Mainstream International Relations Theories Research Articles

System Structure, Unjust War, and State Excusability

Abstract This article seeks to bridge the interdisciplinary gap between just war theory (JWT) and international relations (IR) by introducing into the former discipline key theoretical and empirical insights from the latter discipline. Specifically, the article argues that traditional JWT is deficient as a normative account of war because it constitutes what Kenneth Waltz calls a “unit-level” theory, operating at the level of the individual state and evaluating the morality of a given war solely by reference to a list of state-level factors (e.g., just cause, proportionality, etc.). In this manner, JWT fails to take account of the systemic, or structural, correlates of international armed conflict. In particular, it fails to incorporate insights from the leading mainstream IR theories of neorealism, institutionalism, and constructivism in regard to how the international distribution of material capabilities, institutions, and ideas codetermines the nature and likelihood of war. To remedy these inadequacies of JWT, a “multilevel” approach to the morality of war is put forward according to which unit-level factors are required to be weighted by systemic factors. Pursuant to this approach, if a state has initiated or participated in a war that is assessed as unjust through the unit-level lens of traditional JWT, the state itself can still sometimes be partially excused for that war once systemic factors have been considered.

Revolution and restoration in post-war East Asia: A Gramscian approach to the ‘history problem’

While tensions over historical issues between Japan and South Korea have long served to impede US strategic goals in East Asia, mainstream International Relations theory has largely been unable to explain the stubborn persistence of such issues. Instead, I interpret East Asia’s post-war history through the lens of Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution, thereby situating the ‘history problem’ in the context of the dialectical relations between state (re)formation, geopolitical contestation and transnational capital accumulation in the post-war era. I argue that US intervention in 1945 was a process in which a set of state–society relations was established whereby democratising tendencies from below were repressed through the establishment of US-aligned capitalist regimes. This implied the partial restoration of certain aspects of the pre-1945 regimes in a manner that served to forestall any genuine coming to terms with past colonial history. Gramsci’s concept of passive revolution thus provides a framework for rethinking how bilateral relations between countries can be explained with reference to the broader dynamics of geopolitical contestation, transnational capital accumulation and the dynamics of state–society contestation within national social formations. While existing empirical applications of passive revolution have typically focused on particular national instances of state formation and transformation, I argue that the concept can be utilised to analyse the region-wide processes whereby the US empire was established in the aftermath of the Second World War, and by extension, how supranational processes of passive revolution subsequently generated their own tensions and contradictions as manifested in contested bilateral relations between states.

Foreign Policy Analysis in Post-Cold War Poland: History, Teaching, Institutions, Westernization, and Theoretical Approaches

The purpose of this paper is to characterize Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) in post-Cold War Poland. The scope of this text is limited to FPA, understood as empirical research utilizing foreign policy theories by taking into account factors at the domestic level. “Polish FPA”is defined as research conducted by scholars employed in Poland. The text focuses on five aspects of Polish FPA: (1) historical context, (2) the teaching covering this subject, (3) the development of institutions doing research on foreign policy, (4) adaptation of ideas from global (mainly Western) science (in fact, westernization), and (5) the most important publications analyzing foreign policy and applying theoretical approaches. The paper is a response to the existing research gap as, so far, no work has been prepared strictly on the FPA’s development in post-Cold War Poland. The weaknesses of the existing literature on this subject are its (1) selectivity, (2) focus on mainstream international relations theories and (3) sketchiness.

The Foreign Policy of Poland and the Problem of Political Rationale

The aim of the paper is to use international relations theories to explain the views of Polish elites in the field of foreign policy. The concept of political rationale in foreign policy, introduced by Fred Chernoff, is utilized to achieve this goal. The structure of the text is threefold. The first part introduces the theoretical approach. It is believed that it is possible to derive foreign policy mental maps from leading international relations theories such as realism, liberalism, and constructivism. The second part describes how foreign policy is understood by three groups of Polish elites. The third part compares decision-makers views identified in the second part with the theoretical models developed in the first part. In conclusion, the theory’s usefulness in explaining Poland’s foreign policy concepts is evaluated. The text presents an attempt to connect the issues of theory with observable political practice on the example of Poland’s foreign policy after the end of the Cold War. As a result, the paper shows the linkages between chosen International Relations (IR) theories and the state’s foreign policy. In this way, it incorporates the mainstream IR theories into the reflection conducted primarily in the Foreign Policy Analysis field.

Regionalism, membership and leadership: insights from Asia and beyond

Drawing inspiration from a Chinese proberb, this paper offers an alternative interpretation of regionalism, with a special reference to its membership. This alternative interpretation provides insights into the exclusionary aspect of regionalism, for which mainstream international relations theories lack a certain efficacy in providing plausible explanations. We hypothesize that a state forms a regional group in which it can be a leader, excluding states that are more powerful than it is. A state values the leading position in a regional group, even in a small regional group. To test the hypothesis, this paper investigates regionalism launched in Asia during the second half of 20th century, with special attention to the inclusion and exclusion of the US. By analyzing diplomatic records obtained at four national archives (Australia, Japan, the UK, and the US), as well as memoirs by retired officials and other studies, this paper shows that regionalism in Asia was often pursued in an exclusionary manner, mainly by Japan, and to a lesser degree by Indonesia. The paper also discusses whether and how regionalism in Europe can be explained with this alternative theory.

Towards Guanxi? Reconciling the “Relational Turn” in Western and Chinese International Relations Scholarship

In recent years, the “relational turn” in International Relations (IR) theory has attracted extensive attention. However, the limitations of the substantialist ontology of mainstream (Western) IR theory means that it encounters difficulties and dilemmas in interpreting the evolving international system. Against the background of the rapid development of globalization and regional integration, the reality of world politics is constantly changing, and increasingly shows obvious characteristics of interconnection and high interdependence. In this context, there is insufficient research comparing the Western and non-Western versions of the “relational turn”. Relational ontology may be able to provide a bridge between Chinese Confucian philosophy, Western philosophy, Western sociology, and mainstream western IR theories capable of generating productive synergies. However, there are major theoretical and cultural obstacles to be overcome if a reconciliation of the Western and Chinese versions of relationalism is to be achieved.

Uluslararası Siyaset Sosyolojisi, Biyo-iktidar ve Salgın Hastalıklar

2020 yılının ilk aylarında küresel bir sağlık krizine dönüşen Kovid-19 salgını, toplum ile birey arasındaki ilişkinin siyasal, toplumsal ve biyolojik boyutlarının tekrardan altını çizerken, bu ilişkilerin uluslararası ilişkiler analizi tarafından daha fazla dikkate alınması gerekliliğini bize göstermiştir. Salgın hastalık, bireyin vücudunda gerçekleşen bir olgu olmasına rağmen, toplumsal boyutuyla dikkat çekmektedir. Uluslararası ilişkiler disiplininde günden güne artan bir ilginin odağında olan uluslararası siyaset sosyolojisi, sosyal teori ve uluslararası ilişkiler disiplinini birbirine yakınlaştırırken, Kovid-19 sürecini anlamamız için bize yeni entelektüel araçlar sağlamaktadır. Bu araçların başında, birey ile toplum arasındaki ilişkilerin hem siyasal ve toplumsal boyutlarını hem de biyolojik boyutlarını dikkate alan biyo-iktidar kavramı gelmektedir. Fransız düşünür Michel Foucault tarafından ortaya atılan bu kavram, iktidarın yeni bir alanı olarak sağlığın ve insan biyolojisinin altını çizer ve ana akım uluslararası ilişkiler kuramlarının ve çalışmaların dikkatinden kaçan egemenliğin yeni bir modelinin ortaya çıkışını görmemize yardımcı olur. Bu bağlamda, çalışmada uluslararası ilişkilerde değişen iç/dış ikiliği dikkate alınarak, bu iktidar modeli ve gelişen sağlık güvenliği ekseninde Türkçe Uluslararası İlişkiler literatürüne katkı yapmaya çalışılacaktır.

HOW INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SCHOLARS EXPLAIN THE WORLD: A WORLD-ECOLOGICAL CRITIQUE

The article is an operationalization of a new theoretical-methodological approach to analyzing International Relations discourse. The approach is based on the Critical Theory of International Relations and the concept of world-ecology. It re-conceptualizes the critique of mainstream International Relations theories and paradigms in a way which foregoes the Cartesian dualism of Society and Nature in order to analyze the subject through the dialectical power-capital-nature relation. The article analyzes two contemporary texts from “Foreign Affairs” which defend the realist and liberal theories. It shows that both discourses only stabilize the existing order without challenging it in any way or proposing radical ways of dealing with the ecological crisis. They either ignore environmental issues or treat them as solvable under the current political-economic status quo.

Relationality and rationality in Confucian and Western traditions of thought

This paper provides a theoretical sketch of relationality within the field of International Relations (IR). It argues, contrary to what many IR scholars hold, that representation is practice: academic representation reflects the background of a community of practice and highlights what is embodied therein. Therefore, different cultural communities have different practices and draw from different background knowledge. Rationality, which serves as the dominant foundation for background knowledge within many Western communities of practice, permeates mainstream IR theory. Relationality performs a similar role in traditionally Confucian communities of practice, where relations enjoy a distinct ontological status over individual rationality. A relational theory assumes (1) that self-existence coincides with other-existence and coexistence, and (2) that self-interest coincides with other-interest. Based on these assumptions, it argues that relations select, meaning that in a social situation actors base their action on relations in the first place and that rationality is and can only be defined in terms of relations. The article uses the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an example to elaborate its theoretical point.

On cultural diversity: international theory in a world of difference

This book is the first in a three-volume project, and therefore necessarily leaves many big questions hanging. It has two principal purposes. The first is to show to the discipline of International Relations (IR) how its engagement with the concept of culture remains wedded to what Christian Reus-Smit labels ‘the default conception’ of culture. This conception sees cultures as largely homogenous, self-generating, bounded social structures interacting with each other in a billiard ball-like way. Reus-Smit argues that this conception was the one prevalent in anthropology and sociology before the Second World War. He shows in considerable depth and detail not only how this old-fashioned default view of culture evolved, but how it still anchors the societal dimension of thinking in four quite different areas of mainstream IR theory: realism, the English School, constructivism and rationalism. The second purpose of the book is to convince mainstream IR that it needs to abandon this old-fashioned view of culture and adopt the more post-modern conception now dominant in anthropology, cultural studies and sociology. In this view, culture is more fluid, variegated, cross-cutting, unbounded and internally contradictory. Reus-Smit thinks that some of the more radical approaches to IR theory such as post-structuralism, post-colonialism, feminism and practice theory have already made this move. Mainstream IR now needs to abandon the default conception of culture not only because it is wrong, but also because it leads to serious misunderstandings about the nature and dynamics of international society. Specifically, the default conception makes cultural difference a zero-sum problem when changes in the distribution of power behind different cultures shift the balance among them. The dominant culture is threatened with losing its position, and the pluralist institutional structures of its order regime are challenged both by a new distribution of power and by new cultural claims. This is precisely the current problem, where western power and culture are in decline, and non-western cultures are gaining in wealth, power and confidence. The issue of how culture is understood is thus central to understanding, and dealing with, contemporary world politics.

State, power and global order

This article examines the evolution of international thought through the notion of ‘political space’. It focuses on two important domains of international politics, the nation-state and the global, to reflect on spatial categories in the discipline of International Relations (IR). Since its inception, the concept of the nation-state has dominated mainstream IR theory. Yet an investigation of how international order has been theorized over IR’s first century shows that this era has also been defined by globalist visions of political order. Nowadays, globalization is sometimes seen as the apex of the historical interplay of particularity and universality. The progression towards global political and economic order, however, is today undermined by the resurgence of state-centric political nationalism which seeks to challenge the legitimacy of the global political space. By examining how past international thinkers including Alfred Zimmern, Barbara Ward, Hans Morgenthau, E. H. Carr and John Herz, imagined and interpreted the relations of space and politics in the national and global spheres, this article suggests that spatial thinking offers an insightful approach for theorizing international relations. The article argues that the global and national spaces attain their political meanings through divisions as well as interactions and connections. The focus on divisions, exemplified in the writings of Barbara Ward, helps to make sense of the modus operandi of power in the national and global political spaces by investigating differences, tensions and instability.

Between East and West: Japanese IR at a crossroads

That East Asian IR communities are increasingly interested in knowledge production has become self-evident. While the form that this interest is taken in China is predominantly focused on developing a Chinese School of International Relations Theory (IRT), the situation in Japan is much more diverse and complicated. This article examines the impact of the non-Western IRT movement on Japanese IR academia from a sociology of science perspective. It finds that while indigenous theorizing has garnered interests in a portion of Japanese IR academia due to both internal and external driving forces, there have been few claims for and actual theorizing on a ‘Japanese brand-name’ in IRT like the ‘Chinese School.’ The majority of Japanese IR scholars remain strongly attached to mainstream IRT or the traditional historical and area studies. Such development has its roots in the structural restraints embedded in Japan’s unresolved identity as a de facto polity situated between ‘East and West’ and the heritage of its war-time history. Given these characteristics of IR studies in Japan, the different components of Japanese IR academia will most likely follow their own trajectory without integration and synthesis. This will position Japanese IR, just like its current foreign policy, at a crossroads.

Opening up the debate over ‘non-western’ international relations

This opening article maps the terrain of the ongoing debate over various forms of ‘non-Western’ International Relations (IR) theory-building enterprise with the aim not only of providing contextual background for the Special Section, but also, and more importantly, of identifying what is missing in the overall debate. It is often pointed out that IR as a discipline is ‘too Western centric’, and that much of mainstream IR theory is ‘simply an abstraction of Western history’. In this respect, many IR scholars have called for ‘broadening’ the theoretical horizon of IR while problematising the Western parochialism of the discipline, and it is increasingly acknowledged that IR needs to embrace a wider range of histories, experiences, and theoretical perspectives, particularly those outside of the West. However, despite such a meaningful debate over non-Western IR theorisation and its recent contributions, several critical questions and issues still remain unclear and under-explored. I suggest that there are (at least) three sets of questions that require more careful attention in our discussion. First, does IR need to embrace theoretical pluralism? Second, to what extent has contemporary IR become pluralistic? Third, should IR pursue the promotion of dialogue and engagement across theoretical and spatial divides? Of course, each of these questions invites several subsequent questions. This discussion will serve as a useful point from which more substantial and exciting bearings may be taken in enriching the ongoing debate and moving IR towards becoming a more pluralistic discipline.

Toward a new relational ontology in global politics: China’s rise as holographic transition

The theoretical challenges for international relations (IR) posed by China’s rise cannot be adequately addressed at a mere theoretical level. Predicated on a Cartesian/Newtonian ontology that assumes a mechanistic world made up of discrete, self-contained parts (e.g., sovereign nation-states), mainstream IR theories offer limited understanding of China’s rise. In this article, I propose an alternative, holographic relational ontology. Drawing upon recent IR scholarship on relational ontology and holographic ideas in quantum physics as well as traditional Asian thoughts, this ‘new’ ontology posits that the world exists fundamentally as holographic relations, in which a part is a microcosmic reflection of its larger whole(s). As a part of various wholes in global politics, ‘China’ is thus never an entity in and of itself, but holographic reflections of them. Its rise is best understood as a phenomenon of holographic transition, in which characteristics of those larger wholes are being enfolded into what is known as ‘China’. Thus, both the ‘China’ challenges and ‘China’ opportunities, rather than some inherently ‘Chinese’ properties, are products of China’s holographic relations. This ontology has broader conceptual and methodological as well as policy implications for IR in East Asia and beyond.

Rethinking Japan in mainstream international relations

Located geographically in the East, but often identified with the West, Japan's role as a world power over the last century and a half remains curiously inconsistent in mainstream international relations (IR). By examining Japan's often under-appreciated role in the international history of wealth and power, we argue that this tells us more about the distorting impact on IR theory of Eurocentrism and realism than it tells us about Japan's role in world history. Symptomatic of these distortions are Japan's exclusion from or marginalization within, the first round of modernization before 1914, and the accompanying under-recognition of its role as a model and hub for Northeast Asia's capitalist development. Also occluded is Japan's key post-1945 role in both underpinning America's superpower status, and promoting the capitalist world order in Asia. Mainstream IR theory provides poor foundations for both academic and policy analysis of Japan's important world role.

Repensar la historia diplomática: diálogos, ausencias y retos para el entendimiento de la alteridad histórica mundial

El presente artículo pretende señalar las limitaciones de las teorías dominantes de las Relaciones Internacionales sobre el entendimiento histórico de la diplomacia, y la normalización hecha de las bases categoriales sobre las que es interpretada la alteridad histórica mundial, la cual invisibilizó actores, saberes y prácticas diplomáticas que perviven en la exterioridad del sistema mundial. Para respaldar las afirmaciones del texto, se aportan hechos históricos de la actividad diplomática que dan cuenta tanto de la resistencia histórica como del entendimiento político y diplomático mundial. En su conjunto, se suma a la promoción de las agendas de investigación sobre diplomacia, interesadas en comprender mejor la alteridad planetaria y su preocupación por la transformación de la violencia y la dominación global.

Pakistan’s Politics of Alliances and the Role of Pakistani Military in Politics (1954-1958): Uneven and Combined Development

The states have to adjust to the pressure exerted by the 'international'; yet impact of the 'international' on national politics has been ignored by mainstream international relations theories. This study uses a framework of "Uneven and Combined Development" to investigate the impact of Pakistan's inclusion in the United States led defense pacts on Pakistan military's role in domestic politics from 1954 to 1958. The central finding of this research is that the United States preferred Pakistan military over political leadership in Pakistan to checkmate communism in Asia as well as to stop communist political parties gaining power in Pakistan. By participating in these international pacts, the role of Pakistan military expanded in politics which culminated in the first martial law (1958).

A Multilayered Approach to Public Diplomacy Evaluation: Pathways of Connection

This article presents a multilayered framework, called pathways of connection, as an approach to public diplomacy evaluation. It is well established both in the study and practice of public diplomacy that evaluation is a daunting task, mostly due to the complex and convoluted nature of the concept. To overcome such obstacles, the proposed framework first defines public diplomacy as a foreign policy tool. This definition is then used to state that the only success criterion for a public diplomacy project is its contribution to advancing national interests, regardless of the type of the project or the practitioner country. Second, three layers on which the outcomes of public diplomacy projects can be observed are described by incorporating mainstream international relations theories in the practice of public diplomacy. Third, pathways of connection are introduced to explain how the changes in target audiences contribute to the advancement of national interests.

Understanding New Middle Eastern Leadership: An Operational Code Approach

Political Islam and Islamist organizations have broadly gained strength across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the post-Cold War era. Following the Arab uprisings, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), generally viewed as the world’s largest and most influential Islamist organization, has shaped the wider landscape of MENA politics. This study examines MB leadership by comparing M. Morsi of Egypt, R. Ghannouchi of Tunisia, and K. Meshaal of Gaza as examples of Islamist leaders to explain their political belief systems and predict their foreign-policy behavior. We use the operational code approach, a content-analysis software and statistical tests to conduct the study. Results show that the three leaders’ foreign policy beliefs are analogous to the averages of world leaders. Results also partially support the hypothesis that their foreign-policy propensities are similar to each other. We conclude that despite the conventional portrayal of MB leadership, these leaders use negotiation and cooperation to settle their differences in foreign affairs, and the best way to approach them is to engage in a Rousseauvian assurance game that emphasizes international social cooperation. Results also suggest important implications in terms of mainstream international relations theories.

Collective intentionality, complex pluralism and the problem of anarchy

In this article, I argue that contemporary theories of collective intentionality force us to think about anarchy in new and challenging ways. In the years since Wendt declared the state a person, the collective intentionality of groups has become the focus of important scholarship across the humanities and social sciences. But this literature will not sit easily with mainstream International Relations for two reasons. First, contemporary theories of collective intentionality are difficult to square with the idea that the personified state is an intentional agent, with first-person plural self-awareness and moral obligations. However, by contrast, the same theories make it eminently plausible for all sorts of other groups to be intentional, agential, moral persons and can tell us how states are constructed. In short, this set of theories radically pluralises and transforms standard political ontology while also accounting for common misperceptions. I push these insights further to argue that radical pluralisation suggests that anarchy may be the structural context for politics as such. What we know from mainstream International Relations theory is that politics without an orderer is well-ordered regardless. It may be time to recast these insights in order to demonstrate how complex pluralism is not chaos but anarchy.