International Political Theory Research Articles

Performing Theory/Theorizing Performance in Emergent Supranational Governance: The ‘Live’ Knowledge Archive of European Integration and the Early European Commission

This article considers the entanglement of theories of international politics and international economics on the one hand and an emergent supranational policy actor on the other. The formation of the European Communities in the late 1950s and early 1960s is well known as a moment of radical supranational institutional creation. This is a period in which both economists and political scientists sought to theorize the processes of regional integration as it was happening. The article shows that the newly-formed European Commission, in both its communicative and coordinative discourse, drew selectively on the ‘live’ knowledge archive of both international economics and international relations to generate a strategic narrative about what European economic integration entailed, how it would be accomplished and (crucially) what kind of actor it was. At the same time, the semi-inductive quality of academic knowledge production meant that the Commission’s activities were simultaneously being theorized into the live archive from which it was drawing. The paper examines the influence of two bodies of theory: one from economics (Balassa’s theory of international economic integration), and the other from political science (neofunctionalism). The former is a striking influence on early discussions, initiated by the Commission, on monetary union, but its finger prints are rather more enduring — being visible in Commission communicative discourse well into the 1970s.

Theorizing at the Highest Levels

The Great Powers and the International System: Systemic Theory in Empirical Perspective. By Bear F. Braumoeller. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 276 pp., $29.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-1-107-65918-6). Studies of international relations theory experience something of a paradox. On the one hand, systems theories are relatively infrequent in contemporary scholarship. The 1950s and the 1960s were perhaps its heyday, with works such as Morton Kaplan's System and Process in International Politics (1957) among the works championing the system level of analysis. Interdisciplinary efforts, manifested in the publication General Systems Yearbook , sought to generate theories across a wide set of human and animal behavior. Yet such theory gradually went out of fashion in favor of rational choice and other approaches that focused on state and leader decision making; a quick survey of articles in major journals in the field over the last decade reveals few that look at international system properties. Yet, curiously, most syllabi in graduate international theory seminars devote substantial attention to systemic theories, with such works as Waltz's Theory of International Politics (1979), Wallerstein's multivolume works on the world economy (for example, 1979), and Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics (1999) treated as canon. Systems theory has not necessarily produced the payoffs in terms of prediction and explanations that social scientists have sought, but it remains the “ark of the covenant” that international relations …

İyi Komşu’dan Model Ülke’ye: Türkiye’nin Ortadoğu’da Arap Baharı Sonrasında Değişen Rolleri

The recent Arab uprisings have forced many actors to reconsider their positions regarding Middle Eastern politics. Role theory provides a viable tool to explain changes in actors’ foreign policy behaviors, presuming that states’ foreign policies are shaped by the ruling elites’ foreign policy role conceptions. This article analyzes Turkish foreign policy roles with regard to the Middle East and North Africa before and since the Arab uprisings that began in December 2010. We argue that these uprisings caused Turkey to change its emphasis from roles built on soft power instruments to harder roles requiring material capabilities. We also discuss the implications of this change with reference to theories of international politics.

The cosmopolitanism of David Mitrany: Equality, devolution and functional democracy beyond the state

In this article, I engage with the normative foundations of David Mitrany’s international political theory. My aim is to show that there is more to be found in Mitrany’s approach to international organization than the technocratic problem-solving often associated with his name today. To pinpoint the essence of Mitrany’s normative thought, I introduce the term ‘functional cosmopolitanism’. This variety of cosmopolitan theorizing starts from the equality of individual needs (not from rights or obligations), suggesting that transnational institutions, rather than states, should cater to these needs. An important aim of this ‘functional devolution’ is to limit and reconfigure public power, thus countering the threat of an ever more powerful nation-state. Mitrany’s proposal for introducing a functional dimension into the political system can be interpreted as a ‘thin’ cosmopolitanism, designed to free citizens from war and oppressive concentrations of political power, but vague in its ideas about individual political engagement.

Ennobling humanity: Nietzsche and the politics of tragedy

This article offers a critical engagement with Friedrich Nietzsche’s discourse on tragedy and explores its main political implications. The study first examines the ways in which the pessimistic interpretation of the world that the young Nietzsche derives from his study of Greek tragedy leads him to adopt a distinctive attitude towards politics that he later designates as a form of ‘realism’. We then consider how this discourse develops in his mature writings, and flesh out its normative fabric through a reconstruction of Nietzsche’s critique of Europe’s political culture of raison d’état. Through this layered exegesis, we gain a better appreciation of the politics of this important episode of intellectual history, as well as timely insights into the troubled relationship between security, secularisation and political agency under conditions of late modernity. The concluding analysis highlights the originality and continued relevance of Nietzsche’s tragic pathos as a vehicle for critical reflection and political education in the context of recent debates on tragedy in international political theory.

Cosmopolitanism – an alternative for Global Governance?

In the last decades Global Governance was one of the most used and contested terms in International Relations. Many researchers have shown that the concept is overstretched and they call for alternatives. Can Cosmopolitanism as a “new” international political theory be an alternative? I will propose a new theoretical model which can be used to analyze cosmopolitanism empirically. Drawing on both normative and empirical research on cosmopolitanism I demonstrate the necessary combination of both. I formulate a two-axes-model which is based on norms and conflicts. Such a theoretically based and empirically applicable model can be used to analyze different (claims of) actors in relation to a (cosmopolitan) position. In addition the model gives researchers the opportunity to scrutinize the relevance of international norms on different levels and thus offers a possible visualization of the interconnection between global arrangements and local activities. Therefore the model presents an alternative to Global Governance.

Sovereignty and sovereign power

Can the dissolution or transgression of sovereign authority – ‘failed states’, for example – be understood within a concept of sovereignty? Extant understandings provide a negative answer; approaches to sovereignty in International Relations and Political Theory conceptualize sovereignty as located in stable entities, generally states. Insofar as political societies face crises of authority, those crises arise from exogenous factors, not the structure of sovereignty. We argue that this is a restrictive notion of sovereignty. In its place, we offer a theorization that can account for the dissolution or transgression of sovereign orders, focusing on the possibility that sovereigns may not recognize their subjects as the originary structure of sovereignty. In our understanding, sovereignty is logically and temporally before sovereign power. Consequently, the possibility of dissolution is a structural condition of all sovereign orders. This enables us to theorize the relationship between sovereignty, sovereign power, and the law, and to apply this broader concept to analyze politics in ‘weak’ and ‘failed states’.

Regional order and peaceful change: Security communities as a via media in international relations theory

The security community concept generally inhabits a rather small niche in the study of International Relations, as the logic of community fundamentally challenges the prevailing logic of anarchy. In this article, it is argued both on ontological and theoretical grounds that the concept’s intellectual heritage and depth transcends the boundaries of existing theories. In this sense, the concept of security community serves as a via media by linking different strands of International Relations theory together and by bridging various theoretical gaps. This argument will be developed in two steps. Firstly, it will be shown that the security community framework developed by Karl W Deutsch is deeply rooted in International Political Theory without belonging to one particular branch. By locating the concept in International Political Theory, an exercise that has been neglected by the security community literature; it will be secondly demonstrated that the concept of security community takes the middle ground between specific strands of International Relations theory, as these strands are ultimately based on concepts of moral philosophy.

Replies to Chris Brown’s ‘“Human Nature”, science and international political theory’ (JIRD 4/2013)

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article "Human Nature', Science and International Political Theory" by Chris Brown published in a previous issue of the journal.

Introduction: The Historical Turn of the Theory of International Politics

Introduction: The Historical Turn of the Theory of International Politics

From the Study of International Law to the Theory of International Politics: American Scholarly Discourse in Transition

From the Study of International Law to the Theory of International Politics: American Scholarly Discourse in Transition

What Did Waltz Leave for the World of the International Political Theory?

What Did Waltz Leave for the World of the International Political Theory?

O Liberalismo Austríaco no Pensamento de Michel Foucault:

Neste artigo, ofereço uma clarificação de conceitos a respeito do lugar ocupado por autores centrais do Liberalismo Austríaco, Mises e Hayek, no pensamento de Foucault, no que diz respeito à gestação da biopolítica e da governamentalidade (neo)liberal. Avanço também o argumento de que o estudo da relação entre Foucault, Mises e Hayek abre novas possibilidades para pensar a Teoria Política Internacional na modernidade tardia como um conjunto de reflexões acerca da relação entre a moralidade e o problema do político na sociedade anárquica de nações soberanas.

A Relational Geography of War: Actor–Context Interaction and the Spread of World War I

Claims by geographers that the geopolitical context of international politics matters requires that context be defined and operationalized in a way that enables analyses illustrating that actors’ behavior varies across different contextual settings. A geographic understanding of embeddedness and relational power is meshed with a well-established contextual theory of international politics to create an operationalization of context that helps to explain the diffusion of war. Using the case of World War I, we investigate the expansion of the war from a localized political crisis in Austria–Hungary to a disastrous global scale conflict involving dozens of states. We integrate contemporary geographic thinking on context with the foundational texts of the war diffusion literature to hypothesize that war-joining behavior is explained by a political entity's relative position in a simultaneously spatial and social network context. Using social network analysis-based methodologies to develop measures of context and evaluate our hypothesis, we find that context had an important impact on states’ war-joining behavior during World War I. An understanding of context that fuses simultaneous embeddedness in network and geographic space with relational power and the methodology of blockmodeling can be used to explore the diffusion of other wars and even other phenomena across geographically situated actors.

Darwinian reasoning and Waltz’s Theory of International Politics: Elimination, imitation and the selection of behaviours

There are important parallels between the pattern of inference Kenneth Waltz uses in his Theory of International Politics and early Darwinian reasoning. This early Darwinian thinking has needed to be significantly refined by modern evolutionary biologists, and their amendments are equally relevant to Waltz’s model. Waltz allows for states to imitate each other and also accepts that they are only rarely eliminated from the system. Modern Darwinian analyses show that where elimination is rare and imitation is common, it is quite possible for deleterious behaviours to become widespread. We cannot assume an anarchic system will select for security-enhancing behaviours in major powers. Thinking about Waltz’s argument in these terms opens space to disagree with his conclusions while respecting the strength of his logic.

Taking the System Seriously: Another Liberal Theory of International Politics

Liberals have discovered the system level of analysis. Two somewhat competing strands of system-level liberal scholarship have emerged. The first emphasizes the system's normative dynamics and the democratic peace. The second has sought to conceive of capitalism as a property of the international system and theorize its effects. While a number of propositions and mechanisms have been identified, the literature has failed to develop an overarching account of system structure. Using Durkheim's distinction between mechanical and organic societies, and Waltz's tripartite definition of structure, this paper develops a liberal grand-theory that integrates these two strands of liberal systemic thinking. The theory generates a number of large propositions: the structure's dominant tendency is integration; it pushes states to specialize; and it induces a competitive normal politics. I also propose a typology of systems that vary according to liberal homogeneity and a liberal normative framework and mutual economic dependence, with important implications for the question of systemic stability. By way of conclusion, I offer a few thoughts on the value of grand-theorizing in International Relations.

Hans Morgenthau and the Tragedy of the Nation-State

The cardinal role of tragedy in Morgenthau's theory of international politics has hardly gone unnoticed. Indeed there is now a considerable corpus of literature that established the importance of tragedy as a central concept around which Morgenthau's theory revolved. This paper builds upon this already developed framework and employs tragedy not as an analytical category but as a metaphor employed by Morgenthau to approach the nation-state. It is claimed that the idea of tragedy underpinned his notion of the nation-state inasmuch as it did his view of individual human beings. As such the notion of tragedy informed consistently Morgenthau's analyses of national tragedies that were like the self-defeating nationalism of Germany. It also informed his efforts to avert potential national tragedies from materialising as his attempts to influence US foreign policy demonstrated. It is finally claimed, that far from a descent into despair, Morgenthau's realism signified a conscious effort to go beyond the tragedy of the nation-state.

The Politics and Limits of the Self: Kierkegaard, Neoconservatism and International Political Theory

This article investigates how Soren Kierkegaard's work developed a key subject utilized in international political theory, and ascribed to particular international actors (including nation-states) — The Self. Kierkegaard's core insights on ‘dread’ and its functions, the need for individuals to will a purpose and, finally, the limits of the Self, I argue, provide a basis from which we can understand the anxieties — The insecurities — That attend to the work of and on a ‘Self’, including that (especially that) of political communities. Specifically, Kierkegaard's engagements with the real and the ideal Self — The Self as it actually is and as it potentially could be — Can be utilized to index and understand the focus in certain vitalist philosophies with the Self of both individuals and political communities. Kierkegaard's insights help us understand this foregrounding of the Self, and yet his work also helps critically render particular recent manifestations of vitalism, found especially in US neoconservatism.

Waltz and the world: Neorealism as international political theory?

The recent recovery of an empirically and ethically richer realist tradition involves an explicit contrast with neorealism's more scientistic explanatory aspirations. This contrast is, however, incomplete. Although Waltz's theoretical work is shaped by his understanding of the requirements of scientific adequacy, his empirical essays are normatively quite rich: he defends bipolarity, and criticizes US adventurism overseas, because he believes bipolarity to be conducive to effective great power management of the international system, and hence to the avoidance of nuclear war. He is, in this sense, a theorist divided against himself: much of his oeuvre exhibits precisely the kind of pragmatic sensibility that is typically identified as distinguishing realism from neorealism. His legacy for a reoriented realism is therefore more complex than is usually realized. Indeed, the nature of Waltz's own analytical endeavour points towards a kind of international political theory in which explanatory and normative questions are intertwined.

Beyond Empty, Conservative, and Ethereal: Pluralist Self-Determination and a Peripheral Political Imaginary

AbstractOver the last couple of years, a stream of pluralist theories of international legal order has developed at the intersection of international law and political theory, having immediate implications for conceptualizing self-determination. The understanding of self-determination under the framework ofbounded,constitutional, andradicalpluralism markedly departs from the previous wave of normative theories in the 1990s: self-determination is now evacuated from the field of national pluralism and struggles over territory.This article does not question the thrust of pluralists’ recent work, but complements their critical attunement to global disparities of power, and complicates their neglect of nationalism and rejection of territorial reconfigurations as self-determination's core meaning. In doing so, it unearths two visions that come from the (semi-)periphery of the international political order. The first belongs to Edvard Kardelj, pre-eminent Yugoslav theorist of socialist self-management and the Non-Aligned Movement. The second belongs to Leopold Sédar Senghor, the poet and politician, advocate ofnégritude, a proponent of French West African integration, and a constitutional advocate for the reconfiguration – not abolition – of the French Union, the heir to the French Empire. While they are suspicious of extensive territorial reconstruction, like contemporary pluralists, unlike them they have seen a role for territorial reconfigurations in the name of national plurality.