By Ole Wæver
Does the English School’s Via Media equal the Contemporary Constructivist Middle Ground? – or: on the difference between philosophical scepticism and sociological theory
Classification becomes valuable, in humane studies,
only at the point where it breaks down.
Martin Wight
“[T]he English School is constructivist”. There is “a family resemblance between Wendtian constructivism and the English School” and “the theoretical work of Charles Manning, Martin Wight and Hedley Bull should be thought of as an example of social constructivism”, and “international society is a social construction”. So argues most consistently and persistently Tim Dunne (1995a, 1995b, 1998, n.d.; quotes from nd 39, 40 and 1995a 368, 384)[1], but Andrew Hurrell (1998), Fawn and Larkin (1996), Buzan (1999) and several others have made similar arguments.[2] In this paper, I would like to challenge this interpretation. Or – since there is certainly a lot of truth to the above statement – maybe more precisely: tell the counter-story by that other half of the truth that gets blinded out by the first half. Cf the classical quote from Niels Bohr: ”There are two kinds of truths: small truth and great truth. You can recognise a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another great truth.”
To tell us that the English School sees international relations as socially constructed is a helpful and intellectually stimulating as it was 40 years ago to be told that something is a question of power.[3] If the Zeitgeist says so, you can fit any argument (except Kenneth Waltz’s) into any category, and the statement ends up empty. This is the mild and innocent problem with the argument about the English School as constructivist. The stronger and less innocent problem is that soaking the English School up into ‘Constructivism’ will water it out and drown some of the potentials held by the English School. The English School contains many unsettling and disturbing insights and suggestions that do not sit easily with today’s standard, mainstream (American) constructivism. A third and minor reason for this warning is related to the advertising of the English School on the IR market. Although Dunne’s argument about the ES as constructivist reads like (too) much of a salesman’s operation, it is actually likely to weaken the standing of the ES. If the ES is accepted as a branch of – or a fore-runner for – constructivism, it will at best become relegated to the role as legitimacy giving ancestry. Especially in an American perspective (and that is usually the one that decides about the discipline), the language of contemporary (American) constructivists is more precise and scientific than that of the ES, so why turn to the latter, if the former is the more precise research programme. The attitude to the ES is likely to be something like: “It is good to know that respectable classics within IR can be seen as constructivist, and it is fun to read them, but real research is done within the constructivist research programme as such.” If the ES shall become an organizing centre and a referent point for significant activities it must be seen as more unique than that.
In section one, I will discuss briefly some of the available attempts to define constructivism and to differentiate between different forms or degrees of constructivism. This section argues the case for six questions – or dimensions – along which different theories can be measured. The six are: 1. Materialist vs socially constructed, 2. The role of ideas (how important and what role?), 3. The self-understanding of the role of IR scholar, 4. Epistemology – the forms of possible IR knowledge, 5. Conception of language and rationality, 6. Theories and traditions in IR. The following six sections deal with these. For each question, I will discuss how it is dealt with primarily by mainstream American constructivism (occasionally specified regarding Wendt, Kratochwil, and Onuf – but mostly represented by Wendt), by the English School and more briefly by classical realists, post-structuralists and ocassionally contemporary rationalists. The ES is discussed not systematically author by author because most of the leading figures are not consistent with themselves, and therefore the overview picks important examples from debates or works that are central to the school as a whole. The final section is the conclusion. In addition to saying the same as this introductory section, it summarises the analysis like this: The affinity of English School and (mainstream, American) constructivism is most clear on the first question (are the ultimate and decisive causal factors material or socially constructed?) – although the ES is somewhat ‘to the right’ of most constructivists – whereas the ES is actually closer to classical realism especially post-structuralism when it comes to assumptions about rationality, the role of the analyst and the nature of language and knowledge. And finally it indicates some of the implications of this difference: what kinds of research can be done with the research approach and what can be achieved with the more classical English School framework?
Constructivisms
When Tim Dunne (1998, 187ff) makes his case for the ES as constructivism, he leans on the following definition of constructivism by its leading spokesman, Alexander Wendt (1994, 385): “first, states are the principal units of analysis for international political theory; second, the key structures in the state system are inter-subjective rather than material; and third, state identities and interests are an important part of these social structures, rather than given exogenously to the system by human nature or domestic politics.”
A more extensive definition is offered by Richard Price and Christian Reus-Smit (1998, 259) and it would seem to parallel relatively well most other attempts to sum up constructivism (cf. eg. Adler 1997; Jepperson, Wendt & Katzenstein 1996; etc)[4]: “Rejecting the rationalist precepts of neorealism and neoliberalism, constructivists advance a sociological perspective on world politics, emphasizing the importance of normative as well as material structures, the role of identity in the constitution of interests and action, and the mutual constitution of agents and structures.” In a much-cited article (from which parts of the title for this paper is borrowed), Emanuel Adler states: “Constructivism is the view that the manner in which the material world shapes and is shaped by human action and interaction depends on dynamic normative and epistemic interpretations of the material world.” (Adler 1997, 322) Furthermore, “Constructivists believe that International Relations consist primarily of social facts, which are facts only by human agreement. At the same time, constructivists are ‘ontological realists’; they believe not only in the existence of the material world, but also that ‘this material world offers resistance when we act upon it’” (ibid 323, including a quote from Knorr Cetina, 1993)
Thomas Christensen et al (1999. 533f) summarise ‘the constructivist turn’ (cf. Checkel 1988) as consisting of three moves: An epistemological(?) turn towards the role of intersubjectivity, an ontological move whereby structure was redefined from ‘anarchy’ as a given towards the effect of the social interaction among states, and the importance of shared norms in terms of institutions.
On this basis it seems justified to formulate as the first three questions to be investigated:
1. Materialist vs socially constructed
2. The role of ideas (how important and what role?)
3. Epistemology – the forms of possible IR knowledge
IR’s constructivism emerged in the opening created by the more ‘extreme’ confrontation between 1st generation reflectivists (most post-structuralists) and rationalists (Keohane 1988). Constructivism emerged –often self-consciously – as a ‘middle’ position (Adler 1997; Wæver 1992, 1996, 1997; Adler & Barnett 1998; Wendt 1995). Constructivism is thereby not surprisingly located on an axis which also runs within the realist group itself. (Zehfuss n.d.; Petersen & Wæver 2000)
The original rationalist/reflectivist formulation (Keohane’s) phrased the difference in relation to (the research on) institutions as the question whether to see institutions as the outcome of rational decision by pre-given actors (states) or to see those actors as constitute by (larger) institutions (such as sovereignty). This in turn leads to a study either of the dynamics of rational decisions (rationalism) or of the various motives and justifications involved in these institutions (reflectivism). This formulation is covered by the above three questions (maybe with the addition of the one below on rationality; although this could easily be mis-leading for reasons that emerge much later in this paper). What is important with the rationalist-reflectivist formulation at the current stage of this analysis is rather the way it can be used to spell out the spread within constructivism and the axis of disagreement especially between constructivists and post-structuralists.
The difference(s) between constructivism and post-structuralismcan be summarised as a chain of inter-connected questions:[5]
1. Should we be explanatory or not? Constructivists want to take up the challenge issued by Keohane in his famous ISA presidential address (1998): what is your research program? how will you explain this better than us? Post-structuralists in contrast ridicule this request as missing the point (due to imperialism or ignorance) and depict Keohane as asking the other side to adopt those scientific principles that they are exactly out to challenge. They do not want to explain (which implies accepting a theory/practice distinction and a separation of academic activities from politics). Instead theory is seen as constitutive, as part of the discursive practice that structures the world. The key category is therefore often ‘practice’, and academic practices are to be judged as interventions into the world (preferably subversive or transgressive), not attempts to reflect it accurately in a scientific mirror.
2. An important part of the shift from post-structuralism towards constructivism is that references as well as the mode of argumentation becomes less philosophical, and more sociological. The aim is social science.[6] [7]
3. In post-structuralism, meaning and order is always temporary and fragile, always threatened from within and without by paradoxes, repressed otherness and the ultimate impossibility of logical closure. [ .... study meaning, language etc ... but constructivists, like the earlier French structuralists: thereby decode the structures .... post-structuralists ... structures always only attempts, pretensions, and impositions.]
4. The building blocks of the analysis in constructivism are soci(ologic)al categories in contrast to ‘language’ as such for post-structuralists. There are important differences between studying study ‘norms’ vs. studying ‘texts’. Operationally, the former allows for generalizations and observations from the outside where the latter demands that one enters into discursive and textual worlds and therefore for instance has to be able to read the languages of any country one studies. More fundamentally, post-structuralists due to their textual orientation introduce into their analysis ironies and paradoxes that they see as intrinsic to ‘language’. This in contrast to the more ‘rationalist’ and harmonious world-view of constructivists.
5. Partly caused by this post-structuralism tends to ask more ‘existential’[8] questions about the role and choices of the researcher in contrast to constructivists’ more detached employment of the traditional academic role.
All of these issues will be touched on below, but since they are inter-connected, they need not all be put up as headline questions. It should be clear that the question of language deserves special attention because within post-structuralism, language is given greater explicit importance in the sense that meaning cannot be understood without an explicit understanding of the language structures or games. One new question to be added to the three above is therefore:
· Conception of language and rationality.
Maja Zehfuss (n.d.; cf also 1999) has convincingly argued that the main difference among the leading constructivists –Wendt, Onuf and Kratochwil – is the role of language, and thus this functions as an axis within ocnstructivism. But it is also clear than none of them reaches all the way to post-structuralism in terms of the inherently un-settling effects of language.
Also something is added to the above question about “forms of knowledge”. In the first presentation it mainly referred to a difference between studying interests and studying intersubjectivity, but the spectrum is larger:
- the deductive nomological model of causal explanation and models of rational decisions based on explicit micro-foundations stating interests of basic agents.
- the necessity of studying processes of identity formation and transformation because these are prior to interests; but the resulting theory is still stated in terms of causal mechanisms.
- verstehen is the relevant form of knowledge, not explanation
- the aim is neither to explain nor to understand since both imply a subject/object distinction and a given external world. The aim is not to explain or understand but to intervene by theoretical practice.
Constructivism usually moves somewhere in the second of third position (while rationalists take the first, and post-structuralists the last).
A already included in the 5-step argument about the difference between constructivism and post-structuralism, there is also the question about:
* The self-understanding of the role of IR scholar
Erik Ringmar (1997) has – in a critical discussion of Wendt’s work – drawn on the difference between only seeing the world as socially constructed (‘constructivism as substantive theory’) and applying that understanding also to one’s own work (‘constructivism as a philosophical concern’ or what might also be called ‘radical constructivism’): “If the late Wendt is a constructivist, he is a highly reluctant one, and curiously enough the constructivism which he defends takes the form of a substantive theory of international politics and not the form of a philosophical argument. What matters to states, he says, are representations and not material facts. Yet it is surely a mistake to try to contain constructivism in this manner: the nature of the relationship between the world and our representations of it is surely a matter of philosophical concern and not a matter or IR theory. And as any philosophical constructivist [?] will inform us, we can say nothing whatsoever about the world as it ‘really is’ since our only access to it passes through our representations, and there representations are not ‘given’ by the world, but instead created by us.” (Ringmar 1997, 282) In other words, it makes a huge difference whether constructivism is taken as a universal condition and thus applies even to ourselves as analysts, or it is only a characteristic of the actors of international relations but not to social scientists.
Furthermore, the question of the role of the analyst has to do with the question whether theory is somehow implicated in the constitution of the reality it allegedly observes. [Smith] [Here something was lost in the crash; can it be recovered?]
Finally, any position depends on its construction of the alternatives, ie of the IR theory landscape. This involves both nature of the discipline and the specific theories or traditions that are claimed to compete in it.
Now it is finally possible to merge the list of question and re-sequence in the way that makes for the smoothest treatment:
1. Materialist vs socially constructed
2. The role of ideas (how important and what role?)
3. The self-understanding of the role of IR scholar
4. Epistemology – the forms of possible IR knowledge
5. Conception of language and rationality
6. Theories and traditions in IR
With the variation within constructivism from an Onuf who often comes close to post-structuralists (while emphasising the distinction in other contexts) to super-soft constructivism a la Checkel which tries to ‘synthesize’ with rationalism and the well-known differences and inconsistencies in the English School any straight forward comparison of all positions on both sides will be impossible. I have chosen therefore to discuss mainly in relation to Wendt and the ‘applied’ constructivists (such as Checkel, Berger, Katzenstein-volume, etc) and only make side-remarks and comparisons to Onuf and Kratochwil. The justification is primarily that Wendt increasingly has come to define constructivism in the larger IR debates (cf Dunne’s attempt to align the ES exactly to Wendtian constructivism), and most of the constructivism that appears in the journals these day is exactly the applied constructivists. [9]
Regarding the English School, the discussion is concentrated on Wight and Bull since they are both the most uniformly agreed core members and (together with Butterfield) the most meta-theoretically conscious of the original/core members. Without re-opening the debate about the ‘outer’ limits or ‘starting point’ of the English School (cf Dunne 1998; Sugangami forthcoming a and b; Knudsen 2000), I hope it is relatively safe to say that neither Carr or Manning are as central to the established ES as Wight and Bull and that even Watson, Vincent or other key members have contributed more to the un-folding of the theory than to its core construction than these two.
1. Materialist vs socially constructed [10]
This is what is usually referred to when constructivism is invoked in a fast and easy way. It can take many forms: the nature of international structure – anarchy as given or as a product of practice; cf Wendt 1992; Mercer 199?); power versus norms; and in various case-studies where an explanation in terms of material, self-evident ‘national interests’ are compared to a more domestic and detailed exploration of interest formation.
An interesting example of how to study the ES position is the question how to define great powers (cf Buzan in preparation); there are two sides to classical definitions of ‘great power’: power and recognition. Bull stresses very much the recognition side, and links this to the generel ES question of the international society: “The idea of a great power, in other words, presupposes and implies the idea of an international society as opposed to an international system” (Bull 1977a, 202). Although his actual analysis is very much power based, he insists that ontologically, the admission to the great power club is what carries the category of great power.” Wight, in contrast (1966a, 1978, 1991), comes much closer to saying that the underlying capacities (read: ability to prevail in war) is what eventually determines recognition. “How does a power qualify for recognition as having general interests? Perhaps not by recognition but by self-assertion. Gorchakov wrote of Italy: ‘a great power is not recognized, it reveals itself’; and Hegel quotes Napoleon before Campoformio: ‘*The French Republic needs recognition as little as the sun requires it*, what his words implied was simply the thingss strength which carries with it, without any verbal expression, the guarantee of recognition’” (1991: 175) – and Wight continues into the various classical definitions of great powers in terms of prevailing in war against an other great power, etc.
This is not to say, that Bull is more ‘socially constructed’ than Wight, because it is easy to find examples that work the other way round. The most profound is probably the relation between international system and international society. Bull operates with a distinction between a mechanical international system and on top of that – as a possibility – norms and rules in the form of international society, ie. mechanical relations are possible, and this must mean the minimum system would take the same form everywhere. Wight in contrast (although according to Watson 1995, the whole Committee accepted Bull’s suggestion for the concepts of international system and international society) operates with international systems that are culturally coloured through-and-through. As seen already in the essay on ‘Western values’ (1966b) but most fully in Systems of States (1977), any international system is shaped by its religious, cultural and political traditions, and there is therefore no image of a possible, minimalist, neutral system.
Characteristically, the ES takes a middle position on this axis. The ES is clearly different from hard core materialism. This is the essense of the difference between (in ES terminology) rationalism and realism regarding the status of international society. But it is equally clear that power matters in a rather materialist sense. Power is not always socially constituted – sometimes (and actually quite often) it is real and brute power that speaks. This, however, does not necessarily take them far from the constructivists. Many of the leading constructivists are not purists and operate with a mix of material and social factors. Even the (often) most post-structuralist of the constructivists, Onuf, works with a distinction between a material and a social realm, whereas the post-structuralists insist on dissolving the distinction between the discursive and the extra-discursive. Conclusion: It is on this axis that the ES is closest to (but far from identical to) the constructivists and furthest from neo-realists and post-structuralists.[11]
2. the role of ideas
Constructivism is characterised by an up-grading of the role of ideas and other ideational phenomena. But what are these exactly (cf Wæver 1998a) and what is the role of ‘ideas’ (etc)?
The applied constructivists are increasingly close to soft-rational choice in studying the causal role of ideas, although with the main difference that the identities and interests of subjects are not left unaffected by this. Identities are not portfolio carried by stable units (as in rationalist studies of ideas), they penetrate and re-shape units. But this is more and more often studied in a mechanistic and external way.
In the ES in contrast, the study of ideas blends into ethical and philosophical questions and these are re-examaned as part of investigations like eg. order/justice, humanitarian intervention, etc. As argued forcefully by Andrew Hurrell (1993), the big difference between a rationalist study of regimes and ES study of international society is that the former studies norms and regimes as external constraints and regulatory mechanisms whereas the ES sees the international society as being about real commitments that actors feel bound by for moral and identity reasons. (This is implied in the classical Bull&Watson definition of international society as well as very clearly in Butterfield[12] and Wight’s ‘Western Values’ essay.) Kratockwil (and Onuf) clearly side with the ES here, but Wendt is a little more ambiguous given both his extreme state-centrism which makes him reluctant to grant collective referents a status as direct objects of individual loyalty – they must only be involved as they shape state identities and interests, and probably more decisively that his theory is structured in terms of identity change and therefore leaves less room than particularly Kratochwil’s for deliberation and moral debate (cf Zehfuss 1999). This is clearly related to the role of the researcher, because – as seen in Bull’s classical essay on the classical tradition – with the ES view a part of the subject matter for international relations is to study ‘eternal’ debates and continue them, ie. participate in the reflection on hard ethical questions. As a consequence participants in debates become participants in real world politics, not external to it:
3. Self-conception of the IR scholar
The ES sees academic reflections as part of political practice (cf pref. to Dipl. Inv.? [I don’t have it at hand]). The connection is mainly due to the role of real-world diplomats as carriers of thoughts and practices And since ideas and ethics are involved in practice and the discipline should be involved in the necessary, eternal debates, the analyst will be engaged in debates that are continuous with those in practical politics. Constructivists of course also see a link because they – probably more often than ES theorists – want to change the world, but they seem to make a stronger distinction between first and second order reflections: one kind of reflections go on among the practitioners, and then the constructivist social scientist observes and analyses and produce thereby knowledge of a different order; it is not immediately continuous with the reflection of the practitioner. Here the ES seems to be again closer to post-structuralism than to constructivism, although not in the ‘religious’ or absolute way (where every footnote in Millennium by definition is co-constituve of the real-world i.r.) but in more concrete way: Since i.r. depends on the ideas from which it is conducted, reflections on especially the impossible ethical and political questions are important. Constructivists, of course and strongly, believe that i.r. depends on ideas, and therefore they must assume that academic work matters, but they still take more an observers’ stand. This is probably related to focusing on slightly different aspects of where ideas matter politically: constructivists in terms of constitution/identity (which is harder to influence by arguments) and ES focus on ethical choices (in open – eternally open – debates). (To avoid misunderstandings: There is an ideational dimension to the constitution of international society in the ES too, but this is not where the political importance translates through.)
Neo-realists are in principle even more sceptical about the role of ideas (although they write policy article after policy article in International Security) and at best take a view like the constructivists only more so: the role is to make observations of a different nature than the debate among practitioners and feed this knowledge into the policy process; i.e. advisor to the Prince. (Although, again the articles in International Security increasingly discuss exactly the same questions as the policy makers do only with more footnotes.) Neo-liberals are often interested in learning and generally believe in progress so despite the rationalist assumptions shared with neo-realism, they tend to give the analyst a stronger role although still at a separate plane from the knowledge among the practitioners. Classical realists were less ‘scientific’ and thus their knowledge less detached from that of practitioners. Also the ‘statesman’ is given a privileged role whereby often the role of the analyst is to explain and distil the kind of wisdom and intuition practised by the statesman.
4. Epistemology
[… this section has not been completed yet – see Richard Little’s BISA paper for interesting thoughts on the pluralist epistemology in the ES.]
5. The Concept of Language and Rationality
[The discussion under 5 and 6 are difficult to separate, and so far it necessarily has to be read in conjunction.] Especially Butterfield and Wight point to structural ironies and tragedy built into the nature of IR. Here the ES is at its closest to classical realism. Also post-structuralism comes close, although here it is not about structural ironies, but an ultimate paradoxality, whereby all attempts at fixing meaning produce strange effects. The world can never be subsumed into thought or speech.
This is very different from constructivism which is fundamentally much more ‘knowledge optimistic’ and implicitly projects the world as much more orderly. Even some ‘soft post-structuralism’ end up projecting the ‘de-coding’ of underlying cultural codes in so self-confident a way that it comes close to classical structuralism – the one that triggered the post-structuralist critique (despite the impression one can get from IR journals, post-structuralism was not a critique of Waltz anticipating him with 20 years). Constructivism is about getting beneath or behind the more easily observable story – anybody can tell a story about self-interested actors and their strategic interaction, that is pure observation (possibly with some equations added), but true understanding is gained by explaining these interests in terms of identities and their changes. Thus, we get by constructivism a deeper understanding rooted in sociological theory.
The ‘irrationality’ of the international system shows up in the ‘methodological pluralism’ (Buzan 1999; Little 199?, 1998, 1999) of the ES. The relationship between the anarchy/society/world order elements is not logical or coherent – it is contradictory. One can not translate between the language of the three ‘layers’ of reality because their ontologies differ –instead they meet in the forms of mixing and shifting. There is no meta-theory unifying the three in a way that ‘controls’ the components, only one (the English School) that can tell stories of their interaction.
Another (ultimately probably the same) example is how Wight in Power Politics creates an image almost of a moebius ribbon of power politics (inter-state) and revolution (trans-national). The world operates in one logic until it breaks down in a different order which is not comprehensible from the former, but after some decades it inevitably shifts back, etc.
There are strong affinities here to the post-structuralist image of all meaning creation as precarious, unstable and ultimately impossibe. This again is close to pre-classical-realism where order is always a temporary achievement destined to break down (Machiavelli etc etc). [This affinity is briefly hinted at in Ashley 1988 and Walker ??.] More radically, some but not all post-structuralists in IR try to include the insight from Derrida and others that language contains inherent ironies: Not only is reality an insurmountable obstacle to being ordered and brought into speech (a Nietzschean abundance of life), but it is in the nature of language to contain dynamics and connections of a nature different from pure logic; homonyms play in a text with equal force to logical reasoning, the un-conscious is present in language etc (Derrida 1978 [1967]; eg ch 7: “Freud and the Scene of Writing”; Laclau unpublished). Wight speaks of “the stuff of international relations (…) is constantly bursting the bounds of the language in which we try to handle it” (1966, 33), and he is certainly the most attentive of the ES to the role of language, but a) this is mostly the first step, Nietzschean, not the Derridean point, and secondly it would generally be to overstate the case to try to attribute the post-structuralist view of language to the ES. The point here is rather that they end up making similar arguments for slightly different reasons. This will become clearer by addressing the final question.
5. Theories and traditions in IR?
[In a final version, this section shall also include how constructivists construct the IR landscape and thereby define themselves, but I haven’t studied this thoroughly yet; their view of the status of IR theories etc. So far this section concentrates on the ES.]
This question has three components: a) the view of the discipline; b) the nature of theories and traditions, c) which exactly are the theories/traditions in the discipline and how is one’s own defined in relation to the other?
On the first question: “for a long time after Martin [Wight]’s appointment as Reader in International Relations, he was not quite persuaded of the credentials of the subject as an academic study; in the same period I, too, was sceptical. [I]n any case I would hold that there are certain subjects, including history – but including perhaps education above all – that can best be taught, best studied perhaps, by people who don’t believe in them too much.” (Butterfield 1975, 5) This and some other examples point to a scepticism of knowledge akin to classical realism; cf more below (although there are certainly counter-citations on this).
The second raises the tricky question of the status of the three traditions in the English School. They are exactly not stable schools of thought but traditions. The three traditions are about ‘the political philosophy of international relations’ in contrast to ‘theories of international relations’. Individual authors do not comfortably rest within one, and they are not necessarily fully stable over time, but writers continue to draw on and re-cycle argument. (cf intro in Ethics book + Der Derian into to special issue 1988) As Wight clearly state in the main book on the three traditions (1991, 259) “However, all this is merely classification and schematizing. In all political and historical studies the purpose of building pigeon-holes is to reassure oneself that the raw material does not fit into them. Classification becomes valuable, in humane studies, only at the point where it breaks down. The greatest political writers in international theory almost all straddle the frontiers dividing two of the traditions, and most of these writers transcend their own systems.” And then he allocates the concluding chapter to describing the roads that often leads from one tradition into the other. Wight also states “I find my own position shifting round the circle. You will have guessed that my prejudices are Rationalist (…). If I said Rationalism was a civilizing factor, Revolutionism a vitalizing factor, and Realism a controlling disciplinary factor in international politics, you might think I was playing with words (…). (p. 268) James Der Derian interprets this as saying – with post-structuralism – that there is “no natural center to international relations” (1995, 4).
Still, we need to explore more fully the implications of the complex relationship between the three realities thus depicted by each of the three traditions. One way to read Richard Little’s argument from the previous session (about methodological pluralism) is in terms of different dimensions of a contradictory reality. The other way, is to see the three as ony traditions of thought (and in-conclusive, unable to form a harmonious system). What is the relationship between these two sides? The former is a kind of surprising realism: the world is made up of different levels of existence – anarchy/system, international society, world society – and this is reflected in theory in the form of the three traditions. The second interpretation gives more place to language: it is impossible to make a conceptual equation where everything goes up. Maybe, this impossibility is inherent in the nature of language (Derrida), or it is because of the nature of the abundance of life (Nietzsche). Anyway, the second interpretation does not project the empirical referent of the three traditions as an extra-theoretical Urgrund for the instability and pluralism we need to live with. Instead: closure is always impossible, and the best way to see this in IR is to explore the main traditions that have come closest to establishing coherent and comprehensive interpretations – and see how they inevitably flow into each other.
On the third question, the most important point about the ES is the point made forcefully in Richard Little’s paper, that the ES position is not the rationalist one – it is defined by the debate among the three although with a preference for rationalism. This in contrast to constructivism and most ofther contemporary IR theory which sets up schools as exclusive and ultimately to be chosen among. [Add effects of defining these three in the ES, and either neo-realism, neo-liberalis and constructivism or rationalism, constructivism and post-structuralism as the three – always three -- by constructivism.] The first two (and maybe the third when fully developed) point towards a scepticism of knowldge in the ES which it shares with post-structuralism although for different reasons. The ES has it (via Butterfield and Wight) partly from those religious roots which cause most of its contemporary theorists some unease (cf Epp 199?, 1998; Thompson 1980); and partly from the classical realist tradition (cf eg. Kissinger 1957; Morgenthau PolAmNations pref to 4th ed + ‘The politician and the Statesman’; use quotes from Wæver 1992, p. 47f). Again, the nature of International Relations scholarship is seen as partly following the destiny of the statesman – in this list, primarily the third quality, which of course eases our occupation compared to that of the heroic statesman: “The decision of the statesman has three distinctive qualities. It is a commitment to action. It is a commitment to a particular action that precludes all other possible courses of action. It is a decision taken in the face of the unknown and the unknowable” (Morgenthau 1962: 344) When the tragic sense of politics has been captured also by the analyst, he no longer believes in easy knowledge that cumulates towards its own aid – the ironies of international relations are too strong and persistent for that to ever happen.
Conclusion
The ES does come close to Wendtian constructivism on one point: materialism vs idealism. Both are in-between positions here, the ES somewhat more materialist than all/most constructivists. But they differ on a whole complex of other questions (notably the view of language, rationality, analysts role, and IR theory/theories) and this bring the ES closer to classical realism and post-structuralism, than to constructivism. What does this tell us about the comparative advantages of re-destilling the ES traditions into contemporary constructivist bottles vs trying to preserve and develop the more unsettling ES tradition? The main advantages of the ES over constructivism are probably two: the ability to deal with (real and/or long-term change) and ethics. The first because the more contradictory, open-ended framework never closes in on itself and therefore always leaves room for change and the historicist nature of the understanding of international society lends credibility to fundemental long-term change – this in contrast to constructivism that can mainly deal with change within pre-conceived categories. Ethics should be self-evident from the above: the ideational phenomeana studies by the ES include ethical debates that can not be concluded but continued and added to, in contrast to a scientistic study of ideas in Wendtian constructivism. Constructivism, on the other hand, has its strengths in delivering in-depth causal understanding of a particular — relatively stable but not totally immutable – situation (relatively stable, because if radical change happens, the harmony and consistency of conctructivism probably is out-stripped by a contradictory reality better captured by the multiple realities of the ES; and not totally immutable, because then rationalist theory might take over). Both the English School and (American mainstrem) constructitivism are valuable, but it would be a pity to give up one in order to look like the other.
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[1] In relation to the argument eventually put forward in this paper, it should be noticed that Dunne discusses the ‘crossover’ between English School and postmodernism (referring to Der Derian 1995), but concludes that: “Whatever the prospects for a constructive engagement with postmodernism, there is certainly a far greater affinity between the international society tradition and the work of constructivists like Alexander Wendt”. (Dunne 1995a, 384)
[2] Parallels between constructivism and the English School have also been pointed out by amongst other Wendt & Duvall (1989); Jepperson, Wendt & Katzenstein (1996, 45); Krasner X; Ruggie 1988, 862; etc etc etc
[3] Recall Wight’s remark ”Everyone is a realist nowadays, and the term in this sense needs no argument. However it is worth noting that the word Realist has suffered a more grave debasement than the word Rationalist.” (1991, 15; cf Der Derian’s reflections on this quote in Der Derian 1995)
[4] Maja Zehfuss (1999) argues not only the lack of agreement on a definition of constructivism but something close to an inherent impossibility of such a definition. This might be true as it is of realism (cf. Wæver 1992, ch 3) and any other major tradition – which is exactly a tradition and kept together that way. Traditions too can be described but they are held together performatively, not by ’agreeing’ on some specific set of ‘assumptions’. An operative definition therefore has to capture how its members operate and the principles used to delineate and distinguish the position (wherefore traditions are very often negatively defined). Furthermore, the description of a tradition changes over time. All this need not worry of unduly at this point since we are not interested in capturing each and any constructivist but mainly that which operates as a powerful position in current IR debates – more on this later in this section (and more on traditions in the section on: traditions).
[5] The following sections are borrowed from Petersen and Wæver 2000.
[6] In practice, constructivists often put more emphasis on agency than post-structuralists with their larger, trans-human discourses — programmatic statements from post-structuralists about the role of agency, change and practice notwithstanding.
[7] This is reflected in John Ruggie’s typology of different forms of constructivism. Ruggie (1998a and 1998b) has distinguished beween neo-classical constructivism, post-structuralist constructivism and naturalistic constructivism. The first is neo-classical in the sense of drawing on Weber and Durkheim and it contains Kratochwil, Onuf, Adler, Finnemore, P. Haas, E. Haas, recent Katzenstein, Elshtain(?) and Ruggie himself. Post-structuralists are post-structuralists. The third category refers to Wendt and Dessler who draws on ‘scientific realism’. It is probably a little misleading to categorise Wendt this way today, since scientific realism played a larger role in ‘the early Wendt’ (1987) than in ‘the late Wendt’ (1992; cf Ringmar 1997 on early and late Wendt). Still, it makes sense to distinguish between Wendt and most of the figures mentioned under neo-classical constructivism, only the distinction probably would have to be as much between different forms of sociology as between those drawing on sociology (neo-classical) and those drawing on philosophy and theory of science (Wendt, Dessler). Wendt has increasingly based his work on social-psychology and micro-sociology, whereas the others draw on the sociological great generalists. (cf Jacobsen & Wæver in preparation) The difference between post-structuralists and (other) constructivists thus keeps paralleling the one between sociologists and philosophers.
[8] The term is of course problematic given the origins of French (post)structuralism in a fight against the previous philosophy dominant in Paris: existentialism and its despised humanism.
[9] For the purpose of inquiring into the viability, consistency or political implications of ’constructivism’, it would be far more logical to explore the three main meta-theorists (Onuf, Kratochwil and Wendt), as Zehfuss does (1999). I am more interested in comparing the ES to ’what counts as constructivism’ which – for better or worse – now means Wendt and the appliers.
[10] Unfortunately, I have not had the time I planned to complete this paper, and the remaining sections are not nearly as well documented as I could have wished. I trust we are all sufficiently well versed in central ES passages to fill in the needed examples – as well as the counter-examples against my story. I apologise for the somewhat skeleton like character of the rest of the paper. Furthermore, I ran out of toner at home where I had to complete the paper, and thus I apologize for insufficient proof reading and some incomplete references.
[11] Post-structuralists deny the validity of this distinction, but it is still possible to observe – even them – with it, even if it does not capture their own inner logic, because they do not use (and claim to have overcome) this distinction (see Hansen 1998 ch 3(?) for a presentation of the post-structuralist argument).
[12] See interesting quote from Butterfield in Watson 1995page xvi – include if time.
[13] In order to include classical realism, the diagram should be two dimensional: they put less emphasis than all but the hard rationalist (who by the way refers to rational choice neo-realists as well as neo-liberals; cf Petersen and Wæver 2000; Wæver 1998b) in the power of ideas, but in terms of the nature of ideas they agree with Kratochwil and ES that tehre is a conversation of classical dilemmas and questions which we have to keep alive, because policy makers should be kept trained in reflecting on these.
