Summary

Chapter No.1: International Relations Theory in an

Age of Critical Diversity

Submitted to: Dr.Syed Mussawar Hussain Bukhari

Composed by: Khawaja Umar Mustfa

Roll No: 01

Programe: M.Phil in Political Science

Semester: 1st

Department of Political science, IUB

 Theorising is the process of giving meaning to the things, peoples, events and
controversies in the world. Studying international relations theory is about human knowledge,
political power and possible global futures. One needs to go beyond a simple ‘current affairs’
approach to international relations to understand the development of theory since the
institutionalization of the IR Discipline in 1919.

Ontology and epistemology have been issues integral to its major debates. Ontology: the
branch of philosophy that studies the nature of being. What is there in the world? What is the
character of the things that make up the ‘furniture’ of the world? Epistemology: the branch of
philosophy that studies how we produce and acquire knowledge. Kant’s ontological position is
self-creating individuals are the fundamental elements of the social world. He seeks to illustrate
it by reference to a progressivist history in which the rational and moral capacities of individuals
are increasingly expressed in democratic social formations.

Scientific IR Issues: Realists see the world differently because their ontological and
epistemological positions direct their image of reality in a different way. The realist individual is
driven by a lust for power and the relentless pursuit of security. Epistemologically, realists
concentrate on states and a history of ‘recurrence and repetition’ rather than of developmental
change. Kantian liberals and their realist counterparts make their theoretical claims for real
knowledge. Both have coherent and cogent ways of illustrating their case, both point to ‘history’
as the vehicle for their knowledge of reality.These were the kinds which led to the search for a
science of IR: for a process by which different knowledge claims could be transformed into a
single scientifically established knowledge form, a body of objectively gleaned knowledge
generated via methods of the natural sciences. This issue was integral to the early realist–idealist
debate in the 1920s and 1930s called ‘first great debate’ and in the 1950s and 1960s it was an
issue of stark contention between the mainly American behaviouralists and their traditionalist
critics called ‘second great debate. And it was at the core of the disputes between positivists and
anti-positivists that characterized the third great debate’ in IR during the 1990s.Positivism
utilises empiricist epistemology. Empiricism maintains that only observable facts should form
the basis of ‘real’ knowledge; facts that can be scientifically validated to create a knowledge base
for IR analogous to the natural sciences. This strict empiricist line has been the norm in
‘scientific’ IR, but it has not been adopted by all positivists. Realists attacked liberalism as
dangerously utopian in the face of extreme danger. Realism uses power as a ‘means’ to an
ordered and relatively peaceful ‘end’ – not as an end in itself. Liberalism, at its best, reminds us
that even in a world of danger and violent intent there can be realistic alternatives to force
projection as a means of maintaining international order. liberalism does not ignore the fact of
violent conflict but refuses to reduce the human condition to the perceived dictates of an
anarchical system of states, insisting instead on the power and persuasiveness of international
law and of the humanitarian instinct.

Carr’s The twenty years’ crisis, argued, by the logics and strategies of traditional
power politics that under liberal tutelage IR as a field of knowledge was in a ‘pre-scientific’
phase of its development, whereas under realism it could become scientifically advanced –
dealing with reality as it actually ‘is’, rather than how idealists assume it ‘ought’ to be. The
twenty years’ crisis: as commentary on inter-war international relations as fascism threatened;
and as an early attempt to deal with some complex theoretical issues and as a work which
indicated something of what realism and liberalism represent, at their best and attheir worst.
Hans Morgenthau concluded in “Politics among nations (1973)” that the struggle for power is
the fundamental political fact which determines the foreign policy behaviour of all states as they
pursue their ‘national interest defined as power in an anarchical system. The superiority of realist
theory, consequently, is that it is ‘governed by objective laws that have their roots in human
nature. In the 1980s and 1990s the emergence of neorealism and neoliberalism as the
mainstream answers to post-Vietnam, post- Bretton Woods critiques; answers which, on the one
hand, reasserted realist notions about structural imperatives and unchangeable principles of
anarchy, security and fear at the core of modern international relations and, on the other, which
reasserted the individualistic free-trade mantras of liberalism as the universalistic basis for
prosperity and peace in a new age of economic globalization.(Waltz)

Realism and liberalism – as effectively two sides of the same historical and cultural
coin. Neoliberalism is actually designed to enhance the power and prosperity of the global North,
whatever its rhetoric about liberalization and democratization. In both cases the self-interested,
power hungry individual-cum-state is the primary ontological assumption. There are differences
between the ‘neos’ but it has been these similarities which have most concerned their critics, and
it has been the resulting narrowness of the mainstream agenda that has been a catalyst for much
of the critical diversity in international relations
theory since the 1990s.
Marxists, have been concentrating on the relationship between the global rich and poor
for many years. There is now a renewed interest in what Marx had to say about advanced
capitalist societies, globalization and the limitations of liberalism and neoliberalism in
international relations. In the 1920s and 1930s Fascist-ruled Italy, Gramsci reformulated
Marxism that States no longer protected their ruling class interests by explicit or direct means He
utilized more nuanced and insidious forms of cognitive and political persuasion to undermine
emancipatory theory and practice. Since the 1980s neo-Gramscians in IR theory have been
utilising these broad Gramscian themes to illustrate an international ‘ruling class’ – of states,
corporations and a variety of global economic institutions. Critical Theory locates current
problems in a broader historical and intellectual context. This helps it question how the system
came to be the way it is, how various social forces impacted upon its historical development, and
how further change might be possible. Beyond realism and Marxism, Critical Theory and
international relations sought to build upon realist insights into power and anarchy.
Postmodernism proposed that all knowledge claims, particularly those invoking universalist
stances on behalf of the truth or the reality of human life are actually driven by a ‘will to power’
on the part of the claimant. Postmodernism shares an ethical position with Critical with much
feminist scholarship in IR theory. Foundationalism in this sense represents a claim to knowledge
perceived as beyond challenge, beyond change, beyond social reassessment and adaptation.
Feminist literature was the claim that women had been systematically excluded from the IR
agenda that IR theory has never been gender neutral. In regard to post-colonial theory which,
above all, insists that its voice now be heard on the IR agenda. The desire of the diverse peoples
to speak in their own voice has particular resonance for post-colonial scholarship because of its
central argument that the voices, cultures and histories of colonised peoples have been
reformulated or caricatured or erased completely by the dominant Western powers in the modern
era. Constructivist writings have explored possibilities on the ideas, norms, rules and meanings
that constitute everyday theory and practice in international relations. A good deal of this
constructivism continues to utilise traditional positivist methodology; on issues of global peace
and systemic transformation

To sum up, this chapter has provided an account of how one might understand not only
the evolution of IR theory since its inception, but also how we might begin to think about the
relationships between the diverse theoretical approaches. It has advanced two important
propositions: first, that international relations cannot be understood independently of the
theoretical frameworks which give meaning to the world; second, that the development of IR as a
discipline has seen the progressive enlargement of the theoretical imagination as a diverse range
of critical theories have challenged mainstream approaches.