Comparative Political Theory and International Relations: A Call for Partnership

Even as work in the natural sciences has shown the Newtonian understanding of the world to be faulty, Newtonianism still pervades the field of International Relations (IR). Moved by the challenges to Newtonianism emanating from various fields, IR scholars have turned to complexity theory or quantum physics for an alternative onto-epistemological basis on which to build a post-Newtonian IR. This article provides researchers with a map that allows them to not only better see and navigate the differences within both complexity and quantum theory and the IR work that draws from each, but also to recognize the similarities across these bodies of work. Complexity theory highlights and engages systems (biological, social, meteorological, technological, and more) characterized by emergence, self-organization, nonlinearity, unpredictability, openness, and adaptation—systems that are fundamentally different from the self-regulating mechanic systems that comprise the Newtonian world. Complexity-grounded IR research, following complexity research more generally, falls into one of two categories. Through “restricted complexity” approaches, researchers use simulation or modeling to derive knowledge about the dynamics of complex social and political systems and the effect of different kinds of interventions. Researchers who take “general complexity” approaches, by contrast, stress the openness and entwinement of complex systems as well as unpredictability that is not exclusively the result of epistemological limitations; they offer critical re-theorizations of phenomena central to IR while also using qualitative methods to demonstrate how complexity-informed understandings can improve various kinds of practices. “Restricted complexity” seems to have gained the most traction in IR, but overall, complexity has had limited uptake. Quantum physics reveals a world with ineluctable randomness, in which measurement is creative rather than reflective, and where objects shift form and seem to be connected in ways that are strange from a Newtonian perspective. IR research that builds from a quantum base tends to draw from one of two categories of quantum physical interpretation—the “Copenhagen Interpretation” or pan-psychism—though more exist. Unlike the complexity IR community, the quantum IR community is ecumenical; given the deep ongoing debates about quantum mechanics and its meaning, embracing different ways of “quantizing” IR makes sense. Most quantum IR work to date stresses the utility of the conceptual tools that quantum physics provides us to rethink a wide variety of socio-political phenomena and hedges on questions of the nature of reality, even as the major theoretical tracts on quantum social science take strong ontological stances. Developing critiques and alternative positive visions for IR on the basis of either complexity theory or quantum work has been an important first step in enabling a post-Newtonian IR. To advance their agenda, however, the critics of Newtonian IR should start engaging each other and carefully interrogate the relationship between different strands of complexity and quantum theory. There are a number of key points of overlap between the work in the general complexity strand and the Copenhagen Interpretation–inspired philosophy of agential realism, and as of 2022 there exists only one major effort to bring these strands of quantum and complexity together to found a post–Newtonian IR. A coordinated post-Newtonian challenge that brings complexity-grounded IR scholars together with quantum-grounded IR scholars under a common banner may be necessary to wake IR from what Emilian Kavalski calls its “deep Newtonian slumber.” The pay-off, post–Newtonian IR scholars argue, will be a deeper understanding of, as well as more effective and ethical engagement with and in, a non-Newtonian world.

How can we appreciate non-Western agency in theorising world politics without reintroducing parochialism and exceptionalism, thus reproducing the very problem that motivated global international relations (IR) in the first place? In this article, I explore an alternative approach to engaging with non-Western IR theories, which I refer to as the embedded observer approach. First, taking the scholarship on Chinese IR as an example, I argue that the present predicament of global IR is in part attributable to the way scholars engage with non-Western political thought. Drawing from discussions in critical IR and Comparative Political Theory, I propose a methodological adjustment for the study of non-Western theories. Specifically, I argue that by shifting focus from isolated scholars and texts to critical dialogues among autochthonous intellectuals, the researcher has the chance to learn about and appreciate the clashes of ideas, analytical perspectives, and methodological tools that together constitute the living intellectual tradition in a non-Western society. As a demonstration, I analyse the People’s Republic of China (PRC) scholars’ critical reaction to Zhao Tingyang’s Tianxia System through the lens of three key topics in the debate over the thesis. The discussion highlights the need to rethink interlocutors in global IR and the utility of an embedded observer approach for engaging with knowledge traditions beyond the West, both in IR and beyond. 神奇理论在哪里？反思全球国际关系学中的对话者

A decade ago, Amitav Acharya outlined his ‘new agenda’ for International Relations (IR) scholars: ‘Global International Relations’. This article seeks to modestly move forward two aspects of the Global IR agenda. First, we foreground a region largely missing from the Global IR literature: the Pacific Islands. That the Pacific has been ‘geo-politically marginal’ has consequences for the Global IR, and broader Political Science and IR scholarship, which has missed out on analysing and learning lessons from a rich and diverse region. Second, the Global IR scholarship has focused on important questions about ontology and epistemology, but with less consideration of methodology. That means that the question of how to move ‘beyond critique’ and do the practical work of studying Global IR remains largely unanswered. In the second part of our article we outline considerations arising from greater Global IR, and broader Political Science and IR, scholarly attention to the Pacific and then provide a grounded perspective of the practicalities of doing research there.

By “Sinophone and Japanese International Relations Theory,” this article means nascent theoretical constructs about the “international” in Sinophone and Japanese International Relations (IR) epistemic communities that draw mainly on their local ideas, experiences, and practices. “Sinophone IR” here is not limited to the community of IR researchers in the People’s Republic of China (PRC); it also includes that of Taiwan and other overseas Chinese-speaking researchers, including non-ethnic-Chinese academics who substantially engage with “Chinese” thought and traditions in their own right, i.e., not for testing established, mainstream IR theories. Similarly, “Japanese IR” is not narrowly defined as a group of IR scholars with Japanese citizenship. Rather, it includes IR researchers based in Japan and their overseas colleagues who take “Japanese” ideas and history seriously. It is thus possible to research and write from these two epistemic communities simultaneously; so to speak, their boundaries are neither fixed nor immutable. The majority of the IR academics in these communities are not concerned with, or involved in, homegrown theorizing, and scholars associated with the “Chinese School of IR” have not engaged with ostensibly Japanese resources for inspiration. However, some homegrown theorists have started drawing on ideas and practices from the other side or shared resources, e.g., Buddhism. Such theorizing synergy and cross-fertilization are likely to continue, especially over such notions as ontology and relationality. This article maps out the literature on homegrown knowledge production in Japanese and Sinophone IR communities and their theorizing endeavors. It will assist readers in comparing and evaluating the originality and contribution of Sinophone and Japanese IR scholarship to global IR knowledge, as well as their shortcomings. Following this introduction, the second section locates the interests of constructing alternative theories in Japanese and Sinophone IR in the wider context of ongoing debates on how to make the theory and practice of global politics more diverse and equitable. The third section introduces key journals and reference resources, followed by the fourth covering the state of the field in Japanese and Sinophone IR. The fifth reviews the debates over the creation of a “national school of IR” in their respective epistemic communities. The last four sections focus on theorizing efforts in Japanese and Sinophone IR as well as their uses of local resources in academic and policy discourses. For the sake of stylistic clarity, surname precedes given name for all East Asian individuals mentioned in the following commentary paragraphs and annotations.

This article contributes to two debates about international relations (IR) as a discipline: first, how global is IR, and how is it structured? Second, what is the state of theory in IR? We conducted (co-) citation analyses of both Web of Science (WoS) and—for the first time— non-WoS publications from Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. With regard to the first question, we find that global IR resembles a core–periphery structure as a “hub and spoke” system whereby transatlantic core nodes are interconnected to each other and to some periphery nodes, while the periphery nodes are connected to the core but not to each other. IR scholarship in the periphery quotes the transatlantic theory cluster but is not linked to each other, not even in the same region. Knowledge produced in the periphery has to go through the transatlantic core in order to be recognized globally. As to the transatlantic core, we identify two major (co-) citation clusters: one committed to IR theory-building across issue areas from a variety of perspectives and the other focused on security studies with a strong emphasis on quantitative methods. With regard to the second question, global IR hangs together through references to the IR theory cluster consisting of North American and European authors who appear to define what IR theory is. Scholars in the periphery refer to this transatlantic IR theory cluster when engaging in theory-building. IR theories have become rather diverse and pluralistic, even in the core. While scholars still refer to the big “isms,” they use them around the globe in a synthesizing manner.

The literature on global international relations (IR) has argued that the discipline develops in the footsteps of world politics, but no sustained attention has been given to more immediate causes such as the funders that pay for IR teaching and scholarship. These donor–recipient relations have only attracted the attention of authors interested in cultural hegemony and those contributing to the recent historiography of IR. Among the latter, some have studied how during the Cold War the Rockefeller Foundation attempted to buttress classical realism in the United States and Western Europe. This article connects and moves forward IR historiography and the global IR literature by shedding light on philanthropic foundations’ attempts to further a specific IR theory—classical realism—and area studies in the global south. The article argues that world politics influenced global IR, but this influence was mediated by highly contingent events. Even a proximate cause like science patronage, let alone “world politics,” is not a sufficient cause capable of determining IR theories and disciplinary boundaries. Donors may achieve some impact but only under specific circumstances such as the ones explored here, that is, the donor is a unitary actor determined to advance its agenda by resorting to conditionality, alternative donors and funding are scarce, the discipline is either poorly or not institutionalized, and the recipient perceives the donor's preferences as legitimate. The article uses previously untapped, fine-grained, primary sources to unravel philanthropy's impact on Latin America's first IR center. Because science patronage is exposed to many sources of indeterminacy and to contingency, donors cannot determine scholarship, which makes cultural hegemony all but impossible. Still, IR scholars need to study their patrons to understand their discipline, in and outside Europe and the United States.

Book Reviews 297© Max Weber Studies 2018. to Hegel only once in all of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (MWG I-22-3, 603). That Cochrane misunderstands Weber’s notion of ‘ideal type’ is also revealed by his assertion that it ‘looks like a complicated way of describing a case study’ and that ‘students of organization’ should have ‘interrogated it’ (154-55). Then there are some claims that misrepresent Weber’s views, such as, ‘Weber regarded compulsion as being essential’, ‘Weber linked bureaucracy with secrecy’, he was ‘critical of classical humanistic expertise’, he believed ‘the ends justified the means’, and his ‘big-canvas analytic approach was not joined-up with worm-eye’s tools’ (17, 43, 78-79, 98, 118). Then there is the matter of Cochrane’s inconsistent manner of citation , his numerous mistakes in pagination, and his incorrect attributions . Sometimes Cochrane provides a citation to the work and no page numbers; at other times he gives the page numbers but they are wrong. For example, ‘Politics as Vocation’ is listed as pages 1-27 in Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, but that is the introduction, ‘A Biographical View’ (17 n. 48, 65 n. 1, 129 n. 26, 130 n. 27, 131 n. 30, 140-41 nn. 2-3 and 5, 148 n. 18). ‘From Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait , edited by Reinhard Bendix’s (129) is likely a mistaken combination of Gerth and Mill’s book and Bendix’s Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. There are references to The Theory of Economic and Social Organization on pages 1149, 1155 and 1393, but that book is only 450 pages in length (12 n. 37, 41 n. 41). All things considered, however, Cochrane’s larger and more important mistake is his failure to comprehend Weber’s conception of bureaucracy. Christopher Adair-Toteff University of South Florida Richard Ned Lebow (ed.), Max Weber and International Relations (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2017), vii + 203pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-1108416382. $99.99. This useful collection of essays, covering a wide range of topics relating to Max Weber, brings together major voices in the field of academic international relations (IR). Aiming to launch an overdue conversation between ‘IR’ and Weber scholarship, the volume, at its best, succeeds in doing just that. Unfortunately, it also tries to cover what many versed in Weber and his theoretical legacy, though perhaps not most IR specialists in political science, will likely consider familiar territory. 298 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2018. The collection’s somewhat nondescript title veils both its strengths and its weaknesses. Its most illuminating discussions concern Weber’s ideas and their direct—or sometimes indirect—relevance to the study of international politics: Max Weber on (or for) International Relations might have better described that part of the book. Its less successful sections, unfortunately, might have instead been entitled International Relations Specialists on Max Weber. Some parts of the volume consist of general discussions of Weber and his ideas written by (and probably for) IR scholars, discussions likely to be of limited interest to Weber specialists or others with serious interests in German political and social theory. These less successful sections cover many aspects of his biography, political theory, and methodology, but do not always break new ground. The volume’s core enterprise nonetheless remains praiseworthy. Both IR specialists and Weber aficionados have something to gain by considering his relevance to the systematic analysis of international politics. As a number of contributors rightly remind us, Weber’s presence has occasionally loomed large in the academic field of IR, particularly as it emerged in Anglophone universities in the immediate aftermath of World War II. In part surely because of Weber’s 1895 Antrittsrede (‘The Nation State and Economic Policy’) and other short pieces where he addressed matters of war and peace,2 he exerted significant influence on an early generation of ‘realist’ IR scholars. In particular—as Richard Ned Lebow and David Bohmer Lebow highlight in an insightful discussion—Weber’s political and intellectual legacy proved crucial to the refugee scholar Hans Morgenthau , one of the major figures in postwar IR during the 1950s and 1960s (186-94). He and a number of influential postwar realist IR thinkers...

With this forum we aim to contribute to the debate within International Relations (IR) scholarship about the space that has opened up since the inter-paradigmatic debate 30 years ago and the challenges still experienced by those of us coming from the “margin” yet committed to the “globalization” of the discipline. That is to say, to building a pluriverse of IR. In the first contribution Anupama Ranawana begins by considering the practical difficulties for Southern research and knowledge creation in IR, detailing a snapshot of how current funding structures continue to relegate academics and researchers in the Global South to a relationship of dependency on their counterparts in the Global North. The next two contributions to the discussion reflect on how these problematic bounds of the disciple are then embodied by those of us working in more marginal spaces in IR. First, Ahmed Rizky Mardhatilla Umar writes of the policing of IR within the Indonesian University which continues to leave most critical work as outside of IR. Another point of embodied experience in what for many continues to be marginal or even outside of the discipline is considered by Jamie J. Hagen and Alex Edney-Browne who write about queer IR and specifically the experience of being a part of a community of LGBTQA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and allies) in IR scholars. In conclusion Roland Bleiker reflects and evaluates “the potential and limits of International Relations as an academic discipline” even as the discipline continues to call for greater diversity. As such, each contributor speaks separately to a jointly articulated provocation regarding what counts and is centered as “real” International Relations scholarship, based on their own encounters with being told explicitly (i.e., through rejections, lack of institutional support) or implicitly (i.e., through what we are taught) that our work is not International Relations.

The discipline of International Relations (IR) does not reflect the voices, experiences, knowledge claims, and contributions of the vast majority of the societies and states in the world, and often marginalizes those outside the core countries of the West. With IR scholars around the world seeking to find their own voices and reexamining their own traditions, our challenge now is to chart a course toward a truly inclusive discipline, recognizing its multiple and diverse foundations. This article presents the notion of a “Global IR” that transcends the divide between the West and the Rest. The first part of the article outlines six main dimensions of Global IR: commitment to pluralistic universalism, grounding in world history, redefining existing IR theories and methods and building new ones from societies hitherto ignored as sources of IR knowledge, integrating the study of regions and regionalisms into the central concerns of IR, avoiding ethnocentrism and exceptionalism irrespective of source and form, and recognizing a broader conception of agency with material and ideational elements that includes resistance, normative action, and local constructions of global order. It then outlines an agenda for research that supports the Global IR idea. Key element of the agenda includes comparative studies of international systems that look past and beyond the Westphalian form, conceptualizing the nature and characteristics of a post-Western world order that might be termed as a Multiplex World, expanding the study of regionalisms and regional orders beyond Eurocentric models, building synergy between disciplinary and area studies approaches, expanding our investigations into the two-way diffusion of ideas and norms, and investigating the multiple and diverse ways in which civilizations encounter each other, which includes peaceful interactions and mutual learning. The challenge of building a Global IR does not mean a one-size-fits-all approach; rather, it compels us to recognize the diversity that exists in our world, seek common ground, and resolve conflicts.

The article makes a case for an intense engagement of international relations (IR) scholars in India with the global IR community, especially those specializing in IR theory. While India has increasingly been integrating itself in global economic and political orders, its IR scholar-ship is yet to get international recognition. This article outlines the structural and domestic causes for the relative absence of theoretical works in IR in India while emphasizing the need for rigorous theory-driven and theory-informed scholarship. It concludes by making eight recommendations for linking IR in India with the global IR scholarship, and offers specific areas where Indian scholars can contribute to puzzle and paradigm-driven IR scholarship.

Over the past two decades, cooperation between international law (IL) and international relations (IR) scholars has produced a vibrant, interdisciplinary IL/IR scholarship. Yet such interdisciplinarity has also produced a backlash from some legal scholars. Martti Koskenniemi, in particular, has for decades warned legal scholars about the potentially damaging effects of exposure to international relations. In his writings, Koskenniemi paints a picture of an IR field dominated by realism, in thrall to American policy-makers, and firmly committed to an antiformalism that is corrosive of international law and of the international legal profession, whose American practitioners have become so corrupted as to be unable to distinguish the law from the interests of American imperial power. Koskenniemi’s concerns, I argue, are not without foundation, yet his critique of IR represents at best an anachronism, and at worst a distortion of IR scholars’ attitudes, aims, and influence on the legal profession. IR scholarship is guilty of multiple sins, which can and should be corrected in dialogue with international legal scholars, but these sins are quite different from those imagined by Koskenniemi. The paper is organized in three parts. In the first, I briefly summarize Koskenniemi’s indictment of IR, including his provocative claim that IR has corrupted the American international law community. This argument, I argue, is flawed by a series of distortions of the views of IR and legal scholars alike, and does not survive careful scrutiny. In the second part of the paper, I take issue with Koskenniemi’s characterization of the IR field as a realist policy science, drawing on recent data to depict a field that is far more theoretically diverse and less in thrall to American policy-makers than Koskenniemi suggests. This is not to say, however, that IR scholarship is without fault as an approach to the study of international law. In the third and final section, therefore, I consider the real problems with IR scholarship in relation to international law. By contrast with Koskenniemi, who sees IR’s relentless antiformalism and commitment to interdisciplinarity as the field’s original sins, I argue that contemporary IR is characterized by precisely the opposite problems, namely a naive and unwitting formalism in its treatment of law, and a disciplinary insularity that has prevented IR scholars from learning some basic lessons that are familiar to international legal scholars. These weaknesses of IR scholarship are real, but they are remediable through more, not less, interdisciplinary collaboration.

The study of international norms from a social constructivist perspective has been one of the major conceptual innovations to the discipline of international relations (IR) over the past forty years. However, despite the concept's ubiquity, there is only a limited understanding of the large-scale trends in research associated with its rise. This analytic essay interrogates conventional wisdom, using a dataset of 7,795 mainstream, English-language journal articles from the Teaching, Research and International Policy Journal Article Database, supplemented with data from Web of Science. How have international norms been studied substantively and methodologically, what are major contributions and blind spots, and which opportunities for future innovation might exist? Although norms research has historically helped expand the scope of issues covered in IR (e.g., gender issues and public health), others have evidence gaps relative to the broader discipline of IR (e.g., terrorism and public opinion). Over the years, the proportion of empirical studies has increased, while purely theoretical, epistemological, and methodological work and innovation have decreased. Despite calls for methodological pluralism, norms research is significantly more qualitative and conceptual than mainstream IR in general and far less multi-method. While more international and less US-based than IR in general, norms research in mainstream journals seems to be no closer to a “Global IR,” measured by regional focus and author affiliation. This suggests three promising avenues for future innovation: greater attention to specific substantive blind spots, more multi-method research, and increased attention to the agenda of Global IR. Beyond these individual insights, this review illustrates the general utility of complementing narrative literature reviews with ones based on quantitative data. It also provides a case study on conceptual proliferation and innovation in IR.

East Asia is increasingly at the centre of debates among International Relations (IR) scholars. China's political, economic, and military ascendency is increasingly considered as a crucial test case for main approaches to IR. Despite this renewed attention, mainstream theories employed to analyse contemporary Asia are still remarkably Euro-centric. A wave of studies has argued in favour of a broad ‘decolonization’ of theoretical concepts used to analyse East Asia as well as other regions. These efforts have produced several distinct research agendas. Firstly, critical and post-colonial theorists have worked on the par destruens, highlighting the inherent Euro-centrism of many IR concepts and theories. Secondly, scholars such as Buzan and Acharya have promoted the idea of Global IR, seeking to advance a ‘non-Western’ and non-Euro-centric research agenda. This agenda has found fertile ground especially in China, where several scholars have tried to promote a Chinese School of IR. This article has three main purposes. Firstly, it briefly explores the issue of Eurocentrism in IR studies dedicated to East Asia. Secondly, it maps the theoretical debates aimed at overcoming it, looking in particular at the ‘Global IR’ research programme and the so-called Chinese School. Finally, it sketches a few other possible avenues of research for a very much needed cooperation between Global IR and area studies.

Debates about the nature and role of international law have preoccupied international relations (IR) scholars since the inception of the discipline. They involve some of the most fundamental questions about the theory and practice of world order: to what extent is IR a rule-based activity? How do rules and institutions emerge and function under conditions of anarchy and power competition? What effects, if any, does law have on the behavior, interests, and identities of global actors? One way of developing and organizing answers to these questions is through theoretical investigation. Each of the discipline’s main theoretical approaches makes arguments about the role of law in the construction and maintenance of the processes and patterns that constitute political order at the global level. Structural realists such as Kenneth Waltz largely dismissed international law as an epiphenomenon to power politics and security competition. Rational institutional literature emerging in the 1980s developed a more nuanced picture, highlighting law’s role in fostering order and cooperation among sovereign states. Contemporary constructivist approaches go one step further and acknowledge law’s centrality for understanding patterns and processes of social ordering, while critical scholarship, including Third World approaches to international law, focuses on revealing and challenging the structures that underpin the formation and operation of law in a stratified global order marked by legacies of colonialism and economic and political inequalities. Some of those theoretical claims are related to and derived from historical analysis, and there now is a recognizable, interdisciplinary move among historians, IR scholars, political theorists, and international lawyers to engage with the role of law in the historical evolution of world order.

The charge of Western-centrism haunting International Relations as a discipline is mirrored in real-world global politics where the power differentials and the imposition of normative concepts created by the ‘West’ are often lamented by the ‘rest’. This claim figures prominently in relation to secularly grounded international women’s rights, whose validity has repeatedly been disputed, for example, in relation to ‘Muslim’ contexts. At the same time, a growing number of Islamic women’s rights advocates call into question a number of dichotomies that pervade such controversies in both real-world global politics and IR scholarship by grounding their quest for gender equality and women’s rights in Islamic discourse. Inspired by their work, the chapter looks more closely into the way gender equality and women’s rights are established in Islamic feminist thought. More precisely, it deals with a particular type of conceptual thought located at the intersection of two sorts of literature which are usually sidelined in the discipline of IR: feminist and religious thought. As will be made evident throughout the chapter, the appreciation of this type of thought holds the double potential of contributing to critically interrogating the discipline of IR and fostering the cause of women’s rights in world affairs.