Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Chris Brown. It is the seventh installment in our “End of IR Theory” companion symposium for the special issue of the European Journal of International Relations. SAGE has temporarily ungated all of the articles in that issue. This post refers to Brown’s article (PDF). A response, authored by David Edelstein, will appear at 10am Eastern.
Other entries in the symposium–when available–may be reached via the “EJIR Special Issue Symposium” tag.
In their invitation to contribute to the Special Issue, the EJIR editors appeared to approach contemporary IR theory in a somewhat sceptical manner, with words such as “stagnation” to the fore — the implicit, and sometimes explicit, proposition was that the period of theoretical innovation and contestation post-1979 is drawing to a close, or, indeed, has ended. Then we had inter-paradigm debates and post-positivist critiques, now the excitement is over and we are becalmed in the doldrums.
Is this actually so? It is not at all clear how one might approach this question and it seems implausible that any kind of rigorous answer is going to be available whatever method of doing so is adopted. Still, one thing that is clear is that this kind of judgement cannot be made without some kind of examination of the sort of work that is being done now and the work that was being done then. At least a rough and ready compare-and-contrast of the 1980s and the 2000s is called for and while approaching this question in terms of a comparison of the major theoretical works published in the two periods may actually be a little too rough and ready, not least because it privileges books over the journal literature, it seems the simplest way to go, and is not likely to be too misleading.
In the full paper I carry out such an inter-temporal comparison, and, making allowances for the crudeness of the exercise, I argue that some conclusions are possible, and that, taken in the round, progress in the discipline is discernable — but only in some areas rather than across the board , and, interestingly, progress is most apparent in the more conventional, mainstream areas of theory. Liberal institutionalists and realists (structural and classical) have in the 2000s produced new, theoretically sophisticated work that represents a genuine advance on the discourses of the 1980s — it is, however, less clear that the same can be said of critical/‘late modernist’/post-structuralist work or even of constructivism.
The 1980s saw many promissory notes issued on behalf of the potential importance of a turn to Grand Theory in the Continental sense of the term, but few of these notes have been cashed out. In the 1980s we were directed to read Foucault, Derrida, or, according to taste, Habermas and the Frankfurt School; to bring things up to date we should add i.a. Lacan, Schmitt, Rancière, Agamben and Luhmann, but while the list of names has grown longer, the positive contribution of work done in the shadow of these names is less easy to find. And in the case of constructivism, while there have been a number excellent empirical case studies illuminated by constructivist thought, there are no major theoretical statements that are as compelling as those by Kratochwil and Onuf nearly a quarter of a century ago.
I argue that the different fate of mainstream and ‘critical’ scholarship partly reflects different reactions to the politics of the last decade or more — and in particular the attempts to reshape the world of the (first) Bush Administration. In the early 1980s Robert Cox compared ‘problem-solving’ theory unfavourably with ‘critical theory’ — but it is the ‘problem-solving end of the discipline that has made progress, and, arguably it has made progress precisely because it is problem oriented and has directly addressed the problem posed by the hubristic excesses of Bush II.
Liberal and Realist theorists in their different ways have been part of the so-called ‘reality-based community’ in the 2000s, and in an attempt to combat the leanings of those in the Bush Administration who believed themselves to be capable creating their own reality, they have actually refined and developed their perspectives in IR in innovatory and progressive ways. They have been joined in this project by some adherents to other schools of thought, but, strangely, not by a great many adherents to the more obviously grand of the ‘grand theories’, the late modernists. These latter writers have produced work that has illuminated our understanding of the world, but, though valuable, such work in the end remains ‘world-disclosing’ rather than ‘action-guiding’ (to draw on a distinction of Stephen White’s).
It might be argued that this lack of problem-oriented action-guiding work form non-mainstream theorists is of no great consequence, but in fact the lack of voices from this area has had unfortunate repercussions. Liberal and realist ‘problem-solvers’ have, on the whole, addressed the kind of problems that the powerful would like to see solved and have had much less to say about the kind of problems that reflect the interests of the disadvantaged. There are a range of ‘problems’ that the ‘problem-solving’ theorists are not addressing, and this is where the need for new thinking is pressing. I suggest that what is needed is ‘critical problem-solving’ – work that is which addresses the needs and problems of the dispossessed, the ‘wretched of the earth’ as the old song has it, rather than with the problems of the masters of the universe. This would be ‘problem-solving’ theory in so far as it directly engaged with the pressing social problems of the day, but it would also be ‘critical theory’ in so far as it did not take the definitions of such problems for granted. In short, it would compress the two modes of theory identified by Robert Cox into one; Cox’s formula made a kind of sense in the context of the 1970s and 1980s when the need was to combat the hegemony of establishment-oriented theories which made no attempt to problematize the status quo, but the original meaning of ‘critical theory’ was theory that contributed to human emancipation and for this task problem-solving in the broader sense is essential. The aspiration to create Grand Theory need not be, and should not be, abandoned but such theory must be oriented towards real-world problems.
A nice contribution. It actually engages in what the editors said they found missing in IR: inter-theoretic debate.
In an earlier comment I proposed that the well of Left and Left Bank theory had run dry. Chris Brown agrees. He argues that critical-ism, late/post-mod-ism, Continentalism, and constructivism have not advanced since the 80s.
In that earlier comment I said that critique of feminism is a no-no. This is a major block on inter-theoretic debate. Chris Brown agrees in deed if not word by prudently omitting any negative mention of it.
Brown does actually discuss feminism in the article, suggesting that as for other late-modern perspectives most of the key contributions were in the 1980s and that perhaps the 2000s have been less fruitful. A taboo on inter-theoretical criticism and discussion would indeed be a bad thing, but Brown’s article doesn’t provide evidence for any such taboo.
Chris Brown’s summary of his article in this post leaves me with a feeling that the call for “critical problem-solving theory” is both a vague prescription and probably a rather difficult one for IR to follow.
Brown wants theory that addresses the real problems of the dispossessed (and hence is problem-solving) but is also critical in that it does not take “the definitions of such problems for granted….”
One main problem of the dispossessed is usually (and rightly, IMO) taken to be extreme (or absolute) poverty, which continues to exist on a large scale in parts of the global South despite a certain amount of uneven progress in the last two or three decades. Its causes and dimensions can be theorized in various ways, but at an empirical level it’s hard to avoid defining it in terms of income and of basic-need-oriented indicators like caloric intake, access to clean water and to sanitation, literacy, access to education, infant mortality, health, etc. What would “not taking definitions of the problem for granted” mean here? As far as ‘critical problem-solving theory’ in this area is concerned, one is more likely to find it, I would guess, in the work of (a) philosophers who are concerned with global justice in its practical application, (b) scholars from various disciplines who work on ‘development’ broadly construed and (c) (mostly left) political economists or sociologists who work on particular regions of the world. Some work that might qualify as mid-range IR theory, say about civil wars and their connections (or lack thereof) to, e.g., social exclusion of marginalized groups, or about so-called ‘failed states’, might make a contribution in this area, but it’s not grand theory.
Off the top of my head, just about the only books in recent years I can think of that were considered IR (at least to the extent of being discussed in IR outlets), that, from what I gathered, were concerned with the dispossessed, and that also (apparently) had grand-theoretical aspirations were Hardt & Negri’s ‘Empire’ and its sequels. But my impression from the discussions (not having read H&N) was that their work remained on a high level of abstraction — grand theory, maybe; critical, yes; problem-solving, not really. (Whereas my sense is that works of leftish or radical political economy that may be more problem-oriented aren’t often discussed in IR journals or even considered IR.)
As for the remarks about post-this-and-that and its uncashed promise, Brown may be a little too quick to dismiss some Foucault-influenced or Agamben-influenced work on, eg, how states/govts in the North have collided with the dispossessed at particular sites such as some territorial boundaries (eg, U.S./Mexico, Spanish enclaves in N Africa, the EU’s southern border etc). This is more descriptive/analytical (world-disclosing, if you prefer) than action-guiding, but it may contain some problem-solving, action-guiding potential that could be drawn out.
Finally, left unasked by Brown, at least in this post, is the question whether IR as a discipline is well-placed to produce (or really even capable of producing) critical problem-solving theory as he describes it. Applied ethicists and philosophers, some development specialists, and leftist social scientists of various disciplinary affiliations seem to produce critical problem-solving theory, but whether IR scholars can add much to their efforts seems to me to be, at a minimum, a very open question.
LFC, completely agree that ‘Grand Theory’ that qualified as ‘critical-problem solving’ theory in IR would require theorists to address the issue of poverty/inequality on a global scale. This would require a renewed and updated statement of the structuralist perspective, drawing on up-to-date theoretical and empirical research on the normative basis for claims of distributive justice, the political economy of development and comparative politics of regions of the global South. Although this programme does not currently exist, there are scholars such as Peter Evans doing this kind of work outside of IR and, as I argued in an article in CRIA, the intellectual resources from other disciplines available to IR theorists concerned with such issues are much greater than commonly acknowledged.
Some more thoughts on Brown’s article over at my blog: https://chaosandgovernance.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/the-end-of-ir-theory-pat-ii-brown-on-late-modern-theory/
Nicholas,
Thanks for this comment.
Btw, Patrick O’Donnell (who blogs at Opinio Juris, I believe, and sometimes comments at CT and elsewhere) put together a selected bibliography on the ethics, politics, and economics of global distributive justice that can be downloaded as a Word doc. (I don’t remember exactly the online link where I got it, as it was a while ago, but Googling his name would prob. find it or I can email it to you if interested.) It’s from ’09 so doesn’t include the last several years; also limited to English-language works (with maybe a couple of translations). Kaplinsky is on his list but not Evans or some important older work (e.g. Prebisch).
From the article:
“From his Tragedy of Great Power Politics through to his work with Stephen Walt on the ‘Israel lobby’, [Mearsheimer’s] version of offensive realism has had clear policy implications and has incorporated an explicit critique of the Bush administration’s pursuit of the ‘War on Terror’ (Mearsheimer and Walt, 2008). Mearsheimer acknowledges the vital interest of the US in securing Middle East oil, but believes this is best achieved by the deployment of ‘over the horizon forces’, and, most important, argues that the US should be oriented towards off shore balancing of the rising power of China.”
I think this is an odd passage, because many people would argue that there is little or no apparent connection between Mearsheimer’s “version of offensive realism” as set forth in ‘The Tragedy…’ and his views on U.S. policy. (And some, such as Payne and Oren, have argued, iirc, that there is actually a contradiction or tension betw M’s theoretical stance and his policy prescriptions.) As I recall, the main prescription about China in ‘Tragedy’ is that the U.S. should seek to slow China’s economic growth. IIrc, he does not explicitly argue for or advocate offshore balancing in ‘Tragedy’ though he does view the U.S. role historically as mostly one of offshore balancer. In the conclusion M. predicts that U.S. pullback from NEAsia will lead to increased security competition there. Iirc he doesn’t say this is good or bad, just predicts it’s going to happen. Anyway the prediction has not worked; the Obama admin has pretty much done the opposite: “pivoted” to Asia rather than drawing down its commitments there.
In short I’m dubious that offensive realism really has “clear policy implications” or, if it does, that they match up esp. well w Mearsheimer’s policy pronouncements. ISTM what M. has said about U.S. policy neither flows directly from nor is dependent on his theoretical stance, and many of his policy views can be accepted by someone who rejects offensive realism.
p.s. since my comments above could be read as grumpy, I should make clear that I pretty much agree w most of the article.
As far as I can tell, theories like offensive realism only seem to have clear policy implications because they come from the same worldview as the policy world, doing little to question its basic assumptions. Turning something into ‘doable’ policy means working within the system in some way and I would argue that Mearsheimer, as well as many liberals, already do that.
This is not true of critical scholarship, the point of which is to challenge that worldview. If the policy implications of J. Ann Tickner, David Campbell, or Cynthia Webers’ (to name just a few) work is not abundantly clear it is because it sits outside of the worldview or ‘conceptual map’ of the policy world at large. Challenging that world may have clear problem solving capability but they are only apparent to those who share that worldview much like the policy implications of Mearsheimer are so supposedly so apparent in the USFP establishment. In many ways I see Brown’s argument as similar to that of Robert Keohane in the late 1980s on ‘reflexivist’ scholarship where he argues that feminists need to test hypotheses in order to be taken seriously even though most feminist scholarship hold ontological assumptions that make testing hypotheses non-sensical.
Therefore, world-building stills needs to be done.
Offensive realism a la Mearsheimer holds, among other things, that great powers are driven by fear and suspicion of each other, which varies across time but is always at some non-trivial level (Tragedy, p.32). Accordingly great powers seek as much as power as they can in a calculated way, although, given the ‘stopping power of water’ and other constraints, the best a great power can do is to become a regional hegemon “and possibly control another region that is nearby and accessible over land” (p.41). States will balance when they have to do so but prefer to buck-pass (ch.8). “Unbalanced multipolarity is the most perilous distribution of power” (p.346).
What specific policy implications do these views have for U.S. foreign policy? Virtually none in terms of most ‘live’ policy debates. If the message is “great powers shd engage in calculated aggression” (see pp. 37 ff.), a lot hangs on what one considers well-calculated or not.
Although in some rather abstract sense it may come “from the same worldview as the policy world,” offensive realism is, I think, actually quite disconnected from the policy world and has no clear policy implications in most cases. That’s why I took issue w/ the particular passage from Brown’s article that I quoted above.
The counterargument wd be that, as a species of realism, offensive realism is opposed to putative moral crusades of the liberal- internationalist or neocon type. Ok, in that general sense it might have some policy implications. But that’s pretty general and I wd continue to argue that most of M’s specific policy positions can’t be derived v. directly from his theory.
I didn’t mean to imply that Mearsheimer’s offensive realism has great policy implications though reading my post above I can see that I did end up saying that.
What i meant to say is that IF Mearsheimer does it is because he generally holds liberal (broadly concieved), rationalist worldview that isn’t too disimilar from the USFP establishment and American society at large. This worldview is not shared by critical theorists, feminists, post-colonialists and so the policy implications that can be derived from it are much less obvious. IOW, Mearsheimer is working within the system and critical theorists outside of it and those outside of it have to give something up to come inside and have the ‘problem-driven’ theory that Brown argues for.
All of which is a long way of saying that I don’t mean to or want to defend Mearsheimer and that we basically agree on that point but that is doesn’t really undermine the larger point I was trying to make.
Yes, thanks for clarifying and I understand the larger pt you were trying to make. I am somewhat more sympathetic than you to Brown’s advocacy of ‘critical problem-solving theory’ and to his criticism of recent ‘critical’ IR work (though I also expressed some reservations about his view, above).