International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach

1966 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hedley Bull
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Classical Approach ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Theory

Two approaches to the theory of international relations at present compete for our attention. The first of these I shall call the classical approach. By this I do not mean the study and criticism of the “classics” of international relations, the writings of Hobbes, Grotius, Kant, and other great thinkers of the past who have turned their attention to international affairs. Such study does indeed exemplify the classical approach, and it provides a method that is particularly fruitful and important. What I have in mind, however, is something much wider than this: the approach to theorizing that derives from philosophy, history, and law, and that is characterized above all by explicit reliance upon the exercise of judgment and by the assumptions that if we confine ourselves to strict standards of verification and proof there is very little of significance that can be said about international relations, that general propositions about this subject must therefore derive from a scientifically imperfect process of perception or intuition, and that these general propositions cannot be accorded anything more than the tentative and inconclusive status appropriate to their doubtful origin.

Why Is There No International Theory?

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-38
Author(s):  
Martin Wight
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Perpetual Peace ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Raison D’État ◽  
The Rich

In this essay Wight explained why there is no set of classic works regarding relations among states—what Wight terms ‘international theory’— analogous to the rich political theory literature concerning the state. In addition to works on international law, four categories of effort have populated the field: (a) those of ‘irenists’ advocating mechanisms to promote peace; (b) those of Machiavellians examining raison d’état; (c) incidental works by great philosophers and historians; and (d) noteworthy speeches and other writings by statesmen and officials. International theory works have been ‘marked, not only by paucity but also by intellectual and moral poverty’, because of the focus since the sixteenth century on the modern sovereign state, with the states-system neglected. Moreover, while there has been material and organizational progress within states in recent centuries, international relations have remained ‘incompatible with progressivist theory’. People who recoil from analyses implying that progress in international affairs is doubtful sometimes prefer a Kantian ‘argument from desperation’ asserting the feasibility of improvements and ‘perpetual peace’. Wight concluded that ‘historical interpretation’ is for international relations the counterpart of political theory for the state.

Helsinki Syndrome: The Parachronistic Renaissance of Finlandization in International Politics

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tapio Juntunen
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Original Process ◽  
The Past ◽  
Great Power Politics ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Ukraine Crisis ◽  
International Anarchy

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has produced a number of commentaries that have tried to grasp the crisis through the comforting lens of historical analogies. One of the most perplexing of these has been the revival of Finlandization, or the idea of the “Finnish model” as a possible solution to the Ukraine crisis. In this article I interrogate these arguments, firstly, by historicising the original process of Finlandization during the Cold War. Secondly, I argue that the renaissance of Finlandization is based on parachronistic reasoning. In other words, the Finlandization analogy has been applied to modern-day Ukraine in such a way that the alien elements of the past context are, to paraphrase Quentin Skinner, “dissolved into an apparent but misleading familiarity” in the present re-appropriation of the idea and its contextual prerequisites. Indeed, the reappearance of Finlandization in the context of the Ukraine crisis reinforces the idea that the real drivers of international affairs can be reduced to the axioms derived from the transhistorical logic of international anarchy and the iron laws of great power politics. Thus, this article makes a novel contribution to the theoretical discussion on the role of analogies and myths in International Relations.

The Japanese Mandate Naval Base Question

1935 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 482-487
Author(s):  
Luther H. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Naval Base

Public opinion in support of the efficacy of collective efforts for the preservation of peace has been considerably weakened by the events of the past three or four years. While it is exceedingly doubtful whether much success will attend whatever other courses of action nations may adopt to secure themselves against the world's turmoil, students of international affairs must accept the fact that we are now in an eddy of the current of progress. But there is slight justification for despair. Indeed, much has come through the wreckage of the sanctions failure almost undamaged. In certain large fields of action, there has been success in the attempts of the League and allied institutions to create a better world of international relations. Among other successes, the mandates system stands unchallenged as a large advance in the supervision of colonial administration.

Preventive War Critically Considered

1951 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pitman B. Potter
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Preventive War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Peace And Justice ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
American Society

Members of the American Society of International Law are by inference charged by the Constitution of their Society with doing all that is possible to promote the study and development of international law and the conduct of international affairs on the basis of law and justice. For this purpose it is not sufficient to study and advocate the development of the law itself or for its own sake. Much attention must be given, certainly much more than has been given in the past, to the second section of the mandate, partly because of its own importance and partly to provide the kind of international situation where the law can thrive and be effective— which in turn is calculated to promote peace and justice. Friends of international law cannot afford to evade even the most difficult and delicate issues in the field of international relations on the ground that they are purely political in character.

scholarly journals The secularism of post-secularity: religion, realism, and the revival of grand theory in IR

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 995-1017 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADRIAN PABST
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
English School ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
Christian Realism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
International Theory ◽  
William Connolly

AbstractHow to theorise religion in International Relations (IR)? Does the concept of post-secularity advance the debate on religion beyond the ‘return of religion’ and the crisis of secular reason? This article argues that the post-secular remains trapped in the logic of secularism. First, a new account is provided of the ‘secularist bias’ that characterises mainstream IR theory: (a) defining religion in either essentialist or epiphenomenal terms; (b) positing a series of ‘antagonistic binary opposites’ such as the secularversusthe religious; and (c) de-sacralising and re-sacralising the public square. The article then analyses post-secularity, showing that it subordinates faith under secular reason and sacralises the ‘other’ by elevating difference into the sole transcendental term. Theorists of the post-secular such as Jürgen Habermas or William Connolly also equate secular modernity with metaphysical universalism, which they seek to replace with post-metaphysical pluralism. In contrast, the alternative that this article outlines is an international theory that develops the Christian realism of the English School in the direction of a metaphysical-political realism. Such a realism binds together reason with faith and envisions a ‘corporate’ association of peoples and nations beyond the secularist settlement of Westphalia that is centred on national states and transnational markets. By linking immanent values to transcendent principles, this approach can rethink religion in international affairs and help revive grand theory in IR.

‘Well, what is the feminist perspective on international affairs?’: theory/practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (6) ◽  
pp. 1209-1213
Author(s):  
Helen M. Kinsella ◽  
Laura J. Shepherd
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Robust Framework

Abstract This brief introduction elaborates on Marysia Zalewski's significant body of work over the past three decades, which provides not only ample evidence of the benefits of feminist modes of encountering world politics, but also a robust framework for enquiry for scholars of politics and international relations. Her work, while deeply rooted in feminist theories and practice, has implications which go far beyond disciplinary determinations and touch upon, as the symposium demonstrates, the empirics, and the impact of international politics writ large, from finance to terrorism to violence.

Diversification propaganda work with foreign audiences

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4(13)) ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Shiyu Zhang ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
The Past ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Relationship

Over the past decade, bilateral relations between China and Russia have attracted the attention of the whole world. As neighbors and rapidly developing countries, China and Russia are becoming increasingly important in the international arena. The strategic partnership and interaction between China and Russia occupy a significant place in the politics of both countries. Cooperation is developing dynamically in various fields, primarily in politics. After 2012, a change of government took place in China and Russia, which brought new changes to international relations. Studying the involvement of the media in this process can clarify their impact on international relations, in particular, their role in the relationship between China and Russia.

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.

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