Critical International Theory Research Articles

Grand narratives in critical international theory

Grand narratives in critical international theory

Ideological Concepts in ‘Formalism, Decisionism and Conservatism in Russian Law’ (2021) by Mikhail Antonov

Abstract The present review analyses key ideas of professor Mikhail Antonov’s 2021 book on formalism, decisionism and conservatism in Russian Law. This review essay is written in the form of an imaginary dialogue between the reviewer (a political philosopher) and the author (legal philosopher). Its main aim is to explore legal dimensions of Russia’s new ideology of conservatism. Divided into five sections, it covers five conceptual foundations of the book – sovereigntism, statism, collectivism, civilizationism and exceptionalism. This review essay also examines the links between the respective ideas of legal philosophy of Mikhail Antonov and an overview of arguments from the contemporary political and critical international theory, aiming to engage in a critical discussion with the author about Russia’s insecure collective identity.

Post-Eurocentric grand narratives in critical international theory

Critical international theory is confronted with a fundamental ‘problem of orientation’, whose answer defines its capacity to critically analyse world politics. This problem derives from how the capacity for critique is inherently connected with the need to, at least partially, escape time- and space-bound points of view and attain a more cosmopolitan perspective that permits an assessment of the regressive/progressive tendencies of the human past, present and possible futures. The search for this cosmopolitan standpoint of orientation has frequently led to a reliance on grand narratives of human development from the perspective of which critical orientation can be disclosed. However, grand narratives themselves have frequently relied on metaphysical categories and stadial conceptions of history that reproduce forms of Eurocentrism that ultimately undermine their adequacy as means of orientation. A fundamental suspicion of grand narratives and need for ‘reflexivity’ that discloses forms of exclusion embedded in theoretical perspectives have thus become common topics in the field. However, this growing concern with reflexivity is also associated with a tendency for greater philosophical abstraction and a growing gap between theory and practice. This article considers the role of grand narratives in critical international theory and explores the possibility of post-Eurocentric and post-philosophical grand narratives that provide an alternative answer to the problem of orientation and recover the link between theory and practice. With reference to recent developments in the field, namely, the work of Richard Devetak and Andrew Linklater, the article considers the possibility of a historical–sociological approach to grand narratives.

‘Barbarising’ China in American trade war discourse: the assault on Huawei

How is the legitimation of the American trade war with China discursively managed and conferred in recent American political discourse? This paper critically examines this under-explored question in the current literature. Taking cues from critical international theory and its insight on discourse and foreign policy, I start by historicising the discursive practices, which I call ‘barbarising China’, in the construction of civilisation vs barbarism as a hierarchical opposition. Mapping authoritarian China onto this historically contingent liberal civilisational edifice, I argue, has prepared the ground for American political action in the trade war. Through a critical analysis of how China has been constructed as a ‘barbarian’ economic aggressor in recent American political discourse, I further argue that the ‘political reality’ and ‘knowledge’ this discursive practice produces serves not only the political imperative of legitimising American trade war policy choices, but also a particular need of the ‘civilised’ hegemon to legitimise its power and practices beyond the trade war. Through a close examination of a coordinated assault on Huawei, I illustrate how ‘barbarising’ China has been discursively done as an integral part of the trade war and assert that ‘barbarising’ China has become indispensable in American strategy to sustain its precarious hegemony.

Contextual Critical Theory: Revisiting the Historical Mode of Thought

Combining a theoretical genealogy and a model for the future, Critical International Theory presents a reflexive agenda for international relations (IR). Its intellectual narrative traces critical theory from its roots to the present, and situates the development of critical theory within the wider ascendance of IR theory since the 1950s. Devetak emphatically seeks to avoid a mere description of its emergence, however; his work first and foremost reappraises the archetypal ideas and theorists in critical IR. It also offers a framework for a “contextualist” mode of historical thought, in contrast to a dialectical–philosophical mode that appeals to a sense of universal reason, or a constructivist mode that interprets history through a given theoretical lens. Differentiating these modes and justifying one strain over another demands understanding the origins of each. The first chapter fixes the beginning of the relevant intellectual history within IR at the dawn of the second “great debate”; conflict between classicists and advocates of a positivist methodology, derived from the natural sciences, planted the seeds of critical theory. Devetak argues that critical theory's stature in the discipline emerged in this era, as the parties to the debate sought to elevate the discipline through theoretical abstraction. Thus, the narrative of this period begins with the methodological disputes (methodenstreit) of the 1950s and closes with the release of Waltz's Theory of International Politics, noting the wide adoption of abstraction and theorizing—even by its opponents. Alongside the classicist perspectives of Hans Morgenthau and Hedley Bull, critical theory became such an opponent to positivism within the broader methodological dispute.

Jürgen Habermas and the democratization of world politics

This article consists of a review of Jurgen Habermas’s discussions of the dilemma posed by human global interdependence to the possibility of democratic politics. According to Habermas, since the Second World War, and in a process that has become only more pervasive since the end of the Cold War, human societies have been brought into increasingly tighter and more complex political, social and economic networks of interdependence that have ultimately undermined the capacity of state-based democratic publics to have some degree of influence over their conditions of existence. From a critical international theory perspective, Habermas’s argument highlights the fundamental contemporary challenge faced by the social sciences in general, and International Relations (IR) in particular. From that perspective, the fundamental task of IR is not only to explain world politics, but also to orientate social and political practice towards an expansion of democratic control over them. The purpose of this article is to show how Habermas’s work makes a fundamental contribution to improve that critical orientating role of IR. The article connects Habermas’s more recent political writings on the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) with his earlier work on the development of a theory of social evolution. In doing so, it shows how Habermas’s work can constitute the basis for an approach to the study of world politics that both understands how the present dilemma between global complexity and democracy came to be the defining feature of the present stage of human development, and that discloses the immanent potential gathered by modernity for a radical expansion of democratic politics to the level of world politics.

Critical International Legal Theory

This chapter presents an account of three phases of writing and practice in critical international legal theory, after first identifying some braided historico-political fuel lines for these cycles of work. These phases correspond to successive periods of revisionism: a pre-1989 reckoning (dating from the mid-late 1970s) with the non-materialization of the promises of socialist revolution and the disappointments of the cosmopolitan, decolonization, and development projects; a 1989 to 1999 reckoning with the apparent triumph of liberalism/neo-liberalism and the Washington Consensus; and a current phase, dating from approximately the turn of the millennium, of reckoning with the post-Washington Consensus, the renewed spread of authoritarian nationalism/nativism, and the prevalence of casualization and automation. In each of these, critical international legal theory has been marked by certain persistent commitments and proclivities which this chapter will briefly examine, before speculating about some possible galvanizing themes of international legal work in this vein in the future.

Civilising statecraft: Andrew Linklater and comparative sociologies of states-systems

AbstractIn this contribution to the forum marking the publication of Andrew Linklater’s remarkable book onViolence and Civilization in the Western States-Systemswe first locate the book in the context of Linklater’s overarching intellectual journey. While best known for his contribution to a critical international theory, it is through his engagement with Martin Wight’s comparative sociology of states-systems that Linklater found resonances with the work of process sociologist, Norbert Elias. Integrating Wight’s insights into the states-system with Elias’s insights into civilising processes,Violence and Civilizationpresents a high-level theoretical synthesis with the aim of historically tracing restraints on violence. The article identifies a tension between the cosmopolitan philosophical history which underpins the argument of the book, and which has underpinned all Linklater’s previous works, and the ‘Utrecht Enlightenment’ that offers a conception of ‘civilized statecraft’ at odds with a universal conception of morality and justice. The article then examines Linklater’s argument about the ‘global civilizing process’ as it applies to post-Second World War efforts to build greater institutional capability to protect peoples from harm. It is argued that Linklater over-estimates the extent to which solidarism has civilised international society, and that the extension of state responsibilities and development of civilised statecraft owe more to pluralism than solidarism.

Traditional, Problem-Solving and Critical Theory: An Analysis of Horkheimer and Cox's Setting of the ‘Critical’ Divide

Robert W. Cox's dictum that ‘(t)heory is for someone and for some purpose’ (emphasis in the original) is said to be the most-quoted line in International Relations (IR) theory. Yet whilst this spurred a revolution in critical thinking in IR, it echoed a far older conception of Critical Theory advanced by Max Horkheimer in the 1930s that claimed there is ‘no theory of society … that does not contain political motivations'. Both sentiments emphasize the relation between knowledge and human interests, and yet both formulate two distinct—though allied—ways of approaching ‘critical’ theorizing. In order to understand the similarities and differences in their approaches, this paper draws out three loci of difference between Cox and Horkheimer regarding the question of emancipation: (i) the epistemological relation between ‘critical’ and ‘Problem-Solving’ (Cox) or ‘Traditional Theory’ (Horkheimer); (ii) the emphasis placed on transformation and historical process; and (iii) the importance of intersubjectivity in how each approach emancipation. It is argued that by actively combining critical (dialectical) approaches across the social sciences, broadening human agency through civilizational dialogue, and retaining a commitment to emancipatory (and visionary) political futures based on human association, that Critical International Theory can maintain ongoing relevance in IR.

A rival Enlightenment? Critical international theory in historical mode

This article proposes an understanding of critical international theory (CIT) as an historical rather than philosophical mode of knowledge. To excavate this historical mode of theorizing it offers an alternative account of CIT’s intellectual sources. While most accounts of critical international theory tend to focus on inheritances from Kant, Marx and Gramsci, or allude in general terms to debts to the Frankfurt School and the Enlightenment, this is not always the case. Robert Cox, for example, has repeatedly professed intellectual debts to realism and historicism. The argument advanced here builds on Cox by situating CIT in a longer intellectual heritage that extends from Renaissance humanism and passes through Absolutist historiography before reaching Enlightenment civil histories, including Vico’s history of civil institutions. The critical element in this intellectual heritage was the formation of a secular political historicism critically disposed to metaphysical claims based on moral philosophies. By recovering this neglected inheritance of criticism, we can articulate not only acriticaltheory to rival problem-solving theories, but propose a conception of theory as ahistoricalmode of knowledge that rivals philosophical modes yet remains critical by questioning prevailing intellectual assumptions in International Relations theory.

Recovering international relations: the promise of sustainable critique

Tables Figures Introduction: Sustainable Critique and the Lost Vocation of International Relations Lost Vocation Critique and the Loss of Vocation Sustainable Critique (1): Problem of Reification Sustainable Critique (2): Reification in International Theory Sustainable Critique (3): Chastened Reason Plan of the Work Chapter One: For We Born After: Challenge of Sustainable Critique Between Comte and Catastrophe Sustainable Critique as an Ethical Commitment: Animus Habitandi Ethical Lacuna in IR: Three Examples From Critique to Sustainable Critique 'Non-Identity' and Negative Dialectics A Logical Impasse? Chapter Two: Sustainable Critique and Critical IR Theory: Against Emancipation A New Hope: Emancipation in Critical IR Theory Post-National Liberalism and Pragmatism Adornian Alternative: Constellation and a Hermeneutic Turn Concretizing the Constellation in IR: Allison's Essence of Decision Toward Sustainable Critique: Concluding Thoughts Chapter Three: Realist Dilemma: Politics and the Limits of Theory 'Dutch Boy Syndrome': Morgenthau's Despairing Vocation 1. Morgenthau's Positive Dialectics 2. Limits of Positive Dialectics: Reification, Despair, Backlash 3. From Reification to Sustainable Critique: Morgenthau's Missed Opportunity Reification by Ontological Smuggling: Waltz's Middle-Range Realism Epistemological Lowballing: Wendt's 'Third Way' Concluding Thoughts: Critical Realism and Sustainable Critique Chapter Four: Communitarian IR Theory: The Common Socius of us All IR-Liberalism: Two Traditions Between Community and Individual Plan of the Chapter Metaphysical Communitarianism: Functionalism 1. Fabian Impasse 2. Mitranyan Breakthrough 'Wise Android': Deutsch's Cybernetic Turn 'Third-way' Communitarianism and the Primacy of Vision: Adler Concluding Thoughts: From Communitarian to Individualist IR Chapter Five: Individualist IR Theory: Disharmonious Cooperation IR-Liberalism: From Communitarian to Individualist Plan of the Chapter Metaphysical Individualism: Ernst Haas and the Renewed March of Reason 1. Against Communitarianism: Neo-Functionalism and 'Managed Gesellschaft' 2. From Neo-functionalism to Liberal Nationalism: Taking up the Gauntlet of Reflexivity Middle-Range Individualism: Keohane's Disharmonious Cooperation and 'Humility' 1. Complex Interdependence and the Middle-Range Turn 2. Liberal Institutionalism's Unsustainable Reflexivity Third-Way Individualism: Multiple Paradigms and the 'Pirandello Problem' Conclusion: Toward Sustainably Critical International Theory 'Hermeneutic Sphere': Toward a Sustainably Critical Research Program Sympathetic Knowledge A Working Example: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and IR 1. Building up the Hermeneutic 'Third Axis' 2. Constructing the Constellation: an Analytical Table of Contents Constellar Production of Compassion Politics without Compassion: More of the Same? Works Cited

Self and other in critical international theory: assimilation, incommensurability and the paradox of critique

AbstractThis article is principally concerned with the way some sophisticated critical approaches in International Relations (IR) tend to compromise their critical edge in their engagement with the self/other problematique. Critical approaches that understand critique as total non-violence towards, or unreflective affirmation of, alterity risk falling back into precritical paths. That is, either a particularistic, assimilative universalism with pretensions of true universality or a radical incommensurability and the impossibility of communication with the other. This is what this article understands as the paradox of the politics of critique. Instead, what is more important than seeking a final overcoming or dismissal of the self/other opposition is to gain the insight that it is the perpetual striving to preserve the tension and ambivalence between self and other that rescues both critique's authority and function.

Writing about Empire: Remarks on the Logic of a Discourse

A new genre of scholarly writing has emerged in recent years in the field of what one can broadly call critical international theory. Its principal defining feature is an intense preoccupation with the phenomenon of the so-called ‘new world order’, which it tries to explain and describe through an analytical lens constructed primarily around two ideas: the idea of ‘empire’ and the idea of ‘imperial law’. In this article I attempt to provide a brief overview of this genre, which for the sake of simplicity I shall call henceforth the ‘new imperial law’ or NIL genre, and to reflect critically on its underlying ideological dynamics.

Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Risk: Rethinking Indeterminacy1

In this paper, I argue that critical international theory could benefit from a broader and deeper conception of the limits of knowledge—that what is needed is more attention to the role of ambiguity in contemporary politics. In doing so, I am not denying the usefulness of the more prevalent concepts of uncertainty and risk used by scholars applying the frameworks of global governmentality and world risk society. This essay is instead proposing that we understand risk and uncertainty as two specific categories of indeterminacy that have come to preoccupy contemporary neoliberal thinkers and policymakers, and hence their critics, but which nonetheless tend to downplay the interpretive dimensions of the limits of knowledge. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things, as well as the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, I develop an analysis of the role of ambiguity in global governance—as an object of global governance, a tool to be exploited by it, and a limit to its operation. Concluding with the case of international financial governance, this essay suggests that not only will a focus on ambiguity shed light on the historical evolution of global finance, but it also provides us with some clues to the sources of the current sub-prime financial crisis.

The Trouble with `Never Again!': Rereading Levinas for Genocide Prevention and Critical International Theory

After the Holocaust, the world said `Never again!' That declaration has since been repeated often, to no avail. The insufficiency of this declaration is symptomatic of a problem with redemptive politics: They might spur us into action to deliver the world from violence, cruelty and injustice, but they might also overwhelm us with paralysing responsibility and provoke a retreat into bad faith. Emmanuel Levinas offers a more sober, but also more promising, view of politics that resists redemptive aspirations. Critical international theorists have explored the resources that Levinas offers for thinking about world politics, but they have underestimated those resources because they have attributed to him a redemptive account of politics. From this perspective, they have criticised his infamous response to the massacres at Sabra and Chatila during Israel's war with Lebanon. Reconsidering his comments about that event, I defend Levinas and suggest that the charges against him stem from that misunderstanding of his view of politics. Once reconstructed, these comments point towards a challenging — but more productive — politics of disquietude that might inform a more constructive approach to the prevention of genocide.

Happy Anniversary! Time and critique in International Relations theory

ABSTRACTAll critical theories lay claim to some kind of account not only of the present of international politics and its relation to possible futures, but also of the role of critical theory in the present and future in international politics. This article argues that if critical international theory is to have a future that lives up to its revolutionary ambition, then it needs to listen more carefully to the voices of postcolonial and feminist critics and take on board the heterotemporality of international politics.

Between Kant and Pufendorf: humanitarian intervention, statist anti-cosmopolitanism and critical international theory

ABSTRACTImmanuel Kant and Samuel Pufendorf were both exercised by the relationship between politics, morality and lawful authority; a relationship that goes to the heart of the sovereign state’s existence and legitimacy. However, while Kant defended the authority of the moral law, believing morality provides higher authoritative norms than the sovereign state, Pufendorf defends the political morality of authority, believing the sovereign state should submit to no higher moral norms. The rivalry between these two positions is reprised in current debate between cosmopolitanism and statism over humanitarian intervention. Arguing against statism, this article defends a Habermasian-style critical international theory which affords a ‘cosmopolitanism without imperialism’.

Teoria crítica em relações internacionais

Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar a tradição da teoria crítica em Relações Internacionais. Entende-se que haja uma lacuna nos debates teóricos com a reduzida atenção dedicada a essa tradição no Brasil. O revigoramento dos debates teóricos contribui para o enfraquecimento das tradições teóricas convencionais. O papel da teoria crítica nessa tendência é primordial. A teoria crítica da Escola de Frankfurt é examinada como precursora filosófica e metateórica da teoria crítica em Relações Internacionais. Em seguida, as bases epistemológicas dos desafios da teoria crítica às teorias convencionais são apresentadas, com ênfase especial dedicada ao trabalho de Robert W. Cox. O pensamento neogramsciano é inspecionado à luz da busca pela transformação social nas relações internacionais. A vertente da teoria crítica internacional é vista como fonte de inspiração para muitos autores que trabalham com a emancipação. Examina-se a produção de Andrew Linklater por representar a busca por transformação das comunidades políticas por meio da expansão de suas fronteiras morais. Em seguida, busca-se uma avaliação crítica dos impactos trazidos pela teoria crítica ao campo de estudos das Relações Internacionais. Conclui-se que a teoria crítica tem méritos na guinada das discussões teóricas em direção a questionamentos ontológicos e epistemológicos, debate esse que tem caracterizado esse campo de estudo nas últimas décadas, por meio da exposição das limitações conseqüentes do domínio das teorias convencionais. Não obstante, a associação da teoria crítica ao pós-positivismo epistemológico constitui atitude premeditada.

Beyond Khalistan? Sikh diasporic identity and critical international theory1

This article examines the possibilities opened up by critical international theory for the articulation of a post-nationalist diasporic Sikh identity which seeks to go beyond Khalistan. Critical theories of international relations contest the hegemony of realism within international relations (IR) by examining the origins, development and potential transformation of the bounded territorial state and the Westphalian order of territorialized nation-states. It is argued that realism, based on a positivist methodology, ‘naturalizes’ the Westphalian order by recognizing the nation-state as the only significant actor in IR. This, consequently, serves to ‘territorialize’ Sikh identity and stimulates the demand for an independent Sikh homeland, Khalistan. However, the twin processes of globalization and fragmentation have made the notion of a bordered, self-contained community that is at the heart of international political theory difficult to sustain in the post-Cold War world. This has created space for the articulation of a deterritorialized Sikh identity which challenges the Westphalian order in its rejection of sovereign statehood and its assertion of the sovereignty of the Khalsa Panth.

The Frankfurt School and International Relations' on the centrality of recognition

The works of Jürgen Habermas have amounted to an inspiration to many within IR. His writings on communicative rationality and communicative action are widely regarded as a useful counterpoint to the emphasis on instrumental rationality and strategic action. Also, Habermas has greatly influenced the development of Critical International Theory. However, as other contributions in this Forum demonstrate, IR scholars have at times found it difficult to apply Habermas to service their specific social scientific inquiries. In particular, it has been difficult to unequivocally locate communicative action in diplomatic exchanges or international negotiations. It is partly for this reason that the contributions of the so-called ‘Third Generation’ of Frankfurt School scholars have attracted increasing interest. Axel Honneth's attempts to reconstruct insights in relation to the struggle for recognition into a social theory (with critical intent) have to date been of particular importance in this context. Indeed, given the perceived difficulties in ‘applying’ Habermas, there appears to be an emerging trend to end the honeymoon with Habermas in favour of a reorientation toward Honneth.