refer to those authors who examine the ways in which rules, norms, and ideas ‘consti-tute’ social objects. For these theorists, the social world (and perhaps the natural world) is constituted through the ideas, or theories, that we hold. For this type of constitutive theory, it becomes important to theorize the act of theorizing.4

The last type we wish to discuss is theory considered as a lens through which we look at the world. Many positivists would be unhappy at labelling this theory. It is certainly not theory in the sense of a coherent and systematic set of logical propositions that have a well formulated and specifi ed set of relationships. However, many social theorists do not think that the ontology of the social world permits a view of theory that allows such clearly defi ned sets of relationships. Instead, they are concerned to explore how social actors navigate their way through social events and processes. In order to make sense of this we need to comprehend what these social processes mean to them, and we do this by understanding the varied ways they make sense of the social world. All social actors view the world in particular ways, and these views of the world do not always display as much coherence, or logic, as one might expect of a systematic and well defi ned theory. Yet, if the theorist is to grasp how social actors understand the world, they need to be aware of the lens through which those actors view, and act in, the world.5

Question of objectivity

Another important issue of contention that arises in meta- theoretical debates is that of objectivity. One of the key notions of Western thought, particularly since the Enlightenment, has been the search for truth, and the ideas of truth and objectivity are closely related. It is important, however, to distinguish between truth and objectivity. There are many theories of truth, and some theories deny that there is, or can be, such a thing.6 Philosophers have addressed the issue of truth in various ways and we cannot go into them at length here. The confusion of truth with objectivity arises due to the fact that the term objective has two closely related meanings. In the fi rst sense, an objective claim can be said to be a statement relating to external facts as opposed to internal thoughts or feelings. Hence, it is possible to talk in this sense of something being objective independent of any belief or statement about it. It is easy to see how this can be confused with truth. Something that is said to be the way it is independent of any belief is a common- sense way of talking about truth. This is not, however, how most philosophers, or scientists, think about truth. Truth is typically understood by philosophers and scientists to express a relationship between the world (however defi ned) and a statement referring to that world; or to a set of beliefs or state-ments that can be said to be true if they have been arrived at through a given set of proce-dures. Truth expresses a relationship between language and the world, or a set of human conventions about what counts as ‘true’. For many philosophers the idea of an external


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30 world having a ‘truth’ independent of any belief about it is nonsense. External objects may exist independent of theory but they could not be said to be true in any meaningful sense of the word. They have an existence, but to exist is not the same thing as to be true.

The second sense of objective is more interesting in terms of disciplinary debates. Objectivity in this sense relates to a statement, position, or set of claims that is not infl u-enced by personal opinions or prejudices. Objectivity thus refers to the attempt by the researcher to remain detached, dispassionate, impartial, open- minded, disinterested, judicial, equitable, even- handed, fair, unprejudiced. Very few, if any, theorists in IR believe that we can ever produce a set of statements that can be said to be accurate in terms of representing the external world exactly as it is. The main lines of debate surround the extent to which we might aspire to knowledge that approximates this goal, how we might justify and provide evidential support to show how one claim fares better than another in this respect, and how objective, in the sense of impartial, we might be.

Positions on these issues deeply divide the discipline. Most positivists, for example, strive for objective knowledge by attempting to defi ne methods and criteria for knowl-edge production that minimize the infl uence of value- biased judgements. This point of view seems persuasive in that striving for systematic and rule- governed procedures relat-ing to knowledge production seems preferable to knowledge acquisition on the basis of an unsystematic and haphazard set of procedures. Positivists argue that, although knowledge is never perfect, through the observance of agreed- upon research criteria, we can aim to make some justifi able judgements between competing knowledge claims. Neoliberals (see Chapter 6), for example, might claim that while their account of the role of institutions is not the only one, nor necessarily an absolute truth, it is still empirically the most valid one in relation to a number of instances. Because this theory can be validated by empirical observations and patterns, and can be used to predict state behaviour, it can be considered more truth- approximating than many others.

For theorists informed by more interpretive approaches to knowledge, social knowledge is by defi nition always ‘situated knowledge’; knowledge claims can never be formulated outside the infl uence of social and political context. It follows that we must accept that knowledge systems are always socially and politically informed and socially, politically, and ethically consequential. Poststructuralists take this view on knowledge to entail that claims about ‘reality’ are always constructions of particular discursive and social systems and are always implicated in power relations. They are also sceptical of truth claims due to the fact that such claims have often driven some of the most violent episodes of human interaction. When a group of people fi rmly believes that they alone possess the truth they can become dogmatic and attempt to implement policies on the basis of that truth, with little or no regard for alternative views. Being sceptical of truth claims then becomes not only a philo-sophical belief but a political position aimed at preventing totalitarian forms of politics.

Other interpretive theorists are concerned to maintain some notion of objectivity even if they reject the idea of truth. Constructivists, for example, recognize that there is no way to produce statements about the world that might be said to be true in the sense of providing complete and accurate accounts of the way the world is, but they do aspire to objectivity in the sense of attempting to remove bias and gaining support for claims by negotiation within the scientifi c community. In some respects this position can be said to resemble the position advocated by many positivist scholars. However, for constructivists,


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the overriding considerations for arriving at judgements relating to knowledge claims are intersubjective agreement as opposed to empirical evidence.

Scientifi c and critical realists accept large parts of the interpretivist position regarding objectivity, and argue that while we always interpret the world through our own socially positioned lenses, and while there is no easy way to prove the truth of a particular t heory, not all theories are equal. Importantly for scientifi c realists, it is precisely because the world is the way it is independent of any theory that some theories might be better descriptions of that world, even if we do not know it. It then becomes a task of deciding which theory is the most plausible. In determining this, scientifi c realists rule nothing out and privilege no one factor; they are epistemological opportunists. For scientifi c realists there is not one set of procedures for adjudicating between knowledge claims that covers all cases. Each case must be assessed on its own merits and on the basis of the evidence it supplies. For scientifi c realists, scientifi c and explanatory activity is rendered meaningless if we are not accounting for something real in more or less objective ways.

Theory testing and theory comparison

Related to the issue of truth and objectivity is the question of how to evaluate and com-pare our theoretical frameworks. Positivists argue that only systematic empirical obser-vation guided by clear methodological procedures can provide us with valid knowledge of international politics, and that we must test theories against the empirical patterns in order to compare theories. Interpretivists, and many other postpositivists, on the other hand, insist that there is no easy or conclusive way of comparing theories, and some go so far as to suggest that theories are incommensurable; in other words, theories cannot be compared because either the grounds for their knowledge claims are so different, or they see different worlds (Wight 1996). Scientifi c and critical realists accept that theory comparison and testing always require recognition of the complexity of judgements that are involved, and an awareness of, and refl ection on, the social and political context in which such judgements are formed, as well as analysis of the potential consequences of our judgements. They accept that positivist observational criteria are often a poor guide to choosing between theories if applied in isolation and without adequate critical refl ec-tion. Scientifi c and critical realists argue that theory comparison must be based on holistic criteria: not merely on systematic observation but also conceptual coherence and plausi-bility, ontological nuance, epistemological refl ection, methodological coverage, and epis-temological pluralism. They also accept that all judgements concerning the validity of theories are infl uenced by social and political factors and hence are potentially fallible.

The consequences of how we test and evaluate the validity of knowledge claims are fun-damental to any theory. Depending on our different criteria of evaluation some approaches literally get legitimated while others are marginalized. These kinds of judgements have important theoretical and empirical consequences for the kind of world we see but, also, political consequences for the kind of world our theoretical frameworks reproduce. The important thing to note in engaging with the theoretical frameworks in the chapters to come and in comparing their validity is that there are multiple criteria for theory testing and comparison in IR. Although some social scientists have assumed that criteria regard-ing the predictive and instrumental empirical value of a theory provide superior criteria


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32 for theory testing, the interpretive and scientifi c realist positions on theory comparison also have their strengths. Indeed, having been dominated by the rather narrow criteria for theory comparison for some time, IR theory should, in our view, start to make more use of the holistic criteria. Science, after all, need not be defi ned by empirical methods alone but can also be seen to be characterized by ontological, epistemological, and method-ological pluralism and refl ectivity.

Theory and practice

Another key aspect at stake in meta- theoretical debate within the discipline has been a dis-cussion over the purpose of social inquiry. For some the purpose of social inquiry is to gain adequate knowledge of social reality to ground and direct policy- making (Wallace 1996). Others argue that the relationship between theory and practice is more complex than this. Booth (1997) and Smith (1997), for example, argued that the role of theory is often prac-tical in a different sense from what is understood by those who argue for a policy- relevant IR. Wallace and others, Booth and Smith argue, make too much of a separation between theory and practice: they assume that theory is not practice and that ‘practice’ entails ‘for-eign policy-making’ devoid of theoretical groundings. Booth and Smith, and alongside them many critical theorists, argue that theory can in itself be a form of practice, that is, if we accept that theory constitutes the world we live in, by advancing a theory one may either reproduce or change mindsets and, hence, social realities. Equally, all practice is predicated on the basis of some or other theory. As Booth and Smith point out, a policy-maker’s view of the world is not necessarily untheoretical: it is actually deeply embedded in social and political points of view.

As the following chapters will reveal, theorists from different camps tend to hold different views on this issue. The traditionally dominant perspectives of realism and liberalism, along with their neo- variants, tend to lean towards Wallace’s point of view, while many of the newer perspectives, especially feminism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism, tend to put an emphasis on the role of theorizing itself as a form of world political practice. Again, the key point advanced here is that there is no agreed- upon understanding of the relationship of theory and practice: a position on theory and practice is directed by a meta- theoretical and theoretical framework; and the way one conceives of the relationship of theory and practice has important consequences for how one views the purposes of IR theorizing itself.

ConclusionThis chapter has aimed to provide the reader with an understanding of the nature and importance of meta- theoretical, or philosophy of social science, debates within IR. We have examined the manner in which discussion concerning the nature of inquiry in the discipline has shaped both the history of the discipline and the contemporary theoreti-cal landscape. We have argued that positivist models of science have dominated, but that recent engagements with the nature of science are creating possibilities for new kinds of understandings of IR as a social science. We also examined a number of important


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issues that are at stake in the way in which theorists from different theoretical schools come to understand and study the world and how they propose to validate or reject knowledge claims. We would like to conclude by highlighting another aspect of debate within the discipline that students should be aware of.

All sciences are social environments with their own internal dynamics and modes of operation. As a set of social practices taking place within a structured social environment, the discipline of IR has a unique internal political structure that is both shaped by the man-ner in which debate occurs, and which shapes the contours of that debate. In examining and evaluating the theoretical approaches outlined in the following chapters, students should be aware that all the theoretical schools of thought in IR and all meta- theoretical positions that underpin them—including ours—are attempting to get their audience to ‘buy in’ to the argument. In this respect IR theorists resemble salespeople, and what they are selling is their theory. Words such as ‘critical’, ‘sophisticated’, ‘simplistic’, ‘naive’, and ‘dogmatic’ are not neutral descriptions of theoretical positions but, rather, are deployed to either delegiti-mate alternative views, or prove the superiority of one approach over all others. However, much like any good customer, the student would be well advised to refl ect critically on the limitations inherent in all the approaches presented to them, even the most persuasive. It is important to remember that all theoretical and underlying meta- theoretical positions are subject to criticism and dispute. Indeed, viewing IR through the philosophy of social sci-ence reminds us that all claims to knowledge are open to challenge from other perspectives. Recognizing this does not necessarily lead to relativism, but to a certain humility and degree of refl ection with regard to the claims we make and reject in studying world politics.

Realizing that all theories are ‘selling you’ a perspective is also important in highlighting the politics of the theoretical and meta- theoretical decisions we make. Each theoretical and meta- theoretical avenue involves a number of judgements about what is an impor-tant object of inquiry and what is, or is not, a valid knowledge claim. These judgements have consequences for the kind of world we come to see, for how we account for processes within it, and for how we act in that world. Meta- theoretical and theoretical debates, then, are not abstract philosophical exercises but are also potentially politically consequential for the kind of world we live in. Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware).

QUESTIONS

1. What is meta-theory? What role does meta- theoretical debate play in International Relations scholarship?

2. What role has the debate over science played in the discipline of IR historically?

3. Is IR a science or an art? What is at stake in this debate? What does the ‘scientifi c’ study of world politics entail?

4. What is meant by the terms positivism/postpositivism, explaining/understanding, rationalism/refl ectivism?


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34 5. Should we think of the contemporary meta- theoretical debates in IR (between positivism and postpositivism, explaining and understanding and rationalism and refl ectivism) as debates between mutually incompatible positions?

6. What are the key assumptions of scientifi c realism? What is the signifi cance of scientifi c realism in disciplinary debates?

7. How should we conceptualize the role of theory in the discipline? What do different concep-tions of theory have to offer?

8. Can we have value- neutral knowledge of world politics?

9. Can we judge some theories to be better than others? If so, what is involved in making such judgements?

10. What is the purpose of IR theorizing?

11. How signifi cant is the fourth debate in the contemporary discipline of IR? Has it, and should it be, transcended? What is the signifi cance of meta- theoretical debates for IR theory and research?

12. Which meta- theoretical leanings do you fi nd persuasive? Why? How would you justify the valid-ity of your position against your critics?

FURTHER READING

■ Cox, R. (1981), ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 10/2: 126–55. A key piece outlining a critique of ‘ problem- solving theory’ in IR.

■ Hollis, M. and Smith, S. (1990), Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press). An infl uential account of the meta- theoretical debates over explaining and understanding in the context of IR.

■ King, G., Keohane, R. O., and Verba, S. (1994), Designing Social Inquiry; Scientifi c Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). A key work outlining a positivist approach to qualitative research.

■ Knorr, K. E. and Rosenau, J. N. (1969) (eds), Contending Approaches to International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). A collection of key articles by the contenders in the second debate.

■ Nicholson, M. (1996), Causes and Consequences in International Relations: A Conceptual Study (London: Pinter). A positivist introduction to philosophy of social science in IR.

■ Patomäki, H. and Wight, C. (2000), ‘After Post-Positivism? The Promises of Critical Realism’, International Studies Quarterly, 44/2: 213–37. This article outlines the contribu-tions of a critical realist approach to theorizing science in IR.

■ Smith, S., Booth, K., and Zalewski, M. (1996) (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). A collection of essays evaluating the contributions of the positivist/postpositivist debate in IR.


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■ Wallace, W. (1996), ‘Truth and Power, Monks and Technocrats: Theory and Practice in International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 22/3: 301–21. See also responses by Booth and Smith in issues 23/2 and 23/4. These articles constitute an interesting debate over the relationship of theory and practice in IR theory.

■ Wendt, A. (1999), Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press). An important constructivist work with a strong philosophy of social science element. Notably, this book introduces scientifi c realist themes to IR theory.

Visit the Online Resource Centre that accompanies this book for lots of interesting additional material. www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/orc/dunne2e/


Part One

HISTORICAL,PHILOSOPHICAL ANDTHEORETICAL ISSUES

IN INTERNATIONALRELATIONS

1

On the History and Historiographyof International Relations

B R I A N C . S C H M I D T

Thus, today, after a quarter-century ofactivity, the study of international rela-tions is still in a condition of considerableconfusion. The scope of the field, themethods of analysis and synthesis to befollowed, the proper administrativearrangements to be made in college cur-ricula, the organization of research – allthese are matters of continuing contro-versy. (Kirk, 1947: 7)

In brief, as a field of inquiry, internationalrelations today resembles a poorlymarked-out arena in which a multiplicityof research programs and strategies com-pete, coexist, overlap, or retain splendidisolation. (Plating, 1969: 11)

The field of international studies hasbecome a little like the Tower of Babel,filled with a cacophony of differentvoices – or, as some have implied, a set oftribes that are very territorial, sniping atthose who come too close and preferringto be with those like them. As a result,the field of international relations hasbecome an administrative holding com-pany rather than an intellectually coher-ent area of inquiry or a community ofscholars. (Hermann, 1998: 606)

These quotations indicate a preliminary reply tothose who question the value of engaging inresearch on the disciplinary history of the field ofinternational relations (IR).1 While a common

diagnosis of the contemporary state of the field isthat it lacks a coherent identity, the statementsabove indicate that the identity of the field hasnever been as secure as many might imagine. A cur-sory review of recent books and articles found inthe ever-expanding number of specialized journals,and the programs of the annual meetings of theInternational Studies Association (ISA) and BritishInternational Studies Association (BISA), reveals acomplex field of extraordinary scope, yet an ele-ment of suspicion continues to be cast on the task ofexamining its history. One possible explanation forthe reluctance to grant legitimacy to this researchtask is the common notion that we already know thehistory. Another possibility is that those in themainstream are satisfied with the dominant storythat is told about the development of the field. Inany event, there is no shortage of brief synopticaccounts of this history in introductory textbooks,state-of-the-field articles and ISA PresidentialAddresses.

These renditions frequently retell a conventionalstory of how the field has progressed through aseries of phases: idealist, realist, behavioralist, post-behavioralist, pluralist, neorealist, rationalist, post-positivist and constructivist. The image of the firstthree phases has been so deeply ingrained in theminds of students and scholars that there almostseems to be no alternative way of understanding theearly history of the field. Hedley Bull, for example,claimed that it is ‘possible to recognize three suc-cessive waves of theoretical activity’: the ‘idealist’or ‘progressivist’ doctrines that were dominant inthe 1920s and early 1930s, the ‘realist’ or conser-vative theories that developed in the late 1930s and

1940s, and lastly the ‘social scientific’ theories thatarose in the late 1950s and 1960s ‘whose origin layin dissatisfaction with the methodologies on whichboth earlier kinds of theory were based’ (Bull,1972: 33). This story of the field’s evolution is, inturn, often buttressed by the closely related accountof the field evolving through a series of ‘greatdebates’, beginning with the disciplinary defining‘great debate’ between ‘idealists’ and ‘realists’ andextending perhaps to the latest debate todaybetween ‘rationalists’ and ‘reflectivists’ (Banks,1986; Katzenstein et al., 1999; Keohane, 1988;Lijphart, 1974a; Maghroori, 1982; Mitchell, 1980).This particular construction of the field’s historytends to have the effect of making the presentdebate a matter that all serious students of IR mustfocus on while relegating previous debates toobscurity.

Finally, the field’s history is commonly chroni-cled by reference to the external events that havetaken place in the realm that has been conventionallydesignated as international politics. There is a strongconviction that significant developments in interna-tional politics such as wars or abrupt changes inAmerican foreign policy have, more fundamentallythan any other set of factors, shaped the develop-ment of IR. The birth of the field, for example, oftenassociated with the founding of the world’s firstChair for the study of international politics, in 1919at the Department of International Politics at theUniversity College of Wales, Aberystwyth, is char-acteristically viewed as a reaction to the horror ofthe First World War (Porter, 1972).

My main intention in this chapter is to problema-tize these prevalent interpretations of how the fieldhas developed and to indicate that the history of thefield is both more complicated and less well knownthan typically portrayed in the mainstream litera-ture. While it is quite evident that we do not possessan adequate understanding of how the field hasdeveloped, there are a number of reasons why it iscrucially important for contemporary practitionersand students of IR to possess an adequate familiar-ity with this history.

First, numerous theoretical insights, of largelyforgotten scholars, have been simply erased frommemory. Yet, once recalled, these insights can havecritical purchase in the present. Second, the fieldhas created its own powerful myths regarding theevolution of the field that have obscured the actualhistory (Booth, 1996; Kahler, 1997; Osiander,1998; Schmidt 1998a, 1998b; Waever, 1998;Wilson, 1998). Third, an adequate understanding ofthe history of the field is essential for explaining thecharacter of many of our present assumptions andideas about the study of international politics.While current intellectual practices and theoreticalpositions are often evoked as novel answers to thelatest dilemmas confronting international politics, amore discriminating historical sense reminds us that

contemporary approaches are often reincarnationsof past discourses. Without a sufficient understand-ing of how the field has evolved, there is the con-stant danger of continually reinventing the wheel.There is, in fact, much evidence to support theproposition that much of what is taken to be new isactually deeply embedded in the discursive past ofthe field. Finally, a perspicacious history of the fieldoffers a fruitful basis for critical reflection on thepresent. Knowledge of the actual, as opposed to themythical, history may force us to reassess some ofour dominant images of the field and result in open-ing up some much needed space in which to thinkabout international politics in the new millennium.

My purpose in this chapter is not to provide acomprehensive history of the broadly defined fieldor discipline of IR. Not only would such anendeavor be impossible in this context, but, as I willindicate below, there is sufficient ambiguity con-cerning the proper identity of the field, with respectto its origins, institutional home, and geographicalboundaries, that simply writing a generic history ofIR without addressing these sorts of issues in detailhas reached the point of being counter-productive.Moreover, while much of the previous work on thehistory of the field has not exhibited sufficienttheoretical and methodological sophistication inapproaching the task of providing an adequate his-torical account, some recent work in this area isforcing scholars to confront a number of historio-graphical issues. This latest wave of scholarshipclearly recognizes the necessary link that existsbetween establishing the identity of the disciplineand presenting an image of its history. Furthermore,the manner in which the history of IR is recon-structed has become almost as significant as thesubstantive account itself, and therefore it becomescrucially important to address the basic researchquestion of how one should approach the task ofwriting a history of the field.

I will begin by briefly discussing a number of lin-gering and contentious issues concerning the extentto which there is a well-defined field of IR that hasa distinct identity, as well as the equally controver-sial question of whether the history of the fieldshould be written from a cosmopolitan frame ofreference – that does not pay significant attention todistinct national and institutional differences – orwhether it is necessary to approach this task fromwithin clearly demarcated national contexts.Although it should be evident that IR is a discreteacademic field after more than fifty to a hundredyears of evolution, depending on how one dates thegenesis of the field, ambiguities have continuallyarisen regarding both the character of the subjectmatter and the institutional boundaries of the field.Adding to the confusion surrounding the identity ofthe field is the fact of the overwhelming and contin-uing dominance of the American IR scholarly com-munity that sometimes leads to the erroneous

HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS4

conclusion that the history of IR is synonymous withits development in the United States. While there ismuch merit in Stanley Hoffmann’s (1977) assertionthat IR is an American social science, despite theinfluence of a great many European-born scholars, itis also the case that notwithstanding the globalimpact of the American model, there are manyindigenous scholarly communities that have theirown unique disciplinary history. This is, for exam-ple, clearly the case with the English School, whosecontributions have only recently begun to be prop-erly documented and assessed (Dunne, 1998; Little,2000). Certainly these communities have beendeeply impacted by theoretical and methodologicaldevelopments in the United States, but there arenevertheless differences in how the subject is stud-ied in different parts of the world (Jorgensen, 2000).The interdisciplinary character of the field and dif-ferences in national settings sometimes lead to theconclusion that a distinct discipline or field of IRdoes not really exist, but despite ambiguities aboutdisciplinary boundaries and an institutional home,IR, as an academic field of study, has a distinctprofessional identity and discourse.

I next focus on the historiography of IR, that is,both the scholarship on the history of the field andthe methodological principles involved in thatresearch and writing. My attention will focus on twofundamental problems: first, presentism, whichinvolves the practice of writing a history of the fieldfor the purpose of making a point about its presentcharacter; and second, contextualism, whichassumes that exogenous events in the realm of inter-national politics have fundamentally structured thedevelopment of IR as an academic field of study. Iwill attempt to illustrate these issues by reviewingthe existing literature. Recently, there has been anotable increase in both the quantity and quality ofliterature on the history of the field, and it can beargued that, in general, the history of the socialsciences is becoming a distinct research specialty.This new literature has cast increasing doubt on theconventional images of the development of IR. Mycritical purpose in this chapter is to challenge thedominant understanding of how the field has pro-gressed and to encourage more sophisticated workon the disciplinary history of IR.

Throughout the chapter, I will occasionally makereference to a conceptual framework developed byJohn Gunnell (1998). The framework, whichGunnell terms the ‘orders of discourse’, is applica-ble to analyzing various issues in the field of IR,since it shares many of the characteristics associ-ated with the other social sciences. In Gunnell’s ter-minology, the social sciences are second-ordermetapractices that ‘are identified, in terms of logic,function, and self-understanding, by the fact that invarious ways they speak about and sometimes tofirst-order activities’ (Gunnell, 1998: 22). First-order practices, which include natural science,

religion, music, art and politics, are defined byGunnell as ‘modes of activity that are primordialand “given” in that their various forms and histori-cal manifestations represent functionally necessaryelements of human activity’ (1998: 19). Withrespect to the relationship between the orders ofdiscourse, the crux of the issue concerns thatbetween second-order and first-order practices. Theformer have sought in various ways to acquire epis-temic and practical authority over the latter.Gunnell writes that ‘the history of the socialsciences has largely been driven by the issue of howto vindicate its cognitive claims and translate theminto a basis of practical authority’ (1998: 3). Inapplying this framework to the intellectual historyof IR, we can see how the various theoretical,methodological and epistemological positions thathave arisen since the field first came into existencehave often been involved with seeking to achieveauthority over the practice of international politics.And histories of IR, like many of those offered inthe other social sciences, have often served tovouchsafe a particular rendition of the field in orderto legitimate a contemporary image of a scientificapproach. This search for validation explains in partthe attraction in social science of turning to thehistory and philosophy of natural science, anothersecond-order practice, in accounting for the growthof the field. It will be through the medium of disci-plinary history which, in Gunnell’s terms, qualifiesas a ‘third-order discourse’ (i.e., those that haveanother metapractice as their object) that I willexplore the manner in which the field of IR hassought to acquire the authority of knowledge thatwould provide theoretical and practical purchase inits relationship to international politics.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

AS AN ACADEMIC FIELD OF STUDY

The task of demarcating the disciplinary boundariesof the field is an important prerequisite to establish-ing authority over its object of inquiry. Yet the ques-tion of whether a distinct field or discipline of IRexists has been a matter of consistent controversy(Gurian, 1946; Kaplan, 1961; Neal and Hamlett,1969; Olson, 1972; Olson and Groom, 1991; Olsonand Onuf, 1985; Palmer, 1980; Thompson, 1952;Wright, 1955). While the controversy is, in someways, related to the contentious issue of the originsand geographical boundaries of the field, it morefundamentally involves the question of the identityof IR as a second-order discourse and the status ofits subject matter. Although it is apparent that thisquestion has never been answered satisfactorily, dis-ciplinary history does provide an insightful vantagepoint for viewing the manner in which the field hasattempted to establish its own identity.

ON THE HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF IR 5

The period that precedes the point at which wecan discern the identity of the field as a distinct aca-demic practice can be termed its ‘prehistory’. Herethere was a gradual change ‘from discourse to dis-cipline’ (Farr, 1990). This period is important foridentifying many of the themes and issues thatwould later constitute the field as it took formduring the early decades of the twentieth century(Schmidt, 1998b). The field’s antecedents includedinternational law, diplomatic history, the peacemovement, moral philosophy, geography andanthropology (Olson and Groom, 1991). In TheStudy of International Relations (1955), QuincyWright identified eight ‘root disciplines’ and sixdisciplines with a ‘world point of view’ that hadcontributed to the development of IR.2 Wright,along with a number of others, argued that the taskof synthesizing these largely autonomous fields ofinquiry hampered the effort to create a unifiedcoherent discipline of IR (Bailey, 1932; Gurian,1946; Kirk, 1947; Wright, 1955). Moreover,Kenneth Thompson observed that ‘there was noth-ing peculiar to the subject matter of internationalrelations which did not fall under other separatefields’ (Thompson, 1952: 433). The interdiscipli-nary character of the field and the fact that otherdisciplines studied various dimensions of its subjectmatter has sometimes led to the question of whether‘international relations is a distinctive discipline’(Kaplan, 1961). This is an interesting and importantquestion that has often been answered by pointingto the field’s unique subject matter, typicallydefined in terms of politics in the absence of centralauthority as well as by adducing various epistemo-logical and methodological grounds. Yet while thequestion of whether IR is a distinct discipline isintriguing, it is important not to let this become anobstacle to reconstructing the history of the study ofinternational politics.

These issues do, however, highlight the impor-tance of clearly identifying and focusing on theinstitutional context of the field. The variability ininstitutional context is, in part, responsible for thewide range of dates that have been used to mark thebirth of the field. It makes a large difference, forexample, whether IR was institutionalized as aseparate discipline, as was largely the case after theFirst World War in the United Kingdom, where anumber of independent Chairs were created, or as asub-field of political science, as was the case in theUnited States, Germany and France.3 Yet orthodoxhistories have been more inclined to emphasize theimpact of significant political events on the develop-ment of the field than the character of the institu-tional setting of the field. In the case of the UnitedStates, for example, it is impossible to write thehistory of IR without locating it within the discipli-nary matrix of American political science. This isdifferent from the historical experience of IR in theUnited Kingdom, where it was not a part of

political science, but rather a new field of inquirywith a separate departmental home (Hill, 1987;Waever, 1998). In addition to these institutionalvariations, there are numerous differences withrespect to intellectual climate, access to informa-tion, research support, links between governmentand academia, and the general structure and charac-ter of the university system (Simpson, 1998;Smith, 1985).

The significance of institutional context isclosely related to the issue of the national context ofthe field. Variations in institutional structure areintimately related to the national setting in which IRis situated. The issue of whether the boundaries ofIR should be demarcated in terms of one particularcountry or whether it should be viewed as a morecosmopolitan endeavor without regard to nationaldifferences complicates the task of writing a historyof the field. Yet while the creation of a truly globaldiscipline may, perhaps, be an aspiration, studiescontinue to indicate that the academic study ofinternational politics is marked by British, andespecially American, parochialism. Ever sinceStanley Hoffmann published his famous article ‘AnAmerican Social Science: International Relations’,discussion has ensued about the extent to which theAmerican academic community dominates the‘global discipline’ of IR, and about the profoundconsequences that this dominance has for the disci-pline as a whole (Alker and Biersteker, 1984;Crawford and Jarvis, 2001; Goldmann, 1996;Hoffmann, 1977; Holsti, 1985; Kahler, 1993;Krippendorf, 1987; Smith, 1987, 2000; Waever,1998). Yet despite the alleged American hegemony,it is a fundamental mistake to associate theAmerican study of international politics withthe ‘global discipline of IR’. For although it is oftenthe case that many national IR communities seem tobe susceptible to embracing American theories,trends and debates, IR, as Waever notes, ‘is quitedifferent in different places’ (1998: 723). I arguethat disciplinary histories of IR should be commit-ted to reconstructing the discursive history of thefield in both its global and indigenous dimensions.Although limitations of space prevent me fromcommenting on the history of IR in every country inthe world, and much of what follows focuses ondevelopments in the United States and the UnitedKingdom, it is important that more country-specificstudies of the development of IR be undertaken.4

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS

One of the most significant problems in work on thehistory of IR is that these histories have failed toaddress adequately the question of how one shouldwrite a history of the field. The tendency has been


to describe the history of IR as if a completeconsensus existed on the essential dimensions ofthe field’s evolution. In the absence of any signifi-cant controversy concerning how the field hasdeveloped, there has been little or no attentiondevoted to historiographical issues. Yet as a num-ber of related academic disciplines such as politicalscience have begun to examine more closely theirdisciplinary history, several theoretical andmethodological controversies have arisen over whatin general constitutes proper historical analysis and,particularly, what is involved in disciplinary history(Bender and Schorske, 1998; Collini et al., 1983;Dryzek and Leonard, 1988; Farr et al., 1990;Gunnell, 1991; Ross, 1991; Tully, 1988). The his-toriographical concerns that this literature hasraised have, however, made little if any impact onthose who reflect on the history of IR. A majorexception to this generalization is found in OleWaever’s article ‘The Sociology of a Not SoInternational Discipline’ (1998), which is a signifi-cant contribution to the literature. With respect tothe existing state of the available literature on thehistory of the field, Waever disapprovingly notesthat it is ‘usually not based on systemic research orclear methods’ and that it amounts to little morethan ‘elegant restatements of “common knowledge”of our past, implicitly assuming that any good prac-titioner can tell the history of the discipline’(Waever, 1998: 692). But while the lack of theo-retical sophistication is definitely rooted in theassumption that practitioners already know thehistory of the field, additional factors are at work inreinforcing the tendency to simplify, and thusdistort, that history.

Traditions: Analytical and Historical

There is a general assumption that the history of thefield can be explained by reference to a continuoustradition that reaches back to classical Athens andextends forward to the present. The IR literaturecontains numerous references to the idea that thereare epic traditions of international thought that havegiven rise to coherent schools or paradigms such asrealism and liberalism (Clark, 1989; Donnelly,1995; Holsti, 1985; Kugler, 1993; Zacher andMatthew, 1995). Furthermore, and more impor-tantly for the discussion at hand, there is a wide-spread conviction that these ancient traditionsrepresent an integral part of the field’s past and,therefore, are relevant for understanding the con-temporary identity of the field. One example of thisbelief can be found in Jacek Kugler’s survey of theliterature on conflict and war in which he claimsthat the ‘classic account of international war comesfrom the realist tradition in world politics’, and thatthe realist ‘approach to the study of war has a verylong tradition that can be traced from Thucydides

(400 BC), to Machiavelli (1513), to Hobbes (1651),to Hume (1741), to von Clausewitz (1832), toMorgenthau (1948), to Organski (1958), to Waltz(1979) and to Gilpin (1981)’ (Kugler, 1993:483–4). While it is certainly the case that the studyof the theorists associated with the classic canon ofWestern political thought constitutes an element ofthe practice of IR, as evidenced, for example, byKenneth Waltz’s Man, the State and War (1959), itis, nevertheless, a fundamental misconception topresume that the work of classic political theoristssuch as Thucydides or Kant can be construed asconstitutive antecedents of the literature ofcontemporary IR.

There is a certain irony in the widespreadtendency of contemporary scholars to make refer-ence to the writings of classic political theorists inthat one of the dominant assumptions for manyyears was that the canon of classic texts from Platoto Marx did not have very much to say about inter-national politics. This was the view popularized inMartin Wight’s polemical essay ‘Why is There NoInternational Theory?’ (1966), which was presentedat the inaugural meeting of the British Committee onthe Theory of International Politics in 1959. Wight’sargument contributed to the widespread view thatthere was a rich and well-defined tradition of politi-cal thought but an impoverished and essentially con-tested tradition of international thought. This view,along with the scientific ambitions of the behav-ioralists who directly challenged the relevance of thecanon, led the fields of political theory and IR todrift apart, producing a profound sense of estrange-ment that only recently has begun to change(Boucher, 1998; Brown, 1992; Knutsen, 1997;Schmidt, 2000; Walker, 1993; Williams, 1992).David Boucher has argued that one of the reasonswhy IR does not have an established canon of clas-sic texts stems from the mistake that IR theoristsmade when they ‘cut themselves adrift from themainstream of political theory in order to developtheir own theories and concepts’ (1998: 10).

The strained and troubled relationship betweenpolitical theory and international relations theoryhas not, however, prevented scholars from con-structing numerous typologies and traditions forclassifying the ideas of classic political theoristsand linking them to the work of contemporary stu-dents of international relations (Boucher, 1998;Donelan, 1990; Doyle, 1997; Holsti, 1985; Kauppiand Viotti, 1999; Wight, 1992). While, symboli-cally or metaphorically, contemporary practitionersmay wish to describe themselves as descendants ofThucydides or Kant, a serious conceptual mistake ismade when the history of the field is written interms of the development of an epic tradition begin-ning with classical Greece or the Enlightenment andculminating in the work of contemporary scholars.This common practice, which can be found in amultitude of synoptic accounts of the history of the


field, commits the error of confusing an analyticaland a historical tradition, resulting in significantobstacles to tracing the actual historical develop-ment of IR (Schmidt, 1994). Although discussionsof a tradition of IR are widespread and, as RobWalker (1993) has noted, far from monolithic, theytend to refer less to actual historical traditions, thatis, self-constituted patterns of conventional practicethrough which ideas are conveyed within a recog-nizably established discursive framework, than toan analytical retrospective construction that largelyis defined by present criteria and concerns. In thecase of the disciplinary history of IR, such retro-spectively constructed traditions as realism arepresented as if they represented an actual or self-constituted tradition in the field, and seriousproblems in understanding and writing the historyof IR result when the former is mistaken for, orpresented as, the latter.

Perhaps the greatest difficulty is that such epicrenditions of the past divert attention from the actualacademic practices and individuals who have con-tributed to the development and current identity ofthe field. Instead of a history that traces the genea-logy of academic scholars who self-consciously andinstitutionally participated in the professional dis-course of IR, we are presented with an idealized ver-sion of the past in the form of a continuous traditionstretching from ancient times to the present. Theseepic accounts, which are the norm in many of theleading undergraduate texts, serve to reinforce theidea that we already know the history of the field.Attention usually is devoted to ‘founding fathers’such as Thucydides, Machiavelli and Kant, while ahost of individuals who contributed to the institu-tionalized academic study of international politicsare routinely neglected. While academic scholarssuch as James Bryce, Frederick S. Dunn, PitmanPotter and Paul S. Reinsch may not be as historicallyfascinating, they are much more relevant for tracingthe actual development of the field.

Presentism

The widespread tendency to write the history of thefield in terms of its participation in an ancient orclassic tradition of thought often serves to conferlegitimacy on a contemporary research program.One of the primary purposes of the various historiesof IR is to say something authoritative about thefield’s present character, and this often contributesto the tendency to distort the history of the field. Inorder either to advocate a new direction for the fieldand to criticize its current structure, or, conversely,to defend the status quo, scholars often feel com-pelled to justify their position by referring to andcharacterizing the general evolution of the field.For example, histories that seek to account for therise and subsequent dominance of realist theory

frequently feel obliged to demonstrate the timelessinsights of the realist tradition, beginning withThucydides or Machiavelli. And those who periodi-cally criticize the pluralistic character of the fieldquite often make reference to an earlier period whenthere was supposedly a dominant paradigm orapproach that united it. The crux of the matter isthat many of the attempts to reflect on the history ofIR are undertaken largely for ‘presentist’ purposesrather than with the intention of carefully and accu-rately reconstructing the past.

‘Whig’ history, which Herbert Butterfield (1959:v) described as the tendency ‘to emphasize certainprinciples of progress in the past and to produce astory which is the ratification if not the glorificationof the present’, and the problem of presentism ingeneral, has become a controversial issue amongthose who are engaged in writing the history ofthe social sciences (Collini et al., 1983; Dryzek andLeonard, 1988; Farr et al., 1990; Gunnell, 1991;Ross, 1991). The problem with presentism is notthat historical analysis is utilized to make a pointabout the present, but that history is distorted as it isreconstructed to legitimate or criticize a positionthat the writer has set out in advance to support orto undermine. Whig history ‘consists in writinghistory backwards’, whereby the ‘present theoreti-cal consensus of the discipline … is in effect takenas definitive, and the past is then reconstituted as ateleology leading up to and fully manifested in it’(Collini et al., 1983: 4).

Given the elusive but persistent goal of main-stream IR in the United States to achieve the statusof a ‘true’ science, it is understandable why somany of the existing accounts of the history ofthe field continue to be Whiggish in character.Histories of the field, and images of that history, arefrequently advanced for the purpose of either illus-trating theoretical progress and scientific advanceor diagnosing an obstacle that is preventing the fieldfrom making scientific progress (Brecher, 1999).George Stocking provided an early and persuasiveexplanation for why the professional social scientistwas likely to be Whiggish. According to Stocking,there is ‘a sort of implicit whiggish presentism vir-tually built into the history of science and by exten-sion, into the history of the behavioral sciences’(Stocking, 1965: 213). The reigning logical posi-tivist account of science that was offered byphilosophers of science during the 1950s and1960s, which is the medium through which mostsocial scientists acquired their understanding ofscience, was one of incremental and cumulativeprogress whereby a greater understanding of thenatural world was made possible by an increasingcorrespondence between theory and fact. Since logi-cal positivists claimed that there was an essentialunity and hierarchy of scientific method, the historyof social science was bound sooner or later to repli-cate the same forward advance of knowledge.


Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of ScientificRevolutions (1970) challenged the logical positivistaccount of science and provided a basic impetus forpost-positivist philosophers and historians ofscience. Not only did Kuhn attack logical posi-tivism’s central premise of the separation of theoryand fact, as well as the correspondence theory oftruth, but he sought to replace the orthodox text-book account of the history of science with the ideaof a discontinuous history marked by scientific revo-lutions, that is, ‘those non-cumulative developmen-tal episodes in which an older paradigm is replacedin whole or part by an incompatible new one’(Kuhn, 1970: 92). Kuhn’s theory of paradigms andscientific revolutions represented a significant chal-lenge to the orthodox account of scientific develop-ment. The crucial point of Kuhn’s revisionistaccount of the history of science was his argumentthat there was no transcendental vantage pointfrom which to claim that the replacement of oneparadigm by another constituted ‘progress’,because the criteria for progress was paradigm-specific. While Kuhn made a significant impact onphilosophers and historians of science, many ofwhom were displeased by the relativistic implica-tions of the argument that resulted in the inability tovindicate scientific progress, his book had anequally dramatic impact on the field of IR, espe-cially with respect to how many scholars havecome to understand the history of the field. The factthat IR scholars increasingly have turned to Kuhnand other philosophers of science, particularlyImre Lakatos (1970), who, for many, appeared tore-establish evaluative criteria of progress, serves toillustrate the point that the task of writing thehistory of the field often has been subordinate to themore fundamental task of demonstrating progressin the field.

Paradigms and the Historiography of IR

There are two principal ways in which the work ofKuhn in particular, and the literature emanatingfrom the philosophy and history of science ingeneral, has had an impact on the historiography ofIR. First, IR scholars quickly set out to establishtheir own paradigms. The situation was very muchthe same in political science where political scien-tists began to use the word paradigm to denote spe-cific schools of thought such as behavioralism(Almond, 1966). In IR, realism has been assumedby many to be the leading candidate for a paradigm,and scholars have repeatedly undertaken the task ofdefining and operationalizing the core assumptionsof the realist paradigm (Guzzini, 1998; Keohane,1983; Lijphart, 1974b; Vasquez, 1983). In a histori-cal sociology of realism, Stefano Guzzini arguesthat the realist paradigm that was most eloquentlyarticulated by Hans J. Morgenthau served the

disciplinary function of defining an independentfield of study. Realism, according to Guzzini, ‘setthe paradigmatic boundaries of the discipline’(1998: 27). While Morgenthau argued that inter-national politics, like politics in general, was char-acterized by a continuous struggle for power, hemaintained that the struggle was qualitatively dif-ferent in the international field where an over-arch-ing central authority was missing (Morgenthau,1948). The notion, which later would become thecardinal claim of neorealists, that the internationalsystem was characterized by a condition of anar-chy, helped to differentiate domestic politics frominternational politics (Waltz, 1979). The exclusivefocus that neorealists placed on the anarchicalstructure of the international system subsequentlycame to provide the predominant framework foranalyzing a wide variety of issues in the areas ofinternational security, international organization,foreign policy and political economy.

The prevalence by which references are made tothe realist paradigm have led some to term it the ‘tra-ditional paradigm’ which, according to ArendLijphart, ‘revolves around the notions of state sover-eignty and its logical corollary, international anar-chy’ (1974b: 43). Quite frequently references to therealist paradigm are used interchangeably withreferences to the ‘realist tradition’ or the ‘realistschool of thought’. Recently, a number of scholarshave problematized the notion that realism repre-sents a singular, coherent theoretical position, andinstead have argued that there are actually a varietyof realisms (Ashley, 1981; Doyle, 1997; Dunne,1997; Frankel, 1996; Goldmann, 1988; Guzzini,1998). Nevertheless, almost everyone in the field isable to identify the central tenets that are associatedwith realism, which typically include the followingclaims: that the sovereign state is the most importantactor in international politics; that state behavior canbe explained rationally; that states are unitary actors;that there is a sharp distinction between domesticand international politics; that states pursue power inan anarchical self-help setting; and that the issues ofwar and peace are paramount. The dominance ofrealism has led Jack Donnelly to suggest that ‘tracingthe fate of realism provides a partial yet still usefulsurvey of the development of the field of inter-national relations’ (1995: 175).

Yet while realism is considered by many to bethe leading paradigm in the field, it has certainly notbeen the only candidate for paradigmatic status.Scholars have made reference to a host of alterna-tive paradigms, which are almost always defined inopposition to the propositions of realism and whoseorigins are typically linked to developments ininternational politics. A classical example of this,even though it allegedly predates the realist para-digm, is the so-called idealist paradigm of theinter-war period. John Vasquez claims ‘that thefirst stage of international relations inquiry was



dominated by the idealist paradigm’, which was‘important in terms of institutionalizing the fieldand creating the emphasis on peace and war’ (1998:33–4). The central features of the so-called idealistparadigm, which largely have been defined retro-spectively by post-Second World War realist cri-tics, are the exact antithesis of the tenets attributedto realism (Bull, 1972; Carr, [1939] 1964; Guzzini,1998; Hollis and Smith, 1991; Kegley andWittkopf, 1989; M.J. Smith, 1986; Vasquez, 1998).Some of the other rival paradigms to realism haveincluded the ‘behavioralist paradigm’ (Lijphart,1974a), ‘world politics paradigm’ (Keohane and Nye,1972), global society and neo-Marxist paradigms(Holsti, 1985), a ‘new paradigm for global politics’(Mansbach and Vasquez, 1981), and pluralism(Little, 1996; Viotti and Kauppi, 1999).

The Great Debates

Kuhn’s concept of a paradigm as well as other con-cepts borrowed from the philosophy and history ofscience, such as Lakatos’s (1970) conception of a‘scientific research programme’, have not only beenused to provide grounds for defining distinct‘schools of thought’, but also to evaluate the overallevolution of the field as well as specific approachesin the field (Ferguson and Mansbach, 1993;Guzzini, 1998; Keohane, 1983; Kugler, 1993;Lijphart, 1974b; Smith, 1987; Tellis, 1996;Vasquez, 1998; Walt, 1997). Arend Lijphart, forexample, has argued that ‘the development of inter-national relations since the Second World War fit’sKuhn’s description of scientific revolutions’(1974a: 12). The underlying purpose of utilizinganalytical frameworks borrowed from the philoso-phy and history of science largely has been todemonstrate that scientific advances are being madeand that the field as a whole is progressing. In thequest for cognitive authority over the subject matterof international politics, IR has been drawn tophilosophers of science in the belief that they canprovide the grounds for empirical judgment andevaluation. Ferguson and Mansbach, for example,note that the attraction of the Kuhnian frameworkfor describing the history of IR is that it allowed‘international relations scholars to see progress intheir field while surrounded by theoretical incoher-ence’ (Ferguson and Mansbach, 1993: 22). Yet thisis simply a misuse of Kuhn, since he argued that hisaccount of the development of science was notapplicable to the history of the social sciences, sincethey were ‘pre-paradigmatic’. Moreover, analyticalconstructs such as idealism and realism do not meetthe criteria of a paradigm as Kuhn described it. Andwhile Kuhn’s framework has been employed todemonstrate progress, his basic argument was that itwas not possible to speak of progress from asecond-order perspective.

Within the orthodox historiography of IR, it hasbeen through the organizing device of the image ofa series of ‘great debates’ that the story of thefield’s development has been framed. This hasserved to demonstrate either coherence or incoher-ence but, most commonly, scientific progress. Thewidespread belief that the field’s history has beencharacterized by three successive great debates is sopervasive and dominant that, as Waever notes,‘there is no other established means of telling thehistory of the discipline’ (1998: 715). The story ofthe field’s three great debates is, as Steve Smith(1995) and Kjell Goldmann (1996) have argued,one of the most dominant self-images of the field.While all academic disciplines experience theirshare of disciplinary controversy, IR may be uniquein that most practitioners believe that the history ofthe field has been singularly marked by thesedefining debates. This view has been reinforced byexplaining the debates in terms of exogenous influ-ences such as the outbreak of the Second WorldWar, the rise of OPEC, the Vietnam debacle and theend of the Cold War. For many in the field, it seemsself-evident that changes in the practice of inter-national politics necessarily and directly bringabout a transformation in how the subject is studiedand taught. This is, for example, the standard expla-nation of the alleged paradigm shift from ‘idealism’to ‘realism’ that occurred after the Second WorldWar. Perhaps more than any other claim about thegeneral history of the field, that which postulatesthree great debates must be critically examined(Kahler, 1997; Schmidt, 1998a, 1998b; Smith,1995; Waever, 1998; Wilson, 1998). It is notentirely clear that all of the debates actually havetaken place, and an examination of the discursiveartifacts of the field leads one to ask if the field’shistory has been seriously distorted by viewing itwithin this framework. I do not deny that the fieldhas experienced numerous controversies, but Iquestion the appropriateness of understanding themin terms of the conventional story of the field’sthree great debates.

According to the conventional wisdom, the firstgreat debate, which Miles Kahler (1997) has termedthe ‘foundational myth of the field’, was betweenthe interwar ‘idealists’ and the post-war ‘realists’.5

Almost every historical account concedes that therealists won the first debate and, as a result, reori-ented the field in a more practical and scientificdirection (Dunn, 1948; Fox, 1949; Guzzini, 1998;Kirk, 1947; M.J. Smith, 1986; Thompson, 1960).The alleged superiority of the realist view has madeit appear unnecessary to consider carefully thenature of the claims made by those writing in thefield prior to the Second World War or eventhe writings of many of those who are considered asearly realists. The interwar ‘idealists’, who aregreatly disparaged, are typically depicted as a groupof utopian pacifists and legalists who focused their


attention on reforming international politics ratherthan on analyzing the realities of politics amongnations. The ‘debate’, which allegedly took place asthe League of Nations system broke down, is oftendescribed in Kuhnian terms. While the idealists sup-posedly envisioned ever-lasting peace, the SecondWorld War is depicted as a glaring anomaly repre-senting a severe crisis in the idealist paradigm,which eventually resulted in its replacement by therealist paradigm, which was superior in its abilityto rationally explain the persistent and ubiquitousstruggle for power among nations (Guzzini, 1998;Hollis and Smith, 1991; Vasquez, 1998). Sometimesthe idealists are represented as alchemists who wereconcerned with ‘what ought to be’ while the realistsare portrayed as scientists focusing on ‘what is’,which was a prerequisite for creating a science ofpolitics (Carr, [1939] 1964). This story of the‘debate’ between ‘idealists’ and ‘realists’ continuesto exert a strong influence on how the field under-stands its own history, and this accounts in part forthe perpetual need to retell the tale of how IR wasonce rooted in idealism but was fortunate, after theSecond World War, to have embraced realism.

The second great debate, as characteristicallydescribed in the literature, took place within thecontext of the behavioral revolution that wasalready deeply impacting the social sciences, espe-cially political science, and which pitted ‘tradition-alists’ against ‘behavioralists’ or ‘scientists’. Thedebate is symbolized by the intellectual exchangebetween Hedley Bull (1966), who sought to defendwhat he termed the ‘classical approach’, andMorton Kaplan (1966), who was one of the earlyadvocates of what came to be known as the‘scientific approach’. A growing sentiment amongAmerican scholars was that the field was losingground in its quest to acquire the mantle of science.While realism, it was argued, served a number ofparadigmatic functions, some scholars claimed thatits tenets, such as the a priori foundational claimthat the struggle for power stemmed from basic bio-logical drives rooted in human nature, as well as itsmethodology, which relied heavily on historicalexamples, were preventing the field from achievingscientific status.

As in the case of political science, the debatebecame polarized between those who believed thatthe methods of the natural sciences, or at least thosedescribed by logical-positivist philosophers ofscience as the hypothetico-deductive model, couldbe emulated and adopted in the study of inter-national politics, versus those who argued that thestudy of the social world was not amenable to thestrict empirical methods of natural science (Knorrand Rosenau, 1969; Morgenthau, 1946; Nicholson,1996; Reynolds, 1973; Rogowski, 1968; Vital,1967). George Liska described the period in whichthe debate between traditionalists and behavioralists

took place as the ‘heroic decade’ and suggested thatthe key division was ‘between those who are pri-marily interested in international relations and thosewho are primarily committed to the elaboration ofsocial science’ (1966: 7). The debate over themerits and adequacy of a positivistic approachsurely has not diminished, but there is, neverthe-less, a common view that the debate helped tofoster the scientific identity of the field through thewidespread acceptance and utilization of scientificmethods which aided in the task of developing acumulative theory of international politics. MortonKaplan’s (1957) systems theory, Karl Deutsch’s(1953, 1964) communications and cyberneticstheory, Thomas Schelling’s (1960) early gametheory, Richard Snyder, H.W. Bruck and BurtonSapin’s (1954, 1962) development of decision-making theory, and J. David Singer and MelvinSmall’s (1972) data collection in their correlates ofwar project at the University of Michigan, aregenerally viewed as contributing to the scientificidentity of the field.

Historical accounts of the third debate tend to bemore ambiguous than that of the other two debates,but it is commonly described as an inter-paradigmdebate that took place in the early 1980s amongrealists, pluralists and structuralists (Banks, 1985;Maghroori, 1982; Olson and Groom, 1991;Waever, 1996). The typical explanation of the ori-gins of the third debate holds that, during the 1970s,realism fell on some difficult times when events inthe realm of international politics, particularly inthe economic sphere but also regarding matters ofpeace and security, appeared to contradict some ofthe key realist assumptions about the nature of inter-state politics (S. Smith, 1987). As a result of thisapparent incongruity, it is generally believed thatalternative ‘approaches’ such as Robert Keohaneand Joseph Nye’s ([1977] 1989) theory of ‘complexinterdependence’, Immanuel Wallerstein’s (1974,1980) ‘world systems theory’, John Burton’s ‘cob-web theory’ (1972), and ‘dependency theory’(Cardoso and Faletto, 1979; Evans, 1979) weredeveloped and directly challenged many of thecentral tenets of realism. Most fundamentally, cri-tics of realism attacked the core claims of state-centrism, the notion that independence rather thaninterdependence characterized the condition ofinternational politics, and that a clear distinctioncould be made between ‘high politics’ (i.e., militaryand security issues) and ‘low politics’ (i.e., eco-nomic, environmental and human rights issues). Ithas been suggested that it was within this context ofa growing focus on interdependence (Cooper, 1968;Rosecrance and Stein, 1973) that the distinct sub-field of International Political Economy emerged(Katzenstein et al., 1999).

While it was argued that the publication ofWaltz’s Theory of International Politics (1979)

gave a new lease on life to realism in the form ofneorealism, which rapidly became the new ortho-doxy, most accounts of the third debate do not con-clude that realism was the victor. Unlike theprevious two ‘great debates’, the ‘third debate’ is,according to Waever, ‘seen as a debate not to bewon, but a pluralism to live with’ (Waever, 1996:155). In other words, claims about the ascendancy ofneorealism did not mean that adherents of a liberal(pluralist) or Marxist (globalist) approach stoppedcontributing to the discourse of IR, and some haveeven questioned whether the three ‘paradigms’ wereever in competition with one another. Adding to theconfusion of understanding this period of discipli-nary history in terms of a ‘third debate’ was theemergence, during the 1980s, of a number of post-positivist approaches that were sharply critical of allthe mainstream approaches in the field (Der Derianand Shapiro, 1989; George and Campbell, 1990;Peterson, 1992). According to Yosef Lapid, theattack by feminists, Frankfurt School critical theo-rists, and post-structuralists on what they perceivedto be the positivist epistemological foundations ofthe field signaled the dawn of a ‘third debate’,which he claimed consisted of a ‘disciplinary effortto reassess theoretical options in a “post-positivist”era’ (1989: 237). That the literature can simultane-ously make reference to two fundamentally differ-ent controversies under the same label of the ‘thirddebate’ should be enough to indicate that there issomething seriously wrong with this understandingof the history of the field.

What’s Wrong With the Imageof the Great Debates?

The newest cohort of disciplinary historians haveboth noted the peculiarity of the field’s self-imagebeing derived from the idea of a set of recurrentdebates and pointed to some of the problems thatare involved in viewing the history of the field inthis manner (Goldmann, 1996; Kahler, 1997;Schmidt, 1998a, 1998b; Smith, 1995; Waever,1998; Wilson, 1998). There are so many problemsand difficulties involved in understanding thehistory of the field within the framework of thethree great debates that we might be better off sim-ply to reject discussing this account of how the fieldhas developed. In the first place, when attention isdirected to the details of the field’s history, it is notevident that all of the three debates actually tookplace. This is especially the case with respect to thefirst ‘great debate’ (Wilson, 1998). Second, the styl-ized versions of the debates do not do justice to thenature of the controversies that were in fact takingplace. Third, by focusing only on the three greatdebates, a number of additional and, extremelyimportant, disciplinary controversies continue tobe overlooked. Finally, the use of the analytical

framework of a series of great debates to accountfor the field’s history is a conservative move thatgives the field a greater sense of coherence than theactual history of the field warrants (Waever, 1998).

One of the surprising findings to emerge from therecent scholarship on the history of the field is that,contrary to popular belief, the field was never domi-nated by a group of utopian scholars who adhered tosomething akin to what has been described as theidealist paradigm (Baldwin, 1995; Kahler, 1997;Little, 1996; Long, 1991; Long and Wilson, 1995;Osiander, 1998; Schmidt, 1998a, 1998b; Wilson,1998). In most cases, it is difficult to find a scholarwho was self-consciously and institutionally amember of the field of IR who adhered to the tenetsthat are frequently associated with a constructtermed ‘idealism’ or ‘utopianism’. While it is thecase that the interwar scholars had a practical mis-sion to reform the practice of international politics,this objective, which is endemic to the very natureof second-order metapractices, has continued toanimate the history of the field. This objective, Iargue, does not in and of itself qualify the enterpriseas utopian. Many of those who have been dubbed‘idealists’ turn out, upon closer inspection, to sub-scribe to a position that is quite different from themanner in which they have been characterized inthe secondary literature. The conventional label ofidealism that has been attached to the interwarperiod of IR scholarship seriously misrepresents theactual character of the conversation that was beingdirected toward understanding international politics(Osiander, 1998; Schmidt, 1998a; Wilson, 1998).Apart from seriously distorting the formative yearsof the field’s history, the idealist tag has inhibitedunderstanding some of the deep discursive continui-ties that exist between the present and the past.

Perhaps the most important continuity is the con-cept of anarchy that has given the field of IR a dis-tinct discursive identity. Although it might appearto those who are not familiar with the institutionalhistory of IR that anarchy is some newly discoveredresearch puzzle that lends itself to the latest tools ofsocial scientific inquiry, anarchy – and the closelyrelated concept of sovereignty – has served as thecore constituent principle throughout the evolutionof the field (Schmidt, 1998b). The interwar scholarswere keenly aware of the fact that their subjectmatter, which included an analysis of the causes ofwar and peace, directly dealt with issues arisingfrom the existence of sovereign states in a conditionof anarchy (Dickinson, 1916, 1926). Many of thosewriting during the interwar period understood thatsovereignty and anarchy were inextricably associ-ated with, and mutually constitutive of, each other,and this explains why much of the interwar discoursefocused on the concept of state sovereignty. Intheir study of the state, political scientists estab-lished a theoretical link between the internal andexternal aspects of state sovereignty as well as


between domestic and international politics. Thejuristic theory of the state, which, during the early1900s, was the most influential paradigm for thestudy of political science, depicted the internationalmilieu as one where states led an independent andisolated existence (Willoughby, 1918). Proponentsof juristic theory evoked the pre-contractual imageof individuals living in a state of nature to describethe external condition of states and drew many ofthe same pessimistic conclusions that realists havemade about politics conducted in the absence of acentral authority.

Beginning in the 1920s, juristic theory was chal-lenged by a new group of thinkers who collectivelyput forth the theory of pluralism that fundamentallytransformed the discourse of both political scienceand IR (Gunnell, 1993; Little, 1996; Schmidt,1998b). Pluralists such as Harold Laski (1921,1927) and Mary Parker Follett ([1918] 1934) arguedthat juristic theory was entirely inconsistent withthe modern condition of interdependence, and thisclearly indicated that the state was no longeromnipotent and immune from all other sources ofauthority. The interdependent quality of inter-national politics, which pluralists took to beaxiomatic, along with the existence of many inter-national public unions (Reinsch, 1911), raised seri-ous doubts about the validity of the claim that eachnation-state was entirely sovereign in relation to allother actors. There are many similarities betweenthe pluralist critique of juristic theory and thedebate over interdependence that took place duringthe 1970s, and yet there is almost no recognition ofthis earlier discourse (de Wilde, 1991). Richard Littleargues that one of the main reasons why the intellec-tual heritage of pluralism has been obscured stemsfrom the ‘willingness of the discipline to accept theattachment of the idealist tag to this seminal litera-ture’ (1996: 69). The ‘idealist tag’ has alsoobscured the manner in which the interwar scholarsapproached the study of international security(Baldwin, 1995) and international organization.While the interwar scholarship is most often associ-ated with the ill-fortunes of the League of Nations,not everyone writing during this period assumed thatthe introduction of this new international organiza-tion would by itself alter fundamentally the logic ofinternational politics (Duggan, 1919; Hicks, 1920).The most pressing theoretical issue for thoseinvolved in the study of international organizationconcerned the manner by which various concep-tions of state sovereignty could be reconciled withthe operation of the League of Nations. This wascertainly the case for Pitman Benjamin Potter, whowas the person responsible for giving specific formto the study of international organization in theUnited States (Potter, 1923, 1925).

Refuting the notion that the interwar period wasdistinguished by idealism does not, however, rest

on denying that the field experienced a change ofemphasis after the Second World War. By the early1940s, it was apparent that the field was undergoinga transition, which was best exemplified by theargument that the study of international politicsshould replace international organization as thecentral focus of the field (Dunn, 1948; Fox, 1949;Kirk, 1947; Schuman, 1933; Schwarzenberger,1941). Those who began to enter the professionunder the self-proclaimed ‘realist’ identity wereresponsible for changing the emphasis in the field, butit is important not to exaggerate the discontinuitiesbetween the pre- and post-war discourse of IR. Likethose writing before the Second World War, the aimof many of the ‘realists’ was to speak truth to power.This was especially the case with the émigré schol-ars who deeply impacted the discourse of both polit-ical science and IR. A careful reading of the texts byE.H. Carr ([1939] 1964), Hans J. Morgenthau(1948) and Frederick L. Schuman (1933) reveals anumber of continuities with the earlier discoursewhich have been entirely overlooked as a conse-quence of viewing their work in terms of the dubi-ous dichotomy between idealism and realism. Whileit is the case that Morgenthau and the other ‘realists’helped to make ‘international politics’ the nucleus ofthe field, it was not the case that those writing beforethe outbreak of the Second World War were unfa-miliar with many of the core claims of the ‘new’power politics model (Bryce, 1922; Reinsch, 1900).The discursive artifacts of the field’s history do notlend much support to the claim that a debate, in thesense of an intellectual exchange between opposingtheoretical positions or paradigms, ever took placebetween the interwar and the post-Second WorldWar scholars.

Compared with the recent research on the inter-war period of the field’s history, the details gener-ally associated with the ‘second great debate’ or the‘traditionalism versus scientism debate’ have notbeen carefully and systematically investigated.Consequently, this later period is not very wellunderstood, and additional research is required.Within the existing literature on the second debate,which typically construes it as a debate about thescientific status of the field, two different accountsof the nature of the controversy have been put forth.Many of the early accounts of the controversy her-alded it as a ‘great debate’ that contributed to a majortransformation in the field (Bull, 1972; Kaplan,1966; Lijphart, 1974a, 1974b). Lijphart, for exam-ple, claimed that the ‘traditionalism-science debateof the 1960s’ was more substantive and fundamen-tal than the earlier debate between idealism andrealism (1974a: 11). He argued that the behavioralrevolution in IR resulted in a new paradigm – ‘thebehavioral paradigm’ – that was at great odds with thesubstantive claims of the traditional realist paradigm.According to this view, the traditionalists – those



who approached the study of international politicsfrom a legal, philosophical, historical, or inductivepoint of view – lost out to what was perceived to bea scientific approach that sought to emulate themethods of the natural sciences. The result was thatIR became more scientific, realism lost its dominantposition, and the field was brought more in line withthe other social sciences.

Beginning with John Vasquez’s influential bookThe Power of Power Politics (1983), an alternativeview of the ‘second debate’ began to emerge thatargued that the controversy was really only a pseudodebate which was largely confined to methodologi-cal issues and did not involve substantive aspectsof the subject matter of international politics(Guzzini, 1998; Hollis and Smith, 1991; Holsti, 1985,1998; Vasquez, 1998). Vasquez (1983) sought todemonstrate that the behavioralists largely workedwithin the realist paradigm and merely sought toadvance the methodological credentials of the field.In this manner, the debate has been construed as a‘methodological debate’ which took place ‘within asingle [realist] theoretical orientation’, and that itwas ‘about how to conduct inquiry within thatapproach’ (Hollis and Smith, 1991: 31). Holstiendorses this view and argues that the ‘behaviouralrevolution did not inaugurate a new way of lookingat the world, a new paradigm, or a new set of nor-mative problems’ (1998: 33). One of the more sig-nificant implications of this revisionist interpretationis the view that the ‘field has been far more coher-ent, systematic, and even cumulative than all the talkabout contending approaches and theories implies’(Vasquez, 1998: 42).

While I concede that there is some merit in eachof these accounts, neither sufficiently captures thenature of the disputes that occurred during the 1950sand 1960s. One way of coming to grips with thisperiod is to view the events in terms of Gunnell’sframework of the orders of discourse. A crucialissue that informed the behavioral debate was theproblem of IR’s cognitive authority as a second-order discourse. It increasingly became the case,especially within the American context, that scienceprovided the model for achieving the authority ofknowledge, and the quest during the 1950s and1960s, as well as before and after this period, was toemulate what were believed to be the canons ofinquiry in natural science. The commitment toachieving a body of knowledge about internationalpolitics that was scientifically credible and thatcould command practical authority has always beena defining goal of the field. What has changedover the course of time is the content of the ideaof science.

One of the consequences of neglecting a carefulstudy of the history of the field has been a failure torecognize adequately the work of the members ofthe Chicago School of political science. In the

1920s and 1930s, Harold Lasswell, CharlesMerriam and Quincy Wright believed that theywere at the forefront of developing a universalscience of politics (Fox, 1975; Kahler, 1997). AsWilliam T.R. Fox has noted, when World Politicsbegan publication in 1948, there were two very dif-ferent schools of thought reshaping the academicstudy of IR: the realist school and the school led byMerriam, which ‘had its roots in homegrownAmerican political science, in pluralist pragmatism,and in an abiding faith in the power of the humanintellect gradually to create a better world’ (1975:597). The Chicago School’s idea of a science ofinternational politics was one that viewed inter-national relations as merely a single subdivision ofa more inclusive approach that focused on the roleof power across a broad range of associations fromthe local to the global level.

There are a number of explanations of why theidea of science that the bahavioralists brought to thefield during the 1950s and 1960s largely centeredon the concept of an international system (Kaplan,1957; Rosenau, 1969). The idea of a system wascentral to the behavioral movement, but its applica-tion to IR took on a number of distinctive and prob-lematic properties. Within political science, thesystems approach (Easton, 1953) was meant toreplace the study of the state, which the behavioral-ists deemed to be archaic and contributing to thebackwardness of the discipline. Yet within IR,where the influence of the behavioral persuasionarrived late and where the theory of realism wasdominant, the adoption of the concept of a systemdid not supersede the focus on the interaction ofstates, since it would have risked the very identityof the field (Little, 1978, 1985). The propertiesaccorded to the ‘international system’ were largelyderived from a detailed, and increasingly quantita-tive, analysis of the units (states) (Buzan and Little,2000). The systems approach gave rise to what hasbeen termed the ‘level of analysis problem’, whichinvolves the question of the relative weight thatshould be attributed to the units as opposed to thesystem as a whole (Buzan, 1995; Hollis and Smith,1991; Singer, 1969). Waltz’s (1979) later attempt toconstruct a systems theory was based on the modelof microeconomics, which sought to overcome theproblem of reductionism that he attributed to theearlier generation of systems thinkers. It wouldappear that Buzan and Little (2000) are correct toargue that the concept of an international system isdeeply contested, and I would suggest that carefullyexamining the period that has been construed interms of the second debate might add a sense ofclarity to the present conversation.

Whether or not we accept the idea that a ‘greatdebate’ took place, it is important that we do notde-emphasize the consequences that the increasingattachment to scientism had for the development of


the field. First, it has resulted in IR surrenderingits intellectual autonomy to a number of cognatefields that appeared, for whatever reason, to be morescientific. This is plainly, and I would argue unfor-tunately, the case today with the field’s fascinationwith, and incessant borrowing from, microeconomicmodels of analysis. Second, the commitment toscience contributed to a growing rift between theAmerican scholarly community, which sought toemulate the positivist approach to knowledge, andmuch of the rest of the world that remained deeplysuspicious of studying international politics in thismanner. The members of the English School,Hedley Bull, Herbert Butterfield, John Vincent,Martin Wight and others, were, for example, ‘skep-tical of the possibility of a scientific study ofInternational Relations’ (Dunne, 1998: 7). Theychose to focus on what they termed an ‘internationalsociety’ that involved the study of history, culture,religion and philosophy (Dunne, 1998; Epp, 1998;Grader, 1988; Little, 2000). Yet their work, as wellas most of the scholarship from Britain, was, untilrecently, almost completely ignored by Americanscholars. A third consequence was a divorcebetween political theory and international relationstheory (Boucher, 1998). Just as the history of politi-cal thought became a focal point of attack by behav-ioralists in political science, the idea that the studyof international political theory could advance thescientific credentials of the field was rejected.Fourth, the bifurcation of political theory and inter-national theory had the effect of marginalizingnormative concerns and contributed to what SteveSmith has termed the ‘forty-years detour’ whereby itbecame ‘simply old-fashioned, and very unacade-mic, to introduce normative concerns into analysisunless they were themselves to be the objects ofanalysis’ (1992: 489). The field has only recentlybegun to recover from this detour and has rediscov-ered normative international political theory.

The limitations of utilizing the ‘great debates’framework for understanding the history of the fieldis plainly apparent when we come to the 1980s andthe so-called ‘third great debate’. As the field hasbecome increasingly pluralistic, perhaps owing, inpart, to its institutional growth, there seems to be aplethora of debates. In addition to the two versionsof the ‘third debate’ mentioned earlier, the inter-paradigm and post-positivism debates, there is thedebate between neorealism and neoliberalism(Baldwin, 1993; Kegley, 1995); between rational-ists and reflectivists (Keohane, 1988; Walker,1989); between rationalists and constructivists(Katzenstein et al., 1999; Ruggie, 1998; Wendt,1999; see also Fearon and Wendt, Chapter 3 in thisvolume); between ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ real-ists (Mearsheimer, 1994/1995; Schweller, 1996);and between communitarians and cosmopolitans(Brown, 1987, 1992; Hoffman, 1988). Yet this

listing only begins to scratch the surface, sincethere are also numerous debates within specificapproaches such as constructivism, feminism,realism and post-structuralism.

Although it is difficult to provide an adequate his-torical perspective on these more recent develop-ments, it is simply impossible to lump all of thesecontroversies under one grand master debate. Nomatter what general characteristics we assign to thedebate, it would not help us to understand the mostrecent history of the field. Waever has suggestedthat one way to get beyond the confusion of view-ing recent developments in terms of a singular thirddebate is by acknowledging that we have entered a‘fourth debate’ (1996). Here Waever, like severalothers in the field (Lapid, 1989; Smith, 2000;Vasquez, 1995), suggests that we make a sharp dif-ferentiation between, on the one hand, approaches,such as critical theory, post-structuralism, postmod-ernism and specific versions of constructivism andfeminism, that fall under the post-positivism labeland, on the other hand, the mainstream, which heargues is wedded to a rationalist orthodoxy. The lat-ter is seen as resulting from what Waever (1996)terms a ‘neo-neo synthesis’ in which, during the1980s, neoliberalism and neorealism essentiallybecame indistinguishable on the basis of theirshared commitment to a rationalist research pro-gram. This view of a ‘neo-neo-synthesis’ is morepopular outside the United States than within,where neoliberalism and neorealism continue torepresent the basic divisions within the field despitethe new emphasis on constructivism.

Post-positivism has sparked a considerableamount of meta-theoretical reflection on the currentidentity and composition of the field. The activityof reflecting on the nature of theory has come tocomprise a significant component of the discourse inIR. As in other fields where the challenge to posi-tivism has been mounted, post-positivists in IRview the traditional epistemological foundations ofthe field, often assumed to emanate from theEnlightenment, as no longer a philosophicallydefensible basis for making authoritative judgmentsabout validity in political inquiry. In this manner,‘post-positivism has placed the scientific studyof world politics in a serious crisis’ (Vasquez, 1995:234). Many of these ‘alternative’ or ‘dissident’approaches seek to deconstruct the traditional posi-tivist foundations of the field and to embrace a radi-cal anti-foundationalism that can enable multiplevoices or perspectives to be heard. This is seen bysome as leading to a major restructuring of IR,allowing for additional space in which to thinkabout the issues that currently comprise the subjectmatter of the field (George, 1994; George andCampbell, 1990; Neufeld, 1995). For others,post-positivism, and postmodernism in particular,has raised fears about relativism, as the loss of


an epistemological foundation is believed toundermine the authority of scholars to providetranscontextual grounds for truth (Rosenau, 1990;Vasquez, 1995).

While there is little doubt that various post-positivist approaches have contributed to the field’spluralistic character, generated an expansive bodyof interesting literature, and forced the field to con-front a host of new meta-theoretical questions, howlarge an impact they have made on the mainstreamcore of the field is still not clear. Like previous‘alternative’ approaches, the main object ofthe post-positivist critique has been realism, yetrealism, in one form or another, survives and con-tinues to provide what many would argue to be theinitial essential assumptions for explaining interna-tional politics as it has been traditionally defined bythe field of IR (Grieco, 1997; Jervis, 1998;Mearsheimer, 1994/5). This can partly account forwhy, of all the alternative approaches that haveentered the field since the early 1980s, Wendt’s par-ticular conception of constructivism, which acceptsmany of the assumptions of realism, is the approachbeing taken most seriously by the mainstreamtoday. To the dismay of some of the critical schol-ars in the field, Wendt (1999) claims that his ver-sion of constructivism is able to entertain the role ofideas, norms and the process of identity-formationwhile at the same time subscribing to a realistworld-view and a positivist epistemology. In thismanner, some of the most recent literature on thestate of the field is heralding constructivism as thefield’s newest approach or paradigm to the study ofinternational politics (Katzenstein et al., 1999;Walt, 1998).

CONCLUSION

Although there is a general sense that we alreadyknow the field’s history, l have attempted to demon-strate that there are many problems with the con-ventional story about how the field has developed.Some of the more recent work on the history of IRsuggests that many of our dominant understandingsof the field are nothing more than myths (Booth,1996; Kahler, 1997; Wilson, 1998), and one of theproblems with such myths is that they often notonly misrepresent the past but continue to misin-form the present. Research on the history of the fieldis not simply an exercise in antiquarianism but anattempt to increase our capacity to examine criti-cally the contemporary nature of the field by anunderstanding of the intellectual roots from which ithas evolved. There is an intimate link between dis-ciplinary identity and the manner in which weunderstand the history of the field. For a field thatappears to be perpetually consumed by identitycrises, careful attention to some of the previous

identities by which we were possessed wouldrepresent a fruitful research agenda. There is ampleopportunity for the diverse approaches in the fieldto explore their own intellectual roots and, thereby,to recognize some of the continuities between thepast and the present. Such an exercise might evenhelp to prevent the tendency for the field to pro-claim something quite old as new.

In order for the investigation of the history of thefield to receive the same intellectual respect as otherareas of research, more attention should be placedon the theoretical and methodological assumptionsinvolved. The absence of such attention in much ofthe existing literature on the history of the field hasserved to reinforce the view that the history of IR isself-evident or trivial. One example is the explicit aswell as implicit contextualism that has informed somany of the orthodox accounts of the field’s devel-opment. Although it is often suggested that theexternal context provided by ‘real world’ politicalevents can be conceived as an independent variablethat explains the character of the field at a specifichistorical juncture, the actual link between the twois seldom as straightforward and self-evident as itmight appear. The relationship between externalevents and the internal disciplinary response mani-fested in conceptual or theoretical change must beempirically demonstrated and not merely assumed.Although IR is conceived as an academic enterprisedevoted to the study of international politics, thisdoes not automatically imply that the exogenousevents that comprise the subject matter at any givenpoint in time can explain what happens inside thefield. From the point of view of disciplinary history,the crux of the issue should be how the field has, orhas not, responded intellectually to external factorsrather than how these factors can account for thedynamics inside the field. And more attentionshould be placed on the internal context of the fieldsuch as its setting in the university system, sourcesof funding and professional norms. An internal ascompared to an external focus may well help toaccount for the distinct national differences in howthe field has developed.

While I have suggested that it might, for variousreasons, be beneficial for the various approaches orschools of thought in the field to chronicle their owndiscursive development, this does not mean that dis-ciplinary history should merely serve as a vehicle forlegitimation and critique. As Gunnell has stated,truth is very often more convincing than fiction andcarries as much critical force (1991). Although theremight be a tendency for histories of the field to bepresentist, it has become obvious that this oftenresults in serious distortions. Rather than seeking tosay something authoritative about the field’s presentcharacter, it might be more useful to attempt to saysomething definitive about the field’s past.

It is quite evident that a number of differentapproaches and methodologies can be used to

recover the disciplinary history of IR. While I haveelsewhere advocated a historiographical approachthat can be described as a critical internal discursivehistory (Schmidt, 1998a, 1998b), Guzzini (1998)advocates a historical sociological approach, Waever(1998) embraces a sociology of science view, andSmith (1995) advocates a genealogical methodinformed by the work of Foucault. There is room forall these approaches and more, but the importantpoint is that disciplinary history can be a vehicle infostering critical insights and opening additionalspace in which to think about the central dilemmasthat continue to confront the study of internationalpolitics. These insights, however, depend on dis-pelling the misconceptions that have plagued pastwork on the history of IR.

Notes

I wish to thank John G. Gunnell, Steve Smith and the edi-tors for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlierversions of this chapter.

1 The abbreviation IR refers to the institutionalizedacademic field of international relations.

2 The eight root disciplines included international law,diplomatic history, military science, international politics,international organization, international trade, colonialgovernment and the conduct of foreign relations. The dis-ciplines with a world point of view included world geo-graphy, world history, psychology, sociology, languageand biology.

3 Waever, 1998 provides a very useful discussion ofthe evolution in IR in Germany, France, the UnitedKingdom and the United States.

4 Although few in number, there is a growing body ofliterature that examines the development of IR fromwithin a specific country setting. For example, the editedvolume by Hugh C. Dyer and Leon Mangasarian (1989)includes chapters on the study of IR in the formerSoviet Union, China, Brazil, the Federal Republic ofGermany, South Africa, France, Japan, Italy and theUnited Kingdom among others. Other examples of thisundertaking include Chan, 1994; Groom, 1994; andJorgensen, 2000.

5 The first generation of self-ascribed academic real-ists and their most influential work included: E.H. Carr1939; George F. Kennan, 1951; Hans J. Morgenthau,1948; Reinhold Niebuhr, 1940; Frederick L. Schuman,1933; Georg Schwarzenberger, 1941; and Nicholas J.Spykman, 1942.

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Article

The Big Bangs of IR: The Myths That Your Teachers Still Tell You about 1648 and 1919

Benjamin de CarvalhoNorwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Norway

Halvard LeiraNorwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Norway

John M. HobsonUniversity of Sheffield, UK

AbstractInternational relations as we know them emerged through the peace of Westphalia, and the discipline of International Relations emerged in 1919 and developed through a First Great Debate between idealists and realists. These are the established myths of 1648 and 1919. In this article we demonstrate how historical and historiographical scholarship has demolished these myths, but that the myths regardless are pervasive in the current textbooks that are used in teaching future IR scholars. Disciplinary dialogue seems to have failed completely. Based on a detailed reading of the myths and their perpetuation, we discuss the consequences of the discipline’s reliance on mythical origins, why there has been so little incorporation of revisionist insight and what possibilities there are for enhancing the dialogue.

Keywordsempire, Eurocentrism, First Great Debate, historiography, historical sociology, IR Theory, textbooks, Westphalia

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736 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 39(3)

Introduction

When we were first introduced to the discipline of International Relations (IR) some 15–20 years ago, we were presented with stories of the origin of the discipline’s subject matter and development, all of which appeared to be complete and settled as if it was all carved in ancient stone. The years 1648 and 1919 figured centrally then as the formative moments comprising, as it were, the ‘big bangs’ of the discipline. The small towns of Münster and Osnabrück in Westphalia were presented as the place where the big modern idea of the sovereign state and the anarchic states-system exploded into being and where the life of empires and other hierarchical political formations ended, while 1919 was presented as the year when the discipline itself exploded into existence with IR scholars becoming for the very first time enthused with theorising about the international as a subject matter in its own right insofar as it constituted an autonomous domain. But in the ensuing years we observed the discipline evolve and, in the process, we encountered a growing number of revisionist attempts that sought to problematise both 1648 and 1919, helping cumulatively, albeit ‘sacrilegiously’, to recast these canonical dates into little more than myths.

Historical and historiographical discussions began to take root in the discipline and have gained a not inconsiderable momentum of their own, seeking to debunk old myths while offering up alternative, not to mention rich and detailed, accounts of the complex processes of sovereign state formation and the origins of the discipline. But when turn-ing to teaching the discipline ourselves, and having had to make an informed choice over which textbooks students would use as a foundation to knowledge of international politics, we were dismayed to find that most of the historical and historiographical insights of the last two decades have barely been incorporated. And thus the lamentable situation emerges wherein because the mainstream of the discipline has failed to enter into any kind of dialogue with these revisionist works so the myths of yesteryear are perpetuated in the minds of generations of students as they in turn embark upon their journeys into the world of IR.

This is surprising, at the very least, in the context of ‘1919’ given the substantial meta-theoretical and theoretical opening up of the discipline that occurred after 1989, and perplexing given the considerable efforts that have been made by revisionist scholars to establish just such a dialogue. That the dialogue between the mainstream and the revi-sionist scholars on the emergence of sovereignty seems to be further away than ever is not entirely surprising given the heavily presentist nature of the discipline.1 But this arti-cle will make the case that this lack of dialogue between the left and right hands of the discipline concerning history and historiography is highly detrimental to the discipline and its ability to make sense of the subject matter that it purports to have unique expertise in. Here we shall confront and reconstruct the two central myths or ‘mythical big bangs’ of the discipline – specifically the ‘myth of 1919’ and the ‘myth of 1648’. The latter

1. For a related argument, see Duncan Bell, ‘Writing the World: Disciplinary History and Beyond’, International Affairs 85, no. 1 (2009): 3–22; and more generally, J.M. Hobson and Stephen Hobden, ‘Conclusion: On the Road towards an Historicised World Sociology’, in Historical Sociology of International Relations, eds S. Hobden and J.M. Hobson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 265–85.



de Carvalho et al. 737

provides a foundational myth about the sovereign state, the anarchic states-system and its underlying principles and institutions, while the former provides a foundational or origi-nary myth about the discipline itself.

The myth of 1648 is detrimental because it provides a distorted view of how the modern sovereign state and states-system came into being – and thus of the naturalness and quality of the basic units that IR takes for granted, the result of which is to produce a rigid statist ontology that is ill-equipped to handle the challenges of global governance, suzerainty, empire and international hierarchy. The myth of 1919 is detrimental in at least four fundamental ways: firstly, because it presents the discipline as an ahistorical extrapolation backwards of current developments and concerns in international relations; secondly, because it allows for a reading of the historiography of the discipline where certain theoretical perspectives win out due to their ability to best explain the so-called ‘real world’; thirdly, because it glosses over the Eurocentric and racist foundations of the discipline by providing a Whiggish reading of the discipline’s birth on the one hand, while, on the other, providing an empiricist epistemology that is ill-equipped to handle the many-faceted and constantly changing challenges that confront the discipline today; and, fourthly, and following on directly from the third, is the problematic assumption that IR underwent a miraculous virgin birth that occurred almost overnight in 1919 following a gruelling 48-month gestation period on the blood-drenched battlefields of Europe.

In brief, as we explain in this article, these are myths of what we study and how we study it and, as such, it matters a great deal that the discipline continues to perpetuate them. As we shall see, perhaps the two key interrelated lowest common denominators of these two myths is a shared Eurocentric metanarrative on the one hand, and the elision of the role of empire in the theory and practice of IR on the other. In order to build our case the article proceeds in three main parts. The first two sections consider each of the myths in turn, beginning with a brief exploration of how the myths have been repeated in older textbooks before moving on to explore the various revisionist readings and closing with a survey of the state of play in more recent textbooks which reveals how the myths continue to be perpetuated. Finally, we close the article with our Conclusion where we consider why IR has been so reluctant to enter into dialogue with its own history, while also reflecting on the consequences of a continued reliance on these myths and whether it is possible to initiate a proper dialogue that could at least go some way to ameliorate the situation. That said, though, we in no way wish to imply that we have ‘got it right’, given that this would presuppose a mind–world duality which we do not subscribe to.2 What we are trying to do, however, is to open up a thinking-space which is necessarily closed down by the traditional myths, while also shedding light on how the myths operate as ahistorical-political constructs.

Before we begin our ‘journey of rediscovery’, however, a few words are in order concerning the textbooks and our rationale for selecting them. We contend that textbooks are highly important to the general understanding of IR, not only for students, but also for the professionals of the discipline. A predictable consequence of the tendency of the discipline to devolve into increasingly specialised pockets of research is that most active researchers become increasingly reliant on textbook-knowledge of issues that are not

2. Cf. Patrick T. Jackson, The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations (Milton Park: Routledge, 2010).




directly related to their own areas of specialism. While textbooks tend on the whole to go uncited, nevertheless they are vitally important in generating, as it were, a kind of lowest common denominator that usually passes for the ‘common sense’ of the discipline. And, despite the point that there are indeed some excellent textbooks available, many of which we examine in this article, nevertheless considerations of availability, popularity/fre-quency of usage, price and name/author-recognition are often the decisive factors in their adoption. The act of choosing appropriate textbooks is also made more difficult by the lack of serious comparative reviews of them in the leading journals in the discipline. And this, in turn, is often a function of the fact that textbooks have an importance that is seriously undervalued and underestimated, with journal articles and monographs weighted far more heavily in promotion rounds as well as research measurement indica-tors such as the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) or Research Excellence Framework (REF).

In the absence of any comprehensive and up-to-date data set on the usage of different textbooks, our choice of which ones to review has necessarily been somewhat eclectic. While we have attempted to cover the most widely-used textbooks, we have also tried to provide a broad overview. Our first choice, based on the centrality of the English language and the US and the UK as the sites of some of the leading universities in the discipline, was to focus on English-language textbooks, particularly those used in the US and the UK. For initial guidance we used a combination of the bestseller and relevance lists for International Relations textbooks, found at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.3 Combining the results provided us with a list of books, most of which are on their third or even higher editions, thereby implying a continuous market for them.4 Nevertheless, the number of online sales is at best only a rough guide to what students read and what can be found on curricula. To this initial list we thus added books that we have personally encountered as well as those that are known to be either in wide use or held in high esteem. However, because a number of textbooks that were consulted did not engage either with the myth of 1648 or the myth of 1919, for the sake of space we have chosen not to cite them here.

An Ontological Big Bang: The Myth of 1648

The ontology of IR, of course, starts with Westphalia. For IR orthodoxy has conven-tionally (and conveniently) dated the ontological emergence of the sovereign state, the anarchic states-system and the interrelated end of the suzerain/heteronomous order of the Respublica Christiana to the end of the Thirty Years’ War and the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648.5 But this account has recently been subject to a growing number

3. Because these lists are updated hourly it should be noted that we consulted them at irregular intervals during the autumn and winter of 2010/11.

4. And as far as possible we have consulted the current editions of the selected books. While a comparison of the same books across editions could potentially yield valuable additional insight, we have left this aside for reasons of space.

5. The Peace of Westphalia consisted of two relatively similar treaties: the Treaty of Münster (Instrumentum Pacis Monasteriensis or IPM) and the Treaty of Osnabrück (Instrumentum Pacis Osnabrugensis or IPO). Sweden participated in the negotiations in Osnabrück and guaranteed the treaty, while a French delegation




of persuasive historical and historiographical revisions, the cumulative result of which is the relegation of the traditional story of the emergence of the statist ontology of IR to the status of a myth. Authors such as Benno Teschke, Stephen Krasner and Andreas Osiander figure prominently among these ‘myth-busters’, and their attempts have been published in prominent IR journals and by established university presses.6 The key feature of these revisionist accounts is the argument that neither the modern state nor the anarchic states-system originated in 1648, and that the enshrining or initiation of sovereignty was all but missing within the Treaties of Westphalia, which in fact com-prised a constitutional document for the Holy Roman Empire (HRE). From these accounts alone one would anticipate that IR might at least begin to depart from the cosy Westphalian account.7

Critically, the ‘Westphalian axiom’ is so entrenched that one need not look too far to find examples of it. No less a figure than Hans Morgenthau, for instance, writes in Politics among Nations that ‘the Treaty of Westphalia brought the religious wars to an end and made the territorial state the cornerstone of the modern states system’.8 Leo Gross refers to the Peace of Westphalia as ‘the end of an epoch and the opening of another’,9 while, likewise, Adam Watson tells us that ‘[t]he Westphalian Settlement legit-imized a commonwealth of sovereign states’.10 Last but not least, David Held informs us that the Peace of Westphalia ‘entrenched, for the first time, the principle of territorial sovereignty in inter-state affairs’.11 Either way, though, such references have abounded throughout the IR canon.

was present in Münster and guaranteed that the treaty was to be followed. The Holy Roman Emperor and a number of representatives from different political units of the Empire were parties to the treaties. There are a number of translations and editions of the treaties, many of which are available online. The most authoritative editions, however, can be found on the website Acta Pacis Westphalicae (‘Document edition of the Peace of Westphalia’), available at: http://www.pax-westphalica.de. Last accessed March 11, 2011. The treaties of Westphalia are also sometimes taken to include the settlement of the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Netherlands, as it was also negotiated in Münster. That treaty, however, was signed on 30 January, while the Treaty of Münster traditionally referred to was signed on 24 October.

6. See Stephen D. Krasner, ‘Westphalia and All That’, in Ideas and Foreign Policy, ed. Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 235–64; Stephen D. Krasner, ‘Compromising Westphalia’, International Security 20, no. 3 (1995): 115–51; Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Andreas Osiander, The States System of Europe 1640–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Andreas Osiander, ‘Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth’, International Organization 55, no. 2 (2001): 251–87; Benno Teschke, The Myth of 1648 (London: Verso, 2003). See also: Claire Gantet, ‘Le “Tournant Westphalien”: Anatomie d’une Construction Historiographique’, Critique internationale 9 (2000): 52–8; Benjamin de Carvalho, ‘Den westfalske fetisj i internasjonal politikk: Om den suverene stat og statssystemets opprinnelse’, Internasjonal Politikk 63, no. 1 (2005): 7–34; and Benjamin de Carvalho, ‘Keeping the State: Religious Toleration in Early Modern France, and the Role of the State’, in European Yearbook of Minority Issues, I (2001/2) (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), 5–27.

7. Tracing the origins of the Westphalian myth falls beyond the scope of the present work. For attempts to trace the myth, see Osiander, ‘Sovereignty’; de Carvalho, ‘Den westfalske fetisj i internasjonal politikk’.

8. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 6th edn (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), 254. 9. Leo Gross, ‘The Peace of Westphalia, 1648–1948’, American Journal of International Law 42, no. 1

(1948): 28.10. Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society (London: Routledge, 1992), 186.11. David Held, Democracy and Global Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 77.




‘Westphalia and All That’: Debunking the Myth of 1648

The texts of the treaties signed in Münster (IPM) and Osnabrück (IPO) on 24 October 1648 tell a very different story to the conventional narrative. Far from inaugurating the era of sovereignty, the Westphalian settlement turned out to be a momentary retreat from an already established idea of a modern system of states, constituting instead the recapitulation of an earlier and more feudal and medieval heteronomous order. Indeed, the idea that rulers had final authority over their territory – which followed more from the Reformation than any other event, and which had been so clearly enunciated in the Preamble to the English Statute of Appeals (1534) as well as the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 – was actually limited by the treaties of 1648.

Indeed, the Peace of Westphalia constituted a step back from an already established idea (and to some extent practice) of state sovereignty; itself the product of decades of political practice, political theory and even the internal order of the HRE as sanctioned by the Peace of Augsburg a century earlier, in 1555. For the Peace Treaties of Westphalia make no mention of sovereignty or cuius regio, eius religio. Indeed, where the Treaty of Augsburg gave the polities of the HRE the right to choose their own confession, this right was retracted in 1648. The result of this was the reversion to the status quo ante, to a date arbitrarily set to 1 January 1624, such that religion was no longer something over which rulers within the HRE could decide upon.12 Thus, with respect to religion, ‘Westphalia was less consistent with modern notions of sovereignty than Augsburg, which had been concluded almost a century earlier’.13 Nor was Augsburg a European-wide treaty. The principle of cuius regio, eius religio was a principle which in 1555 was valid only for the internal affairs of the HRE.14 Thus, both the treaties of Augsburg and Westphalia have been misread by the scholars of IR as applying to Europe in general, as opposed to the HRE in particular. It might, however, be claimed that Westphalia entailed the right of states to have their own foreign policy and to join alliances. But this, it turns out, applied only to the polities of the HRE,15 and was in any case not a new initiative. Moreover, this right had in fact been retracted during the Thirty Years’ War through the 1635 Peace of Prague.16

A complementary claim of the ‘1648 myth’ is that it entailed the defeat of the Holy Roman Emperor’s universal aspirations. The orthodoxy in IR has generally presented the Thirty Years’ War as a war between two main parties. These comprised the representa-tives of an imperial or universalistic order, mainly the Holy Roman Emperor and the Spanish king, who were loyal to the Pope on one side, and the representatives of a more particularistic and anti-hegemonic order advancing the modern idea of state sovereignty,

12. Art. V, 2 IPO and §47 IPM. While the Peace of Westphalia confirmed the Treaty of Augsburg, this was nevertheless done with a few reservations, as it stated that the Peace of Augsburg was not to be valid with respect to ‘certain Articles in the said Transaction [Augsburg] which are troublesome and litigious’; see Art. V, 1 IPO and §47 IPM.

13. Krasner, ‘Westphalia and All That’, 244.14. Even so, the principle of cuius reigo, eius religio of 1555 was not consistent with sovereignty. The

Reformed Confession, Calvinism, was not recognised at Augsburg.15. Art. VIII, 2 IPO and §63 IPM.16. Randall Lesaffer, ‘The Westphalian Peace Treaties and the Development of the Tradition of Great

European Peace Settlements Prior to 1648’, Grotiana 18 (1997): 71–95.




mainly France, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, on the other side.17 But some revisionist accounts of the Thirty Years’ War have questioned in a number of ways whether the war was actually about containing the universalistic ambitions of the Habsburgs. Firstly, the Emperor was already weakened when the war broke out in 1618, and the Habsburg Empire was already divided politically and militarily between a Catholic alliance, the League, and an anti-Catholic alliance, the Union. In the early stages of the war, the potential consequences of Habsburg collapse were more feared in Europe than was their hegemonic ambition.18 Secondly, the interventions of Denmark, Sweden and France were motivated more by their desire to take advantage of the weak position of the Habsburgs than by a fear of their hegemonic aspirations.19 What kept the war going was not that the Habsburgs represented a threat or that they had universal aspira-tions. Indeed, ‘[t]he war was not fought because the Habsburgs were straining to expand their role, but because other actors were seeking to diminish it’.20

All in all, then, the Treaties of Westphalia do not tell a clear-cut and neat story of transformation. Rather, they are better understood within a very complex story of advances, setbacks and messy entanglements of feudal suzerainty with some rare ele-ments of what we now call modern state sovereignty. Illustrating the feudal (as opposed to sovereign) character of Westphalia is the point that both France and Sweden were awarded fiefdoms over several territories formerly under imperial jurisdiction, with the Swedish monarch being made a vassal of the emperor.21

This emphasis that we accord the HRE provides a clue that enables us to finally bring into view the hitherto invisible elephant in the room of ‘1648’: that of hierarchy both inside and outside Europe. For while elements of hierarchy continued within Europe, so imperial hierarchy developed outside of it, notwithstanding the point that within the various countries of Europe domestic sovereignty was compromised in some way or another right down to the early 20 century.22 The typical Eurocentric conflation of Europe and the world leads to the problematic assumption that sovereignty soon became a universal feature of world politics once the big bang of political modernity had exploded at Westphalia. But such an emphasis necessarily obscures the existence of various hierarchical international political formations, especially of an inter-civilisa-tional nature, that have existed not just in the pre-1648 era,23 but above all within the post-1648 ‘anarchic’ era. The immediate problem here is that the post-1648 era wit-nessed a proliferation of international imperial-hierarchies, which comprised a series of

17. See for instance Torbjørn Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 85; David Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 290; Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 32.

18. Osiander, ‘Sovereignty’, 253–4.19. Ibid., 255–8.20. Ibid.21. Art. X, 15 IPO.22. J.M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2004), ch. 12.23. These would necessarily include a range of Eastern formations that were the leading ‘powers’ in the world

such as the Ottoman Empire and the Chinese tribute system, as well as the much weaker regional power of medieval Christendom.




single sovereign colonial powers, each of which stood atop a conglomerate of depen-dent non-sovereign polities. And, no less significantly, it was not until well into the postcolonial era, indeed the final two decades of the 20th century, that the sovereign state became the generic political unit of the global system – even if there are all manner of imperial legacies that have continued on into the 21st century. In short, inter-national hierarchies, albeit under anarchy, have been the norm in world politics in the last 400 years, the sovereign state the bare exception.24

In sum, then, neither sovereignty nor the anarchic international system originated at Westphalia. Indeed Westphalia has been awarded a weighting that its limited achieve-ment simply cannot bear. Ultimately, the emergence of sovereignty and the anarchic states-system were the result of a long process of change rather than a clear-cut break with the feudal system of Christendom that occurred in the space of one year following a gruelling 30-year gestation period on the bloodied battlefields of Europe.25 As we have shown above, in spite of the many references to the Westphalian birth of the statist ontology of IR, scrutiny of the treaties themselves and revisionist scholarship published over the last two decades make a strong case for relegating that story to the world of myth-production, while simultaneously requiring us to be at least wary of the tales that textbooks have for so long told us. But given the weight of the arguments and the central place 1648 has been accorded in historical debates about the discipline, one could rea-sonably expect this wariness, if not an outright rejectionist proclivity, to have trickled down to more recent texts and textbooks.

What Our Teachers Still Teach Us about Westphalia

Given that textbooks are updated more frequently than ever, one might assume that part of the rationale for this would comprise the need to take into account not only the latest developments in international politics, but also the core debates about the discipline of IR. Certainly some of the texts and textbooks have taken parts of these revisionist analyses into account. Notably, in a 2007 textbook, Heather Rae asserts that:

There is much debate over exactly when the process of early modern state formation started, with some scholars looking as far back as the eighth or tenth century. Others cite the early fifteenth century, with the convening of the Council of Constance of 1414–1418, treaties agreed upon at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, or the eighteenth century as the most significant dates in the development of the state.26

24. J.M. Hobson and J.C. Sharman, ‘The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing the Social Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change’, European Journal of International Relations 11, no. 1 (2005): 63–98. See also Darel E. Paul, ‘Sovereignty, Survival and the Westphalian Blind Alley in International Relations’, Review of International Studies 25, no. 2 (1999): 217–31; Barry Buzan and Richard Little, ‘Why International Relations Has Failed as an Intellectual Project and What to Do About It’, Millennium 30, no. 1 (2001): 19–39.

25. See for instance Joseph R. Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970); Hendrik Spruyt, The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Teschke, Myth of 1648.

26. Heather Rae, ‘Theories of State Formation’, in International Relations Theory for the Twenty–First Century, ed. Martin Griffiths (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 124.




Another good example is found in a 2005 textbook: ‘What we would now recognize as the modern state system gradually evolved in Northern Europe between 1500 and 1688 and was consolidated by the rise of nationalism in Europe between 1800 and 1914’.27 Moreover, the 2010 textbook by Keith Shimko hints at a more nuanced under-standing of the emergence of sovereignty:

Although 1648 is a convenient dividing point, the modern state system did not just appear overnight in that year: The world of 1647 did not look much different from the world of 1649. The emergence of the modern state was in reality a slow, gradual process driven by several important economic, religious, and military developments that eventually undermined the feudal order and replaced it with a new way of organizing European politics.28

But this hint leads the reader only into a cul-de-sac given that four pages later she will read that ‘[w]hat the treaty established was the modern notion of sovereignty – that rulers were not obligated to obey any higher, external authority’,29 that ‘the modern sovereign state emerged from the maelstrom of the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia (1648)’, and that ‘[t]he idea of national sovereignty was codified in the peace of Westphalia (1648) as the only feasible solution to the religious conflict that gave rise to the bloody Thirty Years War (1618–1648)’.30 Similarly, Paul Viotti and Mark Kauppi tell us that ‘[t]he peace agreement at Westphalia in 1648 helped solidify the trend of increasing power to the modern state at the expense of other political forms.… With the realignment of territorial borders, the notion of the sovereignty of the state also came to the fore’;31 and, moreover, that ‘[t]he prince or sovereign authority could even determine the religion of the inhabitants of a state’.32

Overall, this tension between an account that is sensitive to the revisionist scholarship of international politics while simultaneously maintaining the mythical story of 1648 is symptomatic of many of the textbooks. Moreover, in the process many administer a strong dose of classical realist ontology, to wit: ‘The Treaty of Westphalia (1648), more than any other event, demarcated the change between the old and new systems. With the sovereign state at its center, this newly evolving system is anarchical’.33 Or again, Russell Bova tells us that Westphalia ‘laid the foundation of the anarchic system of sovereign states that structural realists still emphasize today. Inherent in this new anarchic era were all the consequences – self-help, security dilemmas, wars – that those realists might anticipate’.34 And, again, ‘the 1648 peace of Westphalia … marked the birth of the mod-ern international system.… [T]he dissolution of the empire cleared the way for the

27. Jill Steans and Lloyd Pettiford with Thomas Diez, Introduction to International Relations: Perspectives and Themes, 2nd edn (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005), 117.

28. Keith L. Shimko, International Relations: Perspectives and Controversies, 3rd edn (Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2010), 4.

29. Ibid., 8.30. Ibid., 217, 243.31. Paul R. Viotti and Mark V. Kauppi, International Relations and World Politics, 3rd edn (Upper Saddle

River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007), 63–4.32. Ibid., 70.33. John T. Rourke, International Politics on the World Stage, 11th edn (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007), 60.34. Russell Bova, How the World Works (New York: Longman, 2010), 45.




emergence of sovereign political units within the old empire.’35 That the HRE was not dissolved until 1806 and coexisted with other European polities – be they states, empires or other units – clearly does not figure in the story that the discipline tells its youngest disciples.

Even some of the very best textbooks repeat the standard 1648 mantra.36 Thus, in spite of some passages suggesting to the reader that there may be an issue of contention about the meaning that should be accorded to 1648,37 we can still read in the book known to most British IR students as ‘Baylis and Smith’ that ‘[t]he Westphalian Constitution of World Order: The Peace Treaties of Westphalia and Osnabruck (1648) established the legal basis of modern statehood and by implication the fundamental rules or constitution of modern world politics’.38 The book also exhibits a text-box underlining what it sees as the key elements of this constitution: territoriality, sovereignty, autonomy – to wit: ‘[i]n codifying and legitimating the principle of modern statehood the Westphalian Constitution gave birth to the modern states-system’.39 Yet another textbook by Oxford University Press tells the students a story of pre-Westphalian chaos, relieved in 1648 by the advent of the modern state:

This treaty established the important principle of sovereignty that remains the foundation of contemporary international politics. In an obvious blow to the Church, this meant that kings could decide domestic policy, such as the official religion within their domains, free from outside interference. The principle of sovereignty recognized in the peace of Westphalia represents an essential element in the creation of the modern nation-state.40

This view is no less predominant in US textbooks. Thus, for example, in spite of acknowledging that the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück did not enact the principle of sovereignty as we know it, Joseph Nye and David Welch seem to have mistaken the Treaty of Westphalia for that of Augsburg:

The Peace of Westphalia effectively entrenched the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, whereby each ruler would have the right to determine the religion of his or her own state. The treaties did not amount to a full endorsement of the principle of state sovereignty as we know it, as they contained rights of intervention to enforce their terms.41

To Nye and Welch, the ontology of IR after 1648 is nevertheless statist: ‘For most of the Westphalian era, sovereign states had only to worry about other sovereign states’.42 But

35. Ibid., 44; also 9, 42.36. This problem is not, however, exclusive to English textbooks. One Norwegian introductory text, for

example, tells us that ‘the principle of sovereignty … was ratified at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648’; Jon Hovi and Raino Malnes, eds, Anarki, Makt og Normer, 2nd edn (Oslo: Abstrakt forlag, 2007), 32.

37. John Baylis, Steve Smith and Patricia Owens, eds, The Globalization of World Politics, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 46–7.

38. Ibid., 23–4.39. Baylis et al., Globalization of World Politics, 23–4.40. Steven L. Spiegel, Elizabeth G. Matthews, Jennifer M. Taw and Kristen P. Williams, eds, World Politics

in a New Era, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 59.41. Joseph S. Nye and David A. Welch, Understanding Global Conflict and Cooperation, 8th edn (Boston:

Longman/Pearson, 2011), 72.42. Ibid., 307.




overall, given that the 1648 myth is repeated in all IR textbooks that deal in some way with the origins of sovereignty, our survey is necessarily representative even if it only scratches the surface of the massive IR textbook market. Accordingly, in the inter-ests of space, we provide an extended footnote of other notable examples.43

Even our short tour of widely used IR textbooks produces a clear verdict: the tradi-tional tale of the ontological ‘big bang’ of IR has not given way to recent historiographi-cal scholarship. What is written about Westphalia is seldom referenced; 1648 is doxa. It just is. Finally, while we shall consider why this remains the case in the conclusion, one of the key lowest common denominators of the myths of 1648 and 1919 is an underlying Eurocentrism. For what is almost never questioned in the stories of the rise of the sover-eign state – either in orthodox or critical IR scholarship – is the assumption that it was entirely a product of European exceptionalism and was created by the Europeans all by themselves. But, as has been argued elsewhere, this elides the considerable extra-European influences that helped promote sovereignty, including those from China, India and the Middle East, as well as through the imperial encounter with the Americas after 1492.44 And just as the issues of imperialism and Eurocentric thinking have been ignored in the 1648 story, so their ‘recessive presence’ in the conventional ‘1919 story’ is some-thing that we shall resuscitate in the next section.

An Epistemological Big Bang: The Myth of 1919

The myth of 1919 is a less distinct myth than that of 1648, not least because it has a number of prongs to it. The usual context in which it emerges within standard text-books is as an appendage to the First Great Debate that was allegedly conducted between ‘idealists’ and realists. Indeed, standard introductions recount the lineage of the discipline in terms of the three great debates, with the first one emerging after the ‘birth of the discipline’ in 1919. That said, the myth of 1919, important though it is within the self-image of the discipline, is one that is overall recounted less often than its ‘1648 twin’.45 In what follows we shall cover textbooks even though we will also argue from personal experience and anecdotal evidence given that the myth of 1919 is more commonly transmitted through the classroom than through the textbook.

The myth of 1919 consists of three interrelated elements: firstly, that the discipline was born in 1919; secondly, that the discipline was born out of the calamities of World War I and was established as an idealist attempt to solve the problem of war; and, thirdly,

43. See, for example: Karen A. Mingst, Essentials of International Relations, 4th edn (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008), 24–5; Henry R. Nau, Perspectives on International Relations: Power, Institutions, and Ideas (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007), 56; J. Martin Rochester, Fundamental Principles of International Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2010), 19, 33, 36; Joshua S. Goldstein and Jon C. Pevehouse, International Relations, 9th edn (New York: Pearson Longman, 2010), 60, 61; Michael G. Roskin and Nicholas O. Berry, IR: The New World of International Relations, 7th edn (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008), 5–6.

44. J.M. Hobson, ‘The Other Side of the Westphalian Frontier’, in Postcolonial Theory and International Relations, ed. Sanjay Seth (London: Routledge, 2011); J.M. Hobson, ‘Provincializing Westphalia: Eastern Origins of Sovereignty in the Oriental Global Age’, International Politics 46, no. 6 (2009): 671–90.

45. Cf. Brian C. Schmidt, ‘Lessons from the Past: Reassessing the Interwar Disciplinary History of International Relations’, International Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3 (1998): 433–59, and esp. 438.




that interwar idealism lost out to realism in a First Great Debate, due to idealism’s failure in theory and practice either to prevent or explain the increasing interstate violence of the 1930s that culminated in World War II. The myth is a fully externalist account of the origins and early development of the discipline, based on a Whiggish reading that posits the notion of continuous progress towards both a better understanding of the international system and a solution to the problem of war.

In contrast to the myth of 1648, the myth of 1919 is of much more recent origin, given that there was very little historiographical consciousness within the discipline until the publication of The Aberystwyth Papers in 1972.46 As Jack Donnelly notes, even as late as the early 1980s the standard overview of the discipline only started with the classical realists of the post-war generation, in effect creating an abbreviated foundational myth.47 The key figure that is most closely associated with this foundational myth – the classical realist, E.H. Carr – would nevertheless fit seamlessly into the myth of 1919 when the earlier history of the discipline was rewritten. Realism was the dominant theoretical approach in International Relations by virtue of its embrace of positivism as a means of explaining the so-called ‘realities’ of international relations, rather than founding its analysis on an a priori ‘idealist-political’ foundation. That historiographical interest was piqued for the first time around 1970 is due to various factors. It was partly a result of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the first IR chair at Aberystwyth; partly an aftermath of the methodological differences of the 1960s that was later codified as the Second Great Debate;48 and partly a result of the inspiration from Kuhn and the idea of scientific paradigms. The immediate result was to extend the history of the discipline further back-wards to 1919, and to incorporate a ‘misguided generation’ of ‘idealists’ which had been triumphantly swept away by the rising tide of classical realism, with E.H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau riding its crest. This early historiography was thus largely an exercise in reaffirming the dominance of realism in general, presenting its victory in the more exotic philosophy of scientifism.

From the early 1980s, the discipline (and its dominant realist strand) was subjected to a rising tide of criticism from a range of alternative theories, particularly with the advent of the Third Great Debate (sometimes referred to as the Fourth Great Debate). By pre-senting the ongoing discord as another moment in a procession of ‘great debates’ so it was possible to normalise dissent. That is, deep-rooted debates are thought to be a nor-mal and healthy intellectual way in which disciplinary knowledge progresses. The final codification of the myth of 1919 and the First Great Debate was thus a result of a number of disparate claims of status that emerged in the Third (or Fourth) Great Debate.49

46. Brian Porter, ed., The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972); cf. Peter Wilson, ‘The Myth of the First Great Debate’, Review of International Studies 24, no. 4 (1998), 1–15, esp. p. 8.

47. Jack Donnelly, ‘Realism and the Academic Study of International Relations’, in Political Science in History, eds James Farr, John S. Dryzek and Stephen T. Leonard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 175–97, esp. 181.

48. Joel Quirk and Darshan Vigneswaran, ‘The Construction of an Edifice: The Story of a First Great Debate’, Review of International Studies 31, no.1 (2005): 89–107.

49. The Third Great Debate, which saw positivism come under sustained attack by post-positivists, is referred to as the Fourth Great Debate only when the 1970s’/1980s’ ‘inter-paradigm debate’ is elevated to the status of a ‘great debate’.




‘1919 and All That’: Debunking the Originary/Foundationist Myth of the Discipline

At the very time that the myth of 1919 was being expanded it was also being challenged at its very core. Of particular note here was a critical interrogation of E.H. Carr as well as the Utopians/idealists/liberals that he so forcefully challenged. The first stabs were directed at Carr’s realism, with a number of writers suggesting that he was less of a realist than previously believed, or even that he was not a realist at all.50 The perception of Carr was challenged from internalist, externalist and contextualist perspectives, stress-ing the polemical, political and dialectic character of The Twenty Years’ Crisis and its debts to a Mannheimian reflexivist sociology of science.51 Indeed, it would be fair to say that much of what he wrote had a certain Marxian quality to it. Either way, although no consensus has been reached on how best to characterise Carr, the large majority of those who have dealt with his work in any systematic fashion agree that the label ‘realist’ fits rather awkwardly.52

While Carr was put under closer scrutiny, the ones who were supposed to be his erstwhile opponents were simultaneously placed under the analytical microscope. The end of the Cold War led to renewed interest in the theories that had been developed before 1947, with a boost for liberal theorising after 1989 leading to a revived interest in liberal theorising before 1939. The immediate result was a wide-ranging reconsideration of the ‘idealists’, revealing a breadth and diversity of thought that had been completely glossed over by the myth of 1919.53 Increasingly, writers dropped the terms ‘Utopian/idealist’ and began applying the label ‘liberal’ (or some variety of it) to the writers of the interwar period.

To this can be added two further points concerning the myth of ‘idealism’: firstly, that the so-called idealists frequently argued positions that had much in common with certain realist precepts. Most notably, as Leonard Woolf put it, summarising Norman Angell: ‘It

50. Cf. Ken Booth, ‘Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice’, International Affairs 67, no. 3 (1991): 527–45; Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 159–68; J.M. Hobson, The State and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 55–61.

51. See, for example, Charles Jones, E.H. Carr and International Relations: A Duty To Lie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Wilson, ‘Myth of the First Great Debate’; Peter Wilson, ‘Carr and His Early Critics: Responses to the Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1939–46’, in E.H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Michael Cox (London: Palgrave, 2000), 165–97.

52. One exception that proves the revisionist rule is Seán Molloy, who reaffirms Carr as an important realist, albeit one of a very different kind than most later realists. Paradoxically, although confirming Carr’s realism, Molloy contributes both to the re-evaluation of Carr and the undermining of the myth of 1919; see his The Hidden History of Realism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), ch. 3. We thank Luke Ashworth for this reference.

53. See, for example, David Long, ‘J.A. Hobson and Idealism in International Relations’, Review of International Studies 17, no. 3 (1991): 285–304; David Long and Peter Wilson, eds, Thinkers of The Twenty Years’ Crisis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Schmidt, ‘Lessons from the Past’; Cameron G. Thies, ‘Progress, History and Identity in International Relations Theory: The Case of the Idealist–Realist Debate’, European Journal of International Relations 8, no. 2 (2002): 147–85; Brian C. Schmidt, ‘Anarchy, World Politics and the Birth of a Discipline: American International Relations, Pluralist Theory and the Myth of Interwar Idealism’, International Relations 16, no. 1 (2002): 9–31; Lucian M. Ashworth, ‘Where Are the Idealists in Interwar International Relations?’, Review of International Studies 32, no. 2 (2006): 291–308.




is not human nature … which makes war “inevitable”. War in the modern world springs from what has been aptly called the international anarchy.’54 Indeed, Kenneth Waltz could not have put it much more succinctly himself. And secondly, far from ignoring power in favour of purely utopian sensibilities many of the so-called idealists, as we shall argue very shortly, actively supported the cause of European imperialism in general and especially British imperialism in particular.

If the idealists were not idealists and Carr was not exactly a realist, the next step was to denounce the idea of a First Great Debate between these so-called Manichaean combatants as but a myth.55 While Carr’s book certainly created reaction at the time, there was, however, no wide-ranging debate and certainly no feeling that any ‘idealist’ position had been demolished.56 Likewise, surveying the interwar period more generally, one can obviously find debates, but nothing resembling a ‘great debate’ between liberals and realists.57 More plausible would be the claim that there were debates between different approaches to politics in general, some of which would feed into post-World War II real-ism as well.58 The process of defining ‘realism-triumphant’ against ‘idealism-defeated’ in the immediate post-World War II years was not so much about an actual debate between these two ‘genres’, but rather constituted a political move that sought to enshrine a specific foreign policy as well as to insulate the field of international politics from behaviouralist political science.59 And, not least, it relied on the politics of amnesia – that is, of forgetting much of the non-realist research that had been undertaken.60

With historiographical attention escalating after 1989 even the dating of the birth of the discipline came under heavy challenge. There can be found many important anteced-ents for disciplinary IR, starting in the last two decades of the 19th century, particularly in debates regarding imperialism, geopolitics and trade. The three key scholars of note here are Brian Schmidt, Robert Vitalis and Torbjørn Knutsen. While Vitalis argues that IR became institutionalised around 1910, Knutsen specifies the 1890s, while Schmidt claims that its institutionalisation was secured in 1880 when the study of IR began within the first Political Science Department in the US that was opened at Columbia University by John W. Burgess.61 To this Schmidt adds the claims that IR was advanced by the study

54. Leonard Woolf, ‘Introduction’, in The Intelligent Man’s Way to Prevent War, ed. Woolf (London: Victor Gollancz, 1933), 10–11; Norman Angell, ‘The International Anarchy’, in Woolf, Intelligent Man’s Way, 19–66; See also, for example, G. Lowes Dickinson, The International Anarchy, 1904–1914 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1925).

55. Wilson, ‘Myth of the First Great Debate’; Andreas Osiander, ‘Rereading Early Twentieth-Century IR Theory: Idealism Revisited’, International Studies Quarterly 42, no. 3 (1998): 409–32.

56. Wilson, ‘Carr and His Early Critics’.57. Lucian M. Ashworth, ‘Did the Realist–Idealist Debate Really Happen? A Revisionist History of

International Relations’, International Relations 16, no. 1 (2002): 33–51.58. Thies, ‘Progress, History and Identity’; Quirk and Vigneswaran, ‘Construction of an Edifice’.59. See Nicolas Guilhot, ‘The Realist Gambit: Postwar American Political Science and the Birth of IR Theory’,

International Political Sociology 2, no. 4 (2008): 281–304; see also Stanley Hoffmann, ‘An American Social Science: International Relations’, Daedalus 106 (1977): 41–59.

60. Samuel Barkin, ‘Realism, Prediction and Foreign Policy’, Foreign Policy Analysis 5, no. 3 (2009): 233–46.

61. Brian C. Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1998); Robert Vitalis, ‘Birth of a Discipline’, in Imperialism and Internationalism in the Discipline of International Relations, eds David Long and Brian C. Schmidt (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005), 159–81; Robert Vitalis, ‘The




of colonial administration after about 1900 and that the world’s first IR book emerged in 1900 – Paul Reinsch’s World Politics at the End of the Nineteenth Century.62 Vitalis adds to this a series of developments in the consolidation of the discipline, not the least of which is the establishment of the Journal of Race Development in 1910; a journal that was renamed Foreign Affairs in 1922.63 While the concern with Eurocentrism and racism exists, albeit in rather latent form, within Schmidt’s analysis and in rather more explicit form in Knutsen’s, it is, however, a central component of Vitalis’s work. For it is his key claim that the discipline’s rationale was founded on a racist ‘white supremacist’ outlook.64

While this fascinating avenue concerning the pre-1919 origins of the discipline could be explored as a whole article in itself a few points are noteworthy, not least so as to provide a bridge to the ensuing discussion. Above all, while 1919 is by no means an insignificant moment in the development of the discipline, in a way the onus of proof should more properly lie with those who wish to support the 1919 birth date claim. For it seems curious, if not a product of wishful thinking, to believe that the infant discipline all of a sudden sprung up out of nowhere in some kind of miraculous virgin birth in one year. Three points in particular avail themselves here. Firstly, many of the scholars we associate the interwar period with were writing in the two decades prior to 1919, including John A. Hobson, Norman Angell, Harold Laski and, not least, Woodrow Wilson. And many of the ideas that they developed in the interwar period had been formulated well before 1919. Secondly, if we accept the point that many of the interwar theorists drew on Hobson’s 1902 book,65 whether this be the critique of what Hobson called ‘insane’ imperialism that is found in Laski, Brailsford, Bukharin and Lenin, or equally the support of ‘sane imperialism’ that is found in Wilson, Zimmern, Angell and Buell, then the image of 1919 is necessarily blurred or muted. Thirdly, and most impor-tantly of all, the very Eurocentric and racist narratives that underpinned the majority of interwar scholarship emerged in the 18th century and especially the 19th, thereby bring-ing the pre-1919 intellectual context much more into the foreground of our revised pic-ture of 1919. How then did these metanarratives infect interwar scholarship and what is the significance of this claim for our overall argument about 1919?

To answer the second part of this question first, bringing the ‘dark side’ of the disci-pline into the open necessarily punctures the ‘noble myth’ of the birth of IR that Carr’s reading bequeaths the discipline. Carr’s legacy very much remains with us today, with the belief that the discipline was born in 1919 when the world’s first department of International Politics was established at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Moreover, on the atlas of ideas Aberystwyth and Versailles are in effect presented as twin towns. For both

Graceful and Generous Liberal Gesture: Making Racism Invisible in American International Relations’, Millennium 29, no. 3 (2000): 331–56; Torbjørn L. Knutsen, ‘A Lost Generation? IR Scholarship before World War I’, International Politics 45, no. 6 (2008): 650–74; Torbjørn L. Knutsen, ‘En tapt generasjon? IP-fagets utvikling før første verdenskrig’, Internasjonal Politikk 65, no. 3 (2007): 9–44.

62. Paul S. Reinsch, World Politics at the End of the Nineteenth Century, as Influenced by the Oriental Situation (New York: Macmillan, 1900); Schmidt, Political Discourse, 70.

63. Vitalis, ‘Birth of a Discipline’, 166. Schmidt also sees the study of colonial administration as important; Political Discourse, ch. 4.

64. Vitalis, ‘Birth of a Discipline’; Vitalis, ‘Graceful and Generous Liberal Gesture’.65. John A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1938/1968).




are thought to have initiated noble ideas and practices that sought to set the world on the path to peace following the carnage of World War I. In this reading, then, IR is presented as a noble discipline that was born in order to solve the tragedy of war for the benefit of all peoples. While we do not wish to denigrate the importance of Aberystwyth in the progress of IR as a discipline, nevertheless the overall noble image obscures an ‘inconven-ient truth’: that the overwhelming majority of international theory throughout its exist-ence has been imbued with a specific moral/political purpose – to defend and promote Western civilisation – and that the narratives of the discipline have in one way or another always constituted a ‘West Side Story’.66 In the process, the deep paradox emerges wherein the discipline’s prevailing mythical self-image can only be maintained through a deep structural amnesia that coexists with a highly selective recollection of the discipline’s ‘origins’.

In the external events-context we argue that international theory in the interwar period emerged in the context not simply of World War I, but also in the milieu of the colonial racial revolt against Western imperialism that took off in the interwar period, with the year 1919 marking the launch of the enterprise known as the empire strikes back. Far from expressing a highly optimistic vision of a coming peace, much of the liberal and left-liberal interwar scholarship exhibited or reflected a deep sense of anxiety in the Western imagination as the fault-lines of the West’s imperial hegemony appeared to be cracking. As noted above, far from fatally ‘ignoring power’, many such scholars sought to maintain an imperialist hierarchy of racial and/or civilisational power of the West over the East. Nevertheless, while there was also a significant group of anti-imperialists, it is significant that most of these thinkers still worked to defend the West because their writings were founded on various Eurocentric or racist metanarratives, as opposed to some kind of universalist cultural pluralism that yielded a tolerance of the Other. On the imperialist side these comprised a paternalist Eurocentrism (e.g. Zimmern, Angell, Woolf and Murray), and an offensive racism (as in Wilson and Buell), while on the anti-imperialist side these comprised an anti-paternalist Eurocentrism (e.g. Laski, Brailsford, Lenin and Bukharin), and a defensive racism (e.g. Stoddard and Grant).67

While space, of course, precludes a detailed discussion here, it is worth summarising a few key figures to support our case. Woodrow Wilson is, of course, thought of as one of the discipline’s founding icons, simultaneously doubling up as the founding father of 20th-century liberal internationalism. But Wilson’s academic writings were steeped in explicit scientific racism of a neo-Lamarckian nature.68 And they reveal the point that for Wilson self-determination was to be granted only to the (relatively) civilised Eastern Europeans but should be withheld from the non-white races. For it was vital to maintain imperialism, albeit the internationalised variety that was institutionalised by the League of Nations Mandate System, so that the inferior races could be brought to maturity

66. John M. Hobson, ‘The Myth of International Relations: Constructing Eurocentrism and International Theory, 1760–2010’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

67. For a full discussion of all these writers, see Hobson, ‘Myth of International Relations’, ch. 6.68. See especially the following publications by Woodrow Wilson: ‘The Reconstruction of the Southern

States’, Atlantic Monthly 87, no. 519 (1901): 2–11; ‘Democracy and Efficiency’, Atlantic Monthly 87, no. 521 (1901): 289–99; A History of the American People, V (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1902); The State (New York: D.C. Heath & Co., 1918).




through gaining the right sort of ‘character’ that was in turn the necessary prerequisite for the future awarding of self-determination. This reflects his key argument that was central to his book The State: that constitutional political development is something which occurs only over a very long period of time. It was precisely this gradualist idea that underpinned his advocacy of the League of Nations Mandate System. Of course, while Wilson is famous in IR for his enunciation of the concept of self-determination, it is less well known that he turned round almost immediately and issued a denunciation of it as far as the colonies were concerned. For clearly regretting the fact that he had inadvert-ently let the self-determinist genie out of the imperialist bottle (as his adviser Colonel House had warned him), he asserted on 9 May 1919, in the context of the anti-colonialist upheavals that raged around the colonial world, that he was disturbed by

the unqualified hope that men have entertained everywhere of immediate emancipation from the things that have hampered them and oppressed them. You cannot in human experience rush into the light [of self-determination].… You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is on the landscape.69

More generally, the essential formula of maintaining imperialism, especially British imperialism, through the Mandate System formed the normative lynchpin of many inter-war books that are normally associated with the so-called idealists.70 Of course, it is certainly the case that for these advocates the Mandate System represented something new and that it offered up the possibility that the colonies would not be exploited as they had done when national-imperial control was ‘absolute’ and ‘unregulated’. Indeed, it is this which defined that which Hobson called ‘sane’ imperialism against the ‘insane’ imperialism of the previously unregulated national forms of imperialism. Nevertheless, it was still very much a form of imperialism that worked from precisely the same premise that the old idea of the civilising mission rested upon: the notion that the non-Western peoples were in one way or another inferior and could only be brought into civilisation under Western tutelage and only once the ‘correct and rational’ Western institutions had been delivered. The only real difference lay with the ‘form’ or ‘method’ by which these superior Western institutions would be delivered.

Finally, the common association of Eurocentrism and racism with imperialism elides the point that these discourses also yielded anti-imperialist visions. The extreme case, which can be used to support this point, is found with the interwar scholar Lothrop Stoddard, who embraced an anti-imperialist Eugenics. In a string of books he argued that white supremacy was under severe threat following World War I, which had succeeded only in undermining and dividing the white races, and which in turn came at the very same time when the coloured races – specifically the Yellows and (Islamic) Browns – were

69. Wilson cited in Erez Manuela, ‘Dawn of a New Era: The “Wilsonian Moment” in Colonial Contexts and the Transformation of World Order, 1917–1920’, in Competing Visions of World Order, eds Sebastian Conrad and Dominic Sachsenmaier (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 147.

70. See, for example, Alfred Zimmern, The Third British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926/1934); Norman Angell, The Defence of the Empire (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1937); Leonard Woolf, Imperialism and Civilization (London: Hogarth Press, 1928/1933); Raymond L. Buell, International Relations (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1925).




rising with a vengeance.71 His was a ‘defensive’ variant of scientific racism, for his key point was that the white races needed to restore their unity and protect their homelands (what he called the ‘inner dikes’) from the rising tide of colour. This could best be achieved by ending Western imperialism in Asia on the one hand, while blocking the ‘colored immigration peril’ by erecting prohibitive immigration controls on the other. This was vital because if the coloured races were to enter the citadel of the white West, they would flood the gene pool with inferior and contaminating influences that would inevitably lead to white racial degeneration. And to close this discussion more generally, while the anti-imperialist Eurocentrics provided an entirely different rationale for the critique of imperialism, and were indeed highly critical of the West, nevertheless the Eurocentric give away lies in the point that they reified the West and denied the East agency.72

What our Teachers Still Tell Us about 1919

Turning now to current textbooks, a large number omit historiography altogether. In those which do include disciplinary history, the most obvious change in tenor over the last two decades has been the shift from ‘idealist’ to ‘liberal’ as the moniker for the theories of the interwar years. This move is by no means all-encompassing, but a growing number of scholars seem to agree that the term ‘liberal’ is more appropriate. This devel-opment has quite obviously been related to the concurrent attempts at cementing present-day liberalism as a solid, permanent and viable competitor to realism that enjoys its own long lineage. Significantly, one does find comments on how idealism was a term that realists constructed to discredit their opponents,73 even though some still see the unre-constructed term as applicable.74 Others have noted the changing nomenclature, though without pushing it through to its conclusion:

The body of theory known typically today as liberalism went by the term idealism for most of the twentieth century…. After World War I demonstrated the horror that humans could wreak on each other, idealists sought to create institutions that would mitigate violence and greed…. World War II, and especially the Holocaust, as well as the collapse of the League of Nations, effectively undermined idealist theory.75

From this perspective, liberalism is not a retroactively specific term for the interwar writers given the assumption that they were idealists; and, moreover, the relation

71. See the following books by Lothrop Stoddard: The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920); The New World of Islam (London: Chapman and Hall, 1922); Clashing Tides of Colour (London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1935). We are particularly grateful to Robert Vitalis for alerting us to Stoddard’s anti-imperialism.

72. Hobson, ‘Myth of International Relations’, ch. 6.73. For example: ‘Modern realist theory developed in reaction to a liberal tradition that realists called

idealism’; Goldstein and Pevehouse, International Relations, 44.74. Shimko, International Relations, 43.75. Jeanne K. Hey, ‘Power, Conflict, and Policy: The Role of Political Science in International Studies’, in

International Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Global Issues, eds Sheldon Anderson, Jeanne K. Hey, Mark A. Peterson and Stanley W. Toops (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008), 25, 27.




between the world wars and theoretical change remains unquestioned – thus after idealism collapsed, Morgenthau codified realism.76

The twin beliefs that the discipline was born in 1919 and that there was a subsequent transformation away from interwar idealism in 1945 are still taken more or less for granted. Thus, we are still told that ‘International Relations was born out of the human tragedy of war’,77 and that ‘Realism … developed after World War II as a response to the failure of the interwar period’s (1919–1939) idealism’.78 A more elaborate narrative deserves to be quoted more extensively:

In the twentieth century the idealist paradigm was most closely associated with Woodrow Wilson and the other thinkers who were prominent in the interwar period…. Idealism’s reign as the dominant paradigm ended with its failure to anticipate and prevent World War II…. It was the idealists’ failure to comprehend the forces leading to World War II that gave rise to realism as the dominant paradigm in the immediate postwar period after 1945.79

In the same textbook, the student of IR is informed that ‘[i]t was out of the ashes of World War I that idealists claimed to have learned certain lessons about the dynamics of international relations and what was needed to prevent another major war’.80 In this imaginary, then, idealism equals Wilson; idealism is in effect a ‘paradigm’; and it was eclipsed by realism due to its inherent intellectual and political failure. This trotting out of the old 1919 myth could hardly be less attuned to the last two decades of historio-graphical research. And when we are told that ‘[i]n the period between World War I and World War II, the major challenger to the realist perspective was idealism’, it is surely as if the last two decades of revisionist scholarship had never happened. Or, to put it differently: the maintenance of the 1919 myth presupposes the assumption of the ‘revi-sionist myth’.81 Thus we have to conclude that the notion of something called idealism still persists in the IR imagination, even if slightly less unproblematically than before, and that the wholly exogenous/external events story of the emergence of the discipline and of idealism in 1919 as noble responses to World War I, as well as subscribing to the victory of realism in 1945 following the carnage of World War II, still remain largely uncontested within current IR textbooks.

For this reason it is not surprising to learn that the idea of a First Great Debate is still nurtured as well. This is a staple of IR textbooks and is found even in the very best ones. Thus, Robert Jackson and Georg Sørensen, in what is an otherwise exemplary textbook, tell us:

There have been three major debates since IR became an academic subject at the end of the First World War and we are now in the early stages of a fourth. The first major debate is

76. Ibid., 25, 27. Moreover, according to Roskin and Berry, Morgenthau ‘founded the “realist” school of international relations’; The New World, 27.

77. Steans and Pettiford with Diez, International Relations, 229.78. Spiegel et al., World Politics, 35.79. Rochester, Fundamental Principles of International Relations, 19, 21.80. Ibid., 19, 21.81. See the discussion in Bova, How the World Works, 20.




between utopian liberalism and realism…. The first major debate was clearly won by Carr, Morgenthau, and the other realist thinkers.82

While avoiding the term ‘idealist’, this narrative sticks to the counting of debates, sees Carr as an unproblematic realist, and the realists as winners of a debate that it has been persuasively argued never in fact happened. Placing the debate a little later, Viotti and Kauppi, while giving a valuable and balanced introduction to the work of John Herz, maintain that Herz and Morgenthau ‘found themselves in the center of a great realist–idealist academic debate’.83 And even among scholars who are attuned to the revisionist historiographical literature, we still find references to the First Great Debate. Another otherwise exemplary textbook, having noted the problems inherent in the discussion of the great debates, tells us that ‘[s]ome of the debates, however, were genuine…. The first debate refers to the exchanges between the realists and idealists before, during and immediately after the Second World War’.84 But as our survey of the revisionist literature suggests, it is not an inconsiderable irony that the interwar exchange between realists and idealists is held up as an example of one of the genuine debates within the discipline.

Others, however, simply ignore the revisionist historiography altogether. Peu Gosh, in an introductory text aimed at the Indian market, tells us that:

When the Second World War (1939–1945) finally broke out, the idealists were blamed for their utopian thinking and their legalistic-moralistic assumptions were alleged to be far from the realities of power politics. IR soon came to be occupied with a critique of liberal idealism and out of this emerged a new paradigm – Realism, sometimes also known as Realpolitik – an anti-thesis to Idealism…. This was the emergence of the first ‘Great Debate’ in IR in the post-World War II period.85

With its externalist approach, its lumping of idealists into a single category, its stark dichotomising and the reference to ‘the first “Great Debate” in IR’ (after World War II), this text could just as well have been written 20 years ago.

That it is nevertheless not impossible to write textbooks with a more principled nod to the revisionist historiography is demonstrated by Richard Devetak when he notes that ‘the very idea of narrating the discipline’s history as a series of “great debates” is ques-tionable’; though notably, he adds: ‘Even so, it is important for students to learn how the discipline has told stories about itself, which is why I persist with the narrative’.86 Nevertheless, a reflexive approach seems to us to be the only viable one – both recalling the disciplinary grand narratives and simultaneously deconstructing them.

82. Robert H. Jackson and Georg Sørensen, Introduction to International Relations: Theories and Approaches, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 30, 38.

83. Viotti and Kauppi, International Relations, 90.84. Milja Kurki and Colin Wight, ‘International Relations and Social Science’, in International Relations

Theories: Discipline and Diversity, eds Tim Dunne, Milja Kurki and Steve Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 15–16.

85. Peu Gosh, International Relations (New Dehli: PHI Learning, 2009), 6.86. Richard Devetak, ‘An Introduction to International Relations: The Origins and Changing Agendas of a

Discipline’, in An Introduction to International Relations: Australian Perspectives, eds Richard Devetak, Anthony Burke and Jim George (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 10.




There are obviously also examples of writers taking the insights of the revisionist historiography to heart, but overall it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the impact has been marginal. Even those who show knowledge of the revisionist literature tend to provide cursory or even obligatory nods to it often by inserting various conditional adjectives such as ‘alleged’ and ‘so-called’ in front of the offending nouns. The one area where some progress has been made has been in the reassessment and rebranding of the motley crew previously known as utopians or idealists. In conjunction with the ongoing construction of a liberal body of theory to rival realism, interwar scholars have acquired a new name, and more attention has been paid to them. But even so, this has been done through an ahistorical extrapolation backwards of the present idea of liberalism so as to impute its presence there at the ‘birth’ of the discipline. And because the substitution of liberalism for idealism allows for the perpetuation of the myth under a different name, and glosses over the pluralism of interwar theorising, so we conclude that this can only really count as a step backwards rather than a progressive move forwards.

Conclusion: Why Does the Discipline Continue to Hold These Myths to Be Self-evident Truths?

In the light of our analysis we feel it warranted to conclude that conventional modern IR works on the basis of a false prospectus in relation to its key foundationist assumptions. And despite the point that the discipline has got its ontological and epistemological geneses twisted, the pervading myths still persist. This then gives rise to the conundrum as to why this false prospectus persists despite repeated attempts to prosecute the myths in the revisionist court of IR scholarship. Here we consider a number of possible reasons taking each of the myths in chronological order.

Firstly, it could be argued that like most research articles, the historical literature on 1648 is barely read. But this can be discounted on the grounds that the key revisionist articles and books are cited hundreds of times, and even the more specialised literature on the myth of 1919 is cited more than 50 times. Even so, this only deepens the puzzle given that while the works are cited, their insights are not taken on board. A second possible reason is that under conditions of extreme specialisation, and with books and journals proliferating in ever more daunting numbers, IR scholars often find that they have little choice but to rely on standard textbook discussions in areas that they them-selves do not research. One consequence of this is not infrequently that new editions of a particular textbook tend to be updated by way of adding either a few recent citations or by adding a new chapter on the latest event or theory of significance. Accordingly it is not surprising that the historical aspects of the discipline tend to get left behind, not least because these are neatly packed away in the filing cabinet of ‘settled knowledge’.

A third partial explanation, related to the previous one, is IR’s inherent tendency towards presentism. History, as a matter in its own right, is of little or no interest to much of the discipline. Often it appears as little more than a useful site or shallow quarry from which can be garnered or sifted certain facts which are brought out into the open and held up triumphantly to confirm certain ‘present truths’ that are pertinent to a particular




theory.87 Accordingly, a deeper engagement with historical matters becomes surplus to requirements – for ‘that is what they do in History or other related disciplines’. It would seem that much of IR would happily go along with Henry Ford’s historophobic assertion that ‘[h]istory is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today’.88 Thus when seen through this angle it is not surprising that the rich historical gems that lie deep beneath the surface of these shallow quarries lie undisturbed.

The problem of presentism leads directly into a fourth explanation: that one reason why these historical insights are ignored is the fact that they represent radically different per-spectives or ‘takes’ on the discipline that necessarily confront the normalised and settled subject matter. The myths have had a tremendous function in disciplining our thinking about fundamental issues in international politics, ‘normalising’ it as common sense and providing the parameters or outer boundaries within which the disciplinary field is contained or homesteaded. A genuine commitment to revisionism would necessitate a reconceptualisation of many of the fundamental frameworks of the discipline, as well as the need to reset its parameters or boundaries, not to mention invalidating the past as a (re)source from which we can pick historical data points at our leisure. This itself has several ramifications, one of which is that the Westphalian myth serves as a matter of intellectual convenience providing a simple and tidy story about the origin of sovereignty and the anarchic states system.89 But in so doing it effects an ahistorical temporalist sleight of hand, wherein 1648 marks the boundary of an endless and synchronic present, sepa-rated from the temporal Other of the pre-1648 era, which comprises the world where ‘there be imperial dragons and hierarchical demons’.

But it is precisely at this point where we confront perhaps the profoundest paradox. For painting the pre-1648 era as one in which imperial hierarchical formations domi-nated enables Eurocentric scholars to sanitise the post-1648 era of its imperialism and the very Eurocentric metanarratives upon which this has been founded. But the paradox emerges in the point that much of IR embodies a Eurocentric imperialist narrative of the creation of modern world politics, of which 1648 provides the initial moment. That is, in the Eurocentric imaginary, 1648 constitutes the first step of the two-step Eurocentric big bang theory of modern international relations. The first step entails the single-handed creation of the sovereign state, which could only have occurred in Europe owing to its civilisational exceptionalism. And having created sovereignty in the absence of non-European help and non-European encounters, so the second step flows on ineluctably, where Europe expands outwards and graciously bequeaths sovereignty and Europe’s panoply of civilised and rational institutions to the inferior Eastern societies, thereby remaking, as far as possible, the world in its own image. To break with this imperialist imaginary, upon which the myth of 1648 ultimately rests, is to fundamentally confront

87. See the discussion in J.M. Hobson and George Lawson, ‘What Is History in International Relations?’, Millennium 37, no. 2 (2008): 415–35; also Leonard Seabrooke, ‘Why Political Economy Needs Historical Sociology’, International Politics 44, no. 4 (2007): 390–413.

88. Interview in Chicago Tribune (25 May 1916).89. On this point, see Osiander, ‘Sovereignty’, 266.




the Eurocentric identity of the discipline. And given that such a leap is one that would be too confronting for most, it might well be this problem which ensures that the revisionists are often seen but rarely heard.

This Eurocentric identity-problem also lies behind the myth of 1919, which argues that the discipline was born on the back of a painful 48-month gestation period on the blood-drenched battlefields of Europe. For it is this tragic external event that furnishes the Whiggish reading of the birth of the infant IR and the development of the interwar idealist adolescent, blessed as it was with the noble if not utopian purpose of finding ways to solve the universal problem of war for the benefit of all peoples. But when the birth-year becomes stuck or frozen in this way, despite repeated attempts to budge or thaw it, then this provides a clear pointer to the possibility that there is an identity-based function that lurks beneath the ‘sovereignty of 1919’. This, we suggest, lies in the point that 1919 provides the IR community with a heart-warming rendition of the basis or function of their discipline: to find ever-better ways to solve the universal problem of war. But resuscitating the dark side of the discipline that lies deeply subli-mated within the deep recesses of the IR imagination, as inter alia we have done in this article, is vital not just to complete our narrative, but also to alert our readership to the need to question the very noble identity of the discipline that has been cherished for too long. For if these temporal boundaries have been set on the basis of a provincial European myth, rather than the universal aspirations which the discipline upholds, it is surely high time that these boundaries be transgressed and their border controls disbanded. Naturally, though, to tamper with the most cherished and heart-warming of Whiggish self-beliefs is extremely confronting. But it is necessary because while most myths in life are constructed precisely to make us feel good about ourselves, they often entail all sorts of detrimental consequences that are ignored or simply denied and covered up. For myths can be used in different ways and serve different functions. On the one hand, their quotidian or everyday meaning of myths are stories commonly held to be true, but which are not. On the other, myths can be anchors or ‘building blocks’ for thinking and theorizing, or ‘the frame into which other phenomena are fitted and then interpreted.’90 Our argument about the myths of 1648 and 1919 is that these are myths in both ways. While they are stories held to be true which turn out to be false, they have also served as a matrix for further thinking in IR. This might be one of the reasons why they have proved so difficult to dislodge.

How, then, might we begin to dismantle the border controls that characterise 1648 and 1919 within the discipline? Or, put differently, what are the prospects for bettering the record and for getting the discipline to self-reflexively engage with its own history? We urge a strong commitment to dialogue. Disciplinary dialogue can only work if we no longer accept short hands from students and colleagues that are often relayed through textbooks and lecture notes. There needs to be constant vigilance about references to the Westphalian sovereign states/states-system, to idealists and the great debates, and to the birth of the discipline. As lecturers and textbook-writers we should not fear that the

90. Martin Hall, ‘The Fantasy of Realism, or Mythology as Methodology’ in Harry Potter and International Relations ed. Daniel H. Nexon and Iver B. Neumann, (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 178.




students would thereby lose faith in the discipline, but rather understand our endeavour as a dynamic one where dialogue helps us to gain new and richer understandings of international phenomena. The discipline of IR might more profitably spend its time in taking intra- as well as extra-disciplinary dialogue seriously in order to end the Sisyphean process of endlessly repeating the same old tired mantras. But, ultimately, although most of the revisionist literature fails to confront Eurocentrism, a large part of our argument has been that it is precisely this which needs to be disbanded before we can adequately dismantle the border controls that police the myths of 1648 and 1919, thereby enabling the discipline to finally move on beyond its intellectual prison of its extant Sisyphean prison.

Acknowledgements

We would like to extend thanks to the two anonymous reviewers, and especially to Luke Ashworth, Robert Vitalis and Iver B. Neumann, for many vital pointers. We are also grateful for comments received at the 2010 Millennium Conference on Dialogue where the first draft of the article was presented. Of course, the usual rider applies. Benjamin de Carvalho and Halvard Leira are also grateful for funding from NUPI’s Centre for Global Governance.

Author Biographies

Benjamin de Carvalho is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), Norway.

Halvard Leira is a Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and Associate Professor (II) at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

John M. Hobson is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, UK.



International Organization Foundation

The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline: American and European Developments inInternational RelationsAuthor(s): Ole WaeverSource: International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 4, International Organization at Fifty:Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics (Autumn, 1998), pp. 687-727Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2601355Accessed: 25/11/2008 03:29

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Christian Büger European University Institute

[email protected]

Paradigms, Cultures and Translations: Seven Ways of Studying the Discipline of International Relations

Draft paper for presentation at the ‘Annual Conference of the International Studies Association’, Chicago, February 2007; in the panel ‘Turning a reflexive eye on the IR discipline III: The IR Discipline as (Open) Social

System’; Thursday 10:30 - 12:15

Draft paper, comments more then welcome! 1. Situation Knowledge Production: Why a Sociology of IR?1

"The way the profession remains strangely quiet, almost silenced, […], makes this a particularly relevant time to enquire into the links between theory and practice"

(Steve Smith 2002: 233)

“The predominant, essential character of the university is generally considered to reside in its ‘self-governance’: this shall be preserved. But have we also fully considered what this claim to the right of self-governance demands of us? Self governance means: to set ourselves the task and to determine ourselves the ways and means of realizing that task in order to be what we ourselves ought to be. But do we know who we ourselves are […]? Can we know that at all, without the most constant and most uncompromising and harshest self-examination?”

(Martin Heidegger 1991 [1933]: 29) Similar to other social science disciplines, International Relations (IR) is facing these days a

growing range of critics accusing it for being a useless discipline. Whether these critics come

from the inside or from the outside, they attack the very heart of the discipline. If an autonomous

discipline of international relations is a useless project, why should it persist? The cynic might

argue that the problems addressed by IR, such as international cooperation, war and peace are

persistent to a degree that also in future all sorts of social knowledge that can be made available

will be needed. This is however an argument that drives IR into arbitrariness and does not justify

the resources the members of the project have been granted, or the existence of a master

programme in IR (or even IR theory). The positivist scholar might argue for the superiority of

the formalized knowledge that an academic discipline can provide. Given that it is a conventional

wisdom also among politicians these days, that academics rarely speak in the name of truth and

scholastic knowledge has offered little problem solutions, how to justify the existence of an

1 For comments on an earlier version of this paper I like to thank Peter Wagner and the participants of his seminar “Whither the European social science? The sociology of forms of social knowledge applied to Europe”, European University Institute, Winter 2006. Further I like to thank Frank Gadinger, as much of what is presented here draws on our earlier discussions.

C. Büger – Seven ways of studying IR

2

autonomous discipline of international relations instead? Heideggers quote is suggestive in this

context. Firstly, he reminds us that the contemporary situation, or crisis as we might call it, is not

a novel situation. Secondly, he identifies a strategy of coping with the situation and defines a

concrete task: Defending self-governance requires the “constant and most uncompromising and

harshest self-examinations” by which scholars define their tasks and ways and means to fulfil

them.2

If we take this perspective, how has the project of IR examined itself?3 The majority of scholars

have opted for the path of examining the project by means of epistemological debates. Can we

consider these debates and examinations as the harsh and uncompromising kinds Heidegger calls

for? I suggest this is not the case. A focus on ideal types of producing knowledge and how it

represents reality, sidelines, undermines, and neglects decisive components of a disciplinary

project. Science is first and foremost a social practice. Science is materially and socially situated; it

requires material, financial and human resources; it is structured by socialization and

disciplinarization; it requires knowing subjects, who are gendered, marginalized or authorized; it

is negotiations about relevance, significance, instruments and methods; it requires a range of

institutions and techniques, and it is also a political practice involving ethical considerations of all

sorts.4 These are some of the forces and dimensions that have been identified by the sociology of

science. Hence if we attempt to follow Heidegger’s path, what is required is a systematic

alternative to the so far dominant epistemological reflections. This alternative consists in the

sociology of science perspective.

And indeed, if something has flourished in recent years, then it is a growing interest in studying

the project of IR in a sociological fashion. The past, presence and future of the discipline as one

way of studying ‘the international’ and problems of world politics has been of growing interest. A

nascent number of studies have re-told the early history of the discipline, provided different

readings of its birth and evolution. Scholars have become increasingly concerned how the

structure, mechanisms and practices of the discipline have shaped the way the international is

thought. Although the majority of these studies focus on methodological or pedagogical

2 The other alternatives might be to either leave the examination of IR to these bureaucratic evaluation programmes that are currently already permeating the sciences globally, or to retain from any justification and give up the idea of a scientific study of IR. 3 My question is not referring to examination techniques such as peer review. While this is the standard technique used to judge (examine) about the quality of scientific work, with its own problems (see Hellmann and Müller (2004)), it refers to the examination of individual or smaller groups work. I refer to collective endeavours. 4 Problems of scientific practice arise, for instance, when a librarian has not managed to organize literature needed in time, which was the case for me, and led to the exclusion of some major works from my discussion.


3

practices, in recent years, scholars have stressed the significance of other practices, institutions

and structural and environmental factors. Taken together, these studies present a new wave of

self-examinations: Self-examinations of how the discipline studies its issues, what it has achieved

and how it limits and enables its members. Disciplinary sociology as a significant field of inquiry

and as alternative to epistemological reflections has emerged.5 It would however be an

exaggeration to claim that disciplinary sociology has reached the core of the discipline.

As for the case of epistemological reflections6 there is a certain danger inherent to these

reflections, the danger of becoming an esoteric disciplinary island, where as David Newsom has

stressed it in a different context “even the humour is for members only”. As Pierre Bourdieu puts

this “Sociologists must avoid the temptation of indulging in the type of reflexivity that could be

called narcissistic, not only because it is very often limited to a complacent looking-back by the

researcher on his own experience, but also because it is its own end and leads to no practical

effect” (Bourdieu 2004:89, emphasis in original). Disciplinary sociology would be rather useless, if

it only focuses on the discipline in a closer sense and does not address the broader disciplinary

contexts such as the relation of the discipline to politics and society.

Jürgen Habermas (1978:13) has argued that reflections on science should be at least composed of

three elements: 1) empirical research on the organisation of scientific and technological progress;

2) reflexive analysis of the social situations (gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhang) in which science

is institutionally and methodological embedded and which decides the same time about the usage

of scientific created information’s; 3) the preparation of the practical usage of knowledge

(Erkenntnis) to be translated into technology and strategies as well as into communicative praxis.

Hence according to Habermas studies of science should reflect on the constitutive conditions of

knowledge production, on the organisation and practices of knowledge production and on

institutions and practices by which the knowledge is used, disseminated and put into praxis.

Bourdieu argues in the same spirit, when he claims (in a more wordy way):

"Practical reflexivity can take on its full force only if the analysis of the implications and

presuppositions of the routine operations of scientific practice is taken further into a genuine

critique (in Kant's sense) of the social conditions of possibility and the limits of the forms of

thought that the scientist ignorant of those conditions unwittingly engages in his research and

which, unknown to him, that is to say, in his place, perform the most specifically scientific

operations, such as the construction of the object of science." (Bourdieu 2004: 90)

5 I outline my understanding of the terms ‘disciplinary sociology’ and ‘sociology of IR’, I use interchangeable, below. 6 Peter Mayer (2003) provides a nice example, when he argues ironically that one of the reasons of why epistemological debates continue might lay in the fact that scholars engaged in it have invested so many resources that debates need to continue for a sufficient pay-off


4

These interrelated tasks are what a disciplinary sociology of IR needs to address. This does not

mean necessarily to follow the path outlined by Habermas (in Theorie und Praxis and Erkenntnis und

Interesse), or by Bourdieu (in Homo Academicus and Science of Science and Reflexivity).7 Rather the field

of science studies invites us to make use of their different, concepts, theories and results.

If these are the tasks, what needs to be done, in what way has the project of international

relations tackled these? If sociology of science is the path to go how far did IR researchers

walked on it so far? Or to phrase it with Heidegger’s words, what is the quality of the self-

examinations conducted by disciplinary sociology, are they as harsh and uncompromising

Heidegger calls for?

Overview of the paper

In this paper I attempt to address these questions in examining the self-examinations of the

disciplinary project of international relations. The objective of this paper is to read IR‘s

disciplinary sociology in the context of the broader sociology of (social) science discussions. Such

a strategy helps to identify what kind of analytical choices scholars have made, what their implicit,

silent assumptions are and where the strength and weaknesses of the contributions are. The

imperative behind such a discussion is to foster a needed dialogue between IR and sociology of

science (Wæver 1998) in order to improve the current discussion and future research. Although

disciplinary sociology in IR has meanwhile reached a quantitative level that is unique if compared

to reflections on political science in general and to other fields studying political phenomena,

many of these reflections have demonstrated an astonishing resistance to engage thoroughly with

the sociology of science. The primary tasks of this paper are hence: First, to identify and

systematize disciplinary self examinations; second, to suggest paths by which the examinations

can become as harsh and uncompromising as needed.

[As side-product, and a secondary task, taking disciplinary reflections as an object of analysis

might lead us to interpretations of what this thing called IR is, as the narratives produced by

disciplinary sociology are not only descriptive but also prescriptive. They are accounts of what IR

is, and what it is not, of what it should be and what it shouldn’t, of where it comes from and

where it should go. To use Heideggers words, they are attempts to determine what “we ourselves

ought to be”. Such a discussion might thus contribute to understand what IR is, what its place in

the world is and how it relates to other cultural spheres. On purpose I am using here the word

7 I would rather argue that both Habermas and Bourdieu have failed in their own standards. This is, however, a different discussion.


5

might, as my discussion builds up on a selective reading of the literature and is limited to studying

texts, rather then practices.]

The following section two, firstly, provides an overview of science studies traditions as a

background. Secondly, I shall conduct an inventory of IR’s disciplinary sociology, identify seven

ways of studying IR, thirdly, criticize the achievements of the seven ways in the light of the

described challenges and conclude in sketching persistent problematiques in IR’s disciplinary self-

examinations. Section three is a sketch on how to proceed with disciplinary self-examinations

from a Cultural Studies of Science perspective and section four a summary combined with a note on

self-reflexivity.

2. Examining self-examinations: Sociology of Science and IR’s disciplinary sociology If we start from a wide understanding of the term ‘self-examination’ we might include a wide

array of studies. To some degree any study summarizing the state-of-the-art of a disciplinary

subfield or critically judging about existing literature is a self-examination. This would be however

a too broad and rather un-operative, useless understanding for the purpose of this paper. A more

narrow notion is used here. I consider as self-examinations, those studies that are a) written with

the objective to conduct self-examinations, b) relate themselves in some way to the project of

disciplinary sociology, signified by a degree of reflexivity on the issue and are c) build to some

degree on empirical observations, hence are not limited to the discussion of metaphysical

problems.8 Further, I assume that contributions to disciplinary sociology set up a relation to the

discussions in the sociology of science. Such a relation can be composed of either a quoting

strategy or the direct usage of concept, models and results of the sociology of science.

Sociology of Science: Four traditions

As a background for my following discussion, and given that most IR researchers are not familiar

with sociology of science, let me explain what I understand by it. Sociology of science is

conventionally split into four traditions.9

8 Hence prominent state-of-the-art articles and edited volumes, some would expect from an appraisal of self-examinations, are excluded from my discussion. 9 For such a separation and general introductions see Bourdieu (2004: 4-31), Felt, Nowottny and Taschwer (1995), Lynch (1993:39-116), Rouse (1992), and Law (2004) on methods. Despite otherwise noted, these are the hinterland of the following discussion. For an exceptionally concise and short summary of myths about science and science studies findings see Traweek (1996).


6

1) A functionalist wing in the footsteps of Robert Merton, primarily interested in the institutions

of science and the identification of social norms that should govern science. Mertonians work in

the frame of a separation of labour in which the past and the ‘reconstruction of progress’ is the

meal for the historians, a philosophy of science is responsible for scientific content and concepts,

and what is left, or cannot be explained otherwise, falls in the realm of the sociologist.

2) With the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s seminal Structure of Scientific Revolution such a separation

was successfully challenged and research developed historically after Kuhn builds up on the

assumption that research on the sciences needs to integrate time, content and any social

dimension of the sciences. I am hence speaking in the following of post-Kuhnian thought when

research does reject an implicit or explicit frame of a separation of labour. In marking this

difference, scholars prefer the term of ‘science studies’10 over the term of ‘sociology of science’ to

highlight that any studies of scientific practice is a transdisciplinary project (Weingart 2003) and

not a ‘sociology of’. Accordingly I will use this label, science studies, in the following.11

Kuhn’s major contribution (and those following in his lines) is twofold. First he successfully

challenges the idea that the development of science is a continuous process. In introducing the

concepts of normal science and revolutionary shifts, he demonstrated the discontinuities and

breaks that mark the history of science. Second, Kuhn re-introduced the idea of a scientific

community12. He argued that scientists form a closed community whose research draws on a

well-defined range of problems and who use methods adapted to this work. Instead of

determined by the rules as set out by philosophers of science, or the norms suggested by

Mertonians, scientific practices are attempts to solve concrete problems, regarded as ‘puzzles’.

For Kuhn the problems stem from what he called ‘paradigm’ or ‘disciplinary matrix’: A set of

scientific achievements, theories and methods that are taken for granted. The actions of scientists

are hence determined by paradigms, and the community becomes indistinguishable from this

paradigm. Kuhn was not only criticized for his under-specification of the concept of paradigm,

but also for cutting of the scientific group from any external world. Although it is Kuhn’s merit

to have brought back the idea of scientific community governed by a central norm (paradigm)

10 Other conventionally used terms are ‘social studies of science’ or ‘science and technology studies’. Both highlight distinct features, while the former wants to preserve the notion of explicit social explanations of science, the other stresses that science and technology cannot be separated. However, I came to prefer the term ‘science studies’ as the most neutral one, while ‘sociology of science’ is the most popular term. 11 Consequently I also would prefer to speak about ‘IR studies’, instead of ‘disciplinary sociology’ or ‘sociology of IR’, however I am afraid this would cause even more confusion. 12 I am using here “re-introduced”, given that Kuhn largely copied his concept of scientific communities, although rephrased under the label “paradigm”, from the work of Ludwik Fleck, that was largely forgotten. See Felt, Nowottny, Taschwer (1995: 127-128) and the historical reconstruction in Schäfer and Schnelle (1980).


7

and drawing attention to the discontinuities of scientific history, with this problems Kuhn fell

back behind earlier more sophisticated thought.13

3) A third tradition, the ‘strong programme’, sets up on such a critique of Kuhn’s work. This

tradition is associated with the work of scholars conventionally referred to as the Edinburgh school

following the writings of David Bloor and Barry Barnes and the Bath group following Harry

Collins. The seminal work in this context is Bloor’s Knowledge and Social Imagery, first published in

1976. To construct a conclusive theory of scientific knowledge, Bloor argued for four major

principles that should be followed: 1) causality: any proposed explanation must be causal; 2)

impartiality: the researcher must be impartial towards the ‘truth’ or ‘falsehood’ of any assertions

made by the actors studied; 3) symmetry: the same means must be used to explain both beliefs

considered to be true by the actors and those judged to be ‘false’; 4) self-reflexivity: in principle

science studies must be open to the same treatment as those sciences studied. Given the notion

of causality is interpreted even by Bloor himself widely as also including ‘understanding’, these

principles form the core principles of any contemporary science studies.14

Besides outlining these core principles for science studies, the merits of Bloor, Barnes, Collins

and followers lay in clearly showing empirically the underdetermination of any theory by data. As

case studies exemplify, belief preferences, tactics of persuasion, opportunistic strategies and local

conditions such as equipment and procedures define to a considerable degree the outcome of

scientific practices. Further, controversies are rarely solved by evidence or by rational means.

Controversies come to be settled by diverse strategies of boundary drawing and of persuasion or

even by dishonest means. Hence in this tradition scientific achievements are better explained by

social ‘factors’.

The strong programme has however, been criticized for failing to address the wider (external)

environmental conditions shaping scientific actions. Much the same as Kuhn did, a given

autonomy of science was assumed, the attention was centred on the immediate local environment

of scientists and a wider context largely ignored. The main criticism is however that researchers

have overstretched the “social” explanation in a way in which the object of analysis does not

matter anymore.15

13 For instance the related work of the sociology of knowledge by Karl Mannheim or, as mentioned already, the work of Ludwik Fleck. 14 Nonetheless there is considerable disagreement about the meaning of these principles, see the discussions in Pels (1996) and Latour (2005). 15 Such an interpretation led to what has to become known as the science wars. See Latour (1999, chapter one) and Topper (2005) for provoking discussions of the science wars. While Bruno Latour offers a ‘truce’, Keith Topper shows how the science wars find their parallels in political science’ Perestroika Movement.


8

4) A fourth tradition initially took the perspective of the strong programme as starting point and

used it to conduct ethnographic studies of scientists in action. Researchers moved closer to the

sites where scientific knowledge was produced and followed scientists minutely. The key finding

was that

“we cannot start from a particular division between systems like the one between the scientific

community and the rest of the social context and then determine their interaction. As direct

observation studies of scientific work indicate, the social context of scientific work is both more

restricted and extended than the notion of a speciality community suggests. It is more restricted

(more local) in that researchers draw upon a variety of variables that are situationally contingent.

For example, their decisions may be influenced by measurement instruments which happen to

stand around in the laboratory, or by arguments which come up in a technical discussion. The

context of scientific work must be defined more broadly than previously suggested in that these

variables and arguments are not, in principle, limited to (bounded by) the scientific community.

Direct observation of scientific work suggests that laboratory operations are embedded within

transscientific fields of interaction and discourse. Transscientific fields are not logical classes

whose members share specific characteristics. They are constituted by what is transmitted

between agents; they come through actual or potential (discursive) interaction and

communication relevant to what happens in the laboratory. “ (Knorr Cetina 2005 [1983]: 191)

The local is translated to the global and the other way around in specific sites such as the

laboratory.16 To give an illustration what and how these researchers studied scientist actions,

consider the box below, which is part of an excerpt of an interview John Law and Michael

Williams (1982) conducted with two groups of scientists (studying the capacity of polymers to

stimulate the uptake of substrate by cells):

Box 1: Interview excerpt, reproduced, without permission, from Law and Williams (1982: 535)

16 I shall discuss shortly if political science has laboratories or not below (7).


9

Both groups under study were attempting to write a publication together. What Law and

Williams identify is how scientists attempt to produce a paper that has the maximum impact and

is perceived by their colleagues as both reliable and relevant. Law and Williams conclude that

scientists in many ways behave like entrepreneurs: they conduct market research, evaluate the

relevance of their study to this group or that and then “are trying to array people, events, findings

and facts in such a way that this array is interpretable by readers as true, useful, good work, and

the rest.” (Law and Williams 1982:537). In sum these scientists arrange a network (array or

transscientific field) of resources (events, findings and facts) and people (earlier researcher, the

readers and themselves, the authors). That those networks are not necessarily composed of

scientific resources and people, becomes clear already from the above interview excerpt, as the

scientists have already in mind future funding. While funding is an obvious link, others have

shown how wide the repertoire of resources and people decisive for scientific research can be.

For instance, Bruno Latour gives over his writings vast evidence of how economic interests,

concerns of politicians (such as national security concerns) and scientific interests merge and

become assembled in one network. For instance, the work of Frederic Joliot trying to reduce the

absorption speed of neutrons to make use of nuclear power, is a good case for such a network. A

network of Zairian miners (providing the uraniumoxid), French import companies (importing the

material), German scientific research, leading to the threat for the French war ministry that the

Nazi Regime could use nuclear energy earlier, spies identifying this threat, and, of course, a

research team at the Collège de France, etc. These are only parts of the networks Latour (1999)

identifies. To understand what is going on in this network, protagonists of this wing of science

studies, made use of the notion of translation as developed in the sociological writings of Michael

Serres. According to Callon (1986:197), translation in this sense can be understood in the

following way17:

“translation postulates the existence of a shared field of meanings, preoccupations, and interests.

[…] If it concedes the existence of divergences and irreconcilable differences, it nevertheless

affirms the underlying unity of distinct elements. To translate it to create convergences and

homologies out of particularities”

What came to be known initially as laboratory studies or laboratory constructivism is today much more

difficult to grasp by a unifying label. The protagonists of this ethnographic way of studying

science, just discussed, have developed their thoughts into what has become known as Actor-

17 See further on the notion of translation Callon (1986), Callon and Latour (1981), Latour (1999, 2005),


10

Network Theory.18 Others advocate for an ‘ethnomethodology’ of science (Lynch 1993). In the U.S.

context the more integrative denomination of “cultural studies of science” (Rouse 1992) has been

established for describing the ongoing work in this tradition. Rouses stresses with this signifier

that the study of sciences should be understood as part of other attempts that focus on the

emergence of meaning within human practices.19

Summary and back to IR

To take Bloor’s principle of self-reflexivity serious, my short introduction of science studies

should not be understood as a narrative of intellectual progress. In the footsteps of all four

traditions sketched, contemporary science studies research is produced. I have conducted this

discussion to make clear what the relations of IR’s disciplinary sociology to science studies in

principle can be. I suggest that the four traditions are the major resources disciplinary sociology

can draw on. This does not mean that these are the only resources available from science studies.

Science studies has developed as such a lively field of research that it is nearly impossible for an

informed dilettante to provide any comprehensive overview. Consequently if IR has picked up

any other line, than discussed, we should be happy about it. Nonetheless the discussed traditions

are, in some way, the minimum we would expect IR has made use of, if the idea of a disciplinary

sociology is taken serious.

What becomes, however, already visible from my short science studies discussion is that if the

tasks I identified with Habermas and Bourdieu – to reflect on the organisation of knowledge

production, the environmental conditions shaping knowledge production and usage and the

translation of knowledge into praxis as well as the interactions between politics and science – are

to be followed, we need to pay close attention to the last tradition of a ‘cultural studies of

science’. That there is a need to turn to the perspective outlined by this programme I will

(hopefully) develop in section three.

So far I argued in following Heidegger that there is a need for self-examinations to cope with the

current pressures put on IR. I argued that self-examinations which devote themselves exclusively

to the discussion of epistemological problems are not sufficient in this regard. Instead, I stressed

that self examinations are best conducted in the spirit of reflexivity induced by a sociology of

science. Such a reflexivity should however avoid becoming narcissistic, through paying attention

18 See Latour (1999, 2005: 9-12) and Law (1999) for a discussion of these terms. 19 Latour (2005) has made a similar move when he speaks of that the social interpretation of the sciences might have failed, but has led to a complete new understanding of what constitutes the social. Latour (e.g. in his Parliament of Things) and many other have consequently meanwhile moved far beyond “only” studying science.


11

to the organisation and conditions of knowledge production as well as the translation of

knowledge into praxis. Finally, I outlined shortly on which major resources from science studies a

disciplinary sociology of IR can draw upon. Now let us move to the question of how IR has

conducted self-examinations by disciplinary sociology.

Seven ways of studying the discipline

In 1998 Ole Wæver has argued quite strongly that “the relationship between IR and sociology of

science is virtually nonexistent” (Wæver 1998:692). In focussing primarily on histories of the

discipline, he stressed that those “are usually not based on systematic research or clear methods.

They are, at best, elegant restatements of 'common knowledge' of our past, implicitly assuming

that any good practitioner can tell the history of the discipline” (Wæver 1998:691). Five (six?)

years later, the situation did not look much different for him (Wæver 2003). Wæver’s pessimistic

assessment needs to be however understood as an argument for strengthening the link between

IR and Sociology of Science. While this warmly welcomed, I would suggest more caution in

making such a claim. First, IR’s constructivists have drawn in many ways on science studies,

(maybe most prominently on Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality and Ian

Hacking’s The Social Construction of What?), this however has been done in an epistemological or

ontological way20, rather than in an self-examination way, as understood here. Second, Thomas

Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolution has considerably shaped IR discussions. One is rather

tempted to say that Wæver’s claim is right in the sense that the signifier ‘sociology of science’ and

‘science studies’ do not exist in IR – it seems that in IR everything that ever has been written on

science, runs under ‘philosophy of science’. In many ways IR scholars heavily trained in

epistemology debates, tend, whenever they are faced with the sociology of science, to see only

philosophy of science, as this is what they are familiar with.

Nonetheless, Wæver’s claim can be used to ask in what way IR’s disciplinary sociology has

actually made use of sociology of science. If we follow broadly the tasks set out by Habermas and

Bourdieu, this means primarily how IR has used post-Kuhnian (science studies) thoughts, as

these are the resources addressing these issues. I shall question the achievements of the

disciplinary literature has made in settling the three tasks and in providing the necessary means of

reflexivity in the Heideggerian sense. [Further if I follow my secondary target in gathering some

knowledge about the self-image of the discipline by studying self-examinations, attention needs

to be paid on how IR scholars construct their object of study.] In sum to reflect on the self-

examinations of IR’s disciplinary sociology, I suggest to address the following questions:

20 The epistemic community approach, for instance, claims to make use of Kuhn and Fleck.


12

1) How has IR mobilized the resources of the sociology of sciences so far? Is Ole Wæver

diagnosis adequate?

2) In what way has IR coped with the three tasks set out by Habermas and Bourdieu?

3) What were the reasons for doing sociology of IR? Autonomy preservation in a

Heideggerian sense?

4) [What subjects of objectification have been studied? What are the ‘ourselves’ in the study?

What is the underlying model of science?]

I shall start with an inventory of disciplinary sociologies.21 Rather then discussing every single

self-examination, I conduct a clustering. The categories are constituted by the networks of

articles, scholars citing each other and similar problems being addressed by similar means. My list

is not meant to suggest any hierarchical order or a historical narrative. The main purpose of the

list is to demonstrate what a lively field disciplinary sociology is and to provide an initial

assessment in the light of the above questions. Such an approach has, of course, its own

shortcomings. Given that my perspective is wider than what is usually understood as disciplinary

sociology, this comes at the cost of depth. My reading is selective; I will not be able to do justice

to all the works I refer to; etc.

I suggest that disciplinary sociology can be usefully ordered in seven categories – seven ways of

studying the discipline. However, categories overlap and the list is open ended.22

1) The textbook and aesthetic genres

The most conventional way of examining the discipline is to be found in the format of textbooks.

Textbooks attempt to provide overviews for newly arriving students and external (academic or

non-academic) consumers. In their objective textbooks differ from other genres of literature.

In his classic 1935 study the Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact , Ludwik Fleck differentiated

between three types of scientific practice that manifest themselves in three different genres of

scientific publications. Fleck argued that the three types differ over the Erkenntnisziele (epistemic

goals) they follow and how they relate to non-community members – what Fleck called exoteric

communities in contrast to esoteric communities of scholars.

Textbook science – Fleck spoke of Populärwissenschaft (popular science) – forms one type.

Textbook sciences are constituted of these research practices which are the closest related to

exoteric communities. Their key objective is Anschaulichkeit (a term difficult to translate: maybe

imaginary clearness?), to develop images and symbols of a research object to make it 21 I use the plural on purpose here. As the perspectives I discuss are, although related, very different. 22 Several works did not find their space here, but might in a future version of the paper. Most notably those are studies from feminism, and subfields of IR. (see also Fn. 4).


13

comprehensive for exoteric communities. Rather then being interested in specific evidence of

detailed components, the goal is to provide knowledge of an object by providing imaginaries.

Fleck contrasted this type of research practice with two others, Fachwissenschaft in Handbuchform

(specialized science in handbook format) and Zeitschriftenwissenschaft (journal science). The latter

types focus on evidence and detail, but yet differ. The objective of handbook science is to

provide critical summaries into an ordered system. Journal science is of a personal and

provisional character. According to Fleck journal science follows individual standpoints and

personal working methods in a way that an addition of articles do not make up a unified organic

whole. Articles are incongruent and contradictory. However, research articles are always related

to handbook science, as they usually relate themselves to a unified whole, in providing a state of

the art section or in ‘making a contribution to the literature’. This kind of science is none the less

always tied to an individual and his work, which becomes obvious in the usage of terms such as

“I am” and a defensive style of reasoning such as “I attempt to show”, etc. In contrast handbook

science is de-personalized, detached from personal opinions and works. Therefore terms such as

“it is”, etc. are used.23

Fleck’s highlights the different objectives of research practices and that they are related to

different audiences. His distinction is useful as it, first, stresses that textbooks are a very different

genre then other forms of science and usually not address the esoteric community. Hence we

shall not expect a high degree of reflexivity or a sophisticated usage of science studies from IR

textbooks. Nonetheless, also textbooks are in need of an ordering device, which in principle can

be drawn from science studies resource. Second, some of the publications in my inventory come

in the format of handbook science (Schmidt 2002?), the majority is, however, journal science.

a) IR textbooks usually start either with a certain definition of the object of analysis of IR (what is

international relations?), with an introductory discussion of what theory is or can be, or with a

short historical narrative of what has been, in the view of the authors, the important steps in the

development of the discipline.24 These introductions also provide the ordering device of the

books. Either, the device is the history of world politics, and IR developments are described as a

(causal) reaction to world political events. Or, some interpretation of Kuhn’s ‘paradigm’ is used

as a more sophisticated version of speaking about theory. Then, or, if the ordering device is more 23 In Science in action Latour (1987) makes a quite similar argument, he speaks of the construction of facts and blackboxing. For an argument of the importance of handbooks and state-of-the-art sections to understand scientific practice, see my discussion of Rouse in section three. Rouse stresses that these are means by which the narrative structure constitutive of science is reconfigured. 24 See the discussion in Wæver (2004) and in Enterline (2004). Notable exceptions I ran across are: Cynthia Weber’s recent introduction that uses the concept of ‘myths’. Greg Fry and Jacinta O’Hagans’s edited volume (2000) which uses the notion of “images of world politics”. Ole Wæver and Iver Neumann’s volume on IR’s Masters in the Making.


14

explicit historically, we get the well known stories of great debates and phases of hegemony

(Smith 1995). In contrast to single authored, edited textbooks usually start with a short

introductory essay in which a thesis about the development of the discipline is presented and the

following contributions are vaguely sorted into that. Peter Wagner (2001:3) gives us a well

reasoned critique of such approaches when he argues that these

"adopt a perspective, in more or less concealed guise, in which all prior debates and disputes

gradually and possibly unevenly, but equally unfailingly, lead to the state of conceptual and

empirical accomplishment that has been reached in the present. The authors of such accounts

are often active practitioners of the social science rather than historians of ideas or sociologists

of knowledge and the sciences. As such, they find it – understandably – difficult to imagine a

higher state of knowledge being attained at times other than their own, be it in the past or in the

future.(3)

As we will see in the following, this is however not only a problem that arises in textbooks.

Rather it is a common device to construct a state-of-the art as a trajectory of events, paradigm

dominance and great debates.

b) Disciplinary self examinations also come in a format not considered by Fleck. Thus we might

add a fourth genre of more sublime character, a genre that can be called a ‘commemorating’ or

‘aesthetic’ account. Such a type includes speeches given at anniversaries celebrations of an

academic association or, plenary speeches by newly elected presidents of associations, for

instance the ISA presidential speech. This genre is textbook science oriented, as highly imaginary

tools are used, but it differs as primarily the esoteric community is addressed. Similar to

handbook science it attempts to order and organize scientific developments, but yet it is most

often highly personal in character. In difference to article science it is less oriented at evidence

and engages in more aesthetic or artful reasoning. Beside speeches, examples of this kind are to

be found in the Pieces of our Craft section of International Studies Perspectives. Although these accounts

are telling, especially if made into an object of analysis in its own, we will not expect that they

engage with science studies, although some of them might implicitly.

2) Progress Assessments and ‘Paradigm Battles’

Thomas Kuhn’s work has not only heavily influenced the practice of writing textbooks, but led to

a real cottage industry of attempts to describe and to judge about the intellectual progress of IR.25

25 See the related contribution of Elman and Elman, Keohane, Vasquez, Hellmann (ed.), which I do not (yet) explore in full detail here. See also Guzzini (1998: 1-12).


15

While some scholars attempt to apply Kuhn’s approach to IR, contemporaries have been more

interested in the Kuhn-Lakatos exchange and discovered the toolbox of Lakatos’ Methodology of

Scientific Research Programmes. If we are tempted to search for a reason, why IR has been more

interested in philosophy of science rather than science studies, we find one of the crossroads

here: In contrast to the Kuhn-Lakatos exchange, the Kuhn-Bloor-exchange, so important for the

development of science studies, was never introduced to IR.

Kuhn’s role in IR starts to get problematic with the inflationary use of the term paradigm in

which it has gradually lost its Kuhnian meaning (e.g. Legro and Moravcik 1999, Smith 1995 ) and

the discovery of Kuhn’s concept of incommensurability to mark boundaries between different IR

‘theories’26. Rather than understanding IR as a scientific community governed by the paradigm of

studying global politics and trans- or interstate relations as “international relations” – and not as

macrosociology or international law– the term paradigm was now understood as referring to

theories. While it was difficult to argue for revolutionary shifts in IR given the continuing

multiplicity of research approaches, when ‘realism’ lost the cold war, the ‘demise’ of ‘realism’,

provided the opportunity to do so. Nonetheless realists are fortunately still with us. Although it is

doubtful if the Kuhnian concept of scientific communities ever reached IR, the move to Lakatos

triggered by Kuhn, even worsened the situation. Lakatos’ Methodology was initially introduced as a

more reflective, methodological way to appraise if the “work is getting any better” (Elman and

Elmann 2002:1) As Frank Gadinger (2002) has shown in his examination of applications of

Lakatos in IR, Methodology transformed into a “discursive weapon”. Instead of gathering

knowledge of the social processes and practice constitutive of IR and ‘causing’ its development,

studies were primarily interested in claiming this or that ‘research programme’ ‘degenerative’ or

‘progressive’. Whether the critics of this “paradigmatism” (Hellmann) might have meanwhile

triumphed or not, several protagonists in this debate have developed their thoughts further and

provided key contributions in other ways of studying IR.27

3) Emancipation of Non-American IR: Leaving Stanley Hoffmann’s shadow.

A third way of studying IR is centred on the quest if the discipline is structured by a ‘hegemony’

of U.S. IR. Scholars either criticize the discipline for being to American, or demonstrate, with

obvious emancipative intentions, that IR is practiced in Non-American sites very differently. The

standard reference is Stanley Hoffmann’s (1977) initial diagnosis of an ‘Americanness’ of IR.

Hoffmann’s contribution is today seen as innovatively (e.g. Jœrgensen 2000, Smith 2002, Wæver

26 When I here and in the following refer to the term ‘theory’ I mean a system of statements (a narrative) that is intelligible and considered to be significant, see my following discussion in section three. 27 This is quite obvious if we trace the writings of Steve Smith and Ole Wæver: Paradigmatism+Hoffmann=recent disciplinary sociology?


16

1998) as he related the emergence of IR to specific interests of the U.S. policy elite (leaders

looking for some intellectual compass) and identified three institutional ‘factors’, of why the IR

developed in the U.S. and not in Europe: 1) the link between the scholarly community and

government, which meant that academics and policy-makers moved back and forth between

universities and think-tanks, and government; 2) the existence of wealthy foundations which

linked the kitchens of power" with the "academic salons", and thus could create a "seamless

pluralism to link policy concerns of government to the academic research community”; 3) the

fact that the universities were flexible and operated in a mass education market which allowed

them to innovate and specialize in their research activities, they were able to respond to the

demands of government in a way that was impossible in the European University sector of the

time. Such an understanding is seen as innovative as Hoffmann acknowledged the interrelation

between politics and IR in an elite network, funding as an important device and the structure of

an educational system. Hoffman’s thesis was largely rediscovered in the late 1980s and 1990s

(Smith 1987, Krippendorff 1987)28. From a contemporary perspective this led to three ways of

responding to Hoffmann’s argument.

a) With only minor changes in the argument, Steve Smith has discussed a diagnosed

ethnocentrism of IR over several articles (1987, 2000, 2002, 2004, etc.). For Smith IR is still tied

to the interests of American foreign policy elites, much the same way as Hoffmann described it.

This is considered to be problematic as it favours a distinct view of what international relations

and IR is, and what and how it should be studied. In his most recent contribution (2004), he

investigates how IR treats questions of violence and concludes “that the discipline’s definition of

violence looks very closely linked to the concerns of the white, rich, male world of the power

elite” (Smith 2004:510). Smith claims to make use of a sort of genealogy a la early Foucault. His

method is describing the development of IR theorizing and then linking it to other discourses. A

range of other authors have meanwhile used different data and methods. Nosal (2001), for

instance, has focussed on 14 U.S. textbooks to identify what visions of the world shape IR. He

concludes that these texts “portray the world to their readers from a uniquely American point of

view” (Nasal 2001:l.p.). Others also focussed on IR publications but did so by statistical means

(Wæver 1998, Friedrichs 2004, and earlier Holsti 1985). These statistical analyses claimed that

there is indeed an American hegemony, but that there is an evolving European counter-

hegemony (a drifting apart). Statistical analyses however face a not easy solved methodological

problem of nationalism, implied through the memberships of scholars and institutions in multiple

28 See Smith 1987, fn.2 for related studies re-discovering Hoffmann.


17

communities.29 For instance, is a scholar who has made his career in the U.S academia, but is

German in citizenship and mother-tongue, a European, a German or an U.S. scholar? Is a scholar

with U.S. citizenship, based at a Scandinavian University, publishing mainly in European outlets

an American scholar?

b) Others have responded to the Hoffman quest by mobilizing the concept of schools (see

Wæver’s (2004) discussion of this concept). Most visible advocates of an ‘English school’ have

stressed that such a perspective must be returned to the discipline (e.g. Buzan 2001, Dunne 1995,

1998). In contrast to the above discussed texts, these authors where less interested in interpreting

the discipline but to do something about the American hegemony, what Buzan (2001) called

interestingly “self referential reflection”. While Smith, Dunne and others attempt to secure that

the British IR tradition is preserved and the US academics will continue to listen to British voices,

a range of case studies has sought to show that there is even other than Anglo-Saxon IR

scholarship.

c) National Community Studies

Numerous studies have meanwhile demonstrated at which sites IR has grown academically and

how.30 The primary perspective has been on ‘national communities’, usually referred to as those

academics based in a nation state or by the language they publish. The findings where that there

is an astonishing variety of national IR communities, who differ over how they dependent they

are or relate to the U.S., that many interesting achievements have been reached, which stay often

inaccessible for wider audiences as they are not published in English language. These studies face

in many ways the methodological nationalism problem, discussed above. Many of these national

case studies cumulated into more eclectic descriptions of the data the scholar could find or in

narratives in which the scholars describe their own experiences in a national system. To

encounter such a tendency scholars mobilize sociology of science to study IR more

systematically. If we feel comfortable with a national perspective, these have been Danish

contributions in the first place (the Danish way of doing disciplinary sociology?). Let me discuss

two contributions which have reconfigured the study of IR in a more systematic way.

1) Wæver’s 1998 article published in the anniversary issue of International Organizations, was maybe

the first to speak explicitly of a ‘sociology of IR’. Wæver conducted numerous works in this

article: He conducted an analysis of publishing pattern, which let him to the conclusion that 29 Problems of this kind are discussed in Holden (2004), Wæver (2003). 30 To numerous to be cited for now, see Jœrgensen (2000:12), Wæver (2003:2) and Holden (2006: 232) for collections. Studies meanwhile come from all over the world, Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa?.


18

European and US IR are drifting apart. He developed Hoffmann’s institutional factors further in

mobilizing the ‘discourse coalition model’ developed by Peter Wagner and Björn Wittrock to

conduct more systematic national case studies and sketched how this model makes sense of the

development of France, Germany, UK and US. Finally he introduced the structural model of

Richard Whitley, he is now continuing to develop31. Surprisingly the article was more recited for

its drifting apart thesis and in introducing a national perspective as pivotal. Hence Wæver’s article

should be seen as the key reconfiguration move to national community studies. Nonetheless the

discourse coalition model as a systematic way of relating political, bureaucratic, cultural and

intellectual developments was not picked up in these.

2) While Wæver explicitly used work from the sociology of science, Jœrgensen (2000, 2003,

Jœrgensen and Knutsen 2006) has developed a more eclectic “cultural-institutional” approach –

not as an alternative to Wæver’s interpretation of Wagner and Wittrock, as one would expect, but

in largely ignoring it. Jœrgensen attempts to analyse IR by “connecting” three explanatory

variables to the developments of IR. These three variables are political culture, the organizational

culture of both science bureaucracies and university systems, and the “habits, attitudes and

professional discourse” (Jœrgensen 2002) within the social sciences and humanities. With some

reference to science studies in the latter variable (Bourdieu, Wagner, Gunnarson), he nonetheless

does not argue why such an understanding is superior to others (either Wæver’s discourse

coalitions or maybe even Hoffmann’s three factors). Rather he claims that the three variables are

self-explanatory by pointing to the ‘facts’.

[…]

Despite the work of Joergensen (2000) and Wæver (1998) it is surprising how weak the relations

to science studies are in this network of studies. For instance Friedrich’s book (2004) survives

without reference to any sociology of science (or bibliometric) literature.32 The very recent edited

volume on International Relations in Europe by Jœrgensen and Knudsen (2006), which shows an

explicit concern for scientific institutions33, manages to go along with some references to IR’s

disciplinary history (largely Schmidt 1998, 2002) and a discussion of Ole Wæver use of Richard

Whitley works and Bourdieu’s sociology of science, in one of the chapters (Holden 2006).

31 See my discussion of way 6. 32 See also the related critiques of Friedrichs book by Holden (2005) and Stritzel. 33 For instance Lucarelli and Menotti (2006: 48) attempt to identify “Pattern of interaction among domestic scholars and between them and the external community, and domestic factors that influenced the current shape of the country’s IR Production”


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4) The Disciplines Historiographers

Although contemporary studies in the emancipative network (way 3) gives some reference to IR

historiographies, Gerald Holden (2006:226) is right in stating that “historiography and

investigations of non-Anglophone communities have up until now been pursued largely in

isolation from each other”. If this is true, it is an interesting observation as both (way 3 and 4)

originate from the 1970s and 1980s greyzone of textbooks, histories of the discipline and other

state-of-the-art products (a good examples is Holsti 1985). To isolate historiography as distinct

network of studies required much the same reconfiguration work Wæver (1998) and others have

done for the case of the emancipative studies. I would suggest that such a re-shuffling was

initially undertaken by Schmidt (1994) and stabilized through the major books by Guzzini (1998),

and Schmidt (1998), which led finally to the declaration of a historiographical turn (Bell 2001) – a

timely practice.

Historiographies prime interest can be seen in deconstructing the identity of the discipline by

reading its politics of history (most explicitly Thies 2002). The tools have been that of intellectual

history (John Gunnell, Quentin Skinner), rather than of sociology of science. Although Guzzini

explicitly adopts a Kuhnian framework (and might be better put in way 2), his reconstruction of

realism is maybe most widely read among historiographers.

The main case of historiography has been the birth of the discipline and the first great debate34 as

the locus where the narrative (or myth) of International Relations begins. The issue was less if

there was anything such as a first debate, but how the narrative of two camps of scholars led to

the exclusion of interesting scholarship and still defines what the discipline today is, and what it is

not. A comparable case arises for where the birthplace of IR is located, whether it has been

developed out of classical political theory, and hence is a subfield of political theory, whether its

birthplace is the founding of the first chair in international studies in Scotland, and hence is an

academic enterprise shaped by the idea of European universities, whether it was established as

part of the post world war one negotiations and institutionalized as peace research think tanks,

and hence is a an policy-oriented endeavour, or whether it is located in the founding of the

American Political Science Association and hence a professional science in the U.S. sense –

locating the birth of the discipline is political in so far as it implies a distinct vision of what IR is

and what it is not.

From presentism to historiographies internal/external distinction

34 Besides the already mentioned Ashworth (2002), Quirk and Vigneswaran (2005) and the more fact oriented Wilson (1998).


20

The major re-configuring move conducted by Schmidt (1994, 1998) was first in accusing other

history writers of using history primarily as a device for legitimizing or delegitmizing a particular

identity. This is what Schmidt called presentism. Second, he mobilizes Gunnell’s approach to

conduct a more sophisticated historical case study. This seems to be the more important move as

it opened the debate of how history can be studied reflexive35 – and indeed the move which leads

me to speak of historiography as a way of studying IR.

In contrast to earlier studies that claim to have solved the problem by posing “W questions: what

to study, where to study, study by whom?, why study? How to study, what not to study, and what

was left out?” (Holsti 1998: 18). While all these questions are important, how shall they be

answered? For Schmidt, Gunnell’s ‘internal’ approach provided a convincing answer to guide

such a research. What is problematic about Schmidt’s move is that he develops the enemy image

of a (presentist) ‘external’ account and seems not to use, according to Holden (2002), his

approach empirically appropriate. Despite the existing differences between Gunnell and Skinner,

in his recent reformulation Schmidt (2006:257-268) in which the immediate academic

environment is the starting point of research and the job is “to reconstruct as accurately as

possible the history of the conversation that has been constitutive of academic IR” (257),

Schmidt blurs his earlier boundary between an external and an internal in a way that it becomes

indistinguishable. […]

5) Theory and policy discussions

A quite different network of studies conducting self-examinations has arisen around the question

of how the achievements of IR (findings, statements, theories, ‘laws’) relate to processes of

(foreign) policy making.36 The query has been conventionally grasped as examining if and how

foreign policy elites ‘use’ IR products. Albeit the concept of ‘usage’ has proven to be difficult37,

the overall finding was that elites rarely do. The reasons were largely seen in miscommunication,

different language games, logics, systems or weak institutional links. Based on these results

several prescriptions have been developed of how academics can find open ears and by which

35 For a criticism on Schmidt’s account see Holden (2002) and for a review of further critics Holden 2006:227). 36 Cp. for the following the existing overviews of the literature in Walt (2005), Eriksson and Sundelius (2005), Lepgold and Nincic (2001) and our own discussion in Büger and Gadinger (2007a). I further refer to literature that needs to be added or has not been addressed adequate in my present context. 37 See our critique of the concept of ‘usage’ or ‘utilization’ in Büger and Villumsen (2006), and the related sociological literature (e.g. Beck and Bonß (1989), etc.). Utilization is a key concern in many studies from development studies, working in the bureaucratic-academic nexus.


21

practices results are best communicated.38 Critics have opposed the view that IR should be

produced for elites and called for delivering to civil society and NGO’s instead.39 While initial

approaches have been experience-based, sociology of science perspectives and findings have

been integrated, empirical observations been conducted and conceptualizations moved to the

recognition of interactive pattern.

a) Recent contributions have been shaped to a considerable degree by science studies’

interpretations of an upcoming knowledge society.40 In drawing on his earlier pragmatist works,

for instance, Gunther Hellmann (2007b) uses Peter Weingarts (2001) interpretation of the

consequences of the knowledge society to examine the state of the discipline. Weingart’s system

theory based thesis is that a knowledge society implies several reconfiguration processes between

science and society. Politics is scientifized; the sciences become politicized to a degree that they

cannot escape political influences, medialized and industrialized. Hellmann takes up this thesis and

argues by relying on the case of German IR that contrary to earlier diagnoses of a drifting apart,

IR, politics and the media move closer together. Such a tendency is visible, although (or because,

which is what Hellmann suggests) German IR is more theory oriented and more

professionalized. Hence for Hellmann the social importance of IR’s achievements is largely

determined by the environment that orders science, politics and the media, and structural change

occurring in it, rather than dependent on the actions of individual scientists – what seems to be

the prevalent view in the majority of prescriptions.

b) Given that the interactivity and interconnectivity between science and society is a key issue in

sociology of science, others have relied on these thoughts to study more local cases of the

relation between IR and policy processes. Although the borders of IR now become a critical

issue41, case studies I found (so far) that at least take inspiration in sociology of science are42:

38 See for instance those practices identified by George (1993). Others argue for a stronger orientation at an objectivist tradition (Nicholson 2000) or for revising the idea of IR as a planning device (Jentlesson and Bennett (2003), Zelikow (1994). 39 See for instance Booth (1997) and Smith (2007), the critique of Cox’s understanding in Duvall and Varadarajan (2003). Contrary to the ‘problemsolvers’ and ‘technocrats’ they oppose, IR’s Critical theorists have hesitated to show how such an engagement might look like. See for instance the discussion in (Bühler 2002). 40 This is an issue in Eriksson and Sundelius (2005), Lepgold and Nincic (2001), in the contributions in Hellmann (2007a), and related in Hellmann and Müller (2004). 41 Many of these studies are either transdisciplinary (more historical or sociological) or stem from IR’s subfields, such as Critical Development Studies, Peace Research, Strategic Studies, or New European Security Studies. Although the focus is not immediately on self-examinations and the focus much wider than on IR, I would include here also much of the work of Didier Bigo and Jef Huysmans on security professionals, some of the epistemic community studies, for instance Risse-Kappen’s (1994) study on peace research and the end of the cold war or Emmanuel Adler’s (see 2005) study on the Non-


22

Inderjeet Parmar’s work (e.g. 2002, 2004) on the role of foundations and think tanks in

the foreign and development policies of Britain and the U.S;

Ron Robin’s study (2001) of the relation between the behavioralist revolution in IR, think

tanks such as the Rand cooperation, and the security politics of the early cold war;

Philip Lawrence (1996) analysis of the vocabulary of deterrence and the (security studies)

scholars providing it;

Adam Edwards and Pete Gill’s (2002) discussion of the discourse of organized crime and

the mutually constitution of scholarship and political interests;

Martin Mallin and Robert Latham’s (2001) analysis of the practices of “the interplay of

research, practical innovation, and advocacy” in the case of security scholars;

Miroslav Nincic and Joseph Lepgolds (2001) analysis of the cases of Democratic Peace

research and IR Institutionalism in US Foreign Policy;

Nicolas Guilholt’s (2005:166-187) study of IR scholars, legitimizing the politics of and

constituting the “field of human rights and democracy promotion”.

In contrast to the other studies discussed (way 2, 3, 4, 5, and early ‘theory and policy discussions’)

concepts of the ‘public’ and/or ‘society’ are of pivotal importance in these works. Whether these

are IR-media relationships (Hellmann, Mallin and Latham), think tanks role in organizing public

consensus (Parmar), or IR’s role in providing the vocabulary to justify policies before a wider

audience (Lawrence, Edwards and Gill, Guiholt). This does not only prove to some degree that it

is sometimes useful to have a look at sociology of science, but is a needed addendum to the

discussion, given that other studies either ignore it (way 2) or reduce the ‘public’ to some

miraculous concept of political culture, which is for instance the case of Joergensen (way 3).

Whether the knowledge society perspective is taken or more local cases are studied, this network

of study contributes to disciplinary sociology in highlighting the dense interactivity of IR, policy

processes and society. Hence what this network addresses are the relation between IR and its

environment and, in so far as prescriptions are produced, thoughts on how theory translates into

praxis are provided.

6) The structural perspective

Proliferation movement. Other works interested in the role of (social science) expertise in global politics might well be included. See my related discussion in Büger (2007). 42 Some of the studies someone might expect here, I discuss in the frame of the next category.


23

A sixth network of self-examination studies I would suggest to consider as a “structural

perspective”. Although there are close parallels to the early usage of Kuhn, the broad assessments

whether the discipline is American, historiographies addressing the development of the discipline

at large, general assessment’s of the disciplines relevance, and the knowledge society narrative, the

studies I discuss in the following conceive IR as a (global) order – hence the term ‘structural’43 –,

are less interested in the Americanness quest and emphasize the functionality of IR. In contrast

to emancipative accounts (way 3) who attempt to enable a cross-community dialogue by

establishing borders between them first (in identifying national communities and describing them

as somehow disentangled from the rest of IR), structural perspectives consider IR as a

transnational ‘discipline’, ‘field’, ‘discoursive structure’ or ‘global network’. In contrast to

historiographies (way 4), who apply in many ways also a structural perspective, the concern has

been much more on the present state of IR research. In sidelining many pieces that could be

relevant in this context, let us consider at least the following two approaches

a) Post-structuralist’s appraisals have come up with an understanding of IR as a discoursive

structure. Scholars such as Roxanne Lynn Doty, R.B.J. Walker, Bradley S. Klein, James Der

Derian and partly Steve Smith stress that IR is not so much a ‘science’ of something, but a

representation of political discourse. Hence IR should be analysed as done with other political

discourses, but IR discourse is seen as an especially significant discourse as it attempts to

objectify and rationalize other discourses of global politics. This understanding is the counter-

argument to those assuming autonomy of science (and IR). IR is a discoursive structure

embedded in and representative of other discoursive structures. Scholars have hence attempted

to identify the political in the discourses of IR. Findings have been that the representational

discourses of IR draw boundaries, which excludes regions, people and issues from political

discourses or drives them to the margins. Representational practices of IR stabilizes the identity

of societies as ‘Western’, ‘modern’, ‘liberal’, ‘secular’ and ‘democratic’, etc.

Such a perspective is telling as it, firstly, turns the starting point of a sociology of IR upside-down

in not starting with the organizational aspects of knowledge production, but with the translations

between IR’s and political practice. The assumption that there is (or cannot be) an autonomy of

IR, however, comes at the price of ignoring the organizational aspects and many of the power

struggles (post-structuralists are otherwise so interested in) between IR scholars. Such elements

need to be developed if post-structuralists want more then to provoke and instead contribute to

disciplinary sociology. Nonetheless, these post-structuralists make a decisive contribution in

returning the political to a sociology of IR and in opposing a view of IR (and the analysis of it) in

43 Wæver (2003) which I discuss below explicitly talks of a “structural” perspective.


24

which an autonomous IR sphere interacts with an autonomous political or social sphere.

Scientific practice, IR practice is political.

b) Ole Wæver’s (2003) neo-functionalist account – in many ways the most sophisticated form of

disciplinary sociology in directly drawing on science studies – is less interested in the political of

IR, and leads us into another direction. In his draft paper that has meanwhile been widely

discussed (e.g. Holden 2006, Hellmann 2007a), Wæver responds to the national versus global

community debate (3) and answers the American hegemony quest by giving us a world-system

style answer in claiming IR to be “a global network centred on US journals, debates and job

markets” (Wæver 2003:4); although IR is trans-national, it is a “trans-national empire plus distinct

national nodes” (Wæver 2003:4): the US is the centre and the further we move away from it, the

more we move into the periphery. Hence he rejects that both quests (the hegemony and

national/global) are relevant ones.

In shortly discussing Bourdieu’s notion of (French) academia as field of power struggles, Wæver

stresses that the study of power effects need to become part of disciplinary sociology44, to

consider power he promises us for the future (has he kept his promise?). Primarily Wæver

discusses what we can learn from Richard Whitley’s (1987) neo-Mertonian The Intellectual and

Social Organization of Science.

Without going into all the details, Whitley’s approach is centred on the idea that science is a type

of ‘work’ distinctly organised. Two principles are pivotal in this organisation, which is the

principle of dependency – scientists need to rely on the works of others to be able to conduct

their work or to gain status– and the principle of novelty or uncertainty – new findings need to

be presented and results cannot be a simple replication of earlier work. Whitley goes further in

arguing that both principles have a “functionalist”, technological and a “strategic” dimension.

The former refers to the degree in which scientists have to rely on equipment and earlier works,

while the strategic dimension covers the way how scientists need to cope with the two principles

to build a reputation. Whitley ends up with a two-by-two table from which he develops different

types (different degrees to which principles and dimensions matter). The typology is used to

compare different sciences. This is movies considered necessary, as Wæver stresses with Whitley,

because many thoughts on the sciences have been too focussed on general statement about

science. Wæver uses the typology to identify which type IR might be. While he finds the

functional dimension in general to be low and the strategic to be high, he concludes that IR’s

44 Wæver is aware that for Bourdieu the identification of a field is the result of research, not the starting point, and requires heavy empirical observations on the existence of a common doxa and illusio. Hence he uses the (for him less theory-laded) notions of a global network or empire, to make his claim of IR as a multi-level enterprise.


25

authorization practices (better: reputation gaining mechanisms) are heavily directed towards

theory. Although Waver’s pragmatic game with Whitley is telling, it leaves the readers with

nagging doubts if a disciplinary sociology should be based on a technological functionalist

vocabulary in which scientists seem to do no more then passive reputation maximizing and task

fulfilling, while the rest is determined by the structure of the “intellectual field”. Whether this is

Wæver’s or Whitley’s problem, the imaginary offered here seems to sideline creative agency or

any transformative (political) capacity of a sociology of IR.45

To raise some more criticism: Wæver is well aware that IR is inherently political and structured by

power effects. Although he points into a direction (Bourdieu)46, so far he has however not shown

how the study of power can be integrated into his Whitley framework and into disciplinary

sociology of IR at large. Second, Wæver claims to follow a strategy that starts from an internal

understanding and adds (if necessary) external elements. Hence he follows the opposite

directions the post-structuralists have taken. The problem is nonetheless the same. In starting

from the organization of knowledge production in IR, he either forgets (or did not had the time

so far) to add, or does consider other factors, than those identified by Whitley, to be marginal.

In sum, structural accounts are key contributions for the sociology of IR, trying to implicitly and

explicitly integrate science studies major findings and approaches. Both perspectives discussed

here, nonetheless, suffer from some weaknesses and if a future ‘structural’ perspective is to be

developed it may well be some connection (or muddling together) of those two.

7) Scientific Practice and Professionalization Discourse

Optimistically I suggest adding a seventh category, the study of scientific practice. I say

optimistically because such an approach has not been fully developed for IR, nor has it been used

empirically. Given the growing numbers of advocates for a focus on practice in IR and political

science (Kratochwil (2007), Neumann (2002), Adler (2005), Huysmans (2006), Fischer (2003),

Wagenaar (2003)), the increasing calls to understand IR as scientific practice(s) (this panel?) and

that science studies’ fourth perspective advocates for such an understanding, future studies are to

be expected. The crux about practice theories might be seen in 1) their rejection of any a-priori

position of whether internal or external explanations are to be favoured or wherever such a 45 In some sense this is a surprising move by Wæver (although understandable from the perspective of his 1998 article which is the starting point of this paper), as he seems to be in his influential writings on security in favour of agency, rather then technocratic or neo-neo-functionalist theories. Why not a speech act of IR? 46 I would doubt that a marriage of Bourdieu and Whitley is possible. This is not only difficult as two very elaborated vocabularies need to be translated to each other, but also because Bourdieu in many ways relies on a sophisticated version of realism – at least this is my reading of Bourdieu (2004), see the related criticism in Lynch (2000) and Latour (2005).


26

boundary should be drawn; and 2) their attempts to balance structure and agency in seeing them

in a mutually constitutive dynamic relation (“global microstructures”, “actors macro-structuring

reality”).47

Poststructuralists have partly taken such a perspective, but they tend to be interested in the long-

term structures and orders produced by practice, rather than in practice itself. In our own

proposal for studying IR’s scientific practice (Büger and Gadinger 2007a, 2007b), we drew on

Latour and argued to focus on the practices of concept development, self-governance, boundary

drawing, alliance building, mobilization of the world and public representation. We argued that

these are useful domains by which scientific practice can be ordered and analysed.

Further the study of IR practice is usefully combined with studying local actions and techniques,

such as writing, quoting, presenting, styles of reasoning and publishing, practices of peer review,

etc. Heidrun Friese’s (2001) study, observing the practices of authority construction at a

sociological conference, is noteworthy in this regard. Dvora Yanow (2006) has put forward some

concerns on such a perspective that sets up on laboratory studies. She argued that the laboratory

so decisive for these studies is non-existent in political science. This is, however a very limited

understanding of both, the laboratory, as well as laboratory studies. True, political science is not

operating in a lab, as high energy physics does. But anyone who has ever had trouble with his

printer, email or power point or has been astonished by the results SPSS has produced for him,

will not doubt that contemporary political science is decisively shaped by (social and material, if

we prefer to distinguish it) technology. Also we do not have to search very long for our

laboratory sites, whether these are conferences or advisory projects.48 The history of deterrence

theory is instructive in this regard (Lawrence 1996, Robin 2001).

While these are debates on how to proceed with disciplinary sociology, I shall come back later to,

we should not neglect that meanwhile considerable efforts are made to reflect on scientific work

in outlets such as the section on teaching in International Studies Perspectives or Perspectives on Politics.

Although I did not make the effort to review this literature in detail, the creation of these outlets

and the renewed interest in pedagogical work and career pattern, form a part of a sociology of IR.

Given that teaching makes up not only a major ground of justification for academic IR, but is

time-consuming everyday work, it should not be considered a minor issue. Nonetheless the study

of practice, whether in the format of studying everyday actions or of studying ordered practice is

still in its beginnings.

47 Many would suggest that also Bourdieu as a major theorist of practice would fit into this. This is reasonable if it is acknowledged that Bourdieus work is less coherent and better be understood as offering to different readings, a more structural-objectivist and a more practice-experience oriented. See King (2000) for such a distinction. 48 See Law (2004) for such an enlarged understanding. Bockmann and Gill’s (2002) discussion of Eastern Europe as a laboratory for economists is an interesting social science example for this.


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Summary: IR’s disciplinary sociology

Even in my limited inventory, sociology of IR proves to be a lively field. The range of scholars

engaged in it and the growing recognition of its results suggest that it is a field of growing

significance. Let me draw some conclusions from this inventory in the light of the questions I

raised.

1) The relation between IR and sociology of science is not non-existent, but (so far?) largely

limited to a) the American reception of the Kuhn-Lakatos exchange, b) some eclecticism citing

sociology of science to make frameworks studying national communities more reasonable, c)

Guzzini’s reading of Kuhn, d) the knowledge society narrative, and e) Ole Wæver’s several

attempts to use the sociology of Randall Collins intellectual networks, Richard Whitely’s

structural account and Peter Wagner and Björn Wittrock’s discourse coalition approach.

To provoke, most scholars seem to be somehow aware that something must have happened in

the sociology of science, since Kuhn, but have hesitated so far to engage with anything out there.

Despite Wæver’s engagement, scholars that at least point into the direction of using sociology of

science (Smith, Holden, who else?) rather tend to rely on social theorists they read anyway (such

as Bourdieu and Foucault), than first to start with reading an introduction to the sociology of

sciences and then decide what is useful for their problem. As a general assessment, one is

tempted to say that, thirty years after the publication of Kuhn’s Scientific Revolutions, the Kuhnian

revolution has still not reached IR.

2) Disciplinary sociology is more then discussions on how to write a good textbook, but also a

wider field then some of the European protagonists want us to believe. It is far more than

complaints about American hegemony, the study of some freaky indigenous IR communities or

the demolition of mythical great debates. Those are topics of disciplinary sociology, but as shown

other thoughts and discourses belong to it as well. This needs to be kept in mind, if it is only to

prevent us from any argument that might be raised in future, of the kind “US IR might be

hegemonic, but we (Europeans) do disciplinary sociology and reflect on what we are”, There is

no need to reproduce the U.S. versus. the rest of the world discussion on a meta-level.49

3) Struggles of how to conceptualize the relations in the trias between knowledge production, its

environment and its translation into praxis, are a significant topic in the sociology of IR. While 49 Such a tendency is already visible in Steve Smith articles, and also somehow present in Holden’s (2006) distinction between “Anglo-Saxon historiography”, meaning those doing reflections on the discipline the American way, vs. “cross-community comparisons”, meaning largely rest-of-the-world authors.


28

paradigmatic accounts offer us silence, poststructuralists claim the hegemony of the environment

over knowledge production and the majority of textbooks offers us at least a causality between

events and scientific change, sophisticated thoughts in this regard are:

Historiographers addressing this issue as a problem of internal vs. external explanations.

Schmidt (2006: 257) follows Holden (2006) that “the controversy of internal and external,

or contextual is fundamental”. Scholars have failed, so far to actually demonstrate why it

is so fundamental and more then a private debate between Holden’s reading of Quentin

Skinner and Schmidt’s version of John Gunnell.

National community researcher as a problem of content vs. institutional environment

Largely unconnected from these, theory and policy discussions have raised the issue as a

problem of expertise, as a problem of science-media-politics relations or as a problem of

transforming theory into political praxis.

[…]

In sum the interrelationship of organization, environment and translation has been recognized,

yet we are not at the state where scholars went beyond description.

4) Is the sociology of IR narcissistic? The majority of disciplinary sociologies in my inventory stay

detached. If they carry a prescriptive they do not exemplify it reflective. For instance Holden

(2006:231) is right in criticizing the historiographical wing, by arguing that “the paradox of the

argument put forward by Schmidt and others is that they leave themselves open to a ‘So what?’

objection, because they are unable to show why corrections to the conventional historical

narratives matter in any major way for contemporary practices”.50

Those discussions stemming from the theory and policy debates that do provide prescriptions on

how to transform scientific practice are unconnected to the rest of disciplinary sociology. Hence

the whole issue area of how academic outcomes are translated into political practice is absent

from the majority of disciplinary sociology. Those theory and policy discussions that work out

prescriptions are themselves problematic, not only do they randomly build on systematic forms

of observations on the discipline. and they do not exemplify the political nature of their

recommendations.

Despite poststructuralists, disciplinary sociologies advocate for an apolitical view of IR. Politics is

understood as something outside of IR. Scholarly debate about how this ‘external’ influences the

50 This is not to say that such a case cannot be made, rather to the contrary, and indeed it has been made partly by Thies (2002).


29

‘internal’ (apolitical, value-free?) IR discourses. With such a restricted understanding of politics,

the politics and power-effects inherent in IR’s discourses come out of focus.

Even if disciplinary sociologies want to stay in the frame of any intern/extern distinction, and

wherever this boundary is drawn, they need to acknowledge that from such a perspective a

politics/science relation is threefold: 1) political practice transforms scientific practice, 2)

scientific practice transforms political practice and 3) the practices of scientists are

epistemological and political. Some science studies scholars rightfully stress that it is useful to

speak about capital-‘P’-politics, referring to the politics and policies in a society and small-“p”-

politics, referring to the politics of scientific practice. These might be a device for disciplinary

sociologies to keep in mind the political of scientific practice. An alternative is to reject any form

of intern/extern, content/context, knowledge/object distinction in recognizing that these

dimensions are interrelated to a degree that they become indistinguishable. If we remember the

case of Joliot discussed by Latour, this is what has been argued in the fourth tradition of science

studies.

A third case of why disciplinary sociologies might be narcissistic arises, when we have a look at

the arguments given by scholars for why they conduct disciplinary sociology. The following

motives can be identified:

Legitimizing and de-legitimizing certain ways of doing science or telling the history of the

discipline

To mark the boundaries of what is IR and what it is not

To reconstruct the identity of the discipline

Education purposes

To enable “cross-community” communication.

We have nothing else to do

[…]

All of these are motives that do not guide the sociology of science into an engaged direction.

5) To sum up this discussion a range of pressing problematiques runs through the literature. The

first and most obvious is a low degree of coherence and low connectivity between the different

ways of studying IR and the related networks of literature and scholars. Although national

community studies and historiographers are finding slowly to each other, other disciplinary

sociologies are largely disconnected from this debate.


30

Second, much of the studies are conducted to legitimatize or de-legitimatize certain forms of

knowledge production or ways of interpreting the history without providing alternatives of how

to transform scientific practice. Schmidt describes this problematique as the problem of presentism.

Holdens (2006) comment that this is a minor problem needs to be rejected. If we are out for

harsh and uncompromising self-examinations, it is not sufficient to demonstrate that a certain

way of doing IR is ‘degenerative’, a certain reading of IR history is ‘false’ based on the historical

‘facts’, others have failed to study the important issues, have used the wrong methods, that the

wrong knowledge has been produced or scholars have spoke in the name of elites, instead of the

“powerless”. If a sociology of IR is conducted to denunciate, or if it is perceived as such, it is

useless. To some degree it is unavoidable that scholarly arguments, considered to be relevant by

their colleagues, always are justification and de-justification or ‘presentism’. But this can be done

in a reflective way. I would suggest that IR’s disciplinary sociologies can learn in this regard from

a recognition of Bloor’s ‘strong programme’51. The principles of symmetry – statements to be

considered true or ‘false’ by the actors need to be analysed by the same means – and of reflexivity

– means used for analysis should be applicable (and applied) to the analyst – have been explicitly

designed to cope with these problems.

The third and maybe most dramatic problematique are the narcissistic tendencies of disciplinary

sociology. Studies often fail in leaving the self-referential circle. As I discussed above scholars

tend not to recognize the multiple interconnectivities between scientific practice and political

practice. They tend to neglect the importance of the transformative capacity of a sociology of IR.

Further the current prime objects of disciplinary sociology are forms of communities either in the

format of some de-contextualized paradigms/theories or in the format of national communities.

Wævers contribution in this regard, in first clarifying that IR is (and can be) a global network as

well as a local (national) one, and second in advocating for a perspective on the social science of

which IR forms part of, cannot be emphasized enough. To use an analogy introduced by Johann

Heilbronn (XXXX), IR has studied itself as many have studied the foreign policy of a state, in

taking the perspective on the discipline for granted. Instead of recognizing the global politics of

the social science and transnational, transdisciplinary relations, the focus has been on the state,

the discipline. However, the same as a state is part of a system of states, a discipline is part of a

system of disciplines. The same as the system of states (international relations) is shaped by

transnational relations, is the system of disciplines (the sciences) shaped by transdisciplinary

relations. Wæver seems to be aware of this. If his comparative disciplinary sociology will share

51 Although it has its own shortcomings. Some of the problems I discuss below. For better critiques see Latour (2005), Pels (1996) and Lnych (2000).


31

the same fate as comparative foreign policy studies in IR, is however open to the future. In sum,

there is a need for the sociology of IR to go political, global and local.

3. ‘Cultural Studies of IR ’? Some Suggestions

In my short discussion of science studies, I argued that the fourth tradition of science studies

might be the device by which we can cope with these issues. These are the researchers that have

provided innovative ways to study science, and further claim to have found solutions for some of

the problems just discussed.

In the following I like to elaborate more on the approach of a ‘cultural studies of science’

developed by Joseph Rouse (1996). I do not claim to be able to solve the above discussed

problems – some of them are rather dilemmas and antinomies, than problems –, nor shall I argue

against other concepts that are currently in preparation for usage in IR (for instance in this panel),

or other science studies accounts that might be used for IR in future. I shall sketch how the

argument presented by Rouse is significant in our present context and can open a path for

revising disciplinary self-examinations.

In his Engaging Science: How to Understand its Practices Philosophically, Rouse makes a case for a distinct

version of science studies by largely addressing philosophers of science. He opposes those

attempts in the philosophy of sciences understanding science as determined by relations to

objects or by distinct methods, as well as science studies’ social constructivist (the strong

programme), who attempt to reduce the sciences to social ‘factors’.52 Those studies form, what

Rouse denominates as the “legitimation project”. Advocates of these perspectives:

“tried to settle questions about the legitimation of scientific knowledge by interpreting the

structure or historical development of the content of scientific knowledge and the ontological

status of its objects. Either the cultural authority and political autonomy of scientific inquiry

have been justified by showing how the content of knowledge is determined and related to the

world or challenged by showing representations are accepted in ways that afford no global

legitimisation.” (Rouse 1996:20-21)

Rouse’ argument should be accessible for the ‘professional-trained IR epistemologists’ as well as

those interested in sociology of science. Rouse puts at the centre of his argument the concepts of

‘significance’ an ‘intelligibly’, ‘practice’ and ‘narrative’, and ‘power’ and argues for an engaged way 52 In this way Rouse has a similar starting point (problematique) as Richard Whitley, whose work has been mobilized for IR by Wæver (2003:8, see my discussion of way 6b).


32

of doing science studies (“science studies should be understood as engaging scientific practice

rather then just interpreting it” (31)). Hence he promises us a path to circumvent the narcissist

problem, without falling back in to an sophisticated objectivism a la Bourdieu.

With some parallels to better known IR accounts – Iver Neumann’s (2002) concept of practice,

narrative and discourse and the communities of practice idea (developed by Etienne Wengger

(1998) and introduced to IR by Emanuel Adler (2005)53) –, Rouse argues that scientists operate in

an environment of coherence and contest, provided by temporal and continuous restructured

narrative fields, fields which are the grounds to make scientific practices intelligible and

significant.

Significance

Rouse argues that ‘significance’ is the most fundamental epistemological issue, certainly more

fundamental then ‘truth’. Questions of significance govern the codification of achievements,

answer which results should be published, hoe these results should be framed, and how research

should be redirected accordingly. “Foregrounding significance reminds us that most truths about

the world are scientifically irrelevant or uninteresting; recognizing the difference between

important and insignificant claims is indispensable for understanding scientific practice” (21).

Practice

Practice Rouse conceives in a way similar as pragmatism and symbolic interactionism have done.

Practices are patterns of activity in response to a situation. Thus, practices are here understood in

a non-representational way. They are not understood as the concrete doings of human agents by

which agents created meanings, but as the meaningful situations by which doings are meaningful.

As Rouse (1996:38, my emphasis) puts this, “meaningful patterns are not bestowed on the world

by agents or their shared forms of life, but emerge from patterns of interaction within the world”.

Practices are dynamic because patterns only exist by being continuously reproduced. Coherence

and continuity of practice hence depends on the coordination work of multiple persons and

things and the continuous maintenance of it. Such maintenance work is incredible hard work in

the case of scientific practice, as scientists operate in very different environments (local contexts).

Hence there is room for considerable slippage in the ongoing reconstruction the ‘same’ scientific

53 Although some doubts needs to be raised, if Adler has not misunderstood this concept by stressing the coherence of communities, over their network, entangled character. If the social is constituted by a meshed, intertwined plurality of communities organized around one practice, how can there be anything like an ‘epistemic community’ with shared values, beliefs and common policy project? This problem might however be well a problem of Wengger’s account as he continues to use the problematic term ‘community’.


33

practice, practices are interpreted very differently, and sometimes the pattern even breaks down54.

Scientific practice thus is catched in a continual tension between significance and incoherence.

Scientists manage this tension by what Rouse calls “the narrative reconstruction of science”.

Narrative

By narrative Rouse does not understand the literary form (a story with a beginning and an end),

but “a way of comprehending the temporality of one’s own actions in their very enactment” (27).

Scientific practices and achievements are intelligible if they have a place within enacted narratives

that constitute a developing field of knowledge, and they are important to the extent that they

develop or transform these narratives (170). The appeal of such an understanding of scientific

practice as narrative reconstruction lies for Rouse in being an alternative to standard view that

scientific work “becomes intelligible and important against a background of a research

community’s shared belief and desires”. Such a view is not plausible as it overstretches

coherence, hence do not consider the interplay between significance and incoherence and cannot

cope with situations in which scientific practice transforms a community’s prior commitments or

changes what counts as the relevant scientific community. Instead of what constitutes a scientific

community, what is its history and future is frequently at stake.55 What is hence in common

among researchers “is a field of interpretative conflict rather than any uncontested commitments

about beliefs, values, standards, or meanings” (172). The future and the past become intertwined

in these constitutive conflicts. “Conflicts of over what is to be the future course of research in

the field […] are simultaneously conflicts over how to interpret its past.” (172). To engage in one

research project rather than another is to (attempt to) reconfigure the story that would make

sense of that project within its historical situation. With similarities to Actor-Network Theory

Rouse also speaks of narratives as “epistemic alignments”: “Skills, models, concepts, and

statements become informative about their objects only when other people and things interact in

constructive alignment with them” (27).

Power and an engaged science studies

54 Which is, for instance often the case, when new things (epistemic objects) emerge that need to be integrated in the pattern, or a new practice arises. Disciplinary or sub-disciplinary differentiation or the division between theory-oriented work and policy-oriented work are cases of these. To give a very broad speculative example the discovery of the object “globalization” (see Fischer 2003) led to a crisis of the practice of doing international relations and attempts to establish transnationalism studies, and international political sociology, etc. 55 Rouse provides a telling example: Why are textbooks and state of the art articles continuously rewritten? If new results have been produced, why not just publish occasional supplements? The answer is they are ongoing reconfigurations.


34

Narratives, alignments and (re)configuration practices are not only device by which significance

and intelligibly is provided, but also constitute a range of power relations. They are narratives of

power in the sense that they establish relations between knowing subjects and give authority to

one or the other. Power is mediate by them and hence needs to be understood as situated, and

dynamic. If this is the case, and this is Rouse next move, it needs to be acknowledged that science

studies do not operate detached or independently from narratives and power relations, but within

them. Science studies are situated in power relations, and this is certainly true for IR’s disciplinary

sociology. When science studies are aware that they are reconfiguration moves themselves, they

have transformative capacity. For Rouse this implies that science studies have to be conducted in

an ethical way, in asking by which narratives and reconfiguration practices, which power relations

become established and who and what (objects, things, practices) become excluded or

marginalized.

Cultural Studies of Science and the disciplinary sociology of IR

In what way this discussion open new (significant? intelligible?) paths for the sociology of IR shall

come under consideration next. These are however some very sketchy initial thoughts that need

to be developed further.

What is this thing called IR? Following Rouse there is now easy answer to this question. IR is no

stable thing but a continuously reconfigured narrative structure. Nonetheless the fact that

multiple people refer to “IR”, signify its coherence, and the debates I discussed over these pages

signify its incoherence. IR is not one thing, but interpreted in different narratives differently. To

paraphrase John Law (2004), IR is not one world, but many. Such a statement implies that there

are not unlimited IR’s. There is no plurality, but multiplicity. Grasping multiplicity is however not

an easy thing and will require much further work.

Should we study schools, national IR’s, or a global IR? For Rouse IR is local, national and global

the same time. An IR practice becomes significant, reliable and is indeed constituted by its

reliance on a narrative field. This can be in principle the narrative of science, of social science, of

social science in Britain, of IR in Norway, of political science in Germany or of global IR – to

give some examples. Hence, instead of asking which communities are more significant (a global

or a national?), the question is one of which practices become intelligible and significant in which

narratives.


35

Is IR influenced by internal or external factors, by political culture and ideology? Again, now easy

answer. It does first depend on what ‘IR’ (see above), we focus on. Second, identifying different

alignments and narratives will lead to different networks of IR, and different ways in which

things, objects, etc. are arranged. Again the question is not if IR is influenced by ‘factors’, but

which practices, become significant in relation to which other practices, things, objects,

narratives.

Do we need a disciplinary historiography of IR or a sociology of IR? From Rouses perspective it

becomes clear that both are interrelated. If IR is conceived as a continuously reconfiguring

narrative and if we want to make sense of IR (and transform it based on our results), it will be the

job of a sociology of IR, to study IR practices of reconfiguring its past (historiography), present

and future. If such an endeavour is successful (considered to be intelligible and significant) it will

reconfigure IR and as such will become part of future studies.

How can a sociology of IR be political? It should have become clear that a sociology of IR is not

only describing IR, but producing it. A detached sociology of IR, in which we describe what it is

in ‘fact’ is not possible. A detached sociology of IR, enacts a detached IR – and this is what we

want to avoid? A sociology of IR that neglects power, will leave these power mechanisms intact

that we then talk about at coffee breaks, instead.

If we enact IR by studying it, the question might ultimately boil down to what Annemarie Mol

has called ontological politic, to a question of what IR we politically favour. An IR driven by the

power-effects of professional discourse? An IR in which scholars (we) are task-fullfillers and

reputation-maximizer? An IR independent from society?, etc. However, as Law (2004:67) has put

this,”in an ontological politics we might hope to interfere, to make some realities realer, others

less so.”

4. Conclusion: Paradigms, Cultures and Translations

“Reflexivity is not an epistemological, moral or political virtue. It is an unavoidable

feature of the way actions (including actions performed, expressions written, by

academic researchers) are performed, made sense of and incorporated into social

settings. In this sense of the word, it is impossible to be unreflexive.”

(Michael Lynch 2000: 27)


36

"The sociologically armed epistemological vigilance that each researcher can apply on

his own behalf can only be strengthened by the generalizing of the imperative of

reflexivity and the spreading of the indispensable instruments for complying with it;

this alone can institute reflexivity as the common law by the field, which would thus

become characterized by a sociological critique of all by all that would intensify the

effects of the epistemological critique of all by all."

(Pierre Bourdieu 2004: 91)

“What does this mean in practice? The answer is that I do not know.”

(John Law 2004: 156)

Michael Lynch (2000) reminds us that reflexivity is neither a virtue in itself, nor can it be

identified with constructivism or any other critical or radical programme. Reflexivity is an

essential human capacity. The present crisis of IR, marked by calls for useful knowledge,

proposals of ‘going beyond IR’ and nagging doubts about any achievements the sciences can

offer, increases the need to think consequentially (?) on reflexivity towards scientific practice, or

self-examinations as I called it. In other words a debate of how IR wants to reflect on its own

practices is needed.

I argued that epistemological debates and meta-theoretical reflections are neither useful in this

regard. Nor are they, if we follow Peter Wagner’s (2001:86) claim that the present situation “is

probably a historically new experience, but it requires no new epistemology”, even needed.

Instead, I stressed the importance of the currently evolving ‘sociology of IR’. Such a disciplinary

sociology, however, needs to avoid becoming ‘disciplined’ and ‘narcissistic’ by thinking to strict

inside the borders of the discipline. Hence, I highlighted that attempts addressing the

organisation and institutionalization of knowledge production, the institutional conditions

shaping it and the translations between IR and other cultural spheres require attention. Sociology

of science can be in this regard a powerful resource for IR. My inventory of current disciplinary

sociology in IR led to the conclusion that IR researchers have only sparsely connected to these

resources. So far, disciplinary sociology struggles with a range of problematiques in a way that they

are rather unproductive reflectivity, but also inadequate means to cope with the present situation.

I suggested that many of this problematiques cannot be solved, but at least their consequences be

milded by paying more attention to science studies. The principles of the strong programme,

although problematic in itself, can be an initial guidance for future studies to cope with the

problem of legitimization. To circumvent narcissistic tendencies, political consideration should

return to the sociology of IR. There is a need to widen and to limit the perspective the same time.


37

In sum, a future sociology of IR needs to go political, global and local. To open such a path for

disciplinary sociology, I sketched that a turn to a ‘cultural studies of science’ perspective, might

equip us to handle these tasks. This is however only one way to go.

To end with some remarks on reflexivity, if the mission outlined in this paper is taken seriously, I

have failed in many regards: Although I suggested that I did address significant problems of

scientific practice, my own focus was on texts alone rather then practice (discoursive practices?), I

did not comply with any principle of self-reflexivity, for instance, in reflecting on my own status,

my own objectives and my position in the field of IR (a PhD student at a ‘European university’?,

a dilettante in science studies?) or in throwing the maybe too harsh and provocative criticism I

raised against existing literature at my own paper; neither did I make use of a coherent science

studies approach (ANT? CSS?), as I called for. When we reconsider the discussion of Law and

Wiliam’s paper on how relevant articles are written, the presentation of the array I assembled,

might even have failed to be considered ‘reliable’ or ‘valuable’ by my ‘colleagues’.

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Security 18 (4):143-171.

1

Σύγχρονη Θεωρία Διεθνών Σχέσεων και η Παρακαταθήκη του Hans J. Morgenthau

[υπό έκδοση στο Α. Ι. Μεταξάς (επ.). Πολιτική Επιστήμη: Διακλαδική και Κριτική Προσέγγιση της Πολιτικής Πράξης. Αθήνα: Σιδέρης]

Εισαγωγή

…Να είσαι ικανός να εργαστείς στην υπηρεσία μιας μεγάλης ιδέας και ενός σημαντικού στόχου…., έτσι ώστε στο τέλος να

είσαι σε θέση να πεις: Πεθαίνω, αλλά παραμένει κάτι το οποίο είναι πιο σημαντικό από την ίδια τη ζωή και το οποίο θα

διαρκέσει πολύ περισσότερο απ’ό,τι ένα σώμα – η δουλειά μου. Αυτή είναι η ελπίδα μου…

Hans J. Morgenthau, 1922 (1984a, σελ. 3).

Δεν χωρά αμφιβολία ότι ο Morgenthau συγκαταλέγεται πλέον στους κορυφαίους στοχαστές

του εικοστού αιώνα και ότι η ελπίδα του τότε δεκαοχτάχρονου νεαρού πραγματοποιήθηκε

καθ’ολοκληρία και με τον πλέον πανηγυρικό τρόπο.1 Το έργο του όχι απλώς άντεξε το

αλάθητο τεστ του χρόνου και την απαιτητική αναμέτρηση με τη λήθη, αλλά η επιρροή του

στη μεταπολεμική συγκρότηση του κλάδου των Διεθνών Σχέσεων είναι τόσο δεσπόζουσα

που ακόμη και οι πολέμιοι της θεωρίας του τού αναγνωρίζουν την ιδιότητα του «θεμελιακού

πατέρα» - ή ακόμη και του «Πάπα των Διεθνών Σχέσεων». Η δε παρακαταθήκη του στην

κατοπινή εξέλιξη του κλάδου είναι τόσο εμβληματική που κάλλιστα θα μπορούσε να

χρησιμοποιήσει κανείς την πορεία του έργου του (τόσο το πώς αυτό επηρεάστηκε από

διάφορα διανοητικά ρεύματα, όσο και το πώς επηρέασε ανά περιόδους την επιστημονική

κοινότητα) ως όχημα για ένα πανοραμικό ταξίδι στην ιστοριογραφική εξέλιξη των Διεθνών

Σχέσεων.

Το καθολικά, λοιπόν, αυτό αναγνωρισμένο του status ως «θεμελιακού πατέρα» και η

αδιαμφισβήτητη συμπερίληψη του έργου του στο πάνθεον των κλασσικών κειμένων θα

μπορούσαν να θεωρηθούν από μόνα τους λόγος επαρκής για να ερμηνεύσουμε το σύγχρονο

ενδιαφέρον στη σκέψη του. Τα πράγματα όμως, όπως συνήθως συμβαίνει, είναι λίγο πιο

σύνθετα απ’ό,τι μια πρώτη προσέγγιση αποκαλύπτει. Παρότι η θεμελιακή συνεισφορά του

Morgenthau δεν αμφισβητήθηκε ποτέ, η επιρροή του έργου του χαρακτηρίζεται από

αξιοσημείωτες διακυμάνσεις. Το Politics Among Nations, που αποτελεί το magnum opus του,

αποδείχθηκε άμεση και τεράστια επιτυχία. Δημοσιεύεται το Σεπτέμβριο του 1948 και μέσα

στον ίδιο μήνα υιοθετείται επίσημα ως το βασικό εγχειρίδιο για τα μαθήματα εξωτερικής

πολιτικής και Διεθνών Σχέσεων από τα Πανεπιστήμια Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia

2

και Notre Dame (Frei, 2001, σελ. 73). Μέχρι τον Απρίλιο του 1949 έχει επίσης υιοθετηθεί

από ενενήντα επιπλέον πανεπιστήμια στις ΗΠΑ (Ibid, σελ. 73). Μέσα σε λίγα χρόνια το

βιβλίο θα αναγνωριστεί ως κείμενο θεμελιακό για την μεταπολεμική συγκρότηση του κλάδου

προσδίδοντας στο συγγραφέα παγκόσμια αναγνώριση και σχεδόν καθολική αποδοχή.

Ωστόσο, η επιρροή του Morgenthau άρχισε να αμβλύνεται στη συμπεριφορική και μετα-

συμπεριφορική εποχή τόσο λόγω της κυριαρχίας του νεορεαλισμού του Kenneth Waltz, για

τον οποίο ο κλασσικός ρεαλισμός του Morgenthau αποτελούσε μια προ-επιστημονική και

μάλλον αναχρονιστική εκδοχή του ρεαλισμού, όσο και λόγω της τότε δεσπόζουσας

επιστημικής κουλτούρας που καθόριζε ως ύστατο κριτήριο θεωρητικής επάρκειας τα

θετικιστικά επιστημολογικά διαπιστευτήρια και τις συνδεδεόμενες με αυτά μεθοδολογικές

επιταγές. Έκτοτε, η συνεισφορά του αναγνωριζονταν ως κομβική στην εξέλιξη του κλάδου,

αλλά παράλληλα παρωχημένη. Ένα, δηλαδή, σημαντικό επεισόδιο στην ιστοριογραφία των

Διεθνών Σχέσεων, αλλά με περιορισμένη σύγχρονη αξία. Το τέλος, όμως, του Ψυχρού

Πολέμου ήρθε να τροφοδοτήσει ένα ανανεωμένο ενδιαφέρον για τη σκέψη του Morgenthau.

Αυτό που παρατηρείται, ιδιαίτερα την τελευταία δεκαετία, είναι μια συνεχώς αυξανόμενη

τάση «επανανακάλυψης» της συνεισφοράς του και ευρύτερης επαναξιολόγησης της

παρακαταθήκης του. Πώς ερμηνεύεται αυτή η επάνοδός του στο θεωρητικό προσκήνιο;

Όπως εύστοχα παρατηρεί ο Lebow (2007), ιστορικά υπάρχει μια άρρηκτη και

οργανική σχέση ανάμεσα σε διανοητικές και/ή πολιτικές ανακατατάξεις και την απόπειρα

επανάγνωσης και επανεκτίμησης κλασσικών κειμένων. Η περίπτωση του Morgenthau δεν

αποτελεί εξαίρεση σε αυτό τον κανόνα. Αυτό ακριβώς είναι και το κεντρικό επιχείρημα της

παρούσας συνεισφοράς. Ότι, δηλαδή, το σύγχρονο ανανεωμένο ενδιαφέρον για τον

Morgenthau δεν είναι απλώς προϊόν της πλούσιας διανοητικής του παρακαταθήκης, αλλά η

αποκρυστάλλωση ενός φάσματος σύγχρονων διανοητικών και πολιτικών εξελίξεων. Αν

θέλαμε να ακτινογραφήσουμε αυτό το πλαίσιο θα εντοπίζαμε δύο διανοητικές και δύο

πολιτικές εξελίξεις ως τους κυρίως άξονές του (Williams, 2007). Στο διανοητικό επίπεδο, θα

εντοπίζαμε πρώτον την ανάπτυξη και συστηματικοποίηση του ερευνητικού προγράμματος

της ιστοριογραφικής εξέλιξης των Διεθνών Σχέσεων και, δεύτερον, την επανεξέταση των

παραμέτρων της τρέχουσας επιστημολογικής διαμάχης ανάμεσα σε ρεαλισμό και

κονστρουκτιβισμό. Στο πολιτικό επίπεδο, θα εντοπίζαμε πρώτον τη διάψευση του κλίματος

ευφορίας για παγκόσμια μετα-ψυχροπολεμική σταθερότητα και, δεύτερον, τις παγκόσμιες

προκλήσεις που ανέκυψαν με την άνοδο των νεο-συντηρητικών στο Λευκό Οίκο και την

υιοθέτηση μιας παρεμβατικής και «σταυροφορικής» εξωτερικής πολιτικής των ΗΠΑ. Σε ότι

ακολουθεί θα αναφερθούμε συνοπτικά στο περιεχόμενο της κάθε εξέλιξης και τον τρόπο με

τον οποίο επανα-τροφοδοτεί το ενδιαφέρον για το έργο του Morgenthau.

3

Ιστοριογραφία των Διεθνών Σχέσεων και Morgenthau

Δύο από τα βασικά ερευνητικά πεδία του συνεχούς διευρυνόμενου προγράμματος στην

ιστοριογραφία των Διεθνών Σχέσεων είναι αφενός η επανεξέταση των διανοητικών ρευμάτων

που επηρέασαν την σκέψη κλασσικών συγγραφέων που αποτέλεσαν σταθμούς στην εξέλιξη

του κλάδου και αφετέρου η συστηματική μελέτη των εσωτερικών/διανοητικών και

εξωτερικών/πολιτικών συνθηκών που οδήγησαν στην μεταπολεμική συγκρότηση του κλάδου

και την αυτονόμησή του από την γνωσιολογική μήτρα της πολιτικής επιστήμης (για μια

επισκόπηση, βλ. Schmidt, 2002). Και τα δύο αυτά πεδία επιφυλάσσουν ένα σημαίνοντα ρόλο

στον Morgenthau.

Όσον αφορά στο πρώτο πεδίο της επανεξέτασης των ιστορικών μορφών του κλάδου,

μέρος της τρέχουσας βιβλιογραφίας πραγματεύεται την συστηματικότερη ανάλυση του

ευρύτερου φιλοσοφικού και πολιτικού πλαισίου που επηρέασε τη σκέψη τους και, μέσω

αυτής, την εξέλιξη του κλάδου. Για τον Morgenthau άλλοι ισχυρίζονται ότι κύρια διανοητική

πηγή αποτέλεσε ο Nietzsche (βλ., λ.χ., Frei 2001), άλλοι ο Schmitt (βλ., λ.χ., Pichler 1998)

και άλλοι ο Weber (βλ., λ.χ., Turner and Mazur, 2009). Παρότι αυτή η βιβλιογραφία έχει

συνεισφέρει στην ανάδειξη της σημασίας των ευρωπαϊκών ριζών της σκέψης του

Morgenthau, και άρα του σύγχρονου κλάδου των Διεθνών Σχέσεων, διακατέχεται πολλές

φορές από ένα μονοσήμαντο προσανατολισμό ανάδειξης μιας και μόνο διανοητικής πηγής ως

κυρίαρχης. Αυτό που διαφεύγει, λοιπόν, από την τρέχουσα συζήτηση είναι ότι αυτές η

υποτιθέμενα διαφορετικές πηγές μπορεί να αποτελούν επιμέρους συνιστώσες που συγκλίνουν

σε μια κοινή συνισταμένη. Αυτή τη συνισταμένη εντοπίζει ο Τσακαλογιάννης (2011) στο

ευρύτερο διανοητικό πρόταγμα του αντι-διαφωτισμού του μεσοπολέμου και, ειδικότερα,

στους προβληματισμούς που αναπτύσσονται στους κύκλους του Ινστιτούτου της

Φρανκφούρτης (βλ., επίσης Scheuerman, 2009). Το επιχείρημα προσλαμβάνει μια οιονεί

αναθεωρητική χροιά. Ενώ στα πλαίσια της συμβατικής ιστοριογραφίας, ο μεταπολεμικός

ρεαλισμός του Morgenthau παρουσιάζεται ως η κατάληξη μιας ευθείας διανοητικής πορείας

από τον Θουκυδίδη στον Hobbes και στον Machiavelli αυτό που προκύπτει από αυτή την

ανάγνωση είναι ότι οι ρίζες του μεταπολεμικού ρεαλισμού είναι πολύ πιο σύνθετες από τους

προτεινόμενους όρους του συμβατικού αφηγήματος.

Όσον αφορά στο πεδίο μελέτης των συνθηκών που οδήγησαν μεταπολεμικά στην

αυτονόμηση του κλάδου, η τρέχουσα ιστοριογραφική έρευνα επιφυλάσσει και πάλι έναν

πρωταγωνιστικό ρόλο για τον Morgenthau. Χωρίς να μειώνουμε τη σημασία των

εξωτερικών/πολιτικών εξελίξεων στη διαμόρφωση του κλάδου, πρέπει να αναγνωρίσουμε ότι

η ιστορική εξέλιξη και επιστημική ταυτότητα των Διεθνών Σχέσεων έχει σε μεγάλο βαθμό

καθοριστεί μέσα από μια σειρά αντιπαραθέσεων για το τι συνιστά επιστήμη και τη

4

δυνατότητα των Διεθνών Σχέσεων να αναδειχθούν σε μια ακριβή επιστήμη της διεθνούς

πολιτικής σε βάση αντίστοιχη με εκείνη των θετικών επιστημών (Wight, 2002). Το 1946 ο

Morgenthau δημοσιεύει το πρώτο του βιβλίο με τον τίτλο Scientific Man vs. Power Politics

και το οποίο συνιστούσε ένα ριζοσπαστικά εναλλακτικό επιστημολογικό πρόταγμα για τη

μελέτη της διεθνούς πολιτικής από το τότε κυρίαρχο του συμπεριφορισμού. Το βιβλίο

αντιμετωπίστηκε εντελώς εχθρικά. Τόσο εχθρικά που ο ίδιος ο Morgenthau λέει

χαρακτηριστικά ότι ήταν ευτύχημα που είχε εξασφαλίσει τη μονιμότητα μόλις μερικές

εβδομάδες πριν τη δημοσίευση του βιβλίου – μονιμότητα που θα ήταν, όπως συνεχίζει να

εκτιμά, από εξαιρετικά δύσκολη έως αδύνατη αν είχε προηγηθεί η δημοσίευση (Morgenthau,

1984b, σελ. 371). Η εκτίμηση δεν πρέπει να προκαλεί εντύπωση. Μπορεί στο πεδίο των

Διεθνών Σχέσεων ο συμπεριφορισμός να έκανε δυναμικά την εμφάνισή του στα πλαίσια της

λεγόμενης δεύτερης μεγάλης θεωρητικής αντιπαράθεσης τη δεκαετία του 1950, αλλά στο

χώρο της Αμερικανικής πολιτικής επιστήμης η συμπεριφορική επανάσταση είχε αρχίσει από

τη δεκαετία του 1920 και εδραιωθεί την περίοδο πoυ ο Morgenthau θα πήγαινε στο Σικάγο.

Πράγματι, το Πανεπιστήμιο του Σικάγο αποτελούσε τότε το ισχυρότερο «οχυρό» και κύριο

πρωταγωνιστή της λεγόμενης συμπεριφορικής επανάστασης καθιστώντας το έτσι ένα μάλλον

αφιλόξενο χώρο για μια πολεμική πραγματεία ενάντια στον συμπεριφορισμό και τον

ορθολογισμό. Είναι αυτό ακριβώς το πλαίσιο που οδηγεί τον Guilhot (2008) να παρουσιάσει

τη διαδικασία αυτονόμησης του κλάδου των Διεθνών Σχέσεων ως μια στρατηγική κίνηση,

υπό την πρωτοβουλία του Morgenthau, στη διανοητική σκακιέρα της εποχής προκειμένου να

διαμορφωθεί ένας νέος κλάδος που θα αντιστέκονταν στις σειρήνες του συμπεριφορισμού

που είχε ήδη εδραιωθεί ως η κυρίαρχη προσέγγιση στην Αμερικανική πολιτική επιστήμη.

Η αυτονόμηση του κλάδου, για όποιους λόγους και αν έγινε και όποιες ανάγκες και

αν εξυπηρετούσε, σηματοδότησε παράλληλα ένα «διαζύγιο» των Διεθνών Σχέσεων με την

πολιτική θεωρία και φιλοσοφία. Το «διαζύγιο» αυτό είχε βαρύτιμες επιπτώσεις αφού στέρησε

το πεδίο από μια πλούσια διανοητική παράδοση πολιτικής θεωρίας, οδηγώντας τον Martin

Wight στο κλασσικό πλέον άρθρο του το 1966 στο απογοητευτικό συμπέρασμα ότι δεν

υπάρχει ένα ολοκληρωμένο και συστηματικό σώμα διεθνούς πολιτικής θεωρίας. Καθώς τα

τελευταία χρόνια το πεδίο προσπαθεί να επανασυνδεθεί με την παράδοση της πολιτικής

θεωρίας και φιλοσοφίας έχει σημασία να θυμηθούμε τα λόγια του καθολικά αναγνωρισμένου

θεμελιακού του πατέρα: «Παρότι έχω γίνει γνωστός για τις συνεισφορές μου στην εξωτερική

πολιτική…,αποτελεί παράδοξο ότι το κύριο διανοητικό μου ενδιαφέρον από την αρχή της

ακαδημαϊκής μου καριέρας δεν ήταν η εξωτερική πολιτική, ή έστω η πολιτική γενικότερα,

αλλά η φιλοσοφία» (Morgenthau, 1984b, σελ. 381).

5

Τρέχουσες Επιστημολογικές Αντιπαραθέσεις και Morgenthau

Μια άλλη, όπως αναφέραμε, εξέλιξη στο πεδίο των Διεθνών Σχέσεων που τροφοδοτεί το

σύγχρονο ενδιαφέρον για τον Morgenthau έχει να κάνει με την τρέχουσα επιστημολογική

διαμάχη ανάμεσα στο θετικισμό και τον μετα-θετικισμό και, πιο συγκεκριμένα, με μια

απόπειρα επαναχαρτογράφησης του θεωρητικού τοπίου των Διεθνών Σχέσεων και

επαναπροσδιορισμού της διαχωριστικής γραμμής ανάμεσα στο ρεαλισμό και τον μετριοπαθή

κονστρουκτιβισμό.2 Δεδομένου ότι η σχέση ανάμεσα στο ρεαλισμό και τον

κονστρουκτιβισμό έχει εμπεδωθεί στο συλλογικό υποσυνείδητο του κλάδου σε όρους σχέσης

μηδενικού αθροίσματος ανάμεσα σε δύο εντελώς αντιτιθέμενες θεωρητικές σχολές, ο

προβληματισμός γύρω από μια δυνητικά διαφορετική μεταξύ τους σχέση αποτελεί

ενδεχομένως ανάθεμα ή τουλάχιστον εκπλήσσει. Το ζήτημα είναι προφανώς πολύπλοκο και

δεν μπορούμε να επεισέλθουμε σε λεπτομέρειες. Θα περιοριστούμε σε δύο σημεία ενδεικτικά

της σχετικής προβληματικής, αλλά και ενδεικτικά του εμβληματικού ρόλου και του πλούτου

της παρακαταθήκης του Morgenthau.

Ας ξεκινήσουμε επισημαίνοντας ότι η καθιερωμένη στη βιβλιογραφία τάση άμεσης

αντιπαραβολής ανάμεσα σε ρεαλισμό και κονστρουκτιβισμό είναι μάλλον αδόκιμη, αφού ο

ρεαλισμός αποτελεί πρωτοβάθμια θεωρία των Διεθνών Σχέσεων ενώ ο κονστρουκτιβισμός

ένα ευρύτερο αφετηριακό επιστημολογικό πρόταγμα. Χωρίς να παραγνωρίζουμε ότι οι

αφετηριακές επιστημολογικές υποθέσεις λειτουργούν περιοριστικά στην όποια εφαρμογή

τους σε επίπεδο πρωτοβάθμιας θεωρίας, το γεγονός παραμένει ότι αν ο κονστρουκτιβισμός

αντιτίθεται άμεσα σε κάτι αυτό είναι ο ορθολογισμός και ο υλισμός και όχι ο ρεαλισμός

αυτός καθαυτός. Η αδόκιμη τάση αντιπαραβολής ρεαλισμού και κονστρουκτιβισμού που έχει

επικρατήσει είναι κατ’ουσία προϊόν της ταύτισης του ρεαλισμού με τη νεορεαλιστική εκδοχή

του που καθιέρωσε ο Waltz. Αποτελεί, όμως, παράδοξο η ταύτιση του ευρύτερου

ρεαλιστικού παραδείγματος με τον ορθολογισμό και τον υλισμό όταν το πρώτο έργο του

θεμελιακού πατέρα της κλασσικής εκδοχής του αποτελεί μια πολεμική πραγματεία ενάντια

και στις δύο αυτές φιλοσοφικές τάσεις (Morgenthau, 1946). Όπως χαρακτηριστικά

ισχυρίζεται ο Jervis (1994, σελ. 863): «Αυτοί που πιστεύουν ότι όλοι οι ρεαλιστές

αντιλαμβάνονται τη γνώση ως ανεξάρτητη από την εμπειρία και το συμφέρον, που θεωρούν

ότι έχουν επιτύχει μια θεμελιώδη ανακάλυψη όταν ισχυρίζονται ότι η ανθρώπινη αντίληψη

για τον κοινωνικό κόσμο είναι σε σημαντικό βαθμό κοινωνικά κατασκευασμένη, και

θεωρούν ότι είναι οι πρώτοι που αντιλήφθηκαν τη στενή διασύνδεση ανάμεσα σε ισχύ και

γνώση δεν έχουν διαβάσει ποτέ το Scientific Man vs. Power Politics». Η παρακαταθήκη,

λοιπόν, του έργου του Morgenthau έρχεται να τροφοδοτήσει ένα τρέχοντα προβληματισμό

γύρω από την οξύτητα της κάθετης διαχωριστικής γραμμής ανάμεσα σε ρεαλισμό και

6

κονστρουκτιβισμό, προσκαλώντας μας σε μια επανεξέταση της μεταξύ τους σχέσης (για τη

σχετική συζήτηση, βλ. ενδεικτικά, Barkin, 2010, Jackson, 2004, Williams, 2004).

Ένα δεύτερο ενδεικτικό παράδειγμα που προσκαλεί και αυτό σε μία επανεξέταση της

σχέσης ανάμεσα σε ρεαλισμό και κονστρουκτιβισμό έχει να κάνει με τις επιπτώσεις της

αναρχίας στο διεθνές σύστημα. Η ίσως πιο διαδεδομένη απόπειρα εφαρμογής του

κονστρουκτιβιστικού επιστημολογικού προτάγματος σε επίπεδο πρωτοβάθμιας διεθνολογικής

θεωρίας έχει να κάνει με το επιχείρημα ότι οι ταυτότητες, και σχετική πρόσληψη του

συμφέροντος, των (κρατικών και μη) δρώντων, δεν είναι προκατασκευασμένες και άρα οι

επιπτώσεις της αναρχίας δεν είναι μονοσήμαντες. Όπως ισχυρίζεται ο Wendt (1999), επειδή

το περιεχόμενο της αναρχίας νοηματοδοτείται από τους συμμετέχοντες στο διεθνές σύστημα

δρώντες, και την μεταξύ τους διάδραση, είναι υποκείμενο ιστορικού μετασχηματισμού. Έτσι,

λοιπόν, εντοπίζει τρεις ιδεατούς τύπους ή «κουλτούρες αναρχίας»: την Χομπσιανή, την

Λοκιανή και την Καντιανή κουλτούρα που εκφράζουν αντίστοιχες διαβαθμίσεις των

επιπτώσεων της αναρχίας στη δια-κρατική συνεργασία (Wendt, 1999, κεφ. 6). Όμως ο

βαθμός πρωτοτυπίας του επιχειρήματος αμβλύνεται αν λάβει κανείς υπόψη ότι ο πρώτος που

εισαγάγει μια αντίστοιχη προβληματική διαχωρισμού των επιπτώσεων της αναρχίας είναι ο

Morgenthau. Παρότι αμφισβητούσε τον μόνιμο και οικουμενικό χαρακτήρα τέτοιων

συστημάτων, θεωρούσε ότι συστήματα όπως αυτό της Ευρωπαϊκής Συμφωνίας μπορούσαν

να αμβλύνουν τις επιπτώσεις της αναρχίας καθώς η διπλωματία μπορούσε να στηριχτεί σε

ένα κοινά αποδεκτό πλαίσιο αρχών και συμφερόντων (Morgenthau, 1946, σελ. 107-8). Υπό

αυτό το πρίσμα δεν θα πρέπει να εκπλήσσει ότι ο Wendt (1999), ο θεωρούμενος πρύτανης

του κονστρουκτιβισμού στις Διεθνείς Σχέσεις, στο magnum opus του αποφεύγει συστηματικά

την θεωρητική αντιπαράθεση με τον Morgenthau, εμφανώς στα πλαίσια μιας απόπειρας

μονοσήμαντου περιορισμού του ρεαλισμού στη νεορεαλιστική εκδοχή του.

Το Τέλος του Ψυχρού Πολέμου και ο Morgenthau

Όταν το Τείχος του Βερολίνου γκρεμίστηκε, η μανιχαϊκή δομή του Ψυχρού Πολέμου πάνω

στη οποία είχε οικοδομηθεί το μεταπολεμικό σύστημα κατέρρευσε. Τα δραματικά γεγονότα

του 1989 και ο ραγδαίος ρυθμός με τον οποίο ξεδιπλώνονταν οι ιστορικές αλλαγές που

σηματοδοτούσαν οι «βελούδινες επαναστάσεις» στην Ανατολική και Κεντρική Ευρώπη

έδιναν την εικόνα ενός συστήματος σε πλήρη αποσύνθεση. Πολλοί, με επικεφαλής τον

Francis Fukuyama, έσπευσαν να προσδιορίσουν τη δομική αυτή αλλαγή του διεθνούς

συστήματος ως το «τέλος της ιστορίας» και να διακηρύξουν το χάραμα μιας νέας εποχής

σταθερότητας και ειρήνης, καθώς η επερχόμενη κατάρρευση της κομμουνιστικής ιδεολογίας

και η συνεχώς αυξανόμενη αλληλεξάρτηση των παγκόσμιων οικονομιών θα οδηγούσε σε μια

βαθμιαία συρρίκνωση των αιτιών του πολέμου. Οι απόψεις του Fukuyama κάνουν αυτόματα

7

το γύρω της υφηλίου. Οι θεωρίες περί τέλους της ιστορίας, που άλλοτε αποτελούσαν

αποκλειστική ενασχόληση μιας φιλοσοφικής ελίτ, γίνονται αντικείμενο συζητήσεων σε όλα

τα ΜΜΕ και η εκκοσμικευμένη αυτή παραλλαγή μιας θρησκευτικής τελεολογίας ανάγεται σε

εξωτερική εικόνα της εποχής. Μέσα σε αυτό το διάχυτο κλίμα ευφορίας, ο ρεαλισμός

θεωρείται παρωχημένος καθώς υποτίθεται ότι αδυνατεί να περιγράψει το νέο κόσμο που

ανατέλλει με την επικράτηση της Δύσης, ενώ παράλληλα δέχεται δριμεία κριτική λόγω της

υποτιθέμενης αδυναμίας του να προβλέψει το ειρηνικό τέλος του Ψυχρού Πολέμου και την

μονοπολική δυναμική του διεθνούς συστήματος.

Δεν είναι εδώ κατάλληλος ο χώρος για μια υπεράσπιση του ρεαλισμού έναντι της

κριτικής που δέχθηκε με αφορμή το τέλος του Ψυχρού Πολέμου (για μια συστηματική

ανάλυση, βλ. Wohlforth, 1994/5). Άλλωστε, η ίδια η εξέλιξη των πραγμάτων έδωσε τη δική

της απάντηση στις φιλελεύθερες τελεολογικές δοξασίες, επιβεβαιώνοντας την τραγική φύση

της διεθνούς πολιτικής και τη φορτισμένη από το μεσοπολεμικό φιλοσοφικό κλίμα του αντι-

διαφωτισμού ρήση του Morgenthau (1948, σελ. 249) ότι «τα έθνη συναντώνται κάτω από ένα

κενό ουρανό από τον οποίο οι Θεοί έχουν αποχωρήσει». Αυτό που για τους σκοπούς της

παρούσας συμβολής έχει σημασία να παρατηρήσουμε είναι ότι σε απάντηση της κριτικής που

δέχθηκε ο ρεαλισμός άρχισε να αντιλαμβάνεται κάποιους περιορισμούς του μονοσήμαντα

προσανατολισμένου στη δομική ανάλυση νεορεαλισμού και να στρέφεται στην πλούσια

διανοητική παράδοσή του. Στο πλαίσιο αυτό, το έργο του Morgenthau θα αποτελέσει βασικό

εφαλτήριο και διανοητική πηγή έμπνευσης για την ανάδυση της πλέον σύγχρονης έκφρασης

του ρεαλισμού με τη συγκρότηση της νεοκλασικής εκδοχής του που προσπαθεί να εντάξει

αναλυτικά εργαλεία από όλα τα επίπεδα ανάλυσης σε ένα ενιαίο ρεαλιστικό πρόταγμα (για

μια επισκόπηση βλ. Rose, 1998).

Η Άνοδος των Νέο-Συντηριτικών στις ΗΠΑ και ο Morgenthau

Τα τραγικά γεγονότα της 11ης Σεπτεμβρίου σε συνδυασμό με την ύπαρξη μιας ομάδας νέο-

συντηρητικών γύρω από τον πρόεδρο Τζωρτζ Μπους οδήγησαν στην υφαρπαγή της

Αμερικανικής εξωτερικής πολιτικής από το δόγμα των νεο-συντηρητικών. Κύριο

χαρακτηριστικό του δόγματος τους ήταν μια εμφανής θεωρητική απέχθεια στην παραδοσιακή

ρεαλιστική πολιτική ισορροπίας ισχύος και μια απερίφραστη υιοθέτηση ιμπεριαλιστικών

πολιτικών ως μονόδρομο για την εξυπηρέτηση του εθνικού συμφέροντος των ΗΠΑ και

εμπέδωσης της παγκόσμιας κυριαρχίας τους (για μια επισκόπηση της διαμάχης βλ. Schmidt

and Williams, 2008). Οι επιπτώσεις της πολιτικής αυτής για την παγκόσμια ασφάλεια και

σταθερότητα είναι πλέον γνωστές. Λιγότερο ίσως γνωστό είναι ότι στον Αμερικανικό

δημόσιο διάλογο η πλέον ηχηρή αντίδραση ενάντια στο νέο-συντηρητισμό και την

επερχόμενη εισβολή στο Ιράκ προήλθε από τους κόλπους του ρεαλισμού, ο οποίος έχει

8

αδόκιμα ταυτιστεί από τους πολέμιους του με επιθετικές προτεινόμενες πολιτικές. Αυτό έγινε

εμφανές με τον πλέον δημόσιο τρόπο με μια καταχώρηση στους New York Times της 26

Σεπτεμβρίου 2002 και την οποία υπέγραφαν οι πλέον καταξιωμένοι Αμερικανοί ρεαλιστές.

Μεγάλο μέρος της επιχειρηματολογίας του ανωτέρου άρθρου/καταχώρησης με τον τίτλο

«War with Iraq is Not in America’s National Interest» αντλούσε από τα θεωρητικά διδάγματα

του Morgenthau. Όπως χαρακτηριστικά παρατηρεί ο Τσακαλογιάννης (2011, σελ. 228-9) στο

Επίμετρο της ελληνικής έκδοσης του Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (Επιστήμη και

Πολιτική της Ισχύος):

Λίγους μήνες μετά τη δημοσίευση του ως άνω έργου, στις 14 Μαρτίου 1947, ο Πρόεδρος των ΗΠΑ Χάρι Τρούμαν εξήγγειλε το περιβόητο «δόγμα» του που ισοδυναμούσε με την ανάληψη μιας «σταυροφορίας» κατά του κομμουνισμού. Στα νέα πολιτικά δεδομένα απόψεις σαν και αυτές του Morgenthau πέρασαν στο περιθώριο, γιατί οι προβληματισμοί που θέτει ο συγγραφέας στο συγκεκριμένο έργο ήταν διαμετρικά αντίθετοι με τις πολιτικές επιδιώξεις μιας αναδυόμενης υπερδύναμης. Το Δόγμα Τρούμαν εγκαινίασε μια σειρά από «σταυροφορίες», με επιστέγασμα τη «σταυροφορία» του Τζωρτζ Μπους του νεότερου κατά του «Άξονα του Κακού». Τα συντρίμμια της τελευταίας αυτής «σταυροφορίας» έχουν επαναφέρει στο προσκήνιο προβληματισμούς όπως αυτούς που πραγματεύεται το Επιστήμη και Πολιτική της Ισχύος.

Αντί Επιλόγου

Ξεκινήσαμε την παρούσα συμβολή σημειώνοντας ότι τα τελευταία χρόνια παρατηρείται μια

συνεχώς διευρυνόμενη τάση επανανακάλυψης των κλασσικών κειμένων του Morgenthau και

επανεκτίμησης της διανοητικής παρακαταθήκης του στις Διεθνείς Σχέσεις. Ισχυριστήκαμε ότι

αυτή η τάση δεν είναι μια αθώα ιστοριογραφική άσκηση αναζήτησης διανοητικών ριζών,

αλλά κατ’ουσία συμπτωματική μιας οιονεί διανοητικής και πολιτικής κρίσης και

προσπαθήσαμε να σκιαγραφήσουμε τους άξονες που την τροφοδοτούν. Αυτό που προκύπτει

από την ανάλυση είναι πως δεν χωρά αμφιβολία ότι κάποιος που βίωσε προσωπικά και

ζυμώθηκε επιστημονικά μέσα σε μια τόσο ανατρεπτική πολιτικά, αλλά και γόνιμη

διανοητικά, ιστορική περίοδο -δημοκρατία της Βαϊμάρης, ναζιστική περίοδος, 2ος

Παγκόσμιος Πόλεμος και, τέλος, Ψυχρός Πόλεμος- έχει ακόμη πολλά να μας διδάξει και να

μας πει όχι μόνο για την ιστορία των Διεθνών Σχέσεων, αλλά και για το μέλλον τους.

Ανδρέας Γκόφας Λέκτορας στη Θεωρία & Επιστημολογία Διεθνών Σχέσεων

Τμήμα Διεθνών & Ευρωπαϊκών Σπουδών, Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο

Ορολογικό Ευρετήριο

Ρεαλισμός, Κονστρουκτιβισμός, Συμπεριφορισμός, Ιστοριογραφία, Επιστημολογία, Νέο-

συντηρητισμός, Wendt, Morgenthau, Waltz

9

Βιβλιογραφία

Barkin, J. S. (2010) Realist Constructivism: Rethinking International Relations Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Frei, C. (2001) Hans J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.

Guilhot, N. (2008) “The Realist Gambit: Postwar American Political Science and the Birth of IR Theory”, International Political Sociology, 2(4), pp. 281–304.

Jackson, P. (ed) (2004) The Forum: “Bridging the Gap: Toward a Realist-Constructivist Dialogue”, International Studies Review, 6(2), pp. 337–52.

Jervis, R. (1994), “Hans Morgenthau, Realism and the Scientific Study of International Politics”, Social Research, 61(4), pp. 853-876.

Lebow, R. N. (2007) “Texts, Paradigms, and Political Change”, στο Williams, M. C. (ed.) Realism Reconsidered: The Legacy of Hans Morgenthau in International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 241-268.

Morgenthau, H. J. (1946) Scientific Man vs. Power Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Morgenthau, H. J. (1948) Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. New York: Alfred Knopf.

Morgenthau, H. J. (1984a) “Fragment of an Intellectual Autobiography: 1904-1932”, in Thompson, K. W. and Myers, R. J. (eds) Truth and Tragedy: A Tribute to Hans J. Morgenthau. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, pp. 1-17.

Morgenthau, H. J. (1984b) “Bernard Johnson’s Interview with Hans J. Morgenthau”, in Thompson, K. W. and Myers, R. J. (eds) Truth and Tragedy: A Tribute to Hans J. Morgenthau. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, pp. 333-386.

Pichler, H. K. (1998), “The godfathers of ‘truth’: Max Weber and Carl Schmitt in Morgenthau’s theory of power politics”, Review of International Studies, 24(2), pp.185-200.

Rose, G. (1998) “Neoclassical realism and theories of foreign policy”, World Politics, 51(1), pp. 144-72.

Scheuerman, W. E. (2009) Hans Morgenthau: Realism and Beyond. Cambridge: Polity. Schmidt, B. C. (2002) “On the History and Historiography of International Relations”, in

Carlsnaes, W., Risse, T. and Simmons, B. A. (eds) Handbook of International Relations. London: SAGE, pp. 1-22.

Schmidt, B. C. and Williams, M. C. (2008) “The Bush Doctrine and the Iraq War: Neoconservatives Versus Realists”, Security Studies, 17(2), pp. 191-220.

Τσακαλογιάννης, Π. (2011) Επίμετρο, στο Morgenthau, H. J. Επιστήμη και Πολιτική Ισχύος, μτφ. Π. Τσακαλογιάννης, Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις Τουρίκη, σελ. 205-236.

Turner, S. P. and Mazur, G. (2009) “Morgenthau as a Weberian Methodologist”, European Journal of International Relations, 15(3), pp. 477-504.

Wendt, A. (1999) Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wight, C. (2002) “Philosophy of Social Science and International Relations”, στο Carlsnaes, W., Risse, T. and Simmons, B. A. (eds) Handbook of International Relations. London: SAGE, pp. 23-51.

Wight, M. (1966), ‘Why is there no International Theory?’, in H. Butterfield and M. Wight (eds), Diplomatic Investigations, London: Allen & Unwin, pp. 17–34.

Williams, M. C. (2004) “Why Ideas Matter in International Relations: Hans Morgenthau, Classical Realism, and the Moral Construction of Power Politics”, International Organization, 58(4), pp. 633–65.

Williams, M. C. (2007) “Introduction”, in στο Williams, M. C. (ed.) Realism Reconsidered: The Legacy of Hans Morgenthau in International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1-17.

Wohlforth, W. C. (1994/5) “Realism and the End of the Cold War”, International Security, 19(3), pp. 91-129.

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1 Το κείμενο αποτελεί μέρος μιας ευρύτερης απόπειρας αξιολόγησης της παρακαταθήκης του Hans Morgenthau με τίτλο Hans Morgenthau και Θεωρία Διεθνών Σχέσεων: Διαχρονικές Αντιπαραθέσεις και Σύχρονες Κατευθύνσεις, που βρίσκεται στο στάδιο της ολοκλήρωσης. 2 Εδώ υιοθετούμε τον καθιερωμένο διαχωρισμό ανάμεσα σε μετριοπαθή κονστρουκτιβισμό, που έχει γνωσιολογικό υπόβαθρο, και ριζοσπαστικό κονστρουκτιβισμό, που έχει οντολογικό υπόβαθρο. Μετέπειτα αναφορές μας στον κονστρουκτιβισμό αναφέρονται στη μετριοπαθή εκδοχή του.

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L ; ? C G C L ; 0 4 ; 5 : A O A G M 5 G 5 O A L 0 > 5 ? C G · 17 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE perspectives on how best to understand and explain international processes