International Relations Knowledge Research Articles

The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations: How Do We Know? by Richard Ned Lebow

The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations: How Do We Know? by <i>Richard Ned Lebow</i>

Response to J. Samuel Barkin’s Review of The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations: How Do We Know?

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The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations: How Do We Know? By Richard Ned Lebow. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 320p. $89.99 cloth, $29.99 paper.

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Induction and Deduction in Theorizing of International Relations

The article presents the ways of understanding the place of induction and deductive reasoning in the process of building the theory and knowledge of international relations and the resulting disputes present in the International Relations. The author argues that in the study of international relations, as in the natural sciences, it is necessary to combine empirical observation with creative building of theory. The author performs a critical analysis of the positions of selected theoreticians of international relations on issues related to the problems of induction and deduction and theorizing of international relations.

Reality-congruence, emancipatory politics and situated knowledge in International Relations: a process sociological perspective

Recent discussions of the epistemological and political implications of the situatedness of knowledge in International Relations (IR) have raised important questions regarding the future development of the discipline. They pose the challenge of understanding under what conditions human beings develop more or less reality-congruent knowledge about world politics and what are the implications of such knowledge for emancipatory political activity. This article argues that process sociology should be understood as a relevant complement to these discussions. Assuming a fundamentally ‘realist’ orientation, process sociology provides a sociologically informed analysis of the material, ideational and emotional forces shaping the development of knowledge. As such, it can help those concerned with the implications of the situatedness of knowledge in IR reinforce their capacity to both understand the social conditions under which it is possible to develop more detached and reality-congruent knowledge about the world and better identify and explain the historically emergent values that should orientate the emancipatory transformation of world politics.

Measuring common knowledge: latent semantic analysis, linguistic synchrony, and common knowledge in international relations

Common knowledge, also called intersubjectivity, is a core theme in the study of international cooperation and diplomacy. Yet International Relations (IR) lacks a method to systematically measure the degree of common knowledge. Drawing from research in computational linguistics, psychology, and communication, we introduce latent semantic analysis (LSA) to measure common knowledge in specific communicative exchanges between actors. We argue that the extent to which speaking partners use words in the same way and get in synch linguistically can be used to measure the degree of common knowledge, and this can be measured by the LSA method. We outline several ways LSA can be valuable to IR scholars and provide an empirical illustration of using this method in the case of Bretton Woods negotiations. The LSA method promises to help IR scholars seize the research opportunities offered by the digital age and build a bridge between qualitative and quantitative methods.

Knowledge in international relations: Susceptibilities to motivated reasoning among experts and non-experts

Motivated reasoning as a pervasive feature of human psychology poses challenges to the ideal of liberal democratic government, which relies on citizens’ rationality. Motivated reasoning is at least partially caused by a biased store of knowledge, a partial set of accumulated information that skews reasoning about important political issues. However, there is some evidence that specialized training in a given domain may reduce the effects of motivated reasoning within that domain. To test whether a similar phenomenon is evident in the field of international relations, a signal detection technique is used to measure knowledge of U.S. foreign policy among two samples, one of IR professors and one of laypersons. The results uncover significant differences between experts and nonexperts, indicating that training in IR helps to reduce biases in knowledge, potentially providing “knowledge constraints” on motivated reasoning. Nonetheless, some evidence of bias among IR professors remains, suggesting that knowledge constraints on motivated reasoning may not fully allay normative concerns of bias in the domain of international relations.

From subjects to objects: Knowledge in International Relations theory

There has been a resurgence of interest in the role of scientific knowledge and expertise in International Relations, but it is not clear what the theoretical value-added of this work is. This article places recent work on scientific knowledge and expertise in a longer-term perspective. The history shows that knowledge has played an important role in International Relations theory since Carr and Morgenthau, but that thinking has been trapped within a simple conceptual framework centered on tracing how knowledge shapes the beliefs and interests of international subjects. This mode of theorizing first entered International Relations via Mannheim and has been further developed by Foucauldian and practice-based approaches since the 1990s. Outlining the history of knowledge from Carr through Haas to the present makes it possible to identify the distinctive contribution of recent work: whereas International Relations has focused on how knowledge shapes subjects such as states and international organizations, recent work by Corry, Sending, and others reorients International Relations to the constitution of governance objects. On the object-centered view, knowledge plays a key role in the construction of the hybrid entities like the economy and the climate that structure the landscape of international politics.

Knowledge, International Relations and the structure–agency debate: towards the concept of “epistemic selectivities”

The aim of this article is to develop a framework within which the role and social construction of knowledge in International Relations can be understood and theoretically underpinned. In order to do so, the article discusses post-structuralist and neo-Gramscian answers to the structure–agency debate and argues that the role of knowledge remains rather implicit in both understandings on how structure and agency are mutually constituted. The main argument of the article is that the social construction of knowledge can only be understood, if International Relations are analysed in terms of a dialectically constituted relationship between structure and agency visible in and through processes whereby science and expert knowledge are referred to as true and policy relevant. On this basis, the article develops the concept of “epistemic selectivities”, which describes how the use of science and expert knowledge to underpin strategic action leads to hegemonic patterns in the way in which (scientific) expert knowledge is related to particular claims of policies and facts.

Reconstructing India’s Identity in World Politics: An Emerging Convergence between Public Diplomacy and Constructivism

Public diplomacy has become one of the most significant instruments of foreign policy since the operation of international relations has become more public, and the public, in turn, has become more involved. While challenging the importance of material power in achieving various political outcomes, Public Diplomacy (PD) offers an alternative model of practice that enables an understanding of the normative or ideational structures that help in determining audience identities. It furthers our knowledge of international relations by engaging in shared understandings of this inter subjective dimension, mainly through social interaction and interplay. Here lies the convergence between public diplomacy and social constructivism. In defining PD, Bruce Gregory (an expert in PD and foreign affairs) suggests that PD is ‘the means by which states, associates of states and non state actors understand cultures , attitudes and behaviour, build and manage relationships; and influence opinions and actions to advance their interests and values.When a country seeks to achieve objectives and set targets, realize values, or defend interests, it must express, exchange and share its views and ideas with those whose actions and behaviour they wish to alter, deter, or reinforce. Such an interaction may vary from vividly defining the government’s objectives, and the various ways to realize them especially with regard to concluding agreements on contentious issues. The constructivists place IR and public diplomacy in the context of broader social relations. They lay emphasis on how state’s interests and identities are shaped by rule-governed (or norm-governed) interactions. In brief, the theory points out how norms influence state interests and behaviour. Thus, as rightly pointed out by Joshua Goldstein (an international relations expert), the state’s conception of interests, its presentation of itself on the international stage, and its behaviour all might change as a result of inter-state interactions. States, according to this view, come to see themselves as others see them quite similar to the general human tendency. The present article analyses the ways in which constructivist theories of international relations can inform public diplomacy practice. The paper draws on India’s approach to diplomacy and the significance of a virtual convergence between public diplomacy and constructivism in reshaping India’s identity in world politics.

Between the Covers: International Relations in Books

AbstractEfforts to systematize our knowledge of international relations (IR) have tended to focus on journal articles while ignoring books. In contrast, we argue that to know IR we must know IR books. To this end, this article presents the first systematic analysis of such books based on coding 500 IR texts published by leading presses against variables covering methodology, theoretical paradigm, and policy application. We compare the results with those of the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) project's coding of 2,800 journal articles against the same variables, and the 2008 and 2011 TRIP surveys of more than 3,000 IR scholars. The main findings are that books are much less quantitative than articles published in leading journals, are somewhat more representative of the field according to paradigm, and are more engaged with policy concerns.

Joachim von Ribbentrop in Canada, 1910–1914: A Note

the opinion of John L. Heineman, Joachim von cRibbentrop's interest for historians lies not in his impractical theories but rather in his successful struggle for power.'1 The remark points to both Ribbentrop's remarkable ascent in the Nazi hierarchy from newly minted party member in 1932 to foreign minister in 1938 and his incompetence and lack of substance. As a diplomat with no formal training in diplomacy or knowledge of international relations, Ribbentrop proved ineffectual: he repelled statesmen in the 1930s with his seemingly endless anti-Bolshevist monologues and his repeated calls for the return of the German colonies lost after the First World War. His greatest achievement, the non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939, was soon tarnished by the outbreak of war with Great Britain, an event he had assured Adolf Hitler would not occur in response to the Nazi invasion of Poland.2 In April 1945, Ribbentrop, who had long lost the ear of his beloved Fiihrer, was replaced in Admiral Karl Donitz's short-lived successor government by Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Given Ribbentrop's reputation among historians for incompetence, his ability to achieve and to hold on to high office is astounding. By members of the Nazi Party, Ribbentrop was always considered an outsider; he was neither a vicious anti-Semite like Julius Streicher nor a prototypical professional failure in the style of Joseph Goebbels. While his future comrades were battling Communists in the streets during the 1920s, Ribbentrop was cutting a figure in Berlin society. Emerging from the First World War almost penniless and with few prospects, by 1920 he had married Annelies Henkell, the daughter of a wealthy producer of sparkling wine. Taking advantage of his new family's connections, he set up a liquor import business. Although he would prove to be an ineffective diplomat, Ribbentrop

Making the World Real: Using a Civic Engagement Course to Bring Home Our Global Connections

ABSTRACT Civic engagement is an area ripe for increased pedagogical attention in the discipline of Political Science. However, almost all efforts are limited to courses on local, state, and national government. We teach about the often intricate connections between domestic and international politics, but opportunities for students to research and practice working within these connections in their local communities are lacking. This article presents a model for combining civic engagement and international relations through a service-learning technique in a class that maintains the traditional intellectual rigor and learning goals of the discipline. It argues that we can do more than just talk about the local impact of international relations in our classrooms by presenting students with structured opportunities to take their knowledge of international relations and use it for the benefit of their local community.

The Construction and Cumulation of Knowledge in International Relations: Introduction*

The idea of building knowledge—that humans can observe and think about the world in such a way that they learn things that they did not know before and are able to understand and explain processes—is at the center of all inquiry. This natural tendency has gone hand in hand with those who have questioned whether what we think we know is actually true and who have demanded that we defend the rules by which we believe knowledge is acquired. Despite this epistemological skepticism the quest goes on and on, even though those who want to display their sophistication may put key concepts, like “reality” or “cause” or “truth” in quotes or use intellectual euphemisms, like “utility” or “adequacy.” Today, within international relations (IR) inquiry, the debate over knowledge—its possibility, its nature, even its desirability—is informed by much of the postmodern and postpositivist movements within the social sciences and the humanities (see Foucault 1972, 1980; Vasquez 1995; Hellmann 2003). Constructivism has emerged as an alternative intellectual pillar of mainstream international relations theory to take its place alongside its competitors—realism and liberalism—to claim its role as a productive approach to inquiry. Although, like realism and liberalism, constructivism is better seen as a paradigm that encompasses a number of specific theoretical formulations, it nonetheless has a core set of assumptions and theoretical perspectives that shape its approach and provide guidance to its practitioners. Among the most central in terms of its epistemological assumptions is the idea that “reality” is constructed by concepts, ideas, and knowledge and not the other way around, namely, that the observation or study of “reality” gives rise to knowledge. Within constructivism this assumption is then used to push inquiry into new directions (see, for example, Onuf 1989; Wendt 1992; Katzenstein 1996; and earlier, …

Limiting the Social: Constructivism and Social Knowledge in International Relations

Limiting the Social: Constructivism and Social Knowledge in International Relations