What is at stake?
In the course of studying international relations (IR) theory, it is appropriate to ask what is truly at stake in its theoretical and rather academic debates.
It could be stated that foreign policy became an academic field only as recently as the mid-twentieth century, when the first and second World Wars demonstrated the tragic results of allowing it to be merely a professional pursuit solely in the hands of generals and state leaders.
It is not surprising, then, to find that early IR theorists had clear normative goals embedded in their research. They sought not just to be "right" in their theory construction, but they sought accuracy and clarity in their concepts for a specific reason: to reduce the incidence of inter-state war by influencing the thinking and practices of policy-makers (those who would be war-makers).
Initial IR inquiries were indeed utopian in nature, describing idealized international systems akin to the idealized state imagined in Plato’s Republic (where it was the philosophers who were in charge). Quite quickly, IR theorists found this approach empirically lacking and unsustainable, and certainly of little use to foreign policy practitioners (though US President Woodrow Wilson, himself an academic, could be accused of blind idealism in his devotion to his League of Nations). Therefore, early realist theorists such as Hans Morgenthau introduced a more pragmatic approach to explaining "power politics." Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War and Machiavelli's The Prince are considered the classical antecedents of this school of thought.
In their attempts to describe, explain, and predict state behavior, both of the main schools of IR theory share certain assumptions. These include nation-states as the appropriate unit of analysis and the characterization of the international system as anarchic. While Kenneth Waltz added the environmental concept of self-help to considerations about state behavior, the two main schools of IR theory assign and analyze state preferences in distinctly different ways. A liberal scholar sees states as pursuing absolute gains and open to cooperation with other states while a realist would insist that relative gains are of greater concern and free-riding is the dominant state strategy.
Over time, as these two schools developed into the traditions of neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism, they have begun to debate new concepts and variables such as the autonomous nature and effectiveness of non-state actors (regimes, international institutions like the United Nations, etc.). Using their own variables to explain history, these schools continue to have normative ends in mind: what kind of international order can be created, on what bases will it stand, and what ends can it truly achieve - stability, general welfare and prosperity, security, peace?
Theories flourish or survive based on their applicability and conformity to reality -namely, evidence. During the 1950's through the 1980's, Marxist theory, with its economic focus, was the third option for IR scholars to pursue in explaining state behavior. As valid as some of its arguments may have been and continue to be, the fall of the USSR marked the end of any serious viability of this theory. Currently, the third option for IR theorists to pursue is now constructivism, which follows from the idealist tradition and suggests that peace and cooperation are mind-sets that can be encouraged amidst state leaders and decision-makers through mechanisms such as Alexander Wendt's "collective identity." To constructivists like Wendt, "anarchy is what states make of it," and their arguments are more intersubjective than empirical.
As IR paradigms, realism, liberalism, and constructivism delimit what is appropriate and should be discussed, and suggest what is unimportant and not worth devoting resources and efforts towards. Who wins this debate will shape policy priorities, state leaders’ preferences, and resource allocation. These are not insignificant spoils. For example, if realists win the IR theory debate, international institutions will likely be abandoned except as a means to exploit one's own national interests, and realist theorists’ pessimism about the value of cooperation will become the pessimism of state leaders, affecting their behavior in negotiations, diplomacy, alliance-formation, and war-making.
As is the case with many academic fields, IR theorists seek to characterize their times descriptively, but they also wish to be more than just "reporters." They seek to influence the world around them by helping others see it in the way that they do. This is why their respective optimism or pessimism are both "fraught with ought," containing their own normative preferences and seeking to convince their readers of their truth of their own paradigm.
The line between theorist and policy-maker is in fact becoming quite blurred within the US. A Colin Powell profile in a PBS documentary that described his academic approach to foreign policy referenced his readings of Thucydides; Madeleine Albright received a PhD in International Relations from Columbia University and taught at Georgetown University between her policy-making roles in the Carter and Clinton administrations; Condolezza Rice, with PhD from the University of Denver, taught at Stanford University before becoming an early adviser to George W. Bush and later his National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.
Under current President Bush and Secretary Rice, US foreign policy has taken on the spread of democracy and economic liberalism as its primary goal. Its practical goals and tactics in pursuing these goals are clearly a blend of idealist/liberal ends with the means of realism’s power politics. As today's policy-makers and state leaders continue to make history, there can be little doubt that the paradigms of IR theory will continue their debate and their influence on policy-makers, making their contest of ideas important to us all.
For an excellent description of early IR theorizing, see the first chapter of E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis. For an excellent summary of the competing paradigms of IR theory, see Stephen Walt's article One World, Competing Theories in issue 131 of Foreign Policy magazine.
It could be stated that foreign policy became an academic field only as recently as the mid-twentieth century, when the first and second World Wars demonstrated the tragic results of allowing it to be merely a professional pursuit solely in the hands of generals and state leaders.
It is not surprising, then, to find that early IR theorists had clear normative goals embedded in their research. They sought not just to be "right" in their theory construction, but they sought accuracy and clarity in their concepts for a specific reason: to reduce the incidence of inter-state war by influencing the thinking and practices of policy-makers (those who would be war-makers).
Initial IR inquiries were indeed utopian in nature, describing idealized international systems akin to the idealized state imagined in Plato’s Republic (where it was the philosophers who were in charge). Quite quickly, IR theorists found this approach empirically lacking and unsustainable, and certainly of little use to foreign policy practitioners (though US President Woodrow Wilson, himself an academic, could be accused of blind idealism in his devotion to his League of Nations). Therefore, early realist theorists such as Hans Morgenthau introduced a more pragmatic approach to explaining "power politics." Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War and Machiavelli's The Prince are considered the classical antecedents of this school of thought.
In their attempts to describe, explain, and predict state behavior, both of the main schools of IR theory share certain assumptions. These include nation-states as the appropriate unit of analysis and the characterization of the international system as anarchic. While Kenneth Waltz added the environmental concept of self-help to considerations about state behavior, the two main schools of IR theory assign and analyze state preferences in distinctly different ways. A liberal scholar sees states as pursuing absolute gains and open to cooperation with other states while a realist would insist that relative gains are of greater concern and free-riding is the dominant state strategy.
Over time, as these two schools developed into the traditions of neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism, they have begun to debate new concepts and variables such as the autonomous nature and effectiveness of non-state actors (regimes, international institutions like the United Nations, etc.). Using their own variables to explain history, these schools continue to have normative ends in mind: what kind of international order can be created, on what bases will it stand, and what ends can it truly achieve - stability, general welfare and prosperity, security, peace?
Theories flourish or survive based on their applicability and conformity to reality -namely, evidence. During the 1950's through the 1980's, Marxist theory, with its economic focus, was the third option for IR scholars to pursue in explaining state behavior. As valid as some of its arguments may have been and continue to be, the fall of the USSR marked the end of any serious viability of this theory. Currently, the third option for IR theorists to pursue is now constructivism, which follows from the idealist tradition and suggests that peace and cooperation are mind-sets that can be encouraged amidst state leaders and decision-makers through mechanisms such as Alexander Wendt's "collective identity." To constructivists like Wendt, "anarchy is what states make of it," and their arguments are more intersubjective than empirical.
As IR paradigms, realism, liberalism, and constructivism delimit what is appropriate and should be discussed, and suggest what is unimportant and not worth devoting resources and efforts towards. Who wins this debate will shape policy priorities, state leaders’ preferences, and resource allocation. These are not insignificant spoils. For example, if realists win the IR theory debate, international institutions will likely be abandoned except as a means to exploit one's own national interests, and realist theorists’ pessimism about the value of cooperation will become the pessimism of state leaders, affecting their behavior in negotiations, diplomacy, alliance-formation, and war-making.
As is the case with many academic fields, IR theorists seek to characterize their times descriptively, but they also wish to be more than just "reporters." They seek to influence the world around them by helping others see it in the way that they do. This is why their respective optimism or pessimism are both "fraught with ought," containing their own normative preferences and seeking to convince their readers of their truth of their own paradigm.
The line between theorist and policy-maker is in fact becoming quite blurred within the US. A Colin Powell profile in a PBS documentary that described his academic approach to foreign policy referenced his readings of Thucydides; Madeleine Albright received a PhD in International Relations from Columbia University and taught at Georgetown University between her policy-making roles in the Carter and Clinton administrations; Condolezza Rice, with PhD from the University of Denver, taught at Stanford University before becoming an early adviser to George W. Bush and later his National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.
Under current President Bush and Secretary Rice, US foreign policy has taken on the spread of democracy and economic liberalism as its primary goal. Its practical goals and tactics in pursuing these goals are clearly a blend of idealist/liberal ends with the means of realism’s power politics. As today's policy-makers and state leaders continue to make history, there can be little doubt that the paradigms of IR theory will continue their debate and their influence on policy-makers, making their contest of ideas important to us all.
For an excellent description of early IR theorizing, see the first chapter of E.H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis. For an excellent summary of the competing paradigms of IR theory, see Stephen Walt's article One World, Competing Theories in issue 131 of Foreign Policy magazine.
posted by machiavelli at 10:00 AM
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