The Role of Theory in IR
The Role of Theory in IR
The Role of Theory in IR
Politics.
Sketches for a fuller academic biography
- Reinhard Meyers -
One sometimes wonders whether it is a mere historical coincidence that two German
philosophers both named Karl have left, each in their own way, a most decisive mark
on the epistemology of 19th and 20th century social sciences. The first bearer of that
household name still found reason enough, in the 11 th of his Theses on Feuerbach, to
take his learned colleagues to court: “The philosophers have only interpreted the
world in various ways; the point is to change it”. That change, of course, should follow
a firmly traceable directional arrow – an arrow, however, which was not loosened
from the bow of Cupid, but rather out of the armoury of Minerva, aiming at an
association in which the free development of each would be the free development of
all… The second Karl however, as we all know, tended the regard such grandiose
schemes with a solid dose of rational scepticism. We may, he once said, “…become
the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets…” ( The Open
Society and its Enemies, Intro.)…
Perhaps even more than his refutational epistemological excursion into the habitat of
birds – “No matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this
does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white” (ibid., pp 39 et seq.) – it is
this famous quote by Sir Karl which, on closer inspection, offers a fitting precept for a
full and varied vita academica activa – with the mythological figures of Sapientia,
Sagacia, Eruditia, and Pallas Athena lending a helping hand or two. Of course, one
would have to steer clear of George Bernard Shaw’s little dose of caveatic vitriol in
Man and Superman: “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” Translation for
the not so ripe academic youth: “…roll up your shirt-sleeves and get on with it…!”
But, admittedly, both our Karls could serve equally well as academic lode stars:
without an idea of how to take up the cause of the alienated and oppressed of this
globalized world, the Social Sciences would lack a most decisive element in their
complexion: compassion. And without an idea of the temporary, provisional character
of all academic knowledge the Social Sciences would lack another decisive element
in their make-up: rational criticism, the conditio sine qua non of those Giants of
Enlightenment upon the shoulders of which we all stand, and without the wits of
whom we would all not be here.
Having said all this, allow me to pause for a moment and look back at my first few
paragraphs: did you notice that all good idols of the academic world – from Sapientia
to Minerva - were female ? In a university such as Novi Sad this is of course an open
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secret (and I am admittedly proud to have been able to assist, in a very modest way,
both the former, and the present Lady Rector in the field of European Studies). But
let me confirm this out of my experience of thirty active years in university politics, out
of which a dozen or so as Dean or Vice-Dean of the Social Sciences Faculty in
Münster: the modern bogey bear of the learned republic of letters is the MAN from
the Ministry, be it Higher Education and Research, or Public Finance. Ever heard of a
woman slashing your budget ?
After this little deconstruction of my academic GPS coordinates, let me now turn over
to the subject for which the majority of you, no doubt, are here for: why do we deal
with international relations theory – or more precisely: why do we deal with
international relations theories ? Why is it that - as some of my first year students
remark every year, time and again, for the last 35 years of offering a teaching service
to the learning (and aspiring to become learned) community – why is it that the Social
Sciences in general, and International Relations in particular, cannot make do with
just one elegant, empirically rich, epistemologically parsimonious, and above all,
understandable theory which provides an explanation of facts, predicts future
outcomes from known boundary conditions with a good degree of certainty, and also
allows you to define and choose an option for action, and to justify that choice vis-à-
vis all those I-told-you-so-before pundits and the it-will-never-work-that-way critics of
this world ?
One very easy way to answer that question would, of course, be to perform a
Marxian Double Nelson on the very first Popperian quote with which we started it all:
if theory is the net we throw out in order to catch the world, the undoubted existence
of a vast number of different social, political, economic realities allows au fond only
one conclusion: there must be a great number of different nets with sometimes
coarser, sometimes finer meshes – in other words: there must be as many theories
as there are distinct social universes co-existing next to each other. Of course,
another German philosopher, in this case Hans-Georg Gadamer (in his Philosophical
Hermeneutics), would caution us immediately against the spectre of a linguistically-
constituted Hermeneutic circle. If we need a particular theory to catch, understand,
write, or talk about a particular world, can we then use the “existence” of that world –
usually established by convention among a number of interested individuals – to refer
back to, to “prove” the existence of the corresponding particular theory ? Tertium
comparationis non datur – and the fact that it is only Alice who can pass through the
looking glass should give us cause again to think about and perhaps also do more for
the engendering of the Social Sciences…
To come back to our original problem: ever since I devoted, in 1970, my Master
Thesis to the epistemological clarification of the influence of linguistically-constituted
artefacts – notably country images – on foreign-policy decision-making, I have been
working on a particular premise: namely that social and political – and of course also
academic and scientific – behaviour cannot be understood as an immediate reflex
reaction to the “actual situation out there” to which the behaviour under observation
refers. Rather, this behaviour is structured and formed by the perception of a
situation which the actors in question hold for real – or: it is the interpretation, the
image of that situation that I have which governs my behaviour – independently of
the “fact” that the actual situation ”out there” is or is not structured or formed in the
way we perceive it. The sociologists know this as the Thomas-Theorem: if situations
are defined as real, they are real in their consequences for the actors involved.
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In this context, cognitive schemata gain decisive importance: The image or
conception of political, social, or academic „reality“ we harbour is not formed or
caused by information and experience stemming directly from political phenomena,
crises, and conflicts. Unlike the biologist with a little lady bug, we cannot put a
political party, or even an international actor, under the microscope. Rather, we deal
in the end with linguistically-constituted entities; these are generated, filtered, or
transported by political, economic, cultural. and social interests, experience, and
tradition to which the individual perceiving a particular reality is subjected during his
political (or social or academic) socialisation process.
These patterns and schemata are of particular importance in such areas of life which
are, like International Relations, not immediately subject to our everyday practical
knowledge, which require, in the light of hermeneutical epistemology, a
Vorverständnis in order to be understandable. Actors’ images and conceptions of
their own political aims and behaviour patterns as well as of those of all other state or
non-state actors are (linguistically, socially, mentally) constituted according to
perception and interpretation patterns, which are not the same for all mankind, but
differ according to the quality, quantity, and intensity of an individual‘s political,
cultural, and socioeconomic socialisation experiences. More than that:
In order to afford orientation for action in a society, these differences can be
bridged over and/or even overcome by consensus formation: the agreement
of a number of individuals to interpret and assess phenomena according to the
same criteria, resulting in a common view of the world.
In principle, this process is also the base of scientific knowledge and theory
formation: though of course this proceeds in a more abstracting and
categorizing, formal-logic manner bound by the criterion of intersubjective
control (verification or rather falsification) of all scientific statements.
The difference of cognitive schemata and of the perception and information
processing processes mentioned also implies a difference of individual world
views.
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2. with regard to form, definitions of "theory" depend on (logical) structure, range,
and (explanatory or predictive) performance of abstract constructs which are
imposed on a selected body of phenomena, objects, events, or processes
(cf.Fig.2)
3. with regard to function, definitions of "theory" depend on the particular task
they fulfill in the process of (scientific) discovery, perception, and knowledge
formation (cf.Fig.3).
Despite this bewildering array of theory concepts in I.R., up to the 1980s, the
discipline agreed on a minimal definition of our subject:
"International theory is that part of the study of international relations which offers
descriptive and explanatory statements about patterns, regularities, and change in
structural properties and processes of international systems and their major
component units. It is concerned with classes of events (typical behavior or trends),
not with specific occurences." ... “It delineates a problem area (the dependent
variable) and specifies a range of causal variables. Analysis is designed to transcend
time, location, event, and personality.” ... "Though not presented in a formally
rigorous fashion, it nevertheless has the form of most general social scientific
propositions: a change in variable or property x produces a major (new)
consequence in the pattern of behavior y. But the format of the statement is not the
critical question. It is, rather, the scope of the proposition: theorists seek to discover
relationships and causes of change in them for classes of events, not for particulars."
(K.J.Holsti: Change in the International System, 1991:166)
As may well be seen, the character of this minimal definition is epistemological rather
than ontological: it does not contain any reference a) to the actors of I.R., b) to the
milieu, to the structure of the international environment in the context of which actors
act. However, up to the 1980s there was also a wide consensus as to the ontological
context of I.R. - though the formal character of that consensus must be stressed:
It is my contention that the fissiparous state of present-day I.R. theory is not due - at
least not in the first instance - to a large number of contending methodologies or
canons of proof of scientific statements, but much more so to the competitive
coexistence of a number of ontological referents - call them world views, grand
theories, paradigms or the like - which (re-)construct respectively different images of
International Relations. In the light of these images the central formal categories of
the discipline - actor, structure, and process - are differently "filled" with
"ontological content", i.e. assume different gestalt qualities (cf. Fig. 4)
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The explanation for this contention is two-fold: it hinges
a) on a specific interpretation of the social function of I.R. as a science of crisis inter-
pretation, crisis management, and crisis resolution
b) on a concomitant view of I.R. theory generation and theory development which
sees a new theory as the answer of the scientific community to extra-scientific - i.e.
political, socio-economic, ecological etc. - crisis phenomena which cannot any longer
be interpreted, managed, or resolved within the ontological and categorical
framework of established, overcome theories.
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- nor to the traditional scientistic or empirical-inductive concept of theory - with its
sequence of observation - description - hypothesis formulation - hypothesis testing -
formulation of laws - prognosis.
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Fig. 1: Theory: the conceptual field
THEORY OF
INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
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Fig. 2: Theory: Fields of formal meaning
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Fig. 3: Theory: Typical Functions
Constitutive
Constitution Function
Constitutiveof specified
Function
1) areas of „reality“ by means
1) Means
Meansofofdescription
description of theoretical concepts
(ontological theory)
statement of existence of
phenomena or facts Interpretative
InterpretativeFunction
Functionof
Meaningful structuring
2)
2) Means
Meansofofexplanation
explanation COMPLEX
specified areas of „reality“
(explanatory theory) REALITY
statement of causes or rea- Orientative
Orientative Function
sons for the existence of Reduction ofFunction
complex
phenomena or facts phenomena to simple
explanations or ideal-
typical insights
3)
3) Means
Meansof ofcorroboration
corroboration
(validating theory) Goal
GoalDefining
Defining Function
Function
Guidance for practical action
Statement of adequacy and in „reality“
logical consistency of
explanation or reason for
the existence of phenomena
or facts Legitimation
LegitimationofFunction
Function
Legitimation acts and/
or results of actions in
„reality“
Theories are mental constructs enabling us to deal with the welter of information about „the
reality“by which we are confronted. They help us to structure/ reduce to manageable portions/
impose a conceptual and systematic order on the mass of information about „reality“. They
also enable us to explain individual phenomena by describing the place of these phenomena in
a larger context of information and/ or by formulating causal or genetic-temporal relationships
between individual phenomena and other phenomena/ sets of phenomena.
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Fig. 4: Grand Theories of International Relations
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Fig. 5: Genetic Theory Development in I.R.
Early modern period: resolutive -
compositive construction of the state
(Hobbes: more geometrico);
the supersession of the state of nature
by a covenant of civil association
among individuals frees the state of
nature concept for description of the
relationship of sovereign powers on the
international plane
Absolutism - Mercantilism:
International (economic) politics as Absolutism: Concepts of Perpetual
zero-sum-game in an anarchical Peace as a result of a League of
international state of nature Nations (Saint-Pierre)
Neofunctionalism and
Classical Realism theories of Integration
Dependency- World
Interdependency- oriented System
Neorealism Neomercantilism oriented Globalism Globalism Theories
Hegemonic
Structural Stability Theory 11 Theories
Critical
Realism Neolib. Insti- of I.R.
tutionalism
Fig. 6: An alternative concept of theory
THEORY
Orientation with regard to a
(re-) constituted “reality”
(genetic-functional) (emancipatory)
EXPLANATION ENLIGHTENMENT
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References:
meyersr@uni-muenster de
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