Lecture 4b Theory, science and ideology

From concepts to theories

The argument for concepts throws up three sorts of difficulties:

How do we make these decisions? This is where theories come in.

A theory

= an extended, logical set of arguments that seeks to explain a class of phenomena in international relations.

Levels of generality - variation:

A general theory:

Elements of a theory of modern war

Types of war:

  • interstate war between conventional armies
  • nuclear war
  • guerrilla war
  • genocide
  • terrorism

'Causes' of war:

  • political conflicts between states
  • political conflicts within states
  • conflicts of national economic interests
  • vested interests of armed forces/arms companies/political elites
  • ideologies - nationalism, etc.
  • media and public opinion

Consequences of war:

  • changes in international/national power balance
  • changes in economic and social relations
  • human suffering and the way people respond to it
  • new international norms about human rights/laws of war
  • new means of enforcing international norms

Historical perspective on war:

  • 'old' and 'new wars'
    •
  • 'total' war to high-tech wars of intervention, 'risk-transfer war'

In what sense is IR a science?

What is science? The empiricist view

Core assumptions:

  1. There is an objective world which exists 'out there', independently of us, i.e. of human observers in general and scientists in particular.
  2. The job of science is to describe the facts of 'nature' and explain how it works.
  3. The role of scientific theories is to propose explanations of the facts.
  4. The way that we decide between theories is by seeing which best fits the facts.

Empirical means pertaining to the facts:

  • All science, including IR, involves an empirical aspect - establishing what the facts are, and what it is about them which needs to be explained.
  • However empiricism is a particular view of the importance of the facts, i.e. that the facts are what decide the validity of theories.

In almost all views of science factual verification plays some kind of role, but empiricism is highly contested. Today

  • Even in the natural sciences, many now believe that we, human observers or scientists, are not wholly external to nature. Scientists' activity, in studying their subjects, is actually part of the reality they are studying, and makes a difference to it.
  • And the reasons that scientific theories change are not simply to do with the discovery of new facts. The way that scientists develop their theories is also affected by the larger historical context of knowledge and the social conditions in which knowledge is generated.

What is the role of theory in science?

If the facts are not simply 'out there', if the concepts we use help define how we understand them, and we need theories to help us decide how to define relevant concepts - what are theories and how do we decide which of them are valid?

Theories, theoretical systems and schools

Theories in the strict sense are characterised by relatively tight internal consistency and are usually developed by individual theorists or a group of theorists collaborating directly.

Best-known theories are often regarded less as explanations of a class of events and more as foundations of general intellectual positions in IR.

Frequently specific theories are expanded into larger theoretical systems that have ambitions to serve as general frameworks for the study of world politics as a whole.

Systems are often developed by larger groups of writers over longer periods of time. Such systems give rise to schools of scholars who have similar theoretical approaches, more or less sharing common assumptions, but often disagreeing over specific theories.

Examples of well-known theorists; subjects of their theories; and their corresponding systems/schools:

Kenneth Waltz the international system NEO-REALISM

Hedley Bull international society ENGLISH SCHOOL

Karl Marx capitalist mode of production MARXISM

Immanuel Wallerstein the modern world system WORLD SYSTEMS

Robert Cox hegemony NEO-GRAMSCIANISM

Anthony Giddens modernity + globalization (GLOBALIZATION?)

David Held cosmopolitan democracy (GLOBALIZATION?)

Mary Kaldor new wars (GLOBALIZATION?)

Problems of ascribing theorists to schools - remember Marx famously said 'I am not a Marxist'.
 

Theories, politics and ideology

The problems of evaluating theories in IR are further complicated by how theoretical positions in IR are often closely bound up with moral and political positions.

Theoretical deas can be seen as parts of the ideologies of certain social groups?

Ideology

= a set of beliefs that articulates the interests of a social group.

Major practical connections between IR theory and research, and the real world:

Explanatory and normative theory

The positivist viewpoint

These 2 sides of IR can be strictly separated - because 'is' and 'ought' statements are different kinds of statement, we should accept that the work of science is concerned with 'is' statements, while 'ought' is the concern of morality.

But more realistic to accept that political views cannot be kept out - find the best way of distinguishing between scholarly analysis and the expression of opinion within IR?

The sociologist Max Weber's 2-stage view of social science:

  1. In the selection and definition of the problem, and the formulation of hypotheses, we recognise that the subjective interests, including moral and political views, of the scholar play a part.
  2. In the investigation and testing of the problem, social scientists carry out their work objectively and with detachment from their personal views.

How then does IR as a social science escape from the self-contained worlds of particular theoretical systems?

What the scientific ambitions of IR clearly impose upon us are the aims of reaching scientific consensus. We can try to do this from three different directions:
  1. Since there is usually some partial agreement on facts, we can work back from these.
  2. Since some of the same concepts, like 'state', are used by virtually all scholars in all theoretical systems, we can try to clarify by discussion of which is the most useful or appropriate concept of state to be using.
  3. Where we think that political interests are colouring understanding in an unacceptable way, we can challenge the moral and political assumptions of IR theories.

In conclusion, we can say that these two commitments - to examining evidence and clarifying concepts and theories - are the twin foundations of IR's status as a social-scientific field.

IR as a discipline within the social sciences

What is distinctive about IR as a field, compared to the social sciences as a whole, and can we actually call it a discipline?

Two key descriptions of IR are available:

How to resolve these arguments? No simple resolution. So this course examines IR as part-discipline, part-interdisciplinary field within the social sciences. In practice, it leans more to the second view, and gives emphasis to those theoretical schools that take a more 'interdisciplinary' approach. But it also tries to look at things that define the distinctiveness of IR.

Approach to concepts in this course

The remainder of this course is about concepts in IR. Following from what has just been discussed, it is not about theories or theoretical systems as such, although of course we will be constantly mentioning them.

We are going to be doing is to give a kind of conceptual overview of the field. This will involve a number of different angles: