Mainstream International Relations Research Articles

Quo Vadis, Historical International Relations? Geopolitical Marxism and the Promise of Radical Historicism

John Maclean’s 1988 call “Marxism and IR: A Strange Case of Mutual Neglect” has generated a rich bounty of Marxist studies and paradigms in International Relations (IR). This cross-pollination merged in the 1990s with the “historical turn” and shaped the sub-fields of International Historical Sociology and International Political Economy. But has it left its mark on how IR is practised today? We argue that while Marxism has spoken significantly to the discipline, mainstream IR, even Historical IR, has been largely impervious to Marxist arguments, drawing the standard charge of economism and structuralism. Rectifying these critiques, we suggest that conventional historical studies of “the international” remain methodologically and substantively impoverished. We exemplify this by showing how leading Historical IR studies of “systems change” fail to explain the inside/outside and public/private differentiations constitutive of the modern international order and to integrate the “levels of analysis” they presuppose. We further argue that this rejection has been facilitated by influential Marxist IR paradigms, which ultimately privilege structuralism over historicism: While Neo-Gramscians initially mobilised “historicism” to dissolve claims about the “sameness” of international relations across time and space, the approach became identified with the reified master-category of “hegemony”. Uneven and Combined Development, in turn, has gravitated towards matching Neo-realism’s claim to theoretical universality by insisting on transhistorical model-building and nomological “grand theory”. Both approaches remain over-sociologised and fail to address international politics. Drawing on radically historicist Political Marxism, this article shows how its substantive socio-political premises explain the historical formation of the contemporary international order and re-unite the “levels of analysis” theoretically to provide a framework for non-reductionist and non-economistic accounts of historical international relations. This requires an answer to the agentic challenge of Neo-Classical Realism by reincorporating grand strategy, diplomacy, and international politics into a reformulated perspective of Geopolitical Marxism to track the full historicity of the making of international orders.

Do States Really Sink Costs to Signal Resolve?

Abstract Sinking costs to signal resolve has become a vital part of how the field of international relations (IR) understands crisis bargaining. The logic of a resolved state “burning money” to distinguish itself from an unresolved state is well established in theory. But do states choose to sink costs and burn money in practice? We address the question on two fronts. First, we collect and analyze the examples of sinking costs in the mainstream IR literature. We find almost no clear-cut cases of sunk-cost signals. Second, we argue that this is because states typically prefer other signaling strategies. Rather than burning money, states can expend those resources more constructively. In particular, states can invest in improving the probability of victory in war (“balance tilting”), or they can downpay the costs of war. We conclude that balance tilting and downpaying costs plausibly explain a great deal of state behavior in peacetime, in crises, and even in wartime.

(En)Countering epistemic imperialism: A critique of “Westsplaining” and coloniality in dominant debates on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

ABSTRACT On February 24, 2022, the world was surprised by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and, perhaps even more so, by Ukraine’s fierce resistance to it. In this article, we examine mainstream and feminist International Relations (IR) debates that have emerged in response to Russia’s invasion, as well as the older debates revived through them. Building on decolonial and feminist scholarship, prominently centering feminist debates from Europe’s East and Central Asia, we argue that dominant Western IR debates on Russia and Ukraine are shaped by inter-imperiality. We trace issues of epistemic injustice, epistemic imperialism and coloniality of knowledge production in mainstream IR and see them replicated in feminist debates, including from global South perspectives. We conclude with a contemplation on the structural changes warranted across academia to eliminate the coloniality of knowledge production about Ukraine and fellow societies as well as Indigenous nations affected by Russian colonial and imperial violence.

Is Multi-Method Research More Convincing Than Single-Method Research? An Analysis of International Relations Journal Articles, 1980–2018

While some social scientists see multi-method research (MMR) as a promising strategy for strong causal inference, others argue that it does little to strengthen the validity of research. This paper offers a systematic review of how MMR has been used in mainstream International Relations (IR) and specifically in security studies. Using the TRIP Journal Article Database and Web of Science citation data, I examine whether MMR has reached its full potential. MMR has grown in prominence since the 2000s. Scholars use it most often to examine domestic rather than interstate issues. They cite MMR articles less than they cite quantitative single-method articles and about as often as they cite qualitative single-method research. This suggests that MMR is not more influential, nor perceived as more persuasive. However, this gap has decreased in recent years. The study provides insights into IR at the research design and disciplinary levels, the utility of MMR, and knowledge accumulation in social science.

From the dilemma of Chinese nation branding and soft power to the performativity of creative power: The TAZARA Memorial Park and artistic intervention in Zambia

In this article I analyse the TAZARA Memorial Park in Zambia, which opened in 2022 and commemorates the Zambians, Tanzanians and Chinese who died while building the TAZARA Railway in the mid-twentieth century. Although the memorial is on Zambian soil and recalls a trinational history, it is largely driven by China as a form of Chinese nation branding and soft power. ‘International friendship’ typical of historic Afro-Asian solidarity permeates the memorial’s narratives, and is expressed through large bronze statues as well as museum dioramas, which have loaded museological histories. Zambia, however, was never a tabula rasa onto which this ‘friendship’ was simply imposed, and contemporary attempts to resuscitate historical solidarity are complex. Through interviews with Zambians who live close to the heritage site or worked on the construction of the railway, I demonstrate that there are multiple Zambian responses ranging from frustration and anger to deep feelings of camaraderie. Moving beyond the language of mainstream international relations, I embrace the performativity and generative creativity of culture itself, developing what I refer to as ‘creative power’. In doing so, I analyse two performative interventions that form part of the series, Tulelosha (‘We are mourning’) (2022–23), and which register the gaps and oversights of the memorial.

Differentiating the local impact of global drugs and weapons trafficking: How do gangs mediate ‘residual violence’ to sustain Trinidad's homicide boom?

The Southern Caribbean became a key hemispheric drug transhipment point in the late 1990s, to which the alarmingly high level of homicidal violence in Trinidad is often attributed. Existing research, concentrated in criminology and mainstream international relations, as well as the anti-drug policy establishment, tends to accept this correlation, framing the challenge as a typical post-Westphalian security threat. However, conventional accounts struggle to explain why murders have continued to rise even as the relative salience of narcotrafficking has actually declined. By consciously disentangling the main variables, we advance a more nuanced empirical account of how ‘the local’ is both inserted into and mediates the impact of ‘the global’. Relatively little violence can be ascribed to the drug trade directly: cocaine frequently transits through Trinidad peacefully, whereas firearms stubbornly remain within a distinctive geostrategic context we term a ‘weapons sink’. The ensuing murders are driven by the ways in which these ‘residues’ of the trade reconstitute the domestic gangscape. As guns filter inexorably into the community, they reshape the norms and practices underpinning acceptable and anticipated gang behaviour, generating specifically ‘residual’ forms of violence that are not new in genesis, but rather draw on long historical antecedents to exacerbate the homicide panorama. Our analysis emphasises the importance of taking firearms more seriously in understanding the diversity of historically constituted violences in places that appear to resemble—but differ to—the predominant Latin American cases from which the conventional wisdom about supposed ‘drug violence’ is generally distilled.

Anarchy, Scarcity, Nature: Rousseau’s Stag Hunt and the Arctic Walrus Hunt Compared

Under conditions of anarchy, the predominant assumption is that scarcity leads to conflict. I contrast traditional Inuit walrus hunt practices to Rousseau’s stag hunt to demonstrate how mainstream international relations has it wrong on three counts: (1) radical scarcity need not lead to conflict-prone outcomes, (2) the historical eighteenth-century context of the stag hunt does not prove a predisposition against cooperation, and (3) the conditions of anarchy are irreducible to cultural institutions or to material constraints alone. I leverage Latour’s “symmetrical anthropology” to demonstrate that ideas and things have an equal potential to structure the culture of anarchical relations and to build on the literature which has established that comparative cultural data can be used to theorize anarchy. Rethinking the logic of anarchy is especially important in the age of the Anthropocene, given the prospects for radical ecological change in the near future.

Crossed pandemics: Racism, police violence, and Covid-19 in Brazil and the United States

Abstract The article aims to answer the following question: how is it possible that in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, as a series of daily activities were suspended in the name of preserving life, police violence has not only continued but worsened in the United States and in Brazil? We argue that racism structures social relations both in the United States and in Brazil, functioning as an essential activity of states that remain involved in the production of different types of physical and symbolic death even amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Contrary to mainstream International Relations, which narrates its central categories – such as the state – as neutral and non-racialised, we will draw attention to the racial origin of the state and its institutions, such as the police. This article aims to look at these two contexts, Brazil and the United States, in a crossed way. This analysis is only possible because, despite the heterogeneity of the two scenarios, we understand that racism is constitutive of global order and of the institutions that sustain its unfair and unequal character.

The sea and International Relations

The sea and International Relations offers a collection of interesting contributions and new strategies for the discipline of International Relations (IR) to better engage with the sea and the oceans. This edited volume brings together contributors with varying research interests, from maritime security to the history of empires and from privateering to the mobility and riches of the ocean. Each contributor offers their distinctive perspective on the role of the sea/ocean in our theorizing on world politics. The book takes as its starting-point the assumption that the sea/ocean has so far been under-studied in IR, as the discipline has traditionally been obsessed with territoriality on land. Indeed, it is quite remarkable how mainstream IR, so focused on geographies and control over territories, has largely managed to evade any meaningful engagement with the sea/ocean. This edited volume has integrated a review into the volume itself, which makes independent reviewing more challenging. I am sympathetic to all main points that Xavier Guillaume and Julia Costa López raise in the last chapter, where they offer insights and comments on the book. I especially agree with their assessment that the volume could have tried harder to engage with the literature and ideas of the sea/ocean outside ‘the western thalassodicy’ [maritime powers] (pp. 247–51). While some chapters discuss postcolonial thought, most operate within the western paradigm, despite evident criticism of it. This is particularly apparent when contributors seek to challenge the three ways in which said western tradition has, according to the book, dealt with the sea: ‘(a) … as a space to be tamed, (b) … as a space to be traversed, and (c) … as a space to be controlled’ (pp. 7–8). Each chapter, however, relies predominantly on Anglo-American and European experiences and power struggles at sea, whether contemporary or dating from the past. This way, the book enforces the idea that, beyond this intellectual and historical space, there are limited resources from which to draw when thinking about the sea/ocean. An examination of how the meanings of the ocean—social, political and cultural—vary outside the West would have strengthened the book's critique. While some authors engage with the critical ocean studies literature, as well as with race and gender, a discussion of non-western experiences would have added more nuance to the book.

Alexander Barder on Global Racial Hierarchization and International Relations

Only within recent years has race become a common analytical framework within mainstream international relations (IR) theory. Alexander Barder argues in his book Global Race War: International Politics and Racial Hierarchy that the dominant paradigms of international relations are rooted in historical racial hierarchies and power relations. The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (GJIA) discusses the implications of this theory not only for political hotspots but also for International Relations courses as microcosms of imperial ideology.

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.

Anarchy Is What It Is Made Up Of: Reappraising Kenneth Waltz’s Grand Concept Through a Marxian Lens

In this article, I attempt to critically assess Kenneth Waltz’s deployment of the idea of anarchy to erect a ‘scientific theory of international politics’. First, I argue that the formation of a concept requires comprehension of the object from the standpoint of historical development, not a narrow reading of it. Second, I subject the thinner abstractions of self-help, balance of power and bandwagoning to the test of history. Third, I argue about mainstream international relations’ disdain for revolutions. I would posit that revolutions are fine templates which store rich agential history of structural transformation, a theme subject to much chagrin by realists of all hues, particularly neorealists. In doing so, I take the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 as my benchmark. I elucidate that through the occlusion of first and second images, man and state, in the favour of third image, that is, structural anarchy, Waltz tends to ignore the role of agency as a conscious collective which could be best captured by the Bolshevik Revolution. In doing so, I rely on Perry Anderson’s three modes of agency in history. As a corrective to Waltz’s theorization, I make a strong case for class transcending both man and state as an organic category with immense potential of becoming a level of analysis which both acts upon the structure and refracts through it. I finally conclude by saying that anarchy was a condition and not a ‘social relation’ of any sort which could claim to constitute the ‘international’.

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.

SAME RIDE, DIFFERENT RIDERS

Mainstream international relations definitions commonly assume that states are identical units in a constant state of competition for survival to increase their power. Yet, such a one-sided approach fails to fully consider that the internal structures and contexts of states at different times and under different leaders exert considerable effects on how states act in the international arena and on the foreign policies that shape their identities, priorities, and thus relations with other states. We begin by questioning such theoretical assumptions and then apply a more appropriate reformulation to the case of Turkey's changing trade policy with the European Union (EU). Examining Gül's administration (2007–2014) and Erdoğan's (2014–2020), we look at whether a change in Turkish leadership resulted in a significant change in trade policy and led to a change in the dynamics of its foreign relations approach. Turkey's relations with the members of the EU are assessed (via panel data estimations) as the volume of trade between Turkey and EU members. The data consists of 25 European states’ GDP, Exchange Rate, and Inflation Rate for 2000–2020. We find a significant difference in Turkey's behavior in terms of trade with the EU members between the two administrations under study. This suggests the need to rethink some central theoretical assumptions in certain mainstream international relations perspectives.

A critical evaluation of rationalist IR in the analysis of informal institutions

AbstractThis article has two major inter-connected objectives about the ascendancy of informal international institutions on a global basis. The first objective is to highlight the extended scope of this phenomenon. The second objective of this article evaluates how the mainstream International Relations (IR) literature has treated the cascading wave of informal institutions. With this expansion in mind, the focus is on a critical evaluation of the rationalist institutionalist literature generally and rational design scholarship more specifically. This scholarship possesses some considerable foundational advantages. At the same time several important deficiencies stand out. First, in terms of participation, the scholarship remains excessively US-centric. Secondly, in terms of projection, the rationalist institutionalist literature lacks both historical context and an anticipatory component. Thirdly, in terms of the ‘living personality’ constitutive of informal institutions, the mode of analysis lacks nuance. Notwithstanding its claims of consistency with respect to the logic of institutionalism, the rationalist institutionalist literature is highly uneven in terms of its analysis about the nature of informal institutions. The most consistent component throughout rationalist institutionalist literature is what type of informal institutionalism is left out. Informal institutionalism is recognized to be on the ascendancy. But the core manifestation of informal institutionalism—state-based plurilateralism—is neglected in the analysis.

Global South Perspectives on International Relations: new frameworks for Transboundary Water Analysis

International Relations (IR) are an interdisciplinary field of study; however, mainstream IR possesses a Western and North-centric focus that neglects or unequivocally reflects Global South perspectives and realities. Global events, including those related to transboundary water relations, are told from a Western and North perspective. That does not provide enough knowledge to understand developments occurring in the Global South, understood here as less economically developed countries, comprising a variety of states with diverse levels of economic, cultural, and political influence in the international order. In this sense, the article exposes some Latin American IR thinking, to offer new contributions to the process of theorizing transboundary water relations and broaden the field of view within IR and transboundary water. Following a qualitative methodology, based on the bibliographic revision of authors from the Global South in IR and hydropolitics, the paper argues that it is necessary to incorporate non-Western and non-Northern actors and thinking to explore how different actors challenge, support, and shape global and regional hydropolitics. The paper calls for more attention to how the analytical framework on transboundary water interactions can include Global South perspectives. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future research and policy discussions.

Contributions and Blind Spots of Constructivist Norms Research in International Relations, 1980–2018: A Systematic Evidence and Gap Analysis

Abstract 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.