Patrick Thaddeus Jackson

Relations Before States: Substance, Process and the Study of World Politics

In recent years, paradigmatic debates in International Relations (IR) have focused on questions of epistemology and methodology. While important in their own right, these differences have obscured the basic divide in the discipline between substantialism, which takes entities as primitives, and relationalism, which takes processes of social transaction as the basic building blocks of theory. We argue that while both approaches can be fruitful, theories of processes and relations are better suited to address certain questions, most notably those involving change in global politics. Drawing on work in International Relations, sociology and philosophy, we examine what such theories entail and discuss areas of research for which they are especially suited.

Hegel's House, or ‘People are states too’

Are states people too? Yes , they are. In this I agree with Alexander Wendts contention that the state is an ‘emergent phenomenon which cannot be reduced to individuals’, although I disagree with the methodology (scientific realist abduction) that he uses to make his argument and the consequent implication that the state is a ‘real’ (as opposed, presumably, to a ‘fictitious’) thing. Indeed, I would rather invert the claim that states are people too, and claim that people are states too , inasmuch as both are social actors – entities in the name of which actions are performed – exercising agency in delimited contexts. Instead of trying to ascertain what makes something a ‘person’, we should focus on processes of ‘personation’ in world politics, in order to enhance our understanding of how social actors in general are produced and sustained in the first place. Doing so allows for a much broader catalogue of actors in world politics, and affords the possibility of studying social action in a more consistently constructionist manner.

Foregrounding ontology: dualism, monism, and IR theory

While the recent proliferation in philosophical discussions in International Relations indicates a welcome increase in the discipline’s conceptual sophistication, a central issue has gone relatively unremarked: the question of how to understand the relationship between scholarly observers and their observed objects. This classical philosophical problem has a number of implications for the conduct of inquiry in the discipline, and raises particular challenges for the status of knowledge-claims advanced by constructivists. I clarify these issues and challenges by distinguishing between ‘dualist’ and ‘monist’ ontological standpoints, in the hope of provoking a more focused philosophical discussion.

Defending the West: Occidentalism and the Formation of NATO

EITHER the traditional realist explanation nor liberal and constructivist alternatives are adequate to explain NATO’s formation. Existing explanations of the formation of NATO in International Relations (IR) theory all begin from the position that explaining NATO is a matter of explaining the specific decisions made by individual state actors. It is self-evident to most IR scholars that interstate alliances are arrangements produced by what states do, and that “action” in world politics means “state action.” This reductionist explanatory position parallels a number of individualist stances in the wider sphere of social theory, drawing its intuitive plausibility from a posited equivalence between individuals in society and states in international society: states are, as it were, the “people” of international society. 1 But by adopting this reductionist stance, IR theorists also acquire the central explanatory weaknesses of an individualist approach, particularly inasmuch as they aim to combine an individualist focus with a desire for explanations of social outcomes based on necessity rather than contingency. This “necessity individualism” hampers existing accounts in their efforts to explain the existence of the Alliance. In particular, two explanatory weaknesses characterize necessity individualist accounts. First, such accounts are characterized by a tendency towards the teleological reconstruction of history, in that they tend to read the stable bipolar situation of later years backwards into the incredibly ambiguous period of the period immediately following the Second World War. Second, necessity individualist accounts do not contain an adequate notion of agency, and as such deny the creative aspects of social action. As is usual in social theory, the empirical weaknesses of existing accounts are generated by their underlying theoretical problems; therefore, these theoretical problems must be addressed in order to generate a more robust empirical account. As necessity individualism is the underlying problem, it must be replaced with different theoretical

International theory in a post-paradigmatic era: From substantive wagers to scientific ontologies:

Concerns about the end of International Relations theory pivot around at least three different issues: the fading of the ‘paradigm wars’ associated with the 1990s and early 2000s; the general lack of any sort of ‘great debate’ sufficient to occupy the attention of large portions of the field; and claims about the vibrancy of middle-range theorizing. None of these are terribly helpful when it comes to assessing the health of International Relations theory. We argue that international theory involves scientific ontologies of world politics: topographies of entities, processes, mechanisms, and how they relate to one another. Understood this way, the state of International Relations theory looks strong: there is arguably more out there than ever before. Ironically, this cornucopia helps explain concerns regarding the end of International Relations theory. In the absence of a ‘great debate,’ let alone ways of organizing contemporary International Relations theory, this diversity descends into cacophony. We submit that three major clusters of international theory are emerging: choice-theoretic, experience-near, and social-relational. These clusters map onto two major axes of contention: (1) the degree that actors should be treated as autonomous from their environment; and (2) the importance of thickly contextual analysis. These disputes are both field-wide and high-stakes, even if we do not always recognize them as such.

Security Scholars for a Sensible Foreign Policy: A Study in Weberian Activism

It has always been true that foreign policy debates tend to proceed on a weak evidentiary base, with clever quips or stirring oratory regularly trumping sound analysis. According to Thucydides, for example, the Athenian assembly that endorsed the Sicilian expedition during the second Peloponnesian War had only the haziest conception of the adversaries’ capabilities. 1 Contemporary politics is distinctive not in the sloganeering quality of political discourse, but in the divergence between the quality of information available to society as a whole and the quality of information used in making decisions. For example, it was clear to any open-minded observer by the time of the Congressional vote in 2002 that implications of collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda lacked any basis in reliable evidence. By the time the Bush Administration initiated war in 2003, claims about Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons capabilities were also partially debunked and increasingly dubious. Still, the war went forward, and many Americans continued to believe the Bush Administration’s false claims even after the Administration itself had abandoned them. Many political scientists—like many Americans—were deeply dismayed by this situation, and in the fall of 2004 a group of us determined to try to do something about it. We saw two obvious options. One was to address the substantive issue directly, participating in the election campaign as citizens according to the logic that a new presidential administration would at least not repeat the policies of the Bush team. But anybody could do that, and our marginal contribution could only be modest. We decided

Rethinking Weber: towards a non-individualist sociology of world politics

In recent years there have been many attempts in social theory to dispose of the concept of ‘legitimacy’, and to develop a way of speaking about social order without having to reference normative or ideational aspects of that order. The most prominent of such attempts have been those of the ‘rationalist’ variety (Przeworski, 1985; Levi, 1988). These efforts are predicated on a notion—normally associated with the name of Max Weber—that legitimacy is some kind of occult subjective stance, rooted in ‘norms and beliefs’ and distinguishable from ‘strategic calculations’, and hence a form of irrational behavior. In brief, ‘legitimacy’ is both individual and subjective, according to these critics; it is conceptualized as something operating at the level of the individual consciousness which affects decision-making processes directly, even causing individuals to act against their rational material interests. Against this notion, rationalists seek to demonstrate that theories of social order—even a social order that seems to disadvantage some of its membership—can be constructed based purely on rational self-interest, with other factors occupying a residual position.2 In order to clarify the issues at stake, it may be instructive to return to Weber, to examine what he had to say about ‘legitimacy’ in the first place, in order to determine whether his critics are correct—both in their characterization of his account and in their decision to turn away from what they think Weber’s theory was. Weber was engaged in a number of fierce debates with social theorists whose positions look very much like those of the rationalists who are presently engaged in trying to remove legitimacy from the social-theoretical lexicon (Hennis, 1988, pp. 87–88). His position—far more subtle than these modern critics seem to appreciate—provides a useful base from which to theorize how patterns of social interaction affect outcomes, without having to engage in what I will argue is the analytically questionable activity of reducing those patterns of social interaction to the motivations and behaviors of discrete individuals. The exercise of returning to Weber may thus help to open ‘thinking space’ within social theory.3 Returning to Weber also helps to put the current debate in broader perspective. I believe that this present scuffle is merely the latest round in a struggle between positions that Brian Barry (1970) identified as ‘economists’ and ‘sociologists’, a struggle which has arguably been going on for as long as there has been social theory. Economists, in Barry’s terminology, are those theorists who International Review of Sociology—Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Vol. 12, No. 3, 2002

Must International Studies Be a Science

Must international studies be a science? No. By which I mean: the investigation of the cross-boundary-encounter aspect(s) of things need not be organised so as to categorically privilege epistemic ways of knowing (even though there is a multiplicity of such ways, merely epistemic diversity is insufficient). Other flavours of knowing are equally valuable, and should be celebrated in their distinctness, rather than being forcibly assimilated to impersonal, factual knowing-that. That previous paragraph will likely make little sense without some unpacking and some elaboration. International Studies Grammatically speaking,2 it is not possible to answer the question: ‘Must international studies be a science?’ without some notion of what we mean by ‘international studies’. This is a treacherous domain, since there are multiple incompatible understandings of the field/discipline floating around, even using different names for the endeavour. Depending on which authority one consults, ‘we’ are a group of scholars held together by our ‘great debates’,3 by our concern with the implications of inter-state anarchy,4 by our implication in a (neo)colonial project of establishing European hegemony,5 by a set of so-called ‘paradigms’ which almost no one claims to adhere to any longer6 even though we keep organising our introductory textbooks and courses according to them,7 etc. There is no consensus on whether ‘international political economy’ is part of some larger whole or an autonomous domain,8 on whether the discipline/field even exists outside of ‘the West’,9 or whether the whole project, whatever ‘it’ is, has any life left in it.10 I do not propose to resolve this controversy here. Instead, I will circumvent it by simply elucidating what I mean by ‘international studies’ so that my answer to my initial question becomes clearer. I am using a deliberately broad term both because it is no part of my …

Preparing the Ground for a More Hospitable International Relations

In this reply, I take up three issues raised by the other contributors to this discussion of my book: the purpose of the intervention, the epistemic status of the typology and the question of progress in science.

Jeremy Bentham, foreign secretary; or, the opportunity costs of neo-utilitarian analyses of foreign policy

Ikenberry, G. John. (2001) After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 293 pages. Lake, David A. (1999) Entangling Relations: American Foreign Policy in its Cent ti ry, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 332 pages. Moravcsik, Andrew (1998) The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Mmstricht, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 514 pages.