Critique of International Studies PDF

CHAPTER 11 Critique of International Studies shortcoMings As with most academic disciplines or elds of study, International Relations (IR), World Politics (WP), and International Studies (IS) have been the object of many assessments during the past half-cen- tury. An ambitious predecessor, comprisin...

CHAPTER 11 Critique of International Studies shortcoMings As with most academic disciplines or elds of study, International Relations (IR), World Politics (WP), and International Studies (IS) have been the object of many assessments during the past half-cen- tury. An ambitious predecessor, comprising the views of 44 scholars, was presented in the Millennial Re ections project (1999–2002) earlier in this book. To conclude this volume, I present my own thoughts on the topic, based upon a wide-ranging critique, “International Studies in the Twentieth Century and Beyond: Flawed Dichotomies, Syntheses, Cumulation” (International Studies Quarterly 1999). The shortcomings are as follows: Intolerance of competing paradigms, models, methods, and ndings; closed-mind mentality; tendency to research fashions; retreat from science in IR, WP, IS; and low value placed on cumulation of knowledge. The awed dichotomies are as follows: Theory vs. History as approaches to knowledge; Deductive vs. Inductive paths to theory; Horizontal (breadth) vs. Vertical (in-depth) focus of inquiry; Aggregate data (quantitative) vs. Case study (qualitative) metods of analysis; © The Author(s) 2018 327 M. Brecher, A Century of Crisis and Con ict in the International System, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57156-0_11 328 M. BRECHER Large `N’ vs. Small `N’ clusters of data; System vs. Actor as the optimal level of analysis; and closely related, Unitary vs. Multiple competing actors; Rational calculus vs. Psychological constraints on choice; and the related divide Reality vs. Perceptions as the key to explain state behavior; and Neo-Realism vs. NeoInstitutionalism vs. Constructivism as the fi fl fl fi fl correct paradigm for the study of world politics. of what seems an intellectual-academic morass. Where have we gone wrong? The question is not new but it continues to perplex. The answers, unfortunately, are as numerous as our con- tentious ‘schools,’ which are divided by epistemology, methodology, and ideology, along with idiosyncratic elements such as personality. Realism and Neo-Realism, Institutionalism and NeoInstitutionalism, Critical Theory, Post-Modernism, Post-Positivism, Rational Choice Theory, Cognitive Psychology, the English School, Neo-Marxism, World System, Feminist IR, and Constructivism offer different reasons for the malaise of International Studies. Most would agree, I think, that the promise evident in the work of the modern founders of International Relations, notably E.H. Carr (1939, 1946), Quincy Wright (1942, 1955), Hans J. Morgenthau (1946, 1948), Martin Wight (1946), and Raymond Aron (1957, 1966), has not yet been ful lled. As someone who has learned from many of the pioneers and later ‘schools’ but is a prisoner or apostle of none, I present another answer to this elusive question. In particular, I will examine why this eld of knowl- edge, using the terms, International Relations (IR), World Politics (WP), and International Studies (IS) interchangeably, has not yet crys- tallized into a mature social science discipline. IR, WP, IS scholarship, as noted schematically above, is replete with shortcomings. The rst is intolerance of competing paradigms, models, methods, and ndings. From a Classical Realism perspective, Hedley Bull (1966) launched a “shotgun attack upon a whole ock of assorted approaches,” speci cally the work of Morton Kaplan, Karl Deutsch and Bruce Russett, Thomas Schelling, Richardson, Riker, and other contributors to the IR 11 CRITIQUE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 329 fi fi fi fi fl eld. One of the most pungent assaults on one IR paradigm by another was made by PostModernism’s Richard Ashley: in “The Poverty of Neorealism” (1984), he decried “Neorealist structuralism” as “an orrery of errors... struc- turalism, statism, utilitarianism, and positivism [which] are bound together in machine-like, self-enclosing unity.” Another blunt critique—of Neo- Institutionalism—came from Kenneth Waltz, the creator of Neo(Structural) Realism in IR theory: “A theory’s a theory. It has to meet certain standards whether it’s a natural science theory or a social science theory. Beyond that, I would call it [Neo-Institutionalism] interpretation, philosophy, history.... Keohane... says that the core of the theory [of Neo-Institutionalism] is struc- tural realism. That’s the only theory that there is in liberal internationalism: the rest is application” (1998). Waltz’s verbal assault was in response to a much more muted claim to primacy for Neo-Institutionalism by its leading proponent, Robert O. Keohane: “To analyze world politics in the 1990s is to discuss international institutions: the rules that govern elements of world politics and the fi fi fi These shortcomings and dichotomies are elaborated immediately below. The ‘state of the eld’ of International Studies, International Relations, World Politics remains chaotic, generating a need to break out A second weakness in IR-IS-WP is a closed-mind mentality, humor- ously captured by Dina Zinnes’s comment at a 1997 conference on “What Do We Know About War”: “I think it’s kind of intriguing that everybody who was asked to contribute to [this conference] loves their variable, nobody was willing to stand up and say, ‘I give up my variable’.” A third shortcoming is the tendency to research fashions, as evident in the shifting sands of the IR topical agenda during the twentieth century: legal and formal-structural aspects of international institutions, nota- bly the League of Nations, in the 1920s; the RealismIdealism debate in the 1930s and 1940s; decision-making and Neo-Functionalism in the 1950s and 1960s; Neo-Realism, Neo-Institutionalism, Comparative Foreign Policy, and Political Psychology in the 1970s; Critical Theory, Post-Modernism, and Feminism in the 1980s; and Constructivism in the 1990s. Many of these topics remain active in 2017. While change is a necessary condition of intellectual progress and a desirable response to changing world reality, many of these topic changes took on the appear- ance of a fad or fashion. Rather than contributing to cumulation of knowledge, they tended to create a myriad of debates that generated more heat than light and often polarized the community of IS, IR, WP scholars. 330 M. BRECHER A fourth shortcoming, apparent from a reading of the evolution of the eld, is an increasingly visible retreat from science in International Studies, most recently evident in the extreme version of the constructivist critique. A fth shortcoming, accentuated by the retreat from science, is the low value placed by an increasing number of IR scholars on cumulation of knowledge. Some of these shortcomings—intellectual intolerance, a closed-mind mentality, and a penchant for fads and fashions—can be viewed as part of the human condition and act as constraints on scholarly progress. Other shortcomings—the retreat from science and inadequate atten- tion to cumulation of knowledge—are grave intellectual weaknesses. Together, for they reinforce each other’s negative in uence and have helped to thwart efforts to attain the three objectives of a fully devel- oped social science discipline: accurate DESCRIPTION, convincing EXPLANATION, and high probability PREDICTION of the multiple strands that compose world politics. The negative impact of these shortcomings has been even more exten- sive, for they spill over to the second, more fundamental source of the malaise in IR, IS, and WP, in my view. In fact, they have facilitated the creation, persistence, and accentuation of a set of awed dichotomies that continue to pervade this eld of knowledge. fi fl fi flawed dichotoMies fi fl organizations that help implement those rules” (1998). In sum, prominent advocates of contending approaches in International Studies have not been immune to crass intellectual intolerance. Theory vs. History as approaches to knowledge; Deductive vs. Inductive paths to theory; Horizontal (breadth) vs. vertical (in-depth) focus of inquiry, based upon; Aggregate data (quantitative) vs. Case Study (qualitative) meth- ods of analysis, using large ‘N’ vs. small ‘N’ clusters of data; System vs. Actor as the optimal level of analysis and, closely related, unitary vs. multiple competing actors; Rational Calculus by authorized decision-makers vs. Psychological Constraints on choice, and the related divide over Reality vs. Image as the key to explaining state behavior; and, perhaps, the most sweeping dichotomy of all; 11 CRITIQUE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 331 (Neo)-Realism vs. (Neo)-Institutionalism as the correct paradigm for the study of world politics. It has long been my conviction that each of the competing strands in approaches to knowledge, paths to theory, foci of inquiry and meth- ods, levels of analysis, explanations of choice, and paradigms has merit. However, intolerance has been the prevailing tone of debates on what seem to me to be awed dichotomies, often with disdain for alternative paths. Whichever organizing device is used to frame these cleavages, the central point remains that there is a plethora of dichotomies in the eld of International Studies and these are all awed. Many years ago I set out the case for “many paths to knowledge” and made a plea for pluralism in International Studies (1989, 1995). In this spirit, I turn to what I consider the awed dichotomies. Theory vs. History The adherents of both theory and history claim that theirs is the superior path to knowledge in International Studies–International Relations–World Politics. This cleavage is generally framed in either/or, correct/incorrect terms, and protagonists of both persuasions (broadly, social science vs. the humanities) have, for the most part, yielded to the thesis–antithesis syndrome. fl fi fl fl I have always been a pluralist in the matter of research strategy: there are, it seems to me, many paths to knowledge; no single path has a monopoly of truth. In this I was in uenced by my South Asia experi- ence, especially the Hindu adage that no religion has a monopoly of the truth; all can claim to know only a part of the whole. Translating this to fl fl One way of framing the concept of awed dichotomies, as noted above, is in terms of the thesis/antithesis syndrome: the enduring issue of the optimal path to knowledge, I became commit- ted, very early, to pluralism in methodology. Deductive logic generates models and hypotheses which must be tested with empirical evidence. From inductive research one can derive generalizations, both from com- parative case studies, a small N, and from aggregate data analysis, a large N; these can be framed as hypotheses and tested with evidence from other cases. Theory clearly occupies a central place, whether deductively or inductively derived. Although the former is accorded higher status in the natural and social sciences, the evidence thus far in the study of world politics is mixed and, in any event, the choice depends upon a 332 M. BRECHER researcher’s disposition. Stated differently, the issue of whether for- mal theory must precede—and take precedence over—empirical inves- tigation remains unresolved. My own disposition has always been in favor of an iterative process—pre-theory, in the form of a framework to guide empirical inquiry, followed by the creation of models and hypotheses, testing, their re nement as the evidence dictates, further testing and so on. The stimulus is often a puzzle. In my long research experience, the most complex puzzle has been the ubiquitous phenomenon of inter- state crisis. I began by framing what seemed to me core questions. What is a crisis? How does it differ from, and how is it related to, con ict, war, dispute, and incident? Does it unfold at one or more levels? What are the de ning conditions of an international (macro-level) crisis and of a foreign policy (micro-level) crisis? What is the logical relationship between them? What triggers an external crisis for a state? How do deci- sion-makers cope with the stress of crisis? How do crises wind down and terminate? Are there differences in international crises in diverse con gu- rations of polarity, geography, economic development, political regime, etc.? How does one explain its core dimensions such as crisis outbreak, actor behavior, major power activity, the involvement of international organizations, crisis outcome, its intensity, and consequences? This, in turn, led to a related puzzle: what path should be followed in order to answer these questions? My choice from the outset was a two- track strategy, owing from a conviction about the inherent merit of plu- ralism. One path is in-depth case studies of perceptions and decisions by a single state, using a micro-level model of crisis that I designed to guide research on foreign policy crises for individual states and to facilitate rig- orous comparative analysis of ndings about state behavior under varying stress. This approach, which I termed “structured empiricism,” gathers and organizes data on diverse cases around a set of common questions, permitting systematic comparison. fi fl fi fi fi fl fi Comparative case study alone, however, cannot uncover the full range of ndings about any phenomenon in world politics. For this purpose, a second path was necessary, namely, studies in breadth of aggregate data on crises over an extended block of time and space. The result was a selection of a large-scale empirical domain, all military-security crises of all states, across all continents, cultures, and political and economic systems, initially from 1929 to 1979, extended back and forward in time, to late 1918 and, at present, to the end of 2015, and on-going. In 11 CRITIQUE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 333 the shaping of this aggregate data dimension of the ICB project and in the many volumes and papers that presented the data and the ndings, Jonathan Wilkenfeld and I have been academic collaborators in the best sense of the term, for 40 years. Stated in terms of paths to knowledge, we and our associates and assistants sought conceptual clarity and a rich empirical base, simultaneously, in order to achieve the goal of illuminat- ing the causes, evolution, termination, and consequences of interstate crises and protracted con icts. It is important to emphasize that the plethora of questions noted above emerged both from thinking about the puzzle (theorizing) and from initial research on twentieth-century cases (empirical investiga- tion), which the questions were designed to guide. Over time—the main data-gathering phase lasted 40 years thus far and continues—the puzzle became more, rather than less, complex, and the body of questions grew, for we sought to tap every attribute of interstate crises. Was this research program shaped by theory or by history, that is, by a priori reasoning or by empirical evidence? It was, in reality, a synthesis of the two, and consciously so. In fact, at the same time that the initial set of variables was being created, a preliminary set of cases was being gener- ated for the period 1929–1979. With the advice of specialists on inter- national con ict in all regions of the world, a revised set of cases became the basis for our research, all guided by the same questions, as noted ear- lier in this book. In short, the assumed dichotomy between theory and history seemed awed: in fact, theory and history served as our joint dis- ciplinary guides. Deductive vs. Inductive Theory The cleavage between theory and history spills over to deductive vs. inductive reasoning as paths to theory, the second awed dichotomy in my view. Hedley Bull, a guru of the English School in IR, rejected both deduc- tive and inductive paths to theory. In fact, theory seemed anathema to him: “...in framing hypotheses in answer to these empirical questions we are dependent upon intuition or judgment...; [and] in the testing of them we are utterly dependent upon judgment, also upon a rough and ready observation” (1966). The exemplar of the inductivist approach to IR knowledge was David Singer: from the outset of his Correlates of War (COW) project (1963), 334 M. BRECHER fl fl fi fl fl he urged concentration on the generation of data and the search for cor- relates of war. Causation and theory were eschewed by him. The deductivist view was stated with admirable clarity by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. On the one hand, he acknowledged the virtue of pluralism: “Does it matter whether our research proceeds inductively or deductively, so long as we... satisfy the requirements of rigorous theory construction and rigorous empirical investigation? I think not, at least in terms of the value of the nal product. The logic of discovery apparently is not laid out along a single, neat path. However, the two paths are less than equal: while “observation is useful to falsify theory.... [It] is not particularly useful for con rming theories.... [P]roof must come from axiomatic logic.” Moreover, “... formal, explicit theorizing takes intellectual, if not temporal, precedence over empiricism” (1985). In this view, empirical ndings cannot validate theory; they can only falsify. There is, however, an alternative path to theory ‘from the top down,’ namely, theory ‘from the bottom up.’ In this perspective, theory is the end-point of an intellectual process, not the starting-point; that is, theory is the highest step on a four-step ladder designed to create, organ- ize, and validate knowledge, following the initial task, concept de nition. The initial task takes place in some kind of theory-driven environment, as noted by Popper, Lakatos, and other philosophers of social science. A taxonomy, or classi cation of variables, is the most rudimentary but often the most appropriate technique to begin a scienti c research enterprise, for it brings together variables that identify relevant attributes about a topic, even though relations among the variables have not yet been speci ed. It is the rst pre-theoretical step. The next step in the bottom-up strategy of theory-creation is to group variables in a con- ceptual map based on logical links among the variables. Hypotheses are derived deductively from models, the third step in the bottom-up strategy. For the pure theorist, a model does not merit the accolade, theory, since its primary function is to guide research. For others, however, theory is generated from a model and its hypotheses. A model goes far beyond both taxonomy and conceptual map in specifying cause–effect linkages between independent and dependent variables, often with intervening variables as well. Such postulates are the essence of explanation. When tested with, and supported by, empirical data, these postulates merit the designation theoretical propositions. Thus, in my view, a rig- orous model, quali es as contingent theory. 11 CRITIQUE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 335 fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi What theoretical functions have been performed by the Uni ed Model of Crisis (UMC), presented earlier in this book? First, it provided the intellectual rationale for the phase models, noted earlier in the discussion of the UMC. Second, it presented the logic for the inferences derived from these models. And third, it speci ed these in the form of propositions and hypotheses. As such, it made possible the testing of theoretical expectations with the abundant evidence on interstate crises, facilitating the crucial confrontation between theory and reality. In so doing, the Uni ed Model serves as the core of a scienti c research program (Lakatos 1970) on cri- sis, for it aims to discover which logically derived assumptions about crises and state behavior are falsi ed and which are con rmed. This dichotomy is framed in terms of breadth vs. depth, that is, a horizon- tal vs. a vertical focus, which translates into aggregate data vs. case study. And this, in turn, is linked to the number of cases—a large vs. small N— to be used in testing deductively derived hypotheses or to serve as the empirical basis of theory-type generalizations. The issue of methods is no less contentious than the debates between theory and history, and over paths to theory. Most of the debates on IR methods have focused on the merits and limits of case study. The alternative—quantitative, aggregate data analysis—and the optimal num- ber of cases have received little attention. I know all the arguments of the proponents of one or the other approach. But I have always found them awed and counter-productive, for they are based on the fundamentally faulty premise that one of these methods is RIGHT, and the other, WRONG. Rational actor theorists rarely undertake case studies; they view the ndings as unproductive in theory-testing, let alone theory construction. Political psychologists attach great importance to case studies but they often err in their analy- ses of why decision-makers did or did not initiate war. After engaging in many case studies of crisis, con ict, and war, and the behavior of states in various regions, at diverse levels of power and economic development, with different cultures and historical legacies, I have concluded that, in some cases, rational calculus is the primary path to illuminating choice on war initiation; in other cases, the decision is a product of complex- ity, incomplete information, miscalculation, fear, etc. In almost all cases, both rational calculus and psychological constraints operate. 336 M. BRECHER Is the impasse over IR methods merely another indicator of an under- developed academic discipline? Must we choose rigidly between a quali- tative, small N, in-depth case study research program and quantitative, large N, aggregate data analysis? I do not think so. Rather, my experi- ence of research on crisis, con ict, and war for decades demonstrates that the dead end of clinging to one’s preferred method and the the- sis/ antithesis wrangling can be overcome through the adoption of a dual strategy of research —case studies and aggregate data analysis. However, this is not accomplished mechanically by fusing the two meth- ods. Rather, multi-method analysis is the optimal path to progress in International Studies. Levels of Analysis fi fl fl fl A fourth awed dichotomy in IS, IR, WP relates to the level of analysis problem. Variations in the number of levels of analysis were suggested over the years—ten levels, ve, and three. However, the consensus in support of two IR levels—the state and the system—has been sustained. Scholars sang the praises of one or the other level. The core question posed earlier about other dichotomies comes to mind once more: are the levels of analysis mutually exclusive, as implied by the protagonists of system determinism and state decision-makers’ autonomy? The answer, based upon a prolonged inquiry into fl fi Aggregate Data vs. Case Study twentieth and early twenty- rst century crises and protracted con icts, is emphatically ‘no.’ The International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project focuses on both international crises (the system level) and foreign policy crises (the actor level) , and treats them as parts of an integrated whole—interstate crises. Moreover, while the models designed to guide research at the two lev- els differ, with respect to independent, intervening, and dependent vari- ables, they are not mutually exclusive: they are complementary. Rational Calculus vs. Cognitive Constraints Another dichotomy that has bedeviled International Studies is that between rational choice theory and political psychology: it focuses on the actor level of analysis, speci cally, on how foreign policy decision- makers choose. The concept of rational choice and expected utility theory derive from the social science tradition of neo-classical microeconomic theory and from game theory, but it was slow to penetrate IR. Notable early works by Brams (1975) and Bueno de Mesquita (1981) were followed by a 11 CRITIQUE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 337 plethora of books and articles in The Journal of Con ict Resolution and other journals. The focus on perceptions (images) in International Studies can be traced to an economist, Boulding (1956, 1959) and, even more visibly, to the Stanford-mediated stimulus response model in the 1960s. But it was not until the mid-1970s that the psychological dimension— the importance of cognitive constraints on decision-making—attained high visibility with books by Jervis 1976, Axelrod 1976, and Janis and Mann, 1977. The rational choice school has created a parsimonious and rigorous theory of political behavior. In the sub eld of international con ict, it contends that decision-makers choose to initiate or not to initiate war solely on the basis of a rational calculus of costs and bene ts. Several assumptions underpin this theory: rst, that the decision-making process can be equated with one or a few leaders, with the roles of civil and military bureaucracies, legislatures, interest groups, and, in democracies, the media and public opinion being inconsequential; second, that human decision-makers are capable of pure rationality, a view that psychologists, political and other, have vigorously challenged, as in Simon’s (1957) con- cept of “bounded rationality”; and third, that choice can be examined solely in terms of the behavior of the chooser, that is, of a single state, rather than as a product of hostile interaction among state adversaries. fl fl fi fl fi fi fl fi fi All of these assumptions have been challenged. In particular, critics have argued that the concept of pure rationality is an ideal type which does not conform to reality. They also emphasized the role of constraints on choice, in Jervis’s words, “cognitive limitations on information processing” and “motivated biases,” as well as constraints on rational decision-making ow- ing from domestic politics and organizational behavior (1976, 1989). There is merit in both of these contending approaches. The motiva- tions of foreign policy decision-makers are varied and complex. Not all are pure rational actors. Nor are all driven by fear. Some will respond to a strategy of deterrence, others to a strategy of reassurance. And in still other cases neither strategy nor a mix will be effective. Once more the either/or contention is awed. Deterrence and reassurance are comple- mentary strategies; each explains part of state behavior in the military- security issue-area of foreign policy; together they explain much but not all about the decision process attending the initiation of violence. To explain a decision to initiate war solely in terms of a subjective expected utility calculus may satisfy a penchant for parsimony, but does such a model do justice to the complex process attending a decision to 338 M. BRECHER go to war? I am profoundly skeptical, based upon decades of in-depth research on the decision-making process leading to war. Similarly, to focus exclusively on the cognitive constraints on decision-makers and to argue that a calculus of utility is either not made or plays a marginal role in the choice process is also awed. The vigorous debate between rational choice theory and political psychology theory goes on. Paradigms Lost Academic disciplines are slow to mature. One of the indicators of matu- rity is a consensus frame of reference that shapes the intellectual tone, the research agenda, and the methods of inquiry of a community of scholars. Competition among paradigms is not unique to International Studies– International Relations–World Politics or the social sciences generally. And the concept of “paradigm shift” is one of the major unresolved con- troversies in the philosophy of science. In the years before World War I, continuing through most of the inter-World War period (1919–1939), Idealism or Utopianism held sway, with international law and its institutional nexus, the League of Nations, as the main focus of research in International Studies. It was only with the weakening of the Versailles system and the increasing visibility of con ict, crisis, and war attending the spread of Fascism, Nazism, and Japanese militarism in the 1930s that Idealism as the dominant para- digm in International Studies came under criticism by Realism. fl fl fl Classical Realism, which had dominated International Studies and international practice for more than two millennia, continued its pri- macy for 3 decades after World War II: Vasquez’s designation, in his The Power of Power Politics (1983), “color it Morgenthau” (the 1st edition of Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations 1948), captured the essence of Realism’s pre-eminence. Then, in a substantial revision by Waltz (1979), NeoRealism (Structural Realism) held sway through most of the 1980s. So awesome was Realism’s stature in IR—for almost 2500 years— that the rst serious intellectual challenge to its primacy avoided a frontal attack. In their initial formulation of the new antithesis, Neo- Institutionalism, Keohane and Nye (1977) tried to assert equality, not hegemony: “We do not argue...that complex interdependence faith- fully re ects world political reality. Quite the contrary: both it and the realist portrait are ideal types. Most situations will fall somewhere between these two extremes.” Later, with increasing con dence in Neo- Institutionalism as the superior paradigm, they and the rapidly growing 11 CRITIQUE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 339 International Political Economy (IPE) community of scholars staked a claim to hegemony. The clash of paradigms in International Studies has generated more heat than light. The initial dichotomy, Idealism vs. Realism, dominated the rst three-fourths of the twentieth century. Since the late 1970s, the thesis/antithesis syndrome was expressed by NeoRealism vs. Neo- Liberalism/Institutionalism. Other claimants to the ‘true path’ have staked their claim with increasing fervor and visibility: the global system paradigm, in its Neo-Marxist and long-cycle varieties; several strands of Post-Positivism, including PostModernism and Constructivism; the English school of Neo-Idealism, and Feminism. The most assertive challenge to the two competing mainstream paradigms emanates from Constructivism. As Checkel noted (1998): “Constructivism...is not a theory but an approach to social inquiry [that] question[s] the materialism and methodological individualism upon which much contemporary IR scholarship has been built.” In a thoughtful attempt to build a bridge between Constructivism and main- stream IR, Adler remarked: “Constructivism is the view that the man- ner in which the material world shapes and is shaped by human action and interaction depends on dynamic normative and epistemic interpretations of the material world” (1997). Moreover, “Constructivism also challenges empiricist and realist assumptions of working science” (Onuf 1989). Early in the twenty- rst century, IR–IS–WP is, I think, the skeptical bene ciary of a plethora of competing paradigms. While pluralism is a virtue, cleavage and confrontation, and ensuing confusion, are not. The paucity of serious attempts at synthesis, or at least complementarity, among contending paradigms is an indicator of deep malaise. Perhaps the most enduring re ection about International Studies is that ‘plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.’ World politics have changed drastically during the past threequarters of a century—the structure of the international system and subordinate state systems, the number of member-states, the emergence of transnational and sub-national actors, the increasing importance of the economic dimension in state behavior, and many other far-reaching changes. fl fi fi fi fl fl fi fi fl What has not changed, I think, is the enduring divisiveness within IR–IS–WP, which re ects a persistent immaturity. Sometimes the con- ict between ‘schools’ is wrapped in the super cially civil discourse of a ‘debate,’ sometimes not. Debate, especially when it is based upon mutual respect, is healthy, even necessary in the growth of any branch 340 M. BRECHER of knowledge. But confrontation that is cast in terms of a hostile we/ they syndrome, right and wrong, scienti c rigor versus historical descrip- tion, is an indicator of a deep malaise. This was captured with insight by one of the major contributors to the eld and, more broadly, to political science. “...the various schools and sects of political science now sit at separate tables, each with its own conception of proper political science, but each protecting some secret island of vulnerability.... We are separated along two dimensions: an ideological one and a methodological one” (Gabriel Almond 1990). 2. I recognize that nation-states are no longer the virtually exclusive actors in the international system, the status they enjoyed during the three centuries of the Westphalia system (1648–1945). Non- state and transnational actors have come to play an increasingly important role in world politics, especially in non-militarysecurity issue-areas. But the state is far from dead and is not likely to dis- appear in the foreseeable future. It is still the central actor in the important military-security issue-area, as the crises and wars of the post-Cold War world clearly demonstrate —in the Middle East, including the Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia, North Korea, Iran, and the cluster of upheavals on the periphery of the extinct Soviet Union. 3. The end of the Cold War has not ushered in the ‘Nirvana’ of coop- eration, as evident in the ubiquity of con ict, crisis, and war between and within states, though the domain of cooperation has dramatically expanded during the past 25 years. 4. Violence played an important part in world politics in the 1990s and the early years of the new century, as in previous decades, cen- turies, and millennia, and is likely to continue to do so. 5. Nationalism has re-emerged as a primary force in world politics— in a new form, Ethnicity, which is manifested in the widespread demand for self-determination and secession. Ethnicity is, in fact, a late twentieth-century variation of the fi I remain convinced that, despite the critique of Post-Modernism, Positivism is still a valid basis for creating and accumulating knowledge about state behavior and international system change. fl 1. fi fi Where do I stand on all of the contentious matters discussed above? Goddess of Nationalism that shaped the history of Europe in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars and, later, Asia and Africa, in 11 CRITIQUE OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 341 the anti-colonial Revolution that swept the world from the midnineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries. 6. Parsimony is undoubtedly a high scienti c value, and, wherever possible, it should be sought, but it should not be forced on to the data. The primary goal of all IR–IS–WP research is not parsimony but accuracy in both the description and explanation of reality. The subject matter of crisis, con ict, and war, and, more generally, of world politics, is extraordinarily complex. To force this complex- ity into a singlefactor explanation may be satisfying in terms of parsimony, but is it an accurate explanation of the process leading to war? The answer, in my judgment, is, No. And I would rather forego parsimony than accuracy in the explanation of any complex issue in world politics. It would be unproductive to enter into a disquisition on who is ‘right’ and who is ‘wrong,’ for this is precisely the kind of evaluation that has been the bane of our intellectual endeavor. Suf ce it to express the view that none of the contending ‘schools’ is wholly right or wholly wrong. final words fl fi fl fl fl fl fi There seems to me to be an inner logic in the metaphor of three ‘hats,’ and there has been a kind of natural evolution of focus throughout my Intellectual Odyssey, all guided by an enduring interest in the Con ict domain of world politics: I devoted 2 decades to crisis, war, and pro- tracted con ict, as well as nation-building, in South Asia; 2 decades on crisis, war, and protracted con ict in the Arab/Israel domain of the Middle East; and 4 decades on the perennial effort to illuminate, and construct valid theory about, interstate crises and protracted con icts. It has been an illuminating and rewarding journey, and one I would happily make again.