Martin Hollis

The Theory of Choice: A Critical Guide.

Introduction. Part I: Individual Choice: 1. Rationality. 2. Consumer Theory. 3. How People Choose. 4. Risk, Ignorance and Imagination. 5. Homo Economicus Homo Sociologicus. 6. Autonomy. Part II: Interactive Choice: 7. Game Theory. 8. Bargaining. 9. Game Theory Applied. 10. Organizations. 11. Cultural Exchange. 12. Anarchic Order. Part III: Collective Choice: 13. Social Choice. 14. Democracy. 15. Power. 16. Planning. 17. Agendas. 18. Social Justice. Keywords. Bibliography. Index.

Beware of gurus: structure and action In International relations

The agent-structure problem is not settled by deciding what proportions to put in the blender. Agents and structures do not blend easily in any proportions, and solutions to the problem tend to be unstable. Alexander Wendts thoughtful review article makes this clear, identifies some of the difficulties, and boldly sketches a possible resolution of them. Since his relections are addressed in part to our recent book Explaining and Understanding International Relations , we welcome the chance to pursue them further. Greatly encouraged by his many friendly comments, we shall concentrate on those suggestive or critical points which have prompted us to think afresh.

Two stories about structure and agency

So stark and swift was the collapse of the Cold War structure of international relations that few yet pretend to have been expecting it. The magnitude of the changes involved has forced practitioners and theorists alike into radical rethinking. For practitioners, the old certainties have gone and it is unclear what political and security structures will replace those of the Cold War: whether it will be a New World Order or a New World Disorder is still very much open to debate. But for international relations theorists the events have focused attention on the nature of international political structures. What kind of structures can international systems represent if they can be changed so fundamentally and so easily? Neo-realists especially have to rethink a dominant discourse which relies heavily on established regularities and on the stability of the bipolar system. What does it say for Waltzs conception of international structure if it can be so easily transcended by unit factors? If structural theories of international relations can say nothing about an event as momentous as the collapse of the Cold War system, what can they say anything about? Neo-realists could ignore the fact that their theories could not account for transformations of international structure precisely because these theories did explain the regularity and stability of bipolarity. Now that is gone, theorists have to look again at what they mean by a structure. Moreover, the nature of agency has to be reexamined; for neo-realists human agency was essentially irrelevant at the structural level of explanation, yet the collapse of the Cold War system seemed to depend very largely on active and calculating agents. Questions concerning the nature of agency and the meaning of structure and the relationship between them are now more relevant than ever in international relations theory.

Roles and Reasons in Foreign Policy Decision Making

Explaining the foreign policy behaviour of states has proved a particularly difficult task for theorists of international relations. For centuries it relied on an analogy between states and individuals in the state of nature, so that an endemic tendency to international anarchy resulted from states having ‘interests’; systemic, determinist theories could therefore explain foreign policy by appealing to such notions as national interest and power maximization. The elusive, contestable character of these notions later led many analysts to focus on the empirical decision-making process for explanations of foreign policy behaviour. Yet these attempts have run into a fundamental problem: the proper weight to be attached to the perceptions and reasons of the actors. Some of the literature takes the actors very seriously and relies either on a psychology of perception or on a decision-theoretic model of individual choice. Some of it, on the other hand, by-passes the actors altogether and concentrates on such structural features as bureaucratic position. In this article we shall argue the case for a concept of role, requiring a less mechanical view of action than the standard approaches allow, both separately and in combination.

Reasons in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Social Science

1. Prologue: reason in action Part I. Rational Choice: 2. Three men in a drought 3. Rational preferences 4. The ant and the grasshopper 5. Moves and motives 6. A rational agents gotta do what a rational agents gotta do! Part II. Roles and Reasons: 7. Of masks and men 8. Honour among thieves 9. Dirty hands 10. A death of ones own 11. Friends, Romans and consumers Part III. Other Cultures, Other Minds: 12. The limits of irrationality 13. Reason and ritual 14. The social destruction of reality 15. Hook, line and sinker 16. Say it with flowers 17. Reasons of honour.

Structure and action: further comment

We were at first puzzled by Alexander Wendts latest rejoinder, since systemic theorists need concede nothing in recognizing states as self-interested actors with identities and interests. They have only to add that these identities and interests are shaped by the system in general and are given specific direction at any one time by the systemic pressures operating in the previous period. After all, ‘self-interested’ is a dummy term, until supplied with content, and systemic theorists can regard the system as the source of what matters. Explanations which proceed ‘top-down’ by explaining the behaviour of the units in terms of the system need some kind of feed-back mechanism involving the units. It is no objection to systemic theory that the units contribute to the process, provided that they do so in ways shaped by the demands of the system. In short, why does Wendt believe that the identities and interests of actors cannot be formed by the system? Waltz certainly offers a powerful explanation cast in precisely these terms.

Witchcraft and Winchcraft

’sociology does not need to choose between the great hypotheses which divide metaphysicians’. Searching for a short way with this disingenuous falsehood, my hand falls readily on Peter Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science.2 Fifteen years after publication, it is still the bravest recent attempt by a philosopher to hunt (or, as some would say, poach) in the metaphysics of the social sciences. It has won many friends, become required reading and, although this is asking much for a philosophical book, has even influenced people normally immune to philosophy. It attacks a stock empiricist account of science with spirit and shrewdness and foreshadows a concept of the intelligible real world which, in one form or another, is now hugely well received. It fuses sociology and philosophy in a most suggestive way and is written in. a style both lucid and challenging. It strikes me, in short, as a very fine book; but also as a mischievous one and I propose here to reconsider it.

A response: why epistemology matters in international theory

In their rejoinder to our recent article, Vivienne Jabri and Stephen Chan argue that we have privileged epistemology at the expense of ontology. We welcome this engagement with our continuing discussion of the relationship between epistemology and ontology in international relations theory, and will confine our response to three main points: their interpretation of our argument, their use of the work of Giddens, and their arguments about the nature of epistemology in International Relations.

'Liberal Justice: Political and Metaphysical'

This paper addresses two related doubts about trying to turn metaphysical water into political wine in the manner attempted by John Rawls in his Political Liberalism. First, there are rival non-metaphysical theories of justice on offer and, in weakening his conception of the self, freedom and equality, Rawls may have let himself be fatally squeezed between libertarian writers like F. A. Hayek and left of centre liberals like Ronald Dworkin. Secondly, his theory, in common with those of other philosophical liberals, is curiously unpolitical. He deliberately excludes the haggling and trading of interests and the contingencies of power, characteristic of political agreements, from the rational deliberations that he believes ought to motivate the parties in a democratic society to arrive at his two principles of justice.

A Prayer for Understanding

“Lorde, Thou knowest that I must be very busie this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me.” Sir Jacob Astley, a royalist general in the English Civil War, entered this blunt prayer in his diary just before the Battle of Edgehill in 1642. It is addressed by one officer to another. God, as supreme C.O., will know that there is work to do and that it will be better done if He is out of mind until close of play. Being a no-nonsense sort of chap, He will be expecting Sir Jacob to put up a good show and will not forget him. No doubt similar prayers are being offered by the Cromwellians, no less convinced that they are doing God’s work. But even though He might give them credit for sincerity and good soldiering, they are misguided. God is squarely on the King’s side.