Introduction: Diversity and Disciplinarity in International Relations Theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Steve Smith
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The World

This text argues that theory is central to explaining International Relations (IR) and that the discipline of IR is much more relevant to the world of international relations than it has been at any point in its history. Some chapters cover distinct IR theories ranging from realism/structural realism to liberalism/neoliberalism, the English school, constructivism, Marxism, critical theory, feminism, poststructuralism, green theory, and postcolonialism. Oher chapters explore International Relations theory and its relationship to social science, normative theory, globalization, and the discipline’s identity. This introduction explains why this edition has chosen to cover these theories, reflects on international theory and its relationship to the world, and considers the kind of assumptions about theory that underlie each of the approaches.

Introduction: Diversity and Disciplinarity in International Relations Theory

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Smith
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The World

This text argues that theory is central to explaining International Relations (IR) and that the discipline of IR is much more relevant to the world of international relations than it has been at any point in its history. Some chapters cover distinct IR theories ranging from realism/structural realism to liberalism/neoliberalism, the English school, constructivism, Marxism, critical theory, feminism, poststructuralism, green theory, and postcolonialism. Oher chapters explore International Relations theory and its relationship to social science, normative theory, globalization, and the discipline's identity. This introduction explains why this edition has chosen to cover these theories, reflects on international theory and its relationship to the world, and considers the kind of assumptions about theory that underlie each of the approaches.

1. International Relations Theory and the Middle East

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-38
Author(s):  
Fred H. Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
The Many ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Neoliberal Institutionalism

This chapter discusses the different theories and approaches that characterize the study of international relations. Mainstream theories focus on the ways that states interact with one another in circumstances where no overarching authority governs their behavior — in other words, under conditions of anarchy. These theories include structural realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and the scholarship on relational contracting. An important alternative perspective — the English School — argues that, even under anarchic conditions, there is a high degree of orderliness in world affairs. Meanwhile, proponents of constructivism assert that states take shape in specific historical contexts, and that the conditions under which states coalesce and become socialized to one another play a crucial role in determining how they conceive of themselves and formulate their basic interests. Scholars of the Middle East have so far addressed only a fraction of the many theoretical debates and controversies that energize the field of international relations.

scholarly journals Time in International Relations Theory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Hom
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
English School ◽  
Power Shifts ◽  
It Impacts ◽  
Open Time

Temporal phenomena like power shifts, wars, and confounding events characterize international politics. Yet for decades academic international relations (IR) did not consider time worthy of research or reflection. Recently things have changed, especially in critical IR, where scholars developed numerous arguments about time’s political importance. However, none of that work pursued a synoptic account of time in IR theory. This chapter does so, using an ideal typology of closed and open time to understand realism, liberalism, constructivism, English School, feminism, Marxism, and critical theory. In each, tensions between open and closed time distinguish the theory from its competitors but also animate explanatory and normative debates among its proponents. The historically overlooked issue of time—our assumptions about it, visions of it, and claims about how it impacts politics—drives theoretical development across and within IR theories, which we can understand as attempts to time international political life.

Happy Anniversary! Time and critique in International Relations theory

2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. 71-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
KIMBERLY HUTCHINGS
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
International Theory

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

Rival Visions of Parsimony

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 707-716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seva Gunitsky
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Epistemological Conception ◽  
The Aesthetic

Abstract“Parsimony” is a vague and divisive concept in political science. I identify three distinct but often conflated conceptions of parsimony. The aesthetic conception emphasizes a theory's elegance and clarity; the ontological conception, drawing upon the hard sciences, posits that the world is governed by simple fundamental laws. Neither applies in international relations theory or to social science more broadly. Instead, only the epistemological conception—abstracting from reality to highlight recurring patterns and build testable propositions—justifies parsimony. This view is not a naive simplification of the world but a self-conscious capitulation to its complexity. Though both critics and supporters of parsimony often do not distinguish among these three “visions,” doing so has important implications for how we think about evaluating theories.

Speaking and hearing' Habermasian discourse ethics, feminism and IR

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Hutchings
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Critical Theorist

It is impossible not to encounter Habermas as an important interlocutor in the fields of critical theory, feminist theory and international relations theory across which I work. He is the outstanding critical theorist of his generation, in the tradition of critique which was carried through the Frankfurt School and traces itself back to Kant, Hegel and Marx. And for feminists and international relations theorists, he represents one of the directions in which feminist theory or post-positivist IR could develop, deepening its epistemological and sociological understanding without sacrificing the possibility of the rationally grounded critique of contemporary world politics. This article is the beginning of an attempt to trace through layers of difficulty encountered in using Habermas as a normative resource for a particular version of feminist international theory, which understands feminism to be a transnational, cosmopolitan (but not univocal) project, neither authorised nor legitimised by any foundational ground or teleological end. I will argue that although Habermas's notion of discourse ethics seems initially promising as a way forward for non-foundational feminist theory, in the end any ‘dialogue’ on Habermasian terms turns out to be one-sided and exclusive.

British Idealist International Theory

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (01) ◽  
pp. 73-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Supranational Institutions ◽  
The Way

International relations theorists have long complained about the paucity of rigorous political philosophy in their discipline, and especially bemoan the lack of classic texts to guide them. It is suggested that with the exception of Thucydides, there is little exclusively concerned with International Relations, and nothing that international relations theorists have constructed to resemble the received canon comparable with its sister subject of political theory. Yet all of the major political theorists accommodate international relations in some way, and are invoked by contemporary international relations theorists as having something important to say. Contemporary international relations theory, however, is immersed in its own sense of self-importance, seeing the value of everything in utilitarian or practical terms. The desire to change the world, and not merely to understand it, predisposes the discipline to scale the obligatory heights of Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant, Hegel and Marx in order to pillage what is useful, and to ignore the attempts of philosophers more immediately at the root of modern international relations theory who addressed many of the questions currently thought important and which pointed the way to some of the contemporary answers. Hegel's ill-deserved, but not wholly unfounded, reputation as a brutal realist, and the association of Bosanquet and the rest of the British Idealists with German or Prussian philosophy during and between the two world wars in popular and learned journals, newspapers, and the publications of leading philosophers, including Hobhouse, Hobson, Dewey, Santayana, Laski, Delise Burns, Cole and Joad, have served to bury almost without trace a wealth of literature that applied what are now fashionably called communitarian principles to international questions. Even Chris Brown, who relates Hegel, Green and Bosanquet to the communitarian approach to international relations, ignores the fact that British idealists addressed the key issues of the possibility of extending the community to the international sphere and the establishment of supranational institutions.

Critical International Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Devetak
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Civil Government

Whether inspired by the Frankfurt School or Antonio Gramsci, the impact of critical theory on the study of international relations has grown considerably since its advent in the early 1980s. This book offers the first intellectual history of critical international theory. Richard Devetak approaches this history by locating its emergence in the rising prestige of theory and the theoretical persona. As theory’s prestige rose in the discipline of international relations it opened the way for normative and metatheoretical reconsiderations of the discipline and the world. The book traces the lines of intellectual inheritance through the Frankfurt School to the Enlightenment, German idealism, and historical materialism, to reveal the construction of a particular kind of intellectual persona: the critical international theorist who has mastered reflexive, dialectical forms of social philosophy. In addition to the extensive treatment of critical theory’s reception and development in international relations, the book recovers a rival form of theory that originates outside the usual inheritance of critical international theory in Renaissance humanism and the civil Enlightenment. This historical mode of theorising was intended to combat metaphysical encroachments on politics and international relations and to prioritise the mundane demands of civil government over the self-reflective demands of dialectical social philosophies. By proposing contextualist intellectual history as a form of critical theory, Critical International Theory: An Intellectual History defends a mode of historical critique that refuses the normative temptations to project present conceptions onto an alien past, and to abstract from the offices of civil government.

Hobbes among International Relations Thinkers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
International Issues ◽  
Civil Condition ◽  
The Individual

Among philosophers and historians of political thought Hobbes has little or nothing to say about relations among states. For modern realists and representatives of the English School in contemporary international relations theory, however, caricatures of Hobbes abound. There is a tendency to take him too literally, referring to what is called the unmodified philosophical state of nature, ignoring what he has to say about both the modified state of nature and the historical pre-civil condition. They extrapolate from the predicament of the individual conclusions claimed to be pertinent to international relations, and on the whole find his conclusions unconvincing. It is demonstrated that there is a much more restrained and cautious Hobbes, consistent with his timid nature, in which he gives carefully weighed views on a variety of international issues, recommending moderation consistent with the duties of sovereignty.

Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The World ◽  
Paris Peace Conference

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.

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