Robert A. Denemark

World System History: From Traditional International Politics to the Study of Global Relations

The contemporary study of international politics is plagued by state-centrism, conceptions of politics as an autonomous process, an overemphasis on the near term, and Eurocentrism. As a result, the field is poorly equipped to deal with issues like globalization, political and economic crises, systemic instability, or discontinuous change. Important work in the field of world system history, an alternative school of thought, is reviewed in detail, and the manner in which its proponents avoid these shortcomings is considered. Systemic-level theorizing, transdisciplinarity, treatments of the long historical term, and non-Eurocentrism are hallmarks of this school. Proponents of world system history face two methodological challenges: determinism and indeterminancy. Determinism is not evident in our review, but indeterminancy remains an issue. Given the complex and nonlinear nature of global social phenomena, indeterminancy cannot be approached with traditional social science tools like hypothesis testing or predictive modeling. Nor do chaotic processes generally allow us to link microfoundations with macro-outcomes, as constructivists might counsel. Statistical and ideal-type models, and historical narratives, are more appropriate tools of analysis. Completeness is suggested as a more appropriate criterion for evaluation, but requires the perspectives be given time to develop more fully.

Just Scraps of Paper? The Dynamics of Multilateral Treaty-Making

Despite its importance in the global system, the literature provides little guidance on how treaty-making emerged as a well-accepted practice. In either assuming the appropriateness of treaty-making (and then analysing design) or treating treaties as strategic choices in the pursuit of gains (without analysing how treaties came to be a way to pursue gains), the current literature discounts the emergence and evolution of treaty-making. This lacuna contributes to a biased view of treaty-making as the epiphenomenal result of specific, ahistorical factors, rather than as a patterned, historical practice. We contend that the evolution of the practice of treaty-making is significant for questions of design/compliance, the future of multilateral interaction and global order. In addressing this concern, we pursue two linked goals. The first is self-consciously descriptive. We introduce a dataset of multilateral treaties that provides a novel picture of treaty-making across time, space and issue-areas. The second goal is explanatory. We develop and test a social constructivist and path-dependent explanation for the patterns of treaty-making evident in the data, especially 150 years of exponential growth, the spread of treaty-making across multiple issues and the diffusion of the practice across the world.

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.

World System History, The Papacy, and the Transition from Transitions

In a very controversial argument, Andre Gunder Frank suggested that scholars abandon ideas like ‘transitions’ and ‘modes of production’ in favor of more accurate, less Eurocentric concepts. This work reviews three relevant debates on the use of these concepts. The class backgrounds of 64 popes from 1300 to 1900 are then analyzed to see if leaders of a powerful, non-hereditary office altered over that time. The analysis offers no support regarding the role of transitions or modes of production in helping to understand elite recruitment. This finding supports Franks suggestion that we consider alternative conceptual foundations for understanding development.

Fundamentalisms as Global Social Movements

In a recent comment in Globalizations, Grahame Thompson (2006) poses a definition of fundamentalism and its attendant processes, including the suggestion that fundamentalisms are individual level phenomena, not social movements. This turn leads to the suggestion that maintenance of liberal domestic and global orders might call for a strategy of re-territorialization. In this essay I suggest a more social definition of fundamentalisms to serve as the foundation for analysis, and the strategy of re-territorialization is not well supported from this perspective.

Confronting Bias in International Relations

Those in positions of authority have a special duty to exercise their prerogatives in a neutral and unbiased manner. To do otherwise is to abuse ones position and the trust inherent in it. As teachers and scholars we exercise a fair amount of authority and recognize an endless array of potential biases that we are charged with attempting to avoid. How good are we at doing so? One of the ways we combat bias in our profession is with open interaction. We discuss issues, analytical tools, methods, sources of information, and the problem of bias itself. International Studies Perspectives would like to facilitate this discussion. A rather serious charge of bias was leveled publicly against a recently published work. The issue has been discussed at some length in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Lingua Franca. In the pieces that follow the charge is fully rendered and a defense is mounted. We take no position on merits of the charge or the defense. Our desire instead is to highlight the problem of bias and bring it to the profession in an open manner. Both authors speak to the problem. We invite you to do so as well with two kinds of responses. First, we welcome comments on the specifics of this case. We will review and publish those that deal primarily with this interaction as an issue of bias and as it implicates the profession. Second, we would especially welcome articles about other forms or instances of bias. As we see it, bias can infect us as teachers, colleagues, and public intellectuals. We briefly outline our concerns below, and invite you to submit articles that speak to any or all of the issues. In the classroom we must present to our students, both undergraduate and graduate, as neutral a set of facts and analytical tools as is possible. Our undergraduates depend upon us for information with which they might successfully confront the world. If we provide them with information that skews the nature of the debate, we practice indoctrination and not education. Our graduate students depend upon us for professional training and socialization. We do them no favors by providing faulty tools in either regard. This is not to suggest that we have the unflagging ability to be bias-free. We do not. But failure to be impossibly bias-free does not relieve us of the charge to be honest about the bias that we fear may be inherent in our methods or our sources. Our colleagues demand an honest appraisal of our research. In “science” the ability to replicate findings is important. Though rarely do we threaten or pursue replication, we are inherently held to the same standard. Our colleagues should be able to receive sound responses if they inquire as to our assumptions, our pursuit of certain kinds of questions or arguments, our sources of evidence, and our choice of methods. We fail as professionals when we fail to recognize our methodological biases, our disciplinary blinders, our over-fascination with certain times or places, with the status quo (or with change), with dominant powers (or their challengers), and with the provision of an overly favorable orientation toward any of a number of possible groups—professional, racial, ethnic, religious, gender, or national. When we forward conclusions for all to read we also become vulnerable. Might public arguments or further research or even policies based on the conclusions we present be considered sound? Or are we misleading? Do we mislead knowingly or unknowingly? Might that fault be traced to good-faith assumptions or to personal political or pecuniary interests? How have we sought to guard against this? The problem of bias is difficult to contend with and perhaps inherent in what we do. But it ought not be ignored just because we know it is pernicious. Indeed that is all the more reason to pursue open discussion, and to pursue that discussion on the pages of our own journals. Responses by: Robert A. Denemark, Social Science as Propaganda? International Relationsand the Question of Political Bias, p.417 Robert S. Synder, Farewell to “Old Thinking”: A Reply to Gibbs, p.427