International Relations Theory Today E-Book
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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
International Relations (IR) theorists speak with conviction, and often passion, to the global condition of human society. The result is an important, dynamic and often deeply divided field. This long-awaited new edition of International Relations Theory Today offers undergraduate and postgraduate students an essential guide to the complex terrain of IR theory and the key questions on its agenda.
With chapters by 25 prominent and provocative IR theorists, the book reveals the intellectual excitement - and turmoil - of theorizing world politics. It reflects the conflicts and tensions around the profound challenges facing the contemporary world, such as climate change, globalization, nuclear proliferation, and economic and political injustice and conflict, while also expressing hope that we can better understand, and respond to, these challenges.
Above all, this book demonstrates the significance of thinking theoretically about international relations and developing the tools not merely to describe but also to explain, analyse, prescribe and possibly re-imagine the global political landscape. As the world comes face-to-face with historic challenges over the coming decades, International Relations Theory Today will help its readers to participate more effectively in debates about the most important global political dilemmas of our time.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Preface and Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction: The Argumentative Discipline: Ken Booth and Toni Erskine
Complex contestations
The international in focus
What IR theory does
The discipline at a crossroads
The structure of the book
Keywords
Notes
Part I Contestations
1 Five Generations of IR Theory: Nicholas Onuf
Generations
House and field
Early settlers: first generation, 1919
Founding fathers: second generation, 1946
House building: third generation, 1969
Sibling accommodations
Far afield: fourth generation, 1989
Continental divide
‘Il faut cultiver notre jardin’: fifth generation, 2011
2 Theory and Practice in International Relations: Chris Brown
Speaking truth to power?
Theory is always for someone and for some purpose
The ‘practice turn’
Conclusion
Notes
3 IR Theory as Identity Discourses: Richard Ned Lebow
Realism
Liberalism
Constructivism
Postmodernism
Conclusions
4 IR Theory and the Question of Science: Inanna Hamati-Ataya
An inconclusive crisis
Three perspectives on science
Idealism and the demarcation of science
Culture and practice: an alternative view of theory
Conclusion
Notes
5 IR Theory as an Ethical Pursuit: Molly Cochran
Scientific and ethical engagements within the academic practice of IR
Ethical engagement with the subject matter of IR: a reorientation to values
Conclusion: the state of ethical engagement in the discipline’s future
Notes
6 Do IR Scholars Engage with the Same World?: Pinar Bilgin
The problem of parochialism
Context
Two approaches to ‘worlding IR’
IR scholars engage with the same world conceived as ‘intertwined’ worlds
Conclusion
Notes
7 ‘It’s the Economy, Stupid …’: Craig N. Murphy
Current issues versus global problems in late twentieth-century IPE
Inequality, war, and the triumph of Western industrial capitalism
Neo-liberalism and global manufacturing
Other global problems and what today’s IPE has overlooked
Notes
Part II Theories and Issues
8 The Future of War as the Ultima Ratio: William C. Wohlforth
The decline of war
The partial transformation
A world without hegemonic wars
The future of the ultima ratio
Notes
9 The Nuclear Revolution as Theory: Campbell Craig
The end of the Cold War
The demise of revolutionary major war
The demise of hegemonic war
Continued nuclear deterrence
Unipolarity
China and the pointlessness of waging a new Cold War
Deterrence, not balancing
The advantage of time
The heuristic versus the deductive approach
Acknowledging normative ends
Notes
10 Carmen Miranda Returns: Cynthia Enloe
Notes
11 Global Capitalism, Inequality, and Poverty: David L. Blaney and Naeem Inayatullah
Adam Smith and the paradox of justice
Pogge’s (ambivalent) right to a share
Naverson, Hayek, and the imperatives of market outcomes
Denial, secular theodicy, and desire’s flow
12 ‘Civilised’ Restraint and International Society: Andrew Linklater
Wight’s ‘sociology of states-systems’
‘Social standards of self-restraint’ in process sociology
Analysing standards of self-restraint in international society
Court society and diplomacy
The ‘standard of civilisation’
Humanitarian laws of war
A contemporary global ‘civilising process’
13 Democracy in a Globalised World: Heikki Patomäki
The theory of democratic peace
The theory of cosmopolitan democracy
Democracy and political community as processes of becoming
Pluralist security community and polycentric world democracy
Notes
14 Protest and International Politics in the Information Age: Colin Wight
The Information Age
Protest 2.0
Protest 2.0 and IR theory
Conclusion
15 Global Governance, Beyond IR?: Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson
Sovereignty: less than sacrosanct
Global governance: a step forward?
Beyond IR?
16 International Relations in the Anthropocene: Oran R. Young
The Earth as a human-dominated system
Consequences of human domination
Challenges to the Westphalian order
Meeting the challenges of the Anthropocene
Conclusion: the twilight of the Westphalian order
Part III Theorising IR Tomorrow
17 The Future from Inside the Liberal World Order: Jennifer Sterling-Folker
18 Must IR Remain Abstract in the Future?: Christine Sylvester
But then there’s Rwanda
Ahead
Notes
19 Studying World Politics as a Complex Adaptive System: Neta C. Crawford
Where we start from
A more flexible discipline to understand a more diverse world?
20 A Neo-Hobbesian Future?: Michael C. Williams
Notes
21 The International Studies Association Presidential Address, 2157 (Two Excerpts): Patrick Thaddeus Jackson
I
II
Conclusion: Responsibility, Risk, and IR Theory: Toni Erskine and Ken Booth
Risks and responsibility
Role responsibilities
Shared responsibilities
Notes
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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International Relations Theory Today
Second Edition
EDITED BY KEN BOOTH AND TONI ERSKINE
polity
Copyright © this collection Polity Press 2016Each chapter © the authorFirst published in 1995 by Polity Press
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-5095-0834-1
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Booth, Ken, 1943-, editor. | Erskine, Toni, 1969-, editor.Title: International relations theory today / Ken Booth, Toni Erskine.Description: Second edition. | Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2015038689| ISBN 9780745671208 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780745671215 (pbk. : alk. paper)Subjects: LCSH: International relations.Classification: LCC JX1391.I6383 2016 | DDC 327.101--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038689
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Preface and Acknowledgements
The aim of this book, like that of its first edition in 1995, is to underline the continuing significance of thinking theoretically about international relations. It provides students and other scholars of International Relations (IR), Political Science, Security Studies, and Global Politics at second-year and higher levels with ideas and material to help in understanding, explaining, analysing, and engaging with the old and new challenges at the crucial international level of world politics.
In producing this book we have incurred many debts. We wish to begin by recalling the role of Anthony Giddens, who proposed the publication of the first edition. For prodding us into a second edition, and providing excellent advice and support from its conception to publication, we warmly thank Polity’s Louise Knight. Also at Polity, Pascal Porcheron, Nekane Tanaka Galdos, and Caroline Richmond provided valuable assistance at various stages in the project.
Steve Smith was one of the two co-editors of the first edition. His imprint on that book was everywhere, and his introductory essay has rightly become a standard reference point in the field.
The chapters making up this volume would not be what they are without the authors’ conference held in the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University. For help in funding that conference we acknowledge the assistance of Aberystwyth University’s Research Fund and its Department of International Politics (and the support of successive heads of department, Michael Foley and Jenny Mathers), the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies, and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Canberra. Special thanks are due to an outstanding group of front-line discussants, chairs, and commentators at the Aberystwyth conference and afterwards: Richard Beardsworth, Andrew Davenport, Ian Clark, Milja Kurki, Jenny Mathers, Mustapha Pasha, Jan Ruzicka, Duncan Snidal, Kamila Stullerova, and Hidemi Suganami. Their interventions and suggestions significantly strengthened the chapters presented in this book. For help with the logistics of the conference, we were ably supported by Rachel Vaughan, Elaine Lowe, and Grant Dawson.
Polity’s three anonymous reviewers of the manuscript were quick, conscientious, and critical, and we also want to acknowledge their contribution.
In helping us to manage the flow of e-mails, and for providing outstanding editorial assistance at different stages of the project, we are in the debt of Kimberley Layton, Nishank Motwani, and Rhiannon Neilsen. We are also grateful for the research funding from UNSW Canberra that made their assistance possible.
As ever, and last but not least, we thank our long-suffering families, and particularly EB and MD, for their support and patience throughout this long project.
The Preface to the first edition began: ‘This is a confusing yet exciting and important time for those who study international relations.’ In the tumultuous two decades that followed, we are convinced that the times are even more confusing, the challenges to understanding it all are greater than ever, and the future yet more in doubt. The subject matter of this book therefore remains of profound and universal significance.
Ken Booth and Toni Erskine
Contributors
Pinar Bilgin is Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University. She specialises in critical approaches to Security Studies and is the author of Regional Security in the Middle East: A Critical Perspective (2005) and The International in Security, Security in the International (2016). She is past president of the Central and East European International Studies Association, a past member of the steering committee of the Standing Group on International Relations of the European Consortium for Political Research, a governing council member of the European International Studies Association, an associate member of the Turkish Academy of Sciences, and associate editor of International Political Sociology.
David L. Blaney holds the G. Theodore Mitau Chair of Political Science, Macalester College, St Paul, Minnesota. His research revolves around international political theory, culture and IR and IPE, and political economic thought. With Naeem Inayatullah, he has written International Relations and the Problem of Difference (2004) and Savage Economics: Wealth, Poverty and the Temporal Walls of Capitalism (2010), and, with Arlene Tickner, he has edited Thinking International Relations Differently (2012) and Claiming the International (2013). He is now working on theodicy and political economic thought from Smith to neo-classical economics and contemporary IPE.
Ken Booth was formerly E. H. Carr Professor and head of the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University. He is presently senior research associate, editor of International Relations, and president of the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies. He is a former chair of the British International Studies Association. His publications include Strategy and Ethnocentrism (1979), Theory of World Security (2007), and The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation and Trust in World Politics (2008, with Nicholas J. Wheeler). He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award.
Chris Brown is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and the author of International Society, Global Polity (2015), Practical Judgement in International Political Theory (2010), Sovereignty, Rights and Justice (2002), and International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (1992), editor of Political Restructuring in Europe: Ethical Perspectives (1994), and co-editor of InternationalRelations in Political Thought (2002, with Terry Nardin and N. J. Rengger). His textbook Understanding International Relations (2009) is now in its fourth and final edition and has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, and Turkish. He is a former chair of the British International Studies Association.
Molly Cochran is Reader in International Relations at Oxford Brookes University. She previously taught at the Georgia Institute of Technology and held a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship (2002–3), working at Human Rights Watch on international criminal justice issues. Her research interests are normative International Relations theory and American pragmatism. Her publications include Normative Theory in International Relations: A Pragmatic Approach (1999), The Cambridge Companion to John Dewey (2010), ‘Charting the ethics of the English School’, in International Studies Quarterly (2009), and ‘A democratic critique of cosmopolitan democracy’, in the European Journal of International Relations (2002).
Campbell Craig is Professor of International Politics at Cardiff University. His main research interests are nuclear and Cold War history and contemporary International Relations theory. Over the past several years he has been Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University and visiting fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the European University Institute, and Bristol University. His most recent book, co-authored with Fredrik Logevall, is America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (2009), and he is currently writing with Jan Ruzicka, a book on nuclear proliferation and US unipolar preponderance to be published by Cornell University Press.
Neta C. Crawford is a Professor of Political Science at Boston University. Her books include Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (2002) and Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America’s Post 9/11 Wars (2013). She is the co-director of the project www.costsofwar.org.
Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor at Clark University, Massachusetts. She currently serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including the International Feminist Journal of Politics, Security Dialogue, and International Political Sociology. Among her recent books are Seriously! Investigating Crashes and Crises as if Women Mattered (2013), and Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War (2010). In 2014 she published a revised, thoroughly updated new edition of Bananas, Beaches and Bases.
Toni Erskine is Professor of International Politics and Associate Director of the Australian Centre for Cyber Security at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She has been on the Governing Council (2008–10; 2014–16) and the Executive Committee (2014–15) of the International Studies Association and is past president of its International Ethics section (2008–10). Until 2013 she was Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. Her publications include Embedded Cosmopolitanism (2008) and, as editor, Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? (2003) and, with Richard Ned Lebow, Tragedy and International Relations (2012). She is currently completing a manuscript entitled Locating Responsibility: Institutional Moral Agency and International Relations.
Inanna Hamati-Ataya is Reader in International Politics at Aberystwyth University. Her research lies at the intersection of world politics, social theory, the sociology of knowledge, and science studies. She is co-editor, with Arlene Tickner, David Blaney, and Ole Wæver of the Worlding beyond the West book series (Routledge) and co-editor, with Jonathan Joseph, of the IR Theory section of the International Studies Encyclopedia (Wiley-Blackwell). She is a trustee of the British International Studies Association, chair of the International Political Sociology Section of the International Studies Association, and a member of the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective.
Naeem Inayatullah is Professor of Politics at Ithaca College, New York. His work locates the Third World in international relations and the global political economy. With David Blaney, he is the co-author of Savage Economics (2010) and International Relations and the Problem of Difference (2004). He is the editor of Autobiographical International Relations (2011) and co-editor of Interrogating Imperialism (2006) and The Global Economy as Political Space (1994). Forthcoming work includes ‘Gigging on the world stage: bossa nova and Afrobeat after de-reification’ and ‘A problem with levels: engaging a diverse IPE’ (both in Contexto Internacional) and, co-edited with Elizabeth Dauphinee, Narrative Global Politics.
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson is Professor of International Relations and Associate Dean for Curriculum and Learning in the School of International Service at the American University in Washington, DC. In 2003–4, and again in 2012–13, he served as president of the International Studies Association Northeast. He is presently the series editor of the University of Michigan Press’s book series Configurations: Critical Studies of World Politics and a web editor for International Studies Quarterly. His latest book, The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations (2011), received the Yale H. Ferguson Award for the book most advancing international studies as a pluralist field.
Richard Ned Lebow is Professor of International Political Theory in the War Studies Department of King’s College London, Bye-Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, and the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor (Emeritus) of Government at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. His most recent publications, all of which appeared in 2014, are Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives: A World without World War I, Constructing Cause in International Relations, and, co-authored with Simon Reich, Goodbye Hegemony! Rethinking America’s Role in the World. Books are forthcoming on national identifications and foreign policy and Max Weber and international relations.
Andrew Linklater is Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. He has published extensively on theories of international relations and has in recent years explored connections between Sociology and International Relations as part of an examination of harm in world politics. His most recent book is The Problem of Harm in World Politics: Theoretical Investigations (2011). A follow-up volume, Violence and Civilization in the Western States-Systems, will be published in 2016. Linklater is currently writing a book which is provisionally entitled The Idea of Civilization in World Politics.
Craig N. Murphy teaches at Wellesley College and the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Global and Policy Studies of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is past president of the International Studies Association, past chair of the Academic Council on the UN System, and co-founder of the council’s journal, Global Governance. His books include The United Nations Development Programme: A Better Way? (2006), The International Organization for Standardization (2009, co-authored with JoAnne Yates), and Rising Powers and the Future of Global Governance (2013, co-edited with Kevin Gray).
Nicholas Onuf is Professor Emeritus, Florida International University, Miami, and Professor Associado, Instituto de Relações Internationais, Pontifica Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. His latest book, Making Sense, Making Worlds: Constructivism in Social Theory and International Relations (2013), was published in conjunction with the republication of World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (1989; 2nd edn 2013).
Heikki Patomäki is Professor of World Politics at the University of Helsinki, Finland. His research interests include philosophy and methodology of the social sciences, peace research, futures studies, economic theory, global political economy, and global political theory. His most recent books in English are The Great Eurozone Disaster: From Crisis to Global New Deal (2013) and The Political Economy of Global Security (2008). Previously, he has worked as Professor of World Politics and Economy at Nottingham Trent University and at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. In 2012 he was visiting professor at the Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan.
Jennifer Sterling-Folker is Alan R. Bennett Honors Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Connecticut. She is a member of the International Studies Association Publications Committee and has served as the co-editor of the ISA journal International Studies Review and the BISA journal Review of International Studies. Among her research interests are international relations theory, international organisation, and international law, and her books include Making Sense of International Relations Theory (2006; 2nd edn 2013) and Theories of International Cooperation and the Primacy of Anarchy (2002).
Christine Sylvester is Professor of Political Science, University of Connecticut, and Affiliated Professor in Global Studies, Gothenburg University. She has received an honorary degree from Lund University, been Kerstin Hesslegren Chair for Sweden, and has held posts in Australia (Australian National University), the Netherlands (the International Institute of Social Studies), and the UK (Lancaster University). Her recent research comes out of the Experiencing War project she initiated and includes Masquerades of War (ed., 2015), War as Experience (2013), and Experiencing War (ed., 2011). She was also author of the first feminist IR books in the Cambridge IR series (Feminist Theory and International Relations in a Postmodern Era and Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey).
Thomas G. Weiss is Presidential Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, Director Emeritus of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, and Research Professor at SOAS, University of London. He served as research director of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Among his recent books are Governing the World? Addressing ‘Problems without Passports’ (2014), Global Governance: Why? What? Whither? (2013), Humanitarian Business (2013), What’s Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix it (2016), Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action (2016), and Thinking about Global Governance: Why People and Ideas Matter (2011).
Colin Wight is Professor and Chair of the Department of International Relations at the University of Sydney. Previously, he worked at the Department of International Politics in Aberystwyth University, the Department of Politics in Sheffield University, and the University of Exeter. He is the author of Agents, Structures and International Relations (2006) and Rethinking Terrorism (2015). Between 2008 and 2013 he was editor in chief of the European Journal of International Relations. He has published articles in International Studies Quarterly, the European Journal of International Relations, Political Studies, and Philosophy of the Social Sciences.
Rorden Wilkinson is Professor of Global Political Economy and Chair of the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex. His books include What’s Wrong with the WTO and How to Fix it (2014), International Organizationand Global Governance (2014), Trade, Poverty, Development (2013), The Millennium Development Goals and Beyond (2012), Global Governance, Poverty and Inequality (2010), The WTO: Crisis and the Governance of Global Trade (2006), The Global Governance Reader (2005), and Global Governance: Critical Perspectives (2002). He co-edits the Global Institutions series.
Michael C. Williams is Research Professor of International Politics in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. His research interests are in International Relations theory, security studies, and political thought. His most recent book is Security beyond the State: Private Security in International Politics (2011, with Rita Abrahamsen), while his previous publications include The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations (2005) and Culture and Security: Symbolic Power and the Politics of International Security (2007) and, as editor, Realism Reconsidered: The Legacy of Hans J. Morgenthau in International Relations (2007).
William C. Wohlforth is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. He is the author or editor of eight books and some sixty articles and book chapters on topics ranging from the Cold War and its end to unipolarity and contemporary US grand strategy. He is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and has served as a consultant for the National Intelligence Council and the National Bureau of Asian Research. His most recent book, co-authored with Stephen G. Brooks, is America Abroad: The United States’ Global Role in the 21st Century (Oxford, 2016).
Oran R. Young is Professor Emeritus at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. One of the founders of regime analysis, his research interests focus on theories of environmental governance with applications to climate change, the oceans, and the polar regions as well as environmental governance in China and the US. Among his recent books are Institutional Dynamics: Emergent Patterns in International Environmental Governance (2010) and On Environmental Governance: Sustainability, Efficiency, and Equity (2013). His current project is entitled Governing Complex Systems: Sustainability in the Anthropocene.
Introduction: The Argumentative Discipline
Ken Booth and Toni Erskine
In our dangerous and increasingly interconnected world, students of International Relations (IR) are confronted by the biggest questions of politics in the world’s biggest political arena.1 The subject matter of this book – theorising the international level of world politics – should therefore be of compelling interest. The lives of everybody on earth are caught up in the structures and processes and the attitudes and behaviour comprising the international level of world politics. Today, perhaps more than ever before, human society in global perspective is confronted by immense converging challenges: global existential threats such as the destruction of nature, ‘climate chaos’ (the World Wildlife Fund’s felicitous term) and nuclear weapons proliferation; traditional geopolitical confrontations between regional rivals and power-seeking global players; the diffusion of transnational insecurities by international terrorism and economic crises; new technologies that radically change the nature of communication and war; and widespread social and political crises to do with identity, authority, and the capacity of states.
Complex contestations
While both the daily and historic challenges involved in actually practised international relations are beyond dispute, even to the casual observer, the academic discipline of IR may well appear to consist of nothing but debates and disagreements, in-fights and scholarly tribalism, identity crises and crises of intellectual self-confidence. The label ‘argumentative discipline’ framing this Introduction acknowledges these charges of often self-defeating fissures. Nevertheless, our label is also intended to describe an academic field that is argumentative in the more positive sense of being dynamic and deliberative, a field that shares concepts, questions, and concerns to the extent necessary for productive engagement and mutual comprehension even across ostensible divisions. In other words, IR’s arguments about theory can be constructive as well as divisive.
The academic study of IR began as an institutionalised university discipline in the aftermath of the Great War, the initial academic impetus coming from the spirit of liberal internationalism in the English-speaking world. With the passage of time, the scholarly community of IR specialists increased in number and geographical spread. It also became divided over fundamental issues: about what is ‘real’ in international relations (Are states still the main actors?), about the best methods to generate reliable knowledge (Can IR become ‘scientific’, or is it possible to build only upon the traditional methods of such academic disciplines as History and Philosophy), and about policy-related and normative issues (How might international stability be maintained? Should states radically disarm?). From the beginning, IR scholars have argued with conviction, and often passion, about these and other questions.
One traditional approach to describing the development of the argumentative discipline since the Great War has been in relation to a series of ‘Great Debates’. As conventionally presented, these were realism versus idealism (through the 1930s and beyond), the classical approach versus behaviouralism (the 1960s), neo- realism versus neo-liberalism (the 1980s), and rationalism versus reflectivism (from the 1990s to the present).2 While teaching the subject as a succession of Great Debates is no longer fashionable – it is seen as too crude an approach to a complex intellectual history – there is no questioning the history of the discipline as one characterised by sometimes fierce contestation between rival camps of policy advocates, ideologues, dreamers, fatalists, and others. This should not be a cause for surprise. The ‘real world’ of international relations is complex, and the stakes are always high; its agenda includes the independence of nations, the prospect of war, and the future of international cooperation. It would be truly surprising, indeed shocking, had IR been other than argumentative.
Some of IR’s complex contestations might seem to outsiders to be narcissistic, of interest only to professional academics. But beware cheap shots at scholars, for debates about an issue such as a ‘disciplinary boundary’ are never merely a matter of scholarly turf-wars. Definitions of a discipline, and therefore the scope of its theories, are seriously consequential: what are taken to be its focus and boundaries determine which parts of international relations are to be privileged and which can be marginalised or even silenced. Such issues, together with concerns about methods, ethics, and political orientation, explain why the community of IR scholars has engaged in so many ‘state of the discipline’ discussions over the decades. Such exercises – and the present book is unapologetically yet another – may sometimes reflect a certain lack of scholarly self-confidence in comparison with more long-established disciplines. But there is more to it than that. Self-reflection among IR specialists has primarily been the result of a conscientious desire to ensure that our work helps us make more sense of the multiple dimensions of an international system that exerts such power in shaping the great and small interactions among human society across the globe.
The various debates and disputes of IR theory are sometimes a cause of confusion and frustration for students, but they should not be: contestation is normal in all academic disciplines. It is one of the ways by which knowledge advances. In the natural sciences, hypotheses are set down and experiments are replicated. This is clearly not possible in the real world of international relations. Nonetheless, the impossibility of such a particular conception and practice of ‘science’ (or ‘social science’) does not mean that anything goes. IR theory, like other disciplines, must adhere to a range of traditional scholarly procedures: being systematic and logical, respecting evidence, using language carefully, and so on.
Complex contestation remains the lifeblood in IR’s development, and in the decades since the publication of the first edition of this book the intellectual divisions between those scholars drawn to its theoretical dimensions have grown markedly. As a result, students today have a much wider range of theories from which to choose to help them make sense of the international than was the case with their predecessors in the early 1990s. A long but not exhaustive list of the theories and approaches relevant to IR today includes the following (in alphabetical order): constructivism, critical realism, critical theory, English School, feminist theory, green theory, historical sociology, liberalism, Marxist IR, neo-liberal institutionalism, normative IR theory, postcolonialism, post-structuralism, rational choice theory, and realism (divided into classical and structural/neo-realist strands). Most of these approaches had existed for many years – even centuries – but their exuberant profusion into IR teaching programmes was made possible through the 1990s by the opening of the ‘iron cage’ of Cold War mindsets.
To help students sample this veritable supermarket of theories and approaches, a number of excellent books have appeared describing and explaining the rival positions. In this book, we did not want to replicate such works, often organised on the basis of one chapter, one theory. Instead, it is centrally concerned with exploring the engagement of theory with the ways in which human society has lived and might live globally within and beyond the structures and processes, and the attitudes and behaviour, that we have inherited at the crucial international level of world politics.
The international in focus
In this introductory chapter we provide a broad outline of the aims, scope, and characteristics of IR theorising. We want at this stage to avoid unnecessary complication, though there is no intention to hide away from the complexities of theorising in the book as a whole. Our starting point is that it is necessary for all students of IR, whatever their own particular interests and subfields, to embrace the importance of thinking theoretically; however, we do not want to discourage readers by demanding, as do some books on theory, that they strike out into difficult terrain without some basic map-reading. For present purposes, such map-reading must begin by discussing two fundamental issues over which the community of scholars in this argumentative discipline sometimes disagree.
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State-centrism
’ The academic project of IR is sometimes attacked because the traditional focus on the interaction of states, nations, international organisations, and so on, is said to represent a flawed ‘state-centric’ approach. To be ‘state-centric’ is said to imply exaggerated ideas about the power of states and an ideological commitment to ‘the state’ as the ultimate focus of decision-making and the highest point of loyalty and identity for people.
The meaning of ‘the international’
A second common criticism is that the term ‘the international’ is considered problematic if not obsolete. The latter has been argued, for example, by those who have been dazzled by the pace and depth of ‘globalisation’, with its sense of an increasingly ‘borderless’ world. A key intervention here was James Rosenau’s thesis, developed in the late 1980s, of world affairs becoming increasingly ‘postinternational’. He influentially argued: ‘The very notion of “international relations” seems obsolete in the face of an apparent trend in which more and more of the interactions that sustain world politics unfold without the direct involvement of nations or states’ (Rosenau 1990: 6).
In our opinion, both these common criticisms are faulty: the first is misconceived and the second premature.
‘State-centrism’ is invariably associated with statist values, namely ideas that endorse, privilege, exaggerate, or ‘romanticise’ the position of the state. We reject the implication that focusing on relations between states and other interactions at the international level of world politics implies a commitment to state-centrism in these senses. By accentuating the international in world politics we are simply recognising its empirical significance. Deploying a phrase of Kenneth Waltz, IR’s most influential theorist since the Second World War, the structure of international politics has profound ‘causal weight’ (1959: 159–238; 1979: 38–101) in shaping what happens. The international structure, as Waltz put it, makes ‘a few big and important things’ happen, such as wars and rivalry for power between states (1986: 329). We argue that this level is even more causal than Waltz maintained, for it also helps explain ‘small and important things’, from a person’s identity to their life chances (Booth 2014a: 4–5). The international level, in other words, demands attention because actually practised international relations are deeply causal, whether we want to think about the threat of nuclear annihilation or the languages we first hear in our cots. Consequently, this level demands sustained and serious intellectual inquiry, and theorising must be at the heart of all such inquiry.
Turning to the view that our era has become ‘postinternational’, it is only necessary to show empirically the continuing agency of states. This can be done, easily, in issue areas ranging from the life or death decisions resulting from state policy on migration to assertions of ‘national interests’ in climate change negotiations, and from patterns of poverty and inequality globally to ‘national security’ priorities in negotiations over nuclear weapons proliferation. World politics are globalised, certainly, but to recognise this is far from accepting that they are ‘postinternational’.
The conception of ‘IR’ informing this book understands ‘international relations’ as a particular and powerful level of interaction in world politics and, as such, marks it out for specific academic attention. Since the early 1990s, numerous texts have turned the study of what gets called ‘IR’ into a rather flabby ‘World’ or ‘Global’ politics, full of knowledge about politics, economics, human rights, and other matters on the planet, but without a clear or helpful focus for effective policy-making or research. In contrast, focusing on the international level as IR provides coherence for both policy and research. ‘World politics’, the context in which the international level exerts its power, is understood here, as it was in the final chapter of this book’s first edition, as an extrapolation of Harold Lasswell’s famous definition of ‘politics’ (Booth 1995: 329). We therefore conceive ‘world politics’ as the study of ‘who gets what, when, and how globally’.
We recognise that the concept of an international level has fuzzy edges and a multiplicity of cross-border actors, but these points do not invalidate the claim about its ‘causal weight’. The latter means that the behaviour of multitudes of people – from passport officials to soldiers, every single day – upholds the international system. The system is also upheld by the ideas (theories) that shape the mindsets of those creating the reality of the international level. IR theory explores the issues, large and small, that relate to this reality.
What IR theory does
IR theory does many things. Here, for clarity, we offer three big questions as a framework for understanding the range of IR theory’s ambition.
What is real?
IR theorising engaging this question focuses on ‘ontology’ – what is taken to be the nature of being (‘reality’).
Different IR theories offer different ideas and assumptions about the categorical structures that are thought to make up international relations. For realists, for example, the categorical structure is the sovereign state; for feminist theorists it is gender and gender relations; and for Marxists it is socio-economic class. Within even one theoretical approach, however, there can be significant differences of opinion. Realists notably differ over the fundamental driver of international relations. For some, so-called human nature (characterised by a ‘will-to-power’) is the root cause of the character of international relations; other realists emphasise anarchy as the driver and the urge to survive under conditions of an uneven distribution of power in the world.
Most realists argue that in the struggle for power it is material factors that are key, whereas most critics of realism – ‘idealist’ in a philosophical sense – emphasise the fundamental importance of ideas in shaping the states-system. Constructivists, for example, argue that international realities are the products of the human mind. ‘States’ and ‘nations’ are not ‘naturally’ existing phenomena, such as the elevated landscape we call ‘mountains’; they are the creation of human ideas worked out through time.
What can we know?
IR theorising interested in this question focuses on ‘epistemology’, exploring the ways in which we seek to ‘know’ about international relations. In short, which method of inquiry offers the best approach to grasping something that might be called truth? In the study of IR in the United States – the country that has dominated theorising since the 1930s – questions of method have often been at the forefront of the academic IR project. There has been a persistent desire to develop ‘scientific’ approaches on the assumption that, the more scientific the method, the sounder the resulting knowledge. Critics of such approaches have argued, to the contrary, that ‘classical’ approaches, based on disciplines in the traditional humanities, notably History and Philosophy, offer the soundest ways of accumulating knowledge about human political behaviour. What is more, these critics of scientific (or social scientific) approaches to epistemological issues have also questioned the very aspiration to the goal of ‘objectivity’. For them, the ideal of objectivity is a myth.
The divide between the so-called scientific and classical approaches is sometimes expressed in terms of the distinction between approaches that seek ‘explanation’ and those aiming to achieve ‘understanding’ (Hollis and Smith 1990). The former adopts the traditional perspective of the scientist, endeavouring to uncover reality by standing outside the phenomenon that needs to be explained: ‘What are the causes of war?’ is a familiar question of an explanatory nature. Approaches to understanding adopt an interpretive framing, attempting to provide an account of the attitudes and behaviour of agents from ‘within’: ‘What do leaders of self-proclaimed “Islamic State” want?’ is a typical understanding question.
How should we act?
The much valued aim of objectivity on the part of some influential theoretical outlooks for a long time relegated the study of normative questions and ethical issues (What should be done? What are the rights and wrongs in a situation?) to the very edges of the discipline – this, despite a strong tradition arguing that there can be no escape from ethics in the study of human society.
The first so-called Great Debate in IR – the supposed contestation between realism and idealism – was less an actual interchange of ideas between proponents of the two ‘-isms’ than its subsequent reputation made out. Nevertheless, ‘realism versus idealism’ echoes down the years, albeit in different forms, and underlines the unavoidable persistence of ethical concerns in theorising IR. Idealists have looked towards academic IR as an intellectual stepping-stone to a better world, through the expansion of law and morality, while realists have criticised them as ‘utopians’ who engage with the world as they think it ‘ought to be’, rather than ‘as it is’. Echoes of this oldest of IR’s contestations still resonate through the discipline, albeit in ever more sophisticated language.
As the traditional themes of idealism, ethics, and the potentiality for change have risen in prominence among IR scholars since the end of the Cold War, one particularly prominent rift has been characterised as that between ‘problem-solving’ and ‘critical’ theories. The former are said to be dealing with power and problems in the world as they presently (seem to) exist, while the latter contemplate the ethical and other dimensions of human emancipation, in which the conditions of possibility might be expanded for more people on Earth in order that they can hope to lead fulfilling lives.
With IR’s three fundamental questions in mind (about reality, method, and ethics), theorists choose the specific issue(s) they want to address. These may be essentially abstract issues (more akin to analytical philosophy than anything likely to be found in media headlines about international affairs) or they may be more directly related to empirical matters (such as may actually be found in media headlines). When a theorist settles on an issue, two further questions arise.
What is the appropriate level of analysis?
Theorists of IR are presented with various options regarding the particular level at which to concentrate their thinking, depending on the specific puzzle they seek to explain or understand. The most influential way of thinking about this was elaborated by J. D. Singer (1960). His three choices were the level of the international system as a whole (explanations arising out of the interaction of states); the level of the units of the system (focusing on the foreign policy of states or the behaviour of multinational corporations, for example); and, finally, the level of individual human actors (leading to ‘human nature’ or psychological explanations of behaviour). Theories with the ambition of producing a comprehensive explanation of everything about international relations have variously been called ‘systemic’, ‘general’, and ‘holistic’ theories; those focusing on parts of the whole have been called ‘middle-range’ or ‘reductionist’ theories.
Is theory explanatory or constitutive?
In the first edition of this book, Steve Smith described the debate between ‘Constitutive versus Explanatory Theory’ as ‘the main meta-theoretical issue facing international relations theory today’. He went on:
The emerging fundamental division in the discipline is between those theories that seek to offer explanatory accounts of international relations, and those that see theory as constitutive of that reality. At base this boils down to a difference over what the social world is like: is it best seen as scientists think of the ‘natural’ world, that is to say, something outside of our theories, or is the social world what we make it? (1995: 26–7)
More than two decades on, this remains a fundamental fault-line.
Whatever one’s view on this matter, a significant degree of intellectual responsibility follows for every student in our field. Two self-images are in play. We can see ourselves either as truth-seekers trying to explain international relations or as agents in the replication or transformation of international reality. Both viewpoints impose individual and collective responsibilities on IR theorists – issues we take up in the Conclusion.
The discipline at a crossroads
The first edition of this book was published in the mid-1990s, when IR scholars were in the early years of trying to make sense of the key theoretical developments following the end of the Cold War. Particularly pertinent at that time were various ideas about the emerging world order, and especially the contrasting images of the future presented by Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis (1992), on the one hand, and Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis (1996), on the other. It was also the time when the profusion of theoretical schools mentioned earlier (some heavily influenced by theories from other branches of the social sciences and humanities) were beginning to become embedded as part of the discipline’s theoretical core. Gone forever was IR’s split into merely three – the ‘dividing discipline’ Kal Holsti (1985) had identified only a few years before. It was so much simpler then. Ideas about the emerging world order, and about the ‘dividing discipline’, have moved on remarkably since the 1990s, and this second edition of International Relations Theory Today seeks to reflect upon these changes.
During the quarter of a century since the end of the Cold War, the world has witnessed an era of rampant globalisation, the global triumph of capitalism, the IT revolution, the so-called Global War on Terror, changes in the hierarchy of states (the rise of China and other ‘emerging’ powers), several far-reaching financial crashes, and a growing sense of new global crises and upheavals on the horizon. This sense of impending crisis is fuelled by, in particular, ‘climate chaos’ and other environmental threats, the danger of additional nuclear weapons states, continuing anxieties about the global economy, turmoil across swathes of Africa and Asia, the rise of nationalism with a nasty face, the threat of conflict in Eastern Europe, the spread of violent religious rivalries, international terrorism, and the ever dangerous instability in the Middle East. At the same time there is a general inability of international institutions to deal with these challenges. Moreover, the population of the planet continues to increase; by late 2011 it had passed the 7 billion mark, and it is now heading to possibly 9 billion by mid-century. All these events and developments – apart from globalisation and the occasional concern from a writer on the margins about religion or the environment – were barely touched upon or predicted in the IR literature in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Cold War. Such overlooked issues will, for sure, be part of the context for IR theorising for decades ahead. Given the range of threats, the proliferation of theoretical pathways available to IR students, and the chronic unreliability of our predictions, the image of a crossroads captures an uncertain discipline.
In the book’s first edition there now appears to have been a lesser sense of urgency about global affairs, together with some optimism about what IR theory might deliver. The mid-1990s were not dominated by an era-defining geopolitical crisis comparable with the potentially world-destroying Cold War. And while there was a clear awareness of the tensions between the developing schools of theory, there was often a sense, sometimes implicit, other times explicit, that the proliferation of ‘alternative approaches’ was a positive development that would bring a more theoretically self-conscious and sophisticated discipline. (‘Alternative approaches’, it should be noted, almost immediately became synonymous with non- or anti-realist ways of thinking.) Central to the idea of a more sophisticated discipline was the elaboration of what became known as the ‘postpositivist turn’.
The old and generally understood sense of a self-contained discipline of IR, united around the problems of war and peace and dominated by a realist view of the world, began to grow weaker. Realism seemed in decline, but it should be stressed that it had never been the only theory game in town. In the first decades after 1945, liberal approaches to IR were strong – as they had been in IR’s earliest days in the 1920s – and the 1960s saw the emergence of various ‘idealist’ projects such as peace research and WOMP (as the ‘World Order Models Project’ became universally known). Nonetheless, realism’s dominance had resulted in generally held certainties about IR as a discipline during the Cold War. They began to dissolve after its ending, if not before. As a result, for many students of IR, it was no longer clear that a coherent discipline of IR existed. In response to the proliferation of alternative approaches, however, a vigorous reassertion of a more sophisticated realism from within the mainstream occurred, and today realism is loud and strong in a way that seemed quite unlikely in the mid-1990s.
Together, the convergence of multiple theories in contestation and the growth since the 1990s of serious geopolitical and other challenges facing policy-makers have led the discipline and its theorists to the particular crossroads where we find ourselves today. Sometimes, since the end of the Cold War, concern with the contestations between different theories has resulted in empirical international relations being downgraded in the discipline’s priorities. Those drawn to these ‘theory wars’ have been criticised occasionally for irrelevance or escaping from the real world. As a result, the present edition of International Relations Theory Today has been organised to try and situate IR theory centrally within the empirical world that gives it its rationale.
The structure of the book
This survey of IR theory has been conceived rather differently from what has become a standard model for IR theory books of the past twenty years – to be structured around a ‘schools-approach’ (realism, liberalism, and the rest). David Lake (2011) provocatively declared that ‘isms are evil’, at least when scholars are constrained by them and they impede ‘intellectual progress’. That noted, the labels given to specific modes of IR theorising are a useful way of organising thought and then discussing rich and complex intellectual histories. Nevertheless, labels can indeed be limiting when ‘-isms’ reify structures of ideas and discourage IR theorists from moving beyond, or between, them. Such ‘schoolism’ can be stultifying and exacerbate the more sectarian aspect of our argumentative discipline. Schools of thought are a means to an end, not the destination.
The book is structured into three main sections:
Part I
is organised around the idea of ‘Contestations’. It looks back on how the discipline has grown and discusses some of the major issues in the development of IR theory (such as the significance of identity, the relationship between theory and practice, and the place of economics).
Part II
focuses on theoretical explorations of major challenges facing IR specialists today. These chapters discuss the ways in which IR theorising has previously taken on and might in the decades ahead engage with significant real-world issues, such as the role of war, the threatened natural environment, and new information technology.
Part III
offers something different from the previous chapters. It consists of five short essays in which the contributors were given the opportunity to write about different possible futures for IR theory from their own distinctive viewpoints.
Together, the chapters reveal how IR theory has developed over the quarter of a century since the publication of the first edition and how important approaches engage today with both new and traditional real-world challenges. The authors are all prominent IR theorists, and we believe that their contributions show in different ways the intellectual excitement and turmoil involved in thinking about the international level of world politics. Moreover, these IR theorists have themselves contributed significantly to the topics under consideration and have demonstrated an ability to communicate sophisticated ideas in accessible ways.
This Introduction has made clear that IR theorists have been agonising over the state of the discipline for generations, and the book will certainly not be the last of the genre. This is because arguments about IR theory contribute, to some degree, to the sum of our collective thinking about the ways in which humans do and can relate to each other across the world – and when will this task end?
Keywords
The ‘keywords’ explained below are significant and possibly unfamiliar terms that occur throughout this book.3 They represent a basic – and by no means exhaustive – vocabulary of IR theory today. This section has been included because we are aware that readers will come to the chapters below with different levels of knowledge about the main schools and approaches. But please note: this is a place to start, not to finish, interrogating the vocabulary of IR theory.
Agent–structure debate This puzzle concerns the relative influence of agents (a person or entity able to make things happen) or structures (a set of ideas or institutions existing outside the agent). It has been an influential debate throughout the social sciences. In IR theory the debate concerns the interplay of agents (states, governments, non-state actors such as multinational corporations, etc.) and structures operating at the international level (anarchy, the world capitalist system, etc.). ‘Structuration’ is a theory associated with Anthony Giddens that seeks to understand structures and agents dynamically, as co-constitutive.
Classical realismSee realism.
Communitarianism As an ethical perspective that takes membership in particular communities and participation in their practices to be morally defining, this position is usually placed in opposition to *cosmopolitanism within *normative IR theory and is criticised for granting priority to fellow community members. The communitarian stance within normative IR theory (unlike its political theory counterpart) generally treats the morally defining community and the state synonymously. This results in points of contact with some classical realist positions that espouse (often overlooked) ethical stances. Notably, a number of recent contributions to normative IR theory replace communitarianism with ‘statism’ in opposition to cosmopolitanism.
Constructivism Constructivism encompasses a range of positions that share assumptions about how the social world works. It is not a theory of IR as such, providing a categorical picture of international structures and processes. Instead, it emphasises the importance of ideas (relevant common sense, norms, intersubjective understandings, etc.) in shaping actually practised behaviour (diplomacy, nationhood, etc.). Nicholas Onuf has written that ‘In giving form to the world the mind makes the world real – in our heads.’ In actually practised behaviour, this means, in Alexander Wendt’s words, that ‘Anarchy is what states make of it.’
Cosmopolitanism As an ethical perspective from which all individuals have equal moral standing and we have duties to others as human beings, cosmopolitanism is generally placed in opposition to *communitarianism or statism within *normative IR theory. Cosmopolitanism thus understood as an ethical perspective, or ethical cosmopolitanism, remains agnostic as to the particular institutional arrangements that are best suited to promoting these universal duties. However, political cosmopolitanism advocates the elimination or radical transformation of state borders with the aim of achieving either a world government or some system of representation that transcends political divisions.
Critical realism Some theorists argue that international relations consists of ‘ideas all the way down’; others argue that international relations, like life as a whole, is materially determined (see *Marxist IR theory). Most theorists seek to bring in both ideational and material factors. Critical realism recognises an independent existence of the material world, accepts that the ideas of agents contribute to constructing international relations, and argues that the ‘structures’ and ‘agents’ that make up the international are mutually constituted.
Critical theory Several distinctive, and sometimes antagonistic, approaches fall within the category of critical theory – most notably the Critical Theory (often capitalised) of the *Frankfurt School and the critical theorising of *post- structuralism. What all ‘critical’ approaches share is a challenge to positivist IR: against *positivism’s search for objectivity, critical theorists emphasise the historical situatedness of theorists. They are also biased towards change, challenging what Antonio Gramsci calls ‘common sense’ – that is, thinking that reproduces existing structures, processes, attitudes, and behaviour. (See also ‘problem-solving’ theories.)
Defensive realism Some structural realists argue that balance of power considerations in the anarchical system promote caution, which – if everybody is rational – limits security competition. Kenneth Waltz’s influential work is identified with this approach. (See also offensive realism; realism.)
Democratic peace theory This is the most explicitly ‘scientific’ theory in IR, having been the focus of considerable quantitative work. It claims that what matters in international relations is not the system itself (‘anarchy’) but the types of states in the system. According to this theory, states defined as having democratic institutions and cultures do not go to war with each other.
Discourse In the technical language of IR, ‘discourse’ is not simply ‘talk’. It refers to the way language and other representations construct reality. All the different manifestations of ‘international relations’ in this understanding are constituted by and through complex discursive interplays. Michel Foucault argued that discourses (and knowledge) are embedded in power relations, while Jacques Derrida said of social reality, ‘There is no outside-text.’ (See also post-structuralism/ postmodernism.)
Emancipation The modern conception of emancipation developed from the European Enlightenment, though its supporters reject the idea that there is anything intrinsically ‘Euro-centric’ in the goal of struggling against political
