Richard W. Mansbach

Between Celebration and Despair: Constructive Suggestions for Future International Theory

Just as contemporary global politics are in a state of dramatic flux, so are theories of international relations. A significant aspect of the “Third Debate” now in progress concerns exactly what attitudes toward all this growing theoretical uncertainty should be. The authors stake out their own position between the poles of “celebration” and “despair.” They start by outlining what they perceive to be the positive and “destructive” features of “dissident” perspectives. While reaffirming faith in a less-rigorous empiricism, they nonetheless advance a series of “constructive guidelines for progress in theory” that involve rejection of various “mainstream” approaches including realism. Finally, they offer a unified conceptualization of global politics and suggested research agenda that focuses on the interrelationship among authorities/polities, human loyalties, and value allocation.

Global Politics at the Turn of the Millennium: Changing Bases of “Us” and “Them”

Identity politics is increasingly a target of research and a subject of theory in global politics. Identity is as much a structural condition as power and, like power, is conditioned by historical forces. The territorial state was the product of a unique configuration of historical conditions. Contemporary trends are eroding the state and the state system and ushering in significant shifts in human identities and loyalties. Citizenship and nationality no longer suffice to define who “we” are or where “our” loyalties lie, and “sovereign” borders no longer constitute the sole, or even the main, indication of who is “inside” or “outside” the boundaries of civic and moral obligation.

The Role of Issues in Global Co-operation and Conflict

The study of global co-operation and conflict has been a central topic of enquiry in the field of international relations. Yet notwithstanding extensive work on these subjects, they are not well understood.1 Whenever research fails to resolve an intractable problem, it may be because the conceptualization of the dependent variable is fundamentally flawed and/or because the most critical independent variables have been ignored. The purpose of this analysis is to see if, by confronting these two problems, our ability to explain global contention can be improved. Initially, we delineate the dimensions that underlie the concept of cooperation-conflict and show how it might be reformulated. There are theoretical and empirical reasons to suggest that the concept is too broad, and that its use precludes the analysis of significant nuances and distinctions in behaviour. We then summarize major research on inter-state co-operation and conflict and suggest that one of the reasons there have not been stronger and less obvious findings is that scholars have failed to examine the effect issues can have on the dynamics of co-operation and conflict among states. Why issue characteristics act as an important intervening variable will be demonstrated theoretically. The role of issues in shaping global contention has received increasing attention in the last few years. Beginning in the late I96os with Rosenau and Lowi, considerable effort has been devoted to the creation and refinement of issue-area typologies.2 In addition, several scholars have focused on issues as

The issue cycle: Conceptualizing long-term global political change

A conceptual framework for the analysis of global political change is presented and illustrated with examples drawn from the Cold War. The most important issues on an agenda, the critical issues, go through identifiable stages: genesis, crisis, ritualization, dormancy, decision making, and authoritative allocation. The effects of the different stages on behavior of international actors is examined in a preliminary fashion, and a theoretical rationale is offered. Each stage, treated in detail, relates to the others in terms of differences in behavior associated with each stage, the evolving of relationships among actors, and the resolution of issues. The concluding section elaborates the research implications.

Post-internationalism and IR Theory

This paper suggests that the central question in IR theory today is not perhaps how “the international” should be conceived, rather what role either the state and interstate relations continue to have in a globalizing world with numerous actors of different types engaged in almost every significant issue. Postinternational theory advances this worldview in an aggressive fashion. Yet it is also true that (a) traditional theoretical perspectives continue to have their utility in limited contexts; and (b) postinternational theory intersects in interesting ways with traditional approaches as well as some of their most important challengers. The central organizing question, the paper maintains, is which actors exercise a significant influence over outcomes in particular issues—and why?

The National State and Identity Politics: State Institutionalisation and “Markers” of National Identity

Nationality has been a key identity in international relations for much of the modern period, and the marriage of “nation” and “state” produced a powerful polity – the national state – that dominated global politics. This article investigates the forces that “pushed” and “pulled” nations and states together and explores the factors associated with violent identity politics. It argues that while recent decades have witnessed increasing instances of divorce between “nation” and “state” and a simultaneous proliferation of identity conflicts, the likelihood that identity conflicts will be expressed violently depends both on the character of the state (the timing of state institutionalisation relative to the construction of national consciousness, the democratic or non-democratic nature of the state, and the national or non-national basis for the legitimation of state authority) and on the principal “marker” used to construct national identity (blood, language, culture, religion, or citizenship).

What Is the Polity

The sovereign state became the dominant political form in a relatively brief period that began in Westphalian Europe and continued with European colonization. Contemporary states face increased challenges from inside and outside, and a global crisis of authority looms. Although the state as a form is highly variable and not about to disappear, a growing number and variety of other polities are moving toward center stage. The initiators of this roundtable asked several distinguished social scientists interested in historical perspective how they might redraw the map of global political space to reflect better current polities, boundaries, and identities and what future changes in that map they might foresee. Each contributor approached the questions in distinctive ways. Robert A. Denemark argues for more attention to world system history. Hendrik Spruyt looks for historical sociological insights into international systems change. Barry Buzan and Richard Little predict a rapidly shifting world of postmodern states and a different zone of conflict. Janice Gross Stein focuses on the privatization of security. Michael Mann finds that states as ‘polymorphous’ entities still have a future. Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach close with a discussion of their “polities” model.

Is there an International System

Discussion of two major concerns in international relations, the actors that serve as the elements of global politics and the appropriate base for international systems, leads to a new synthesis of the systems framework. An examination of those assumptions which are most useful for the analysis of global politics suggests a model of “multiple issue-based systems.” This model transcends the traditional emphasis on security issues as all-important and escapes restrictions imposed by a too rigid adherence to system / environment distinctions and levels of analysis. The multiple system model offered is based upon the variety of actors and issues in world politics. Implications of the interdependencies and linkages among actors, issues, and systems themselves are explored. Operational procedures are suggested which can be employed to identify and analyze issue-systems. This approach allows for the synthesis within a comprehensive framework of recent innovative treatments of international relations including bureaucratic politics, integration theory, issue analysis, linkage politics, and transnationalism.

The meaning of 11 September and the emerging postinternational world

This essay analyzes the murderous attacks on New Yorks World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington in terms of what they reflect about the changing nature of global politics and the theoretical demands of these changes. Among the key issues that the article addresses are the implications of 11 September for the overall role of change and the importance of history in global politics, the status of the territorial state in the field, the role of non-states in the global arena, the nature of contemporary violence and its implications for individuals, the declining role of distance, the disappearing boundary between foreign and domestic affairs, and, most importantly, the central role of identity theory in making sense of the emerging world. Overall, the essay professes a ‘postinternational’ perspective in the tradition of James Rosenau, suggesting that the events of 11 September reflect a world in transition from a state-based international system to a far more complex political universe with similarities to the prestate world. Such a world entails a considerable remapping of conceptual and theoretical maps concerning the field.

Polities Past and Present

In what follows, we seek to address the central importance of history in understanding contemporary global politics, especially as it has served us in evaluating change in patterns of global authority.3 Historically sensitive categories of analysis are necessary for the development of theory in IR that allow us to explain the future as well as the past. We illustrate this with our work on the concept of ‘polities’ in preference to ‘states’ because the latter encompass only one of many political communities and have been a principal source of authority for a relatively short period of historical time and place, a Eurocentric epoch. That ‘Westphalian moment’ is ending; ‘states’ are rapidly evolving; and, as in the past, authority is widely distributed among innumerable non-sovereign entities.4 What 1066 and All That expressed in a uniquely humorous way, Francis Fukuyama echoed decades later. In both cases, the authors saw