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CHAPTER 2 IR as an Academic Subject 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Introduction Utopian Liberalism: The Early Study of IR Realism and the Twenty Years’ Crisis The Voice of Behaviouralism in IR Neoliberalism: Institutions and Interdependence Neorealism: Bipolarity and Confrontation 34 35 40 43 46 48 2.7...

CHAPTER 2 IR as an Academic Subject 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Introduction Utopian Liberalism: The Early Study of IR Realism and the Twenty Years’ Crisis The Voice of Behaviouralism in IR Neoliberalism: Institutions and Interdependence Neorealism: Bipolarity and Confrontation 34 35 40 43 46 48 2.7 International Society: The English School 2.8 International Political Economy (IPE) 2.9 Dissident Voices: Alternative Approaches to IR 2.10 Criteria for Good Theory 2.11 Conclusion KEY POINTS QUESTIONS GUIDE TO FURTHER READING 50 54 56 59 62 62 63 64 Summary This chapter shows how thinking about international relations (IR) has evolved since IR became an academic subject around the time of the First World War. Theoretical approaches are a product of their time: they address those problems of international relations that are seen as the most important ones in their day. The established traditions deal, nonetheless, with international problems that are of lasting significance: war and peace, conflict and cooperation, wealth and poverty, and development and underdevelopment. In this chapter, we shall focus on four established IR traditions. They are realism, liberalism, International Society, and International Political Economy (IPE). We also introduce more recent, alternative approaches that challenge the established traditions, including social constructivism and post-positivist approaches. The new voices in IR include feminist theory, Green theory, and IR theories from the Global South. 34 STUDYING IR 2.1 Introduction The traditional core of IR has to do with issues concerning the development and change of sovereign statehood in the context of the larger system or society of states. This focus on states and the relations of states helps explain why war and peace form a central problem of traditional IR theory. However, contemporary IR is concerned not only with political relations between states but also with a host of other subjects: economic interdependence, human rights, transnational corporations, international organizations, the environment, gender inequalities, economic development, terrorism, and so forth. For this reason, some scholars prefer the label ‘International Studies’ or ‘World Politics’. We shall stay with the label ‘International Relations’ but we interpret it to cover the broad range of issues. There are four major classical theoretical traditions in IR: realism, liberalism, International Society, and IPE. In addition, there is a more diverse group of alternative approaches which have gained prominence in recent decades. The most important of these are social constructivism and post-positivist approaches, an umbrella term for several different strands of theory. The main task of this book is to present and discuss all these schools of thought. In this chapter, we examine IR as an evolving academic subject. IR thinking has developed through distinct phases, characterized by specific debates between groups of scholars. At most times during the twentieth century, there has been a dominant way of thinking about IR and a major challenge to that way of thinking. Those debates and dialogues are the main subject of this chapter. There are a great many different theories in IR. They can be classified in a number of ways; what we call a ‘main theoretical tradition’ is not an objective entity. If you put four IR theorists in a room you will easily get ten different ways of organizing theory, and there will also be disagreement about which theories are relevant in the first place! At the same time, we have to group theories into main categories. Without identifying main paths in the development of IR thinking, we are stuck with a large number of individual contributions, pointing in different and sometimes rather confusing directions. But you should always be wary of selections and classifications, including the ones offered in this book. They are analytical tools created to achieve overview and clarity; they are not objective truths that can be taken for granted (see Box 2.1). Of course, IR thinking is influenced by other academic subjects, such as philosophy, history, law, sociology, and economics. IR thinking also responds to historical BOX 2.1 Key Arguments: IR theories as models [T]he main schools of general theory of international relations are not proven in any scientific sense: rather they constitute ways of perceiving international relations, metaphors or models which appeal to their adherents because that is the way they prefer to view the world. Wilkinson (2007: 2) IR AS AN ACADEMIC SUBJECT FIGURE 2.1 The development of IR thinking Historical context: Development and change of sovereign statehood Theoretical discussion between IR scholars: Major debates Other disciplines (philosophy, history, economics, law, etc.) New insights and new methods influence IR and contemporary developments in the real world. The two world wars, the Cold War between East and West, the emergence of close economic cooperation between Western states, and the persistent development gap between North and South are examples of real-world events and problems that stimulated IR scholarship in the twentieth century. And we can be certain that future events and episodes will provoke new IR thinking in the years to come: that is already evident with regard to the end of the Cold War, which has stimulated a variety of innovative IR thought in recent decades. The terrorist attacks that began on 11 September 2001 are another major challenge to IR thinking; the financial crisis that broke in 2008 and the current conflicts in the Middle East are yet other examples (see Figure 2.1). At the present time, the COVID-19 pandemic, the global refugee crisis, and the growth of socioeconomic inequalities, political populism, and nationalist politics challenge theorizing in IR. There have been three major debates since IR became an academic subject at the end of the First World War, and we are now well into a fourth. The first major debate was between utopian liberalism and realism; the second between traditional approaches and behaviouralism; the third between neorealism/neoliberalism and neo-Marxism. The fourth debate is between established traditions and post-positivist alternatives. We shall review these major debates in this chapter because they provide us with a map of the way the academic subject of IR has developed over the past century. We need to become familiar with that map in order to comprehend IR as a dynamic academic subject that continues to evolve, and to see the directions of that continuing evolution of IR thought. 2.2 Utopian Liberalism: The Early Study of IR The decisive push to set up a separate academic subject of IR was occasioned by the First World War (1914–18), which brought millions of casualties, large-scale physical destruction of large areas of continental Europe, and numerous political and military upheavals even after the main fighting had ended in November 1918. It was driven by 35 36 STUDYING IR a widely felt determination never to allow human suffering on such a scale to happen again. Why was it that the war began in the first place? And why did Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Austria, Turkey, and other powers persist in waging war in the face of the slaughter of millions of young men and with diminishing chances of gaining anything of real value from the conflict? The answers that the new discipline of IR came up with were profoundly influenced by liberal ideas. For liberal thinkers, the First World War was in no small measure attributable to the egoistic and short-sighted calculations and miscalculations of autocratic leaders in the heavily militarized countries involved, especially Germany and Austria. Unrestrained by democratic institutions and under pressure from their generals, these leaders were inclined to take the fatal decisions that led their countries into war (see Box 2.2). Why was early academic IR influenced by liberalism? That is a big question, but there are a few important points that we should keep in mind in seeking an answer. The United States was eventually drawn into the war in 1917. Its military intervention decisively determined the outcome of the war: it guaranteed victory for the democratic allies (the US, Britain, France) and defeat for the autocratic central powers (Germany, Austria, Turkey). At that time, the United States had a president, Woodrow Wilson, who had been a university professor of political science and who saw it as his main mission to bring liberal democratic values to Europe and to the rest of the world. Only in that way, he believed, could another great war be prevented. In short, the liberal way of thinking had a solid political backing from the most powerful state in the international system at the time. Academic IR developed first and most strongly in the two leading liberal-democratic states: the United States and Great Britain. Liberal thinkers had some clear ideas and strong beliefs about how to avoid major disasters in the future, e.g., by reforming the international system, and also by reforming the domestic structures of autocratic countries. BOX 2.2 Key Developments: Leadership misperceptions and war It is my conviction that during the descent into the abyss, the perceptions of statesmen and generals were absolutely crucial. All the participants suffered from greater or lesser distortions in their images of themselves. They tended to see themselves as honorable, virtuous, and pure, and the adversary as diabolical. All the nations on the brink of the disaster expected the worst from their potential adversaries. They saw their own options as limited by necessity or ‘fate’, whereas those of the adversary were characterized by many choices. Everywhere, there was a total absence of empathy; no one could see the situation from another point of view. The character of each of the leaders was badly flawed by arrogance, stupidity, carelessness, or weakness. Stoessinger (2010: 21–3) IR AS AN ACADEMIC SUBJECT President Wilson’s vision of making the world ‘safe for democracy’ had wide appeal for ordinary people (see Box 2.3). It has been said that in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, the popular alternatives for Europe were ‘Wilson or Lenin’ (Ziblatt 2017: 8). Wilson’s ideas were formulated in a fourteen-point programme delivered in an address to Congress in January 1918, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. His ideas influenced the Paris Peace Conference, which followed the end of hostilities and tried to institute a new international order based on liberal ideas. Two major points in Wilson’s ideas for a more peaceful world deserve special emphasis (Brown and Ainley 2009). The first concerns his promotion of democracy and selfdetermination. Behind this point is the liberal conviction that democratic governments do not and will not go to war against each other. It was Wilson’s hope that the growth of liberal democracy in Europe would put an end to autocratic and warlike leaders and put peaceful governments in their place. Liberal democracy should therefore be strongly encouraged. The second major point in Wilson’s programme concerned the creation of an international organization that would put relations between states on a firmer institutional foundation than in the past. In essence, that was Wilson’s concept of the League of Nations, which was instituted by the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The idea that international institutions can promote peaceful cooperation among states is a basic element of liberal thinking; so is the notion about a relationship between liberal democracy and peace. We return to both ideas in Chapter 4. Wilsonian idealism can be summarized as follows. It is the conviction that, through a rational and intelligently designed international organization, it should be possible to put an end to war and to achieve more or less permanent peace. The claim is not that it will be possible to do away with states and statespeople, foreign ministries, armed forces, and other agents and instruments of international conflict. Rather, the claim is that it is possible to tame states and statespeople by subjecting them to the appropriate international organizations, institutions, and laws. The argument liberal idealists make is that traditional BOX 2.3 Key Quotes: Making the world safe for democracy We are glad now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the right of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them. Woodrow Wilson, from ‘Address to Congress Asking for Declaration of War’, 1917, quoted from Vasquez (1996: 35–40) 37 38 STUDYING IR power politics—so-called ‘Realpolitik’—is a ‘jungle’, so to speak, where dangerous beasts roam and the strong and cunning rule; whereas under the League of Nations the beasts are put into cages reinforced by the restraints of international organization; i.e., into a kind of ‘zoo’. Wilson’s liberal faith that an international organization could be created that would guarantee permanent peace is clearly reminiscent of the thought of the most famous classical liberal IR theorist: Immanuel Kant in his pamphlet Perpetual Peace (1795). Norman Angell is another prominent liberal idealist of the same era. In 1909, Angell published a book entitled The Great Illusion. Angell argues that in modern times territorial conquest is extremely expensive and politically divisive because it severely disrupts international commerce; war therefore no longer serves profitable purposes. The general argument set forth by Angell is a forerunner of later liberal thinking about modernization and economic interdependence. Modernization demands that states have a growing need of things ‘from “outside”—credit, or inventions, or markets or materials not contained in sufficient quantity in the country itself’ (Navari 1989: 345). Rising interdependence, in turn, effects a change in relations between states. War and the use of force become of decreasing importance, and international law develops in response to the need for a framework to regulate high levels of interdependence. In sum, modernization and interdependence involve a process of change and progress which renders war and the use of force increasingly obsolete. The thinking of Wilson and Angell is based on a liberal view of human beings and human society: human beings are rational, and when they apply reason to international relations, they can set up organizations for the benefit of all. Public opinion is a constructive force; removing secret diplomacy in dealings between states and, instead, opening diplomacy to public scrutiny ensures that agreements will be sensible and fair. These ideas had some success in the 1920s; the League of Nations was indeed established and the great powers took some further steps to assure each other of their peaceful intentions. The high point of these efforts came with the Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928, which practically all countries signed. The pact was an international agreement to abolish war; only in extreme cases of self-defence could war be justified. In short, liberal ideas dominated in the first phase of academic IR. Indeed, the liberal ideas had already been influential before the First World War, as demonstrated by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 (see Box 2.4). Why is it, then, that we tend to refer to such ideas by the somewhat pejorative term of ‘utopian liberalism’, indicating that these liberal arguments were little more than wishful thinking? One plausible answer is to be found in the political and economic BOX 2.4 Key Developments: The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 The Hague Conventions were two international peace treaties made at conferences in the Hague in 1899 and 1907 that were attended by all major powers. The Hague Conventions dealt with rules for warfare but also included negotiations about disarmament and an attempt to set up a court of arbitration that would allow countries to solve disagreements in a peaceful way. A third conference was to take place in 1914 (it was later rescheduled to 1915) but the outbreak of the First World War put a stop to it. IR AS AN ACADEMIC SUBJECT developments of the 1920s and 1930s. Liberal democracy suffered hard blows with the growth of fascist dictatorship in Italy and Spain, and Nazism in Germany. Authoritarianism also increased in many of the new states of Central and Eastern Europe—for example, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia—that were brought into existence as a result of the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference and were supposed to become democracies. Thus, Wilson’s hopes for the spread of democratic civilization were shattered. In many cases, what actually happened was the spread of the very sort of state that he believed provoked war: autocratic, authoritarian, and militaristic states. At the same time, liberal states themselves were not democratic role models in every way: several of them held on to vast empires, with colonies kept under coercive control (Long and Schmidt 2005). Woodrow Wilson himself was a staunch defender of racial hierarchy in the United States and he did not press for self-determination for non-European peoples (Skowronek 2006). The League of Nations never became the strong international organization that liberals hoped would restrain powerful and aggressively disposed states. Germany and Russia initially failed to sign the Versailles Peace Treaty, and their relationship to the League was always strained. Germany joined the League in 1926 but left in 1933. Japan also left at that time, while embarking on war in Manchuria. Russia finally joined in 1934, but was expelled in 1940 because of the war with Finland. By that time the League was effectively dead. Although Britain and France were members from the start, they never regarded the League as an important institution and refused to shape their foreign policies with League criteria in mind. Most devastating, however, was the refusal of the United States Senate to ratify the covenant of the League (see Box 2.5). Isolationism had a long tradition in US foreign policy, and many American politicians were isolationists even if President Wilson was not; they did not want to involve their country in the murky affairs of Europe. So, much to Wilson’s chagrin, the strongest state in the international system—his own—did not join the League. With a number of states outside the BOX 2.5 Key Developments: The League of Nations The League of Nations (1920–46) contained three main organs: the Council (fifteen members including France, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union as permanent members) which met three times a year; the Assembly (all members) which met annually, and a Secretariat. All decisions had to be by unanimous vote. The underlying philosophy of the League was the principle of collective security which meant that the international community had a duty to intervene in international conflicts: it also meant that parties to a dispute should submit their grievances to the League. The centre-piece of the [League] Covenant was Article 16, which empowered the League to institute economic or military sanctions against a recalcitrant state. In essence, though, it was left to each member to decide whether or not a breach of the Covenant had occurred and so whether or not to apply sanctions. Evans and Newnham (1992: 176) 39 STUDYING IR FIGURE 2.2 Contraction of world trade: Total imports of seventy-five countries 1929–33 (million gold US$) 3,500 3,000 1929 1930 2,500 Million US$ (gold) 40 2,000 1931 1,500 1932 1933 1,000 500 0 Year Based on Kindleberger (1973: 280) League, including the most important, and with the two major powers inside the organization lacking any real commitment to it, the League never achieved the central position marked out for it in Wilson’s blueprint. Norman Angell’s high hopes for a smooth process of modernization and interdependence also foundered on the harsh realities of the 1930s. The Wall Street crash of October 1929 marked the beginning of a severe economic crisis in Western countries that would last until the Second World War and would involve hard measures of economic protectionism. World trade shrank dramatically (see Figure 2.2), and industrial production in developed countries declined rapidly. In July 1932—at the trough of the Great Depression—American production of pig iron reached its lowest level since 1896 (Galbraith 1988: 142). In ironic contrast to Angell’s vision, it was each country for itself, each country trying as best it could to look after its own interests, if necessary to the detriment of others—the ‘jungle’ rather than the ‘zoo’. The historical stage was being set for a less hopeful and more pessimistic understanding of international relations. 2.3 Realism and the Twenty Years’ Crisis Liberal idealism was not a good intellectual guide to international relations in the 1930s. Interdependence did not produce peaceful cooperation; the League of Nations was helpless in the face of the expansionist power politics conducted by the authoritarian regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan. These developments put Wilsonianism on IR AS AN ACADEMIC SUBJECT the defensive. Already under the peace negotiations at Versailles in 1919, the French premier George Clemenceau is supposed to have ridiculed Wilson’s Fourteen Points by pointing out that even God Almighty could do with ten. But now Academic IR also began to speak the classical realist language of Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes in which the grammar and the vocabulary of power were central. The most comprehensive and penetrating critique of liberal idealism was that of E. H. Carr, a British IR scholar. In The Twenty Years’ Crisis (1964 [1939]) Carr argued that liberal IR thinkers profoundly misread the facts of history and misunderstood the nature of international relations. They erroneously believed that such relations could be based on a harmony of interest between countries and people. According to Carr, the correct starting point is the opposite one: we should assume that there are profound conflicts of interest both between countries and between people. Some people and some countries are better off than others. They will attempt to preserve and defend their privileged position. The underdogs, the ‘have-nots’, will struggle to change that situation. International relations is, in a basic sense, about the struggle between such conflicting interests and desires. That is why IR is far more about conflict than about cooperation. Carr astutely labelled the liberal position ‘utopian’ as a contrast to his own position, which he labelled ‘realist’, thus implying that his approach was the more sober and correct analysis of international relations. The other significant realist statement from this period was produced by a German scholar who fled to the United States in the 1930s to escape from the Nazi regime in Germany: Hans J. Morgenthau. More than any other European émigré scholar, Morgenthau brought realism to the US, and with great success. His Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, first published in 1948, was for several decades the most influential American book on IR (Morgenthau 1960). For Morgenthau, human nature was at the base of international relations. And humans were self-interested and power-seeking and that could easily result in aggression. In the late 1930s, it was not difficult to find evidence to support such a view. Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Imperial Japan pursued blatantly aggressive foreign policies aimed at conflict, not cooperation. Armed struggle for the creation of Lebensraum, of a larger and stronger Germany, was at the core of Hitler’s political programme. Furthermore, and ironically from a liberal perspective, both Hitler and Mussolini enjoyed widespread popular support, despite the fact that they were autocratic and even tyrannical leaders. Why should international relations be egoistic and aggressive? Observing the growth of fascism in the 1930s, Einstein wrote to Freud that there must be ‘a human lust for hatred and destruction’ (Ebenstein 1951: 802–4). Freud confirmed that such an aggressive impulse did indeed exist, and he remained deeply sceptical about the possibilities of taming it. The realist theologian Reinhold Niebuhr drew on Christianity to explain this. According to the Bible, humans have been endowed with original sin and a temptation for evil ever since Adam and Eve were thrown out of Paradise. The first murder by man is Cain’s killing of his brother Abel out of pure envy. Realists such as Carr and Morgenthau adopted Niebuhr’s view of humans, shorn of its theological basis (Smith 1986: 129–30). Whether the source was religious or found in psychology, the common starting point for realist analysis is this: Human nature is plain bad (Waltz 1959: 27). 41 42 STUDYING IR The second major element in the realist view concerns the nature of international relations. ‘International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is always the immediate aim’ (Morgenthau 1960: 29). There is no world government. On the contrary, there is a system of sovereign and armed states facing each other. World politics is an international anarchy. The 1930s and 1940s appeared to confirm this proposition. International relations was a struggle for power and for survival. The quest for power certainly characterized the foreign policies of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The same struggle, in response, applied to the Allied side during the Second World War. Britain, France, and the United States were the ‘haves’ in Carr’s terms, the ‘status quo’ powers who wanted to hold on to what they already had, and Germany, Italy, and Japan were the ‘have-nots’, who wanted to change the status quo. So it was only natural, according to realist thinking, that the ‘have-nots’ would try and redress the international balance through the use of force. Following realist analysis, the appropriate response to such attempts is two-pronged. On the one hand, rising power should be recognized and given its due, if necessary in the form of political and territorial concessions. On the other hand, it should be met by countervailing power and the intelligent utilization of that power to provide for national defence and to deter potential aggressors. In other words, it was essential to maintain an effective balance of power as the only way to preserve peace and prevent war. The League of Nations failed to constrain Germany. It took another world war, millions of casualties, heroic sacrifice, and vast material resources finally to defeat the challenges from Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. All of that might have been avoided if a realistic foreign policy based on the principle of recognizing and accommodating power when prudent and meeting it with countervailing power when necessary had been followed by Britain, France, and the United States right from the start of Germany’s, Italy’s, and Japan’s sabre-rattling. The third major component in the realist view is a cyclical view of history. Contrary to the optimistic liberal view that qualitative change for the better is possible, realism stresses continuity and repetition. Each new generation tends to make the same sort of mistakes as previous generations. Any change in this situation is highly unlikely. As long as sovereign states are the dominant form of political organization, power politics will continue and states will have to look after their security and prepare for war. In other words, the Second World War was no extraordinary event; neither was the First World War. Sovereign states can live in peace with each other for long periods when there is a stable balance of power. But every now and then, that precarious balance will break down and war is likely to follow. There can, of course, be many different causes of such breakdown. Some realist scholars think that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 contained the seeds of the Second World War because of the harsh conditions that the peace treaty imposed on Germany. But domestic developments in Germany, the emergence of Hitler, and many other factors are also relevant in accounting for that war. In sum, the classical realism of Carr and Morgenthau combines a pessimistic view of human nature with a notion of power politics between states which exist in an international anarchy. They see no prospects of change in that situation; for classical realists, independent states in an anarchic international system are a permanent feature of IR AS AN ACADEMIC SUBJECT FIGURE 2.3 First major debate in IR Utopian liberalism Realist response 1920s 1930s–1940s–1950s Focus: Focus: international law international organization interdependence cooperation peace power politics security aggression conflict war international relations. The classical realist analysis appeared to capture the essentials of European politics in the 1930s and world politics in the 1940s far better than liberal optimism. When international relations took the shape of an East–West confrontation, or Cold War, after 1947, realism again appeared to be the best approach for making sense of what was going on. The utopian liberalism of the 1920s and the realism of the 1930s–1950s represent the two contending positions in the first major debate in IR (see Figure 2.3). The first major debate was clearly won by Carr, Morgenthau, and the other realist thinkers. Realism became the dominant way of thinking about international relations, not only among scholars, but also among politicians and diplomats. Yet it is important to emphasize that liberalism did not disappear. Many liberals conceded that realism was the better guide to international relations in the 1930s and 1940s, but they saw this as an extreme and abnormal historical period. Liberals, of course, rejected the deeply pessimistic realist idea that humans were ‘plain bad’ (Wight 1991: 25) and they had some strong counter-arguments to that effect, as we shall see in Chapter 4. Finally, the post-war period was not only about a struggle for power and survival between the United States and the Soviet Union and their political–military alliances. It was also about cooperation and international institutions, such as the United Nations and its many special organizations. Although realism had won the first debate, there were still competing theories in the discipline that refused to accept permanent defeat. 2.4 The Voice of Behaviouralism in IR The second major debate in IR concerns methodology. In order to understand how that debate emerged, it is necessary to be aware of the fact that the first generations of IR scholars were trained as historians or academic lawyers, or were former diplomats or journalists. They often brought a humanistic and historical approach to the study of IR. This approach is rooted in philosophy, history, and law, and is characterized ‘above all by explicit reliance upon the exercise of judgment’ (Bull 1969). Locating judgement at the heart of international theory serves to emphasize the normative character of the subject which at its core involves some profoundly difficult moral questions that neither politicians nor diplomats nor anyone else who is involved can escape, such as the deployment of nuclear weapons and their justified uses, military intervention in independent 43 44 STUDYING IR BOX 2.6 Key Concepts: Behaviouralist science in brief Once the investigator has mastered the existing knowledge, and has organized it for his purposes, he pleads a ‘meaningful ignorance’: ‘Here is what I know; what do I not know that is worth knowing?’ Once an area has been selected for investigation, the questions should be posed as clearly as possible, and it is here that quantification can prove useful, provided that mathematical tools are combined with carefully constructed taxonomic schemes. Surveying the field of international relations, or any sector of it, we see many disparate elements . . . wondering whether there may be any significant relationships between A and B, or between B and C. By a process which we are compelled to call ‘intuition’ . . . we perceive a possible correlation, hitherto unsuspected or not firmly known, between two or more elements. At this point, we have the ingredients of a hypothesis which can be expressed in measurable referents, and which, if validated, would be both explanatory and predictive. Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff (1971: 36–7) states, the upholding or not of empires, and so forth. This way of studying IR is usually referred to as the traditional, or classical, approach. After the Second World War, the academic discipline of IR expanded rapidly; particularly in the United States, where government agencies and private foundations were willing to support ‘scientific’ IR research which they could argue to be in the national interest. That support produced a new generation of IR scholars who adopted a rigorous methodological approach. They were usually trained in political science, economics, or other social sciences, rather than diplomatic history, international law, or political philosophy. These new IR scholars thus had a very different academic background and equally different ideas concerning how IR should be studied. These new ideas came to be summarized under the term ‘behaviouralism’, which signified not so much a new theory as a novel methodology that endeavoured to be ‘scientific’ in the natural-science meaning of that term (see Box 2.6). Just as scholars of science are able to formulate objective and verifiable ‘laws’ to explain the physical world, the ambition of behaviouralists in IR is to do the same for the world of international relations. The main task is to collect empirical data about international relations, preferably large amounts of data, which can then be used for measurement, classification, generalization, and, ultimately, the validation of hypotheses; i.e., scientifically explained patterns of behaviour. Behaviouralism is more interested in observable facts and measurable data, in precise calculation, and the collection of data in order to find recurring behavioural patterns, the ‘laws’ of international relations. According to behaviouralists, facts are separate from values. Unlike facts, values cannot be explained scientifically. The behaviouralists were therefore inclined to study facts, and first and foremost the observable behaviour of human beings, while ignoring values. The scientific procedure that behaviouralists support is laid out in Box 2.7. IR AS AN ACADEMIC SUBJECT BOX 2.7 Key Arguments: The scientific procedure of behaviouralists The hypothesis must be validated through testing. This demands the construction of a verifying experiment or the gathering of empirical data in other ways . . . The results of the data-gathering effort are carefully observed, recorded and analyzed, after which the hypothesis is discarded, modified, reformulated or confirmed. Findings are published and others are invited to duplicate this knowledge-discovering adventure, and to confirm or deny. This, very roughly, is what we usually mean by ‘the scientific method’. Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff (1971: 37) The two methodological approaches to IR briefly described in the previous section, the traditional and the behavioural, are clearly very different. The traditional approach is a holistic one that accepts the complexity of the human world, sees international relations as part of the human world, and seeks to understand it in a humanistic way by getting inside it. That involves imaginatively entering into the role of statespeople, attempting to understand the moral dilemmas in their foreign policies, and appreciating the basic values involved, such as security, order, freedom, and justice. To approach IR in that traditional way involves the scholar in understanding the history and practice of diplomacy, the history and role of international law, the political theory of the sovereign state, and so forth. IR is in that view a broadly humanistic subject; it is not and could never be a strictly scientific or narrowly technical subject. A good example is the work of E.H. Carr, which was based on a rejection of the notion that IR insights could be subjected to scientific testing against empirical observations. Indeed, Carr’s work is probably best situated in the reflexivist (or post-positivist) tradition we investigate later in the book (Jackson 2016: 207). The other approach, behaviouralism, has no place for morality or ethics in the study of IR because that involves values, and values cannot be studied objectively; i.e., scientifically. Behaviouralism raises a fundamental question which continues to be discussed today: can we formulate scientific laws about international relations (and about the social world, the world of human relations, in general)? Critics emphasize what they see as a major mistake in that method: the mistake of treating human relations as an external phenomenon in the same general category as nature so that the theorist stands outside the subject—like an anatomist dissecting a cadaver. The anti-behaviouralists hold that the theorist of human affairs is a human being who can never divorce themselves completely from human relations: they are always inside the subject (Hollis and Smith 1990; Jackson 2000; for a general appraisal, see Jackson 2016). Some scholars attempt to reconcile these approaches: they seek to be historically conscious about IR as a sphere of human relations while also trying to come up with general models that seek to explain and not merely understand world politics. Morgenthau might be an example of that. In studying the moral dilemmas of foreign policy, he is in the traditionalist camp; yet he also sets forth general ‘laws of politics’ which are supposed to apply at all times in all places, and that would appear to put him in the behaviouralist camp (see Chapter 3). 45 46 STUDYING IR FIGURE 2.4 Second major debate in IR Traditional approaches Focus: Behaviouralist response Focus: understanding: explaining: hypothesis collection of data scientific knowledge Theorist outside subject norms and values judgement historical knowledge Theorist inside subject After a few years of vigorous controversy, the second great debate (see Figure 2.4) petered out. Though it would be wrong to say that the behaviouralists won the second major debate in IR outright, it is clear that they placed the traditionalists on the defensive. That was largely because of the domination of the discipline after the Second World War by US scholars, the vast majority of whom supported the quantitative, scientific ambitions of behaviouralism (Jackson 2016: 60). They also led the way in setting a research agenda focused on the role of the two superpowers, especially the United States, in the international system. That paved the way to new formulations of both realism and liberalism that were heavily influenced by behaviouralist methodologies. These new formulations—neorealism and neoliberalism—led to a replay of the first major debate under new historical and methodological conditions. 2.5 Neoliberalism: Institutions and Interdependence Realism, having won the first major debate, remained the dominant theoretical approach in IR. The second debate, about methodology, did not immediately change that situation. After 1945, the centre of gravity in international relations was the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. The East–West rivalry lent itself easily to a realist interpretation of the world. Yet during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, a good deal of international relations concerned trade and investment, travel and communication, and similar issues which were especially prevalent in the relations between the liberal democracies of the West (see Table 2.1). Those relations provided the basis for a new attempt by liberals to formulate an alternative to realist thinking that would avoid the utopian excesses of earlier liberalism. We shall use the label ‘neoliberalism’ for that renewed liberal approach. Neoliberals share old liberal ideas about the possibility of progress and change, but they repudiate idealism. Most of them also strive to formulate theories and apply new methods which are scientific. In short, the debate between liberalism and realism continued, but it was now coloured by the post-1945 international setting and the behaviouralist methodological persuasion. In the 1950s, a process of regional integration was getting under way in Western Europe which caught the attention and imagination of neoliberals. By ‘integration’ we refer to a particularly intensive form of international cooperation. Early theorists of integration studied how certain functional activities across borders (trade, investment, etc.) offered mutually advantageous long-term cooperation. Other neoliberal IR AS AN ACADEMIC SUBJECT theorists studied how integration fed on itself: cooperation in one transactional area paved the way for cooperation in other areas (Haas 1958; Keohane and Nye 1975). During the 1950s and 1960s, Western Europe and Japan developed mass-consumption welfare states, as the United States had done already before the war. That development entailed a higher level of trade, communication, cultural exchange, and other relations and transactions across borders. This provides the basis for sociological liberalism, a strand of neoliberal thinking which emphasizes the impact of these expanding cross-border activities. In the 1950s, Karl Deutsch and his associates argued that such interconnecting activities helped create common values and identities among people from different states and paved the way for peaceful, cooperative relations by making war increasingly costly and thus more unlikely. They also tried to measure the integration phenomenon scientifically (Deutsch et al. 1957). In the 1970s, Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye further developed such ideas. They argued that relationships between Western states (including Japan) are characterized by complex interdependence: there are many forms of connections between societies in addition to the political relations of governments, including transnational links between business corporations. There is also an ‘absence of hierarchy among issues’; i.e., military security does not dominate the agenda any more. Military force is no longer used as an instrument of foreign policy (Keohane and Nye 1977: 25). Complex interdependence portrays a situation that is radically different from the realist picture of international relations. In Western democracies, there are other actors besides states, and violent conflict clearly is not on their international agenda. We can call this form of neoliberalism interdependence liberalism. Keohane and Nye (1977) are among the main contributors to this line of thinking. When there is a high degree of interdependence, states will often set up international institutions to deal with common problems. Institutions promote cooperation across international boundaries by providing information and reducing costs. Institutions can be formal international organizations, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the European Union (EU) or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); or they can be less formal sets of agreements (often called regimes) which deal TABLE 2.1 OECD countries, total import/export, percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) 1960 % 1970 % 1980 % 2000 % 2015 % 2019 % Imports 11 13 19 23 28 30 Exports 11 13 18 22 29 31 Based on World Bank statistics (CC BY 4.0) http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?locations=OE&name_desc=false&view=chart http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.IMP.GNFS.ZS?locations=OE&view=chart 47 48 STUDYING IR TABLE 2.2 Variations of liberalism THEORY FOCUS • Sociological liberalism Cross-border flows, common values • Interdependence liberalism Transactions stimulate cooperation • Institutional liberalism International institutions, regimes • Republican liberalism Liberal democracies living in peace with each other with common activities or issues, such as agreements about shipping, aviation, communication, or the environment. We can call this form of neoliberalism institutional liberalism. Oran Young (1986) and Robert Keohane (1989) are influential scholars in this area. The fourth and final strand of neoliberalism—republican liberalism—picks up on a theme developed in earlier liberal thinking. It is the idea that liberal democracies enhance peace because they do not go to war against each other. It has been strongly influenced by the rapid spread of democratization in the world after the end of the Cold War, especially in the former Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe. An influential version of the theory of democratic peace was set forth by Michael Doyle (1983). Doyle finds that the democratic peace is based on three pillars: the first is peaceful conflict resolution between democratic states; the second is common values among democratic states—a common moral foundation; the final pillar is economic cooperation among democracies. Republican liberals are generally optimistic that there will be a steadily expanding ‘Zone of Peace’ among liberal democracies even though there may also be occasional setbacks. These different strands of neoliberalism are mutually supportive in providing an overall consistent argument for more peaceful and cooperative international relations (see Table 2.2). They consequently stand as a challenge to the realist analysis of IR. In the 1970s, there was a general feeling among IR scholars that neoliberalism was on the way to becoming the dominant theoretical approach in the discipline. But a reformulation of realism by Kenneth Waltz (1979) once again tipped the balance towards realism. Neoliberal thinking could make convincing reference to relations between industrialized liberal democracies to argue its case about a more cooperative and interdependent world. But the East–West confrontation remained a stubborn feature of international relations in the 1970s and 1980s. The new reflections on realism took their cue from that historical fact. 2.6 Neorealism: Bipolarity and Confrontation Kenneth Waltz broke new ground in his book Theory of International Politics (1979), which sets forth a substantially different realist theory inspired by theoretical insights in microeconomics. His theory is most often referred to as ‘neorealism’, and we shall employ that label. Waltz attempts to formulate ‘law-like statements’ about international IR AS AN ACADEMIC SUBJECT relations based solely on the systemic relations in the state system. He thus departs sharply from classical realism in showing virtually no interest in the ethics of statecraft or the moral dilemmas of foreign policy—concerns that are strongly evident in the realist writings of Morgenthau. Waltz’s focus is on the ‘structure’ of the international system and the consequences of that structure for international relations. The concept of structure is defined as follows. First, Waltz notes that the international system is anarchical; there is no worldwide government. Second, the international system is composed of like units: every state, small or large, has to perform a similar set of government functions such as national defence, tax collection, and economic regulation. However, there is one respect in which states are different and often very different: in their power, what Waltz calls their relative capabilities. Waltz thus draws a very parsimonious and abstract picture of the international system with very few elements. International relations is an anarchy composed of states that vary in only one important respect: their relative power. Anarchy is likely to endure, according to Waltz, because states want to preserve their autonomy. The international system that came into existence after the Second World War was dominated by two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union; i.e., it was a bipolar system. The demise of the Soviet Union has resulted in a different system with several great powers but with the United States as predominant; i.e., it is moving towards a multipolar system. Waltz does not claim that these few pieces of information about the structure of the international system can explain everything about international politics. But he believes that they can explain ‘a few big and important things’ (Waltz 1986: 322–47). What are they? First, great powers will always tend to balance each other. With the Soviet Union gone, the United States dominates the system. But ‘balance-of-power theory leads one to predict that other countries . . . will try to bring American power into balance’ (Waltz 1993: 52). Second, smaller and weaker states will have a tendency to align themselves with great powers in order to preserve their maximum autonomy. In making this argument, Waltz departs sharply from the classical realist argument based on human nature viewed as ‘plain bad’ and thus leading to conflict and confrontation. He terms these ‘reductionist’ explanations which cannot explain anything on their own. For Waltz, states are power-seeking and security-conscious not because of human nature but rather because the structure of the international system compels them to be that way. This last point is also important because it is the basis for neorealism’s counter-attack against the neoliberals. Neorealists do not deny all possibilities for cooperation among states. But they maintain that cooperating states will always strive to maximize their relative power and preserve their autonomy. In other words, just because there is cooperation, as, for example, in relations between industrialized liberal democracies (e.g., between the United States and Japan), it does not mean that the neoliberal view has been vindicated. We return to the details of this debate in Chapter 4. Here we merely draw attention to the fact that in the 1980s, neorealism succeeded in putting neoliberalism on the defensive. Waltz’s theoretical arguments were significant in this respect. But historical events also played an important role. In the 1980s the confrontation between 49 50 STUDYING IR the United States and the Soviet Union reached a new level. US President Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an ‘evil empire’, and in that hostile international climate, the arms race between the superpowers was sharply intensified. During the 1980s, some neorealists and neoliberals came close to sharing a common analytical starting point that is basically neorealist in character; i.e., states are the main actors in what is still an international anarchy and they constantly look after their own best interests (Baldwin 1993). Neoliberals still argued that institutions, interdependence, and democracy led to more thoroughgoing cooperation than is predicted by neorealists. But many current versions of neorealism and neoliberalism were no longer diametrically opposed. In methodological terms there was even more common ground between neorealists and neoliberals. Both strongly supported the scientific project launched by the behaviouralists, even though republican liberals were a partial exception in that regard. This was somewhat paradoxical as Waltz (1979: Ch. 1), whose intervention had paved the way for this rapprochement, had expressly disputed the behaviouralist notion that theories could be tested up against empirical observations (Wæver 2009; Jackson 2016: 123–4). We return to the theoretical and methodological nuances within neorealism in Chapter 3. As indicated earlier, the debate between neorealism and neoliberalism can be seen as a continuation of the first major debate in IR. But unlike the earlier debate, this one resulted in most neoliberals accepting most of the neorealist assumptions as starting points for analysis. Robert Keohane (1993; Keohane and Martin 1995) attempted to formulate a synthesis of neorealism and neoliberalism coming from the neoliberal side. Barry Buzan et al. (1993) made a similar attempt coming from the neorealist side. However, there is still no complete synthesis between the two traditions. Some neorealists (e.g., Mearsheimer 1993, 1995b, 2019) and neoliberals (e.g., Rosenau 1990; Moravcsik 1997) are far from reconciled to each other and keep arguing exclusively in favour of their side of the debate. The debate is, therefore, a continuing one. 2.7 International Society: The English School The behaviouralist challenge was most strongly felt among IR scholars in the United States. The neorealist and neoliberal acceptance of that challenge also came predominantly from the American academic community. As indicated earlier, during the 1950s and 1960s, American scholarship completely dominated the developing but still youthful IR discipline. Stanley Hoffmann made the point that the discipline of IR was ‘born and raised in America’, and he analysed the profound consequences of that fact for thinking and theorizing in IR (Hoffmann 1977: 41–59). However, in the United Kingdom, a school of IR had existed throughout the period of the Cold War which was different in two major ways. It rejected the behaviouralist challenge and emphasized the traditional approach based on human understanding, judgement, norms, and history. It also rejected any firm distinction between a strict realist and a strict liberal view of international relations. The IR school to which we refer is sometimes called ‘the English School’. But that name is far too narrow: it overlooks the fact that several of its leading figures were not English and many were not even from the IR AS AN ACADEMIC SUBJECT United Kingdom; rather, they were from Australia, Canada, and South Africa. For that reason, we shall use its other name: International Society. Two leading International Society theorists of the twentieth century are Martin Wight and Hedley Bull. International Society theorists recognize the importance of power in international affairs. They also focus on the state and the state system. But they reject the narrow realist view that world politics is a Hobbesian state of nature in which there are no international norms at all. They view the state as the combination of a Machtstaat (power state) and a Rechtsstaat (constitutional state): power and law are both important features of international relations. It is true that there is an international anarchy in the sense that there is no world government. But international anarchy is a social and not an anti-social condition; i.e., world politics—at least in the present age—is an ‘anarchical society’ (Bull 1995) (see Box 2.8). International Society theorists also recognize the importance of the individual, and some of them argue that individuals are more important than states. Unlike many contemporary liberals, however, International Society theorists have traditionally regarded IGOs and NGOs (intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations) as marginal rather than central features of world politics. They emphasize the relations of states and they play down the importance of transnational relations. Even the United Nations is seen as a ‘pseudo-institution’ which pales in significance next to the real institutions of world politics, which include the balance of power, international law, diplomacy, and war (Bull 1977: xiv). International Society theorists find that realists are correct in pointing to the importance of power and national interest. But if we push the realist view to its logical conclusion, states would always be preoccupied with playing the tough game of power politics; in a pure anarchy, there can be no mutual trust. That view is clearly misleading; there is warfare, but states are not continually preoccupied with each other’s power, nor do they conceive of that power exclusively as a threat. On the other hand, if we take the liberal idealist view to the extreme, it means that all relations between states are governed by common rules in a perfect world of mutual respect and the rule of law. That view too is clearly misleading. Of course, there are common rules and norms that most states can be expected to observe most of the time; in that sense, relations between states constitute an international society. But these rules and norms cannot by themselves BOX 2.8 Key Concepts: International Society A society of states (or international society) exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions. My contention is that the element of a society has always been present, and remains present, in the modern international system. Bull (1995: 13, 39) 51 52 STUDYING IR guarantee international harmony and cooperation; power and the balance of power still remain very important in the anarchical society. The United Nations system demonstrates how both elements—power and law—are simultaneously present in international society. The Security Council is set up according to the reality of unequal power among states. The great powers (the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France) are the only permanent members with the authority to veto decisions. That simply recognizes the reality of unequal power in world politics. The great powers have a de facto veto anyway: it would be very difficult to force them to do anything that they were not prepared to do. That is the ‘realist power and inequality element’ in international society. The General Assembly—by contrast with the Security Council—is set up according to the principle of international equality: every member state is legally equal to every other state; each state has one vote, and the majority rather than the most powerful prevails. That is the rationalist ‘common rules and norms’ element in international society. Finally, the UN also provides evidence of the importance of individuals in international affairs. The UN has promoted the international law of human rights, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Today there is an elaborate structure of humanitarian law which defines the basic civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights that are intended to promote an acceptable standard of human existence in the contemporary world. That is the cosmopolitan or solidarist element of international society. For International Society theorists, the study of international relations is not about singling out one of these elements and di