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Research Methods in Politics and International Relations

• Christopher Lamont - Tokyo International University
• Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski - Pomona College, USA
• Description

This is the perfect guide to conducting a research project in Politics and International Relations. From formulating a research question and conducting a literature review to writing up and disseminating your work, this book guides you through the research process from start to finish.

-        Is focused specifically on research methods in Politics and IR

-        Introduces the central methodological debates in a clear, accessible style

-        Considers the key questions of ethics and research design

-        Covers both qualitative and quantitative approaches

-        Shows you how to choose and implement the right methods in your own project

The book features two example research projects – one from Politics, one from International Relations– that appear periodically throughout the book to show you how real research looks at each stage of the process. Packed full of engaging examples, it provides you with all you need to know to coordinate your own research project in Politics and International Relations.

See what’s new to this edition by selecting the Features tab on this page. Should you need additional information or have questions regarding the HEOA information provided for this title, including what is new to this edition, please email [email protected] . Please include your name, contact information, and the name of the title for which you would like more information. For information on the HEOA, please go to http://ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html .

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There’s no better learning experience for political science students than carrying out an original research project. But the task can be daunting for students as well as instructors.  Research Methods in Politics and International Relations  is an excellent new resource that will be a useful companion as students set out on this endeavor.  Boduszynski and Lamont’s book is methodologically inclusive and touches on important subjects that are often overlooked, such as research ethics and publishing.

Research Methods in Politics & International Relations is a highly useful, engaging, and accessible methods textbook anchored in concise and compelling chapters and clear explanations of key dimensions of qualitative and quantitative research processes. Moreover, the book provides undergraduates with an in-depth understanding of how to design and carry out different types of research projects, ranging from research papers, capstone research projects, and senior dissertations.

Research training is more important than ever for students of Politics and International Relations at all levels. Lamont and Boduszynski provide a comprehensive, pluralist and accessible guide to the research process and the challenges and dilemmas it entails, a great resource for teachers and students alike.

Boduszynski and Lamont’s new textbook breaks new ground in promoting a comprehensive introduction to research methods in politics and international relations. I especially appreciated the unique discussion of research ethics, which provides an opportunity to reflect on the broader significance of one’s research as well as the importance of protecting human subjects. The text wholeheartedly embraces the notion of methodological pluralism, giving equal voice to a range of qualitative and quantitative methods. It does this while avoiding the divisive debates about whether some approaches are superior to others. The progression of chapters also usefully mirrors the research process, from exploring topics to writing and publishing.

“Writing Up”, Chapter 11, is an excellent resource. This is a practical chapter that presents a road map to essay writing, an outline for a thesis, and a check list for the nervous student. Beautifully, the authors remind us that "academic writing, reflecting the social phenomena that we study, is not a book reviews linear process” (p. 167), while continuing to instruct us on the contents of an introduction, the importance of the thesis or main argument, the best ways to present data and empirical analysis, and the elements all good conclusions must contain. Used in the way it was intended, as a guide to writing, a reference for further reading, and as a plan for research design, Research Methods in Politics and International Relations has the potential to improve the readability of student work and provide a template for lecturers to guide undergraduates and postgraduates alike through the minefield of research. 

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Approaches, Levels, and Methods of Analysis in International Politics

Crossing Boundaries

• © 2006
• Harvey Starr

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Part of the book series: Advances in Foreign Policy Analysis (AFPA)

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Table of contents (15 chapters)

Front matter, introduction: the future study of international relations, two-level games, and internal-external linkages, crossing boundaries: levels of analysis, when are governments able to reach negotiated settlement agreements an analysis of dispute resolution in territorial disputes, 1919–1995.

• Todd L. Allee, Paul K. Huth

A Meso-Scopic View of International Political Economy: World Cities

• David Sylvan

Crossing Boundaries: Domestic-External Dynamics, Democracy, and Peace

Democracy and peace: which comes first, confirming the liberal peace with analyses of directed dyads, 1885–2001.

• John R. Oneal

Democracy and the Renewal of Civil War

• Roy Licklider

Democratic Peace and Integration: Synergies Across Levels of Analysis

Crossing boundaries: domestic-external dynamics and foreign policy, tough talk, public predispositions, and military action: reassessing the rally—’round-the-flag-phenomenon.

• Shoon Kathleen Murray

Blank Check or Marching Orders? Public Opinion and the Presidential Use of Force

• David Brulé, Alex Mintz

Triangulating Civil Peace

• Annalisa Zinn

Constraints and Determinants: Structure, Purpose, and Process in the Analysis of Foreign Policy

• Arthur A. Stein

Crossing Boundaries: From Analysis to Policy

Divided we stand: political partisanship and military force.

• Miroslav Nincic

Unrealizable Expectations: Collective Security, the UN Charter, and Iraq

Crossing boundaries: from ethics to policy, principles under pressure: just war doctrine and american antiterror strategy after 9/11.

• David Kinsella
• integration
• international relations
• political economy
• public opinion

About this book

'For years, the study of international relations remained blissfully ignorant of how domestic political factors affected foreign policy decisions. Numerous works now explore the intersection of domestic and international politics, but none have the breadth of topics, methods, and ideas represented in this collection.'

- Paul F. Diehl, Henning Larsen Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"The essays in this book are connected by a focus on crossing the (often artificial) boundaries delimiting areas of scholarly research. Not only does this volume show that domestic politics influence international behavior, it makes the crucial point that scholarly analysis and ethical considerations should have an impact on foreign policy choices and do so primarily through domestic politics. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of these connections, and students of international relations will benefit mightily from the lessons it contains." - T. Clifton Morgan, Albert Thomas Professor of Political Science, Rice University

About the authors

Bibliographic information.

Book Title : Approaches, Levels, and Methods of Analysis in International Politics

Book Subtitle : Crossing Boundaries

Editors : Harvey Starr

Series Title : Advances in Foreign Policy Analysis

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403983480

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan New York

eBook Packages : Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies Collection , Political Science and International Studies (R0)

Copyright Information : Harvey Starr 2006

Hardcover ISBN : 978-1-4039-7106-7 Published: 27 October 2006

Softcover ISBN : 978-1-349-53271-1 Published: 27 October 2006

eBook ISBN : 978-1-4039-8348-0 Published: 02 September 2006

Series ISSN : 2945-5979

Series E-ISSN : 2945-5987

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XII, 348

Number of Illustrations : 6 b/w illustrations

Topics : International Relations

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Research Methods in International Relations

Research methods in International Relations can be daunting to grasp, but put simply they are the tools and techniques used by students and academics to properly design research questions, and more importantly to reach persuasive and credible answers to those questions. The resources below outline the methods used in International Relations, starting from basic overviews and the levels of analysis, and then continue into more specific and detailed areas.

Different Methods and Approaches

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The SAGE Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations

• Luigi Curini - Università degli Studi di Milano
• Robert Franzese - University of Michigan
• Description

The SAGE Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science   and International Relations  offers a comprehensive overview of research processes in social science — from the ideation and design of research projects, through the construction of theoretical arguments, to conceptualization, measurement, & data collection, and quantitative & qualitative empirical analysis — exposited through 65 major new contributions from leading international methodologists. 

Each chapter surveys, builds upon, and extends the modern state of the art in its area. Following through its six-part organization, undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and practicing academics will be guided through the design, methods, and analysis of issues in Political Science and International Relations:

Part One: Formulating Good Research Questions & Designing Good Research Projects

Part Two: Methods of Theoretical Argumentation

Part Three: Conceptualization & Measurement

Part Four: Large-Scale Data Collection & Representation Methods

Part Five: Quantitative-Empirical Methods

Part Six: Qualitative & “Mixed” Methods

Supplements

For scholars seeking credible research designs, this is an indispensable volume. The methods are wide-ranging and on the cutting edge, and the authors are an all-star cast of leading experts.

This is an extraordinarily comprehensive handbook on the current state of the art in research methods for political science. The roster of authors is both stellar and extensive. No single person knows this much about all this material. So all serious researchers can benefit from having this handbook on their shelves, whether to expand the scope of their own work or to enhance their reading of the work of others.

Since the dawn of the twenty-first century there has been an explosion of methods in the social and natural sciences.  As data has gotten bigger and bigger, we have been developing new tools to acquire, analyze, and synthesize all these bits and bytes, and this has led to nothing short of a revolution in political science.  The very leaders of this revolution have come together in these volumes to show the way, with both deep insight and engaging connections to the biggest substantive problems of our day.  This is literally the dream team of political science, and they are explaining in plain language exactly how to live on the cutting edge.  As someone deeply committed to both learning and teaching new methods, I can't think of another book I would rather have on my shelf. 

This handbook provides the reader with a very broad overview of research methods in political science. With chapters authored by notable senior and junior methodologists and applicants, it does not only cover a wide range of techniques, but also places methods within their context, such as research designs. This book is an excellent companion for researchers of all steps of their career who are about to find their way through the jungle of methodological offers.

This is a very impressive and broad collection of authors and essays.   This book will be my, and my students’, first stop in exploring any topic in political methodology.   The editors provide an important service to the discipline.  

The Sage Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations has wide coverage from leading scholars and practitioners. There is definitely something for everyone to learn while emphasizing accessibility for all as well. 

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SAGE Knowledge is the premier social sciences platform for SAGE and CQ Press book, reference and video content.

The platform allows researchers to cross-search and seamlessly access a wide breadth of must-have SAGE book and reference content from one source.

SAGE Research Methods is a research methods tool created to help researchers, faculty and students with their research projects. SAGE Research Methods links over 175,000 pages of SAGE’s renowned book, journal and reference content with truly advanced search and discovery tools. Researchers can explore methods concepts to help them design research projects, understand particular methods or identify a new method, conduct their research, and write up their findings. Since SAGE Research Methods focuses on methodology rather than disciplines, it can be used across the social sciences, health sciences, and more.

With SAGE Research Methods, researchers can explore their chosen method across the depth and breadth of content, expanding or refining their search as needed; read online, print, or email full-text content; utilize suggested related methods and links to related authors from SAGE Research Methods' robust library and unique features; and even share their own collections of content through Methods Lists. SAGE Research Methods contains content from over 720 books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks, the entire “Little Green Book,” and "Little Blue Book” series, two Major Works collating a selection of journal articles, and specially commissioned videos.

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The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (8th edn)

• Acknowledgements
• How to use the learning features
• How to use the online resources
• List of case studies
• About the contributors
• Introduction: From international politics to world politics
• 1. Globalization and global politics
• 2. The rise of modern international order
• 3. International history of the twentieth century
• 4. From the end of the cold war to a new world dis-order?
• 5. Rising powers and the emerging global order
• 6. Liberal internationalism
• 7. Marxist theories of international relations
• 9. Feminism
• 10. Postcolonial and decolonial approaches
• 11. Poststructuralism
• 12. Social constructivism
• 13. International ethics
• 14. War and world politics
• 15. International and global security
• 16. Global political economy
• 18. Race in world politics
• 19. International law
• 20. International organizations in world politics
• 21. The United Nations
• 22. NGOs in world politics
• 23. Regionalism in international affairs
• 24. Environmental issues
• 25. Refugees and forced migration
• 26. Poverty, hunger, and development
• 27. Global trade and global finance
• 28. Terrorism and globalization
• 29. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
• 30. Nationalism, national self-determination, and international relations
• 31. Human rights
• 32. Humanitarian intervention in world politics

p. 5 Introduction

From international politics to world politics.

• Patricia Owens,
• John Baylis
•  and Steve Smith
• https://doi.org/10.1093/hepl/9780198825548.003.0000
• Published in print: 16 December 2019
• Published online: December 2019

This text offers a comprehensive analysis of world politics in a global era. It examines the main theories of world politics—realism, liberalism, Marxism, social constructivism, poststructuralism, post-colonialism, and feminism. It reviews the main structures and processes that shape contemporary world politics, such as global political economy, international security, war, gender, and race. Furthermore, it addresses some of the main policy issues in the globalized world, including poverty, human rights, and the environment. This introduction offers some arguments both for and against seeing globalization as an important new development in world politics. It also explains the various terms used to describe world politics and the academic field, particularly the use of ‘world politics’ rather than ‘international politics’ or ‘international relations’. Finally, it summarizes the main assumptions underlying realism, liberalism, Marxism, social constructivism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, and feminism.

• world politics
• social constructivism
• international security
• human rights
• globalization
• international politics
• international relations

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1 International Political Theory and the Real World

Chris Brown is Emeritus Professor of International Relations in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics.

Robyn Eckersley is Professor of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.

• Published: 05 April 2018
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This chapter introduces and defends the themes around which the Handbook has been constructed: the importance of an engagement between International Political Theory (IPT) and “real-world” politics, and the need to establish links between IPT and the empirical findings of International Relations scholars. The “new realist” critique of “moralism” is examined along with the more general critique of ideal theory, and both are found to hit a very narrow target. The conventional distinction between “critical theory” and “problem-solving theory” is also challenged, and each is defended as an equally important, albeit different, stage in the life of a theory. The second half of this chapter sets out the principles upon which the Handbook is organized, and provides a guide to each section and chapter.

In this introduction we set out the underlying rationale of the Handbook, introduce and contextualize the two core questions we posed to our contributors, and explain why we believe them to be important and timely. We reflect on the meaning and scope of International Political Theory (IPT), the nature of normative theorizing, and the challenges raised by our emphasis on “real politics.” Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the volume, setting out the way in which we have broken down the subject matter of IPT.

IPT focuses on the point where two fields of study meet—International Relations and Political Theory. It takes from the former a central concern with the “international” broadly defined; from the latter it takes a broadly normative identity. IPT studies the “ought” questions that have been ignored or sidelined by the modern study of International Relations, and the “international” dimension that Political Theory has in the past neglected. A central proposition of IPT is that the “domestic” and the “international” cannot be treated as self-contained spheres, although this does not preclude states and the states system from being regarded by some practitioners of IPT as central points of reference.

International Political Theory has a history which is as extensive as that of both Political Theory and International Relations, and certainly predates the so-called “Westphalian” System ( Brown, Nardin, and Rengger 2002 ). Still, the last three decades have been an active period for scholarship in this field. It has seen the revival of “Just War” thinking, the emergence of post-Rawlsian global justice theory, new thinking about democracy and accountability beyond the nation-state, the further development of English School theorizing, and a new interest in issues of intervention, non-intervention, and sovereignty. Perhaps most important of all has been the collapse of the notion of a self-contained discipline of International Relations as a result of the challenges of constructivism, critical theory, feminist and gender theory, green political theory, and post-structuralism in all its forms. Not all of these changes have directly supported the field of IPT—post-structuralist thinking, for example, is often hostile to normative theorizing—but all have contributed to an intellectual atmosphere that has been conducive to a sustained assault on normative questions; and such an assault has taken place, with a burgeoning of literature in the field, the establishment of new journals, and the ubiquitous presence of IPT in university programmes in both International Relations and Political Theory.

In short, IPT has been mainstreamed, and whereas as recently as the 1990s a Handbook of International Political Theory might have been expected to proselytize for the field, we are now in a position to take stock of what is a healthy enterprise, looking at where we are today, where the discipline is heading, and, equally important, where the development that has taken place has neglected certain issues. This agenda mandates an engagement with “real politics,” and this engagement provides the overarching theme for the Handbook. Our aim is to provide an authoritative account of the field, guided by focusing on two basic questions concerning its purposes and methods of inquiry. First, how does IPT connect with real-world politics? In particular, how does it engage with real-world problems, and position itself in relation to the practices of real-world politics? And second, following on from this, what is the relationship between IPT and empirical research in international relations?

These two questions are closely related, but nonetheless distinct. The first question invites renewed reflection on the vocation and basic purpose of IPT. We do not doubt that it is important to preserve our understanding of past theories, and to track shifts in our theoretical understandings over time; but if the central purpose of IPT is to engage with normative questions, then these tasks cannot be allowed to dominate the field—and, in any event, there are good reasons to doubt whether past theories are adequate to the task of grappling with complex contemporary problems. If IPT is concerned not only with reflecting on, and refining, existing ideas, norms, and practices in real-world politics but also with challenging and transforming them according to desired ideals and goals, then it is important and necessary to understand how IPT is positioned vis-à-vis the real world. In our first question therefore, we invite consideration of the history, potential, and limits of IPT in influencing international debates in general, and international public policy in particular. This entails an examination of the relationship between ontology and ethics, and a clarification and justification of the role of ideal vs non-ideal theory, and practical vs applied theory. This question also provides an opportunity for International Political Theorists to revisit and confront the many different faces of power, and to reflect on the relationship between morality, legitimacy, and international law.

Our second question asks whether, to what extent, and how IPT should be informed by empirical research. In the general field of political theory, a growing frustration with what has been seen to be an overly abstract and idealist form of moral theorizing, too introspective and narcissistic, has arisen; a similar charge could be levelled at much IPT, hence our desire in this volume to focus on establishing a proper relationship between theoretical endeavour and empirical investigation. It should be noted that we are not suggesting that normative IPT theory must be led by empirical research (and the questions asked by empirical researchers)—rather, we invite those engaged in normative IPT to explain and justify to what extent, and how, their theorizing is informed by empirical research in International Relations and other fields.

Our aim in this Handbook, therefore, is not simply to provide an authoritative survey of the field as it stands, although that was, of course, part of the mandate we gave to our authors. Rather, like the Oxford Handbook of International Relations, we aim to provide an intervention in the field by investigating the potential for a closer engagement with real politics, and to that end we have asked our contributors to reflect on our guiding questions in approaching their topics. But, of course, we have not demanded that they all address both questions systematically, since not all topics in the volume can be made to connect directly with real politics, or to touch upon them in the same way or to the same degree. Nor have we set out to narrow or even bridge the divide between the real and the ideal, or the normative and the empirical, since this is not always desirable or indeed possible in some cases, as we explain below. Rather, our aim is to encourage greater reflexivity about the various points at which IPT has, or should have, contact with real politics and/or empirical research, to explore how that contact has been negotiated and whether it could be better negotiated, to draw out in greater relief the distinctive virtues of IPT, and to showcase the diversity of IPT approaches.

Modes of Normative Inquiry

Before engaging further with the themes of our Handbook, it may be helpful to explore the range of different approaches that fall under the rubric of IPT. While the field of IPT is typically dissected along the lines of different traditions of political thought or different topics, we stress that it can also, and perhaps more fruitfully, be approached in terms of the different modes of normative inquiry, modes which can cut across traditions and topics. Here we single out four analytically distinct but, as we will demonstrate, often very closely related modes: interpretation; critique; evaluation and prescription; and meta-normative reflection.

Interpretation is a mode of normative inquiry that seeks to reveal and illuminate normative meaning. Interpretation is not unique to IPT, and it is undertaken in different ways by different traditions of IPT. Its most specialized expression is the interpretation of historical, canonical, and contemporary texts on international politics and international law. Interpretation entails exegesis, but it may also include comparison with other texts to reveal and illuminate different normative and legal understandings in the past and the present, and it may extend to locating texts in their historical or contemporary contexts—and here the term “text” should be understood as widely as possible, and not restricted to written materials. Interpretation may, and frequently will, blend into Critique but is, nonetheless, analytically distinct from that mode of inquiry.

Critique also seeks to reveal meaning, but in ways that expose and criticize rather than simply illuminate and enrich understanding. This mode of inquiry can operate at many different levels and, again, it is not unique to IPT. Nonetheless, critique is widely recognized as forming part of the core business of IPT when it takes the form of exposing self-serving, unjust, harmful, or wrongful ideas and practices in world politics, and in particular political ideologies, traditions, texts, and discourses. For some IPT traditions, critique is a necessary preliminary to Prescription , but it may also be the case that critical interpretation is seen as the central task of the critical theorist, with prescription very much a secondary activity, albeit one that is at least implicit in any developed critique. Critique may be conducted from a vantage point that is external or internal to the subject of critique; while external critique often takes a more radical form than internal critique, this is not always the case.

Evaluation and prescription provides answers to normative questions such as what is good or bad, how we should be and act in the world, and how we should order and regulate relations between sovereign or corporate entities, communities, or individuals. While critique is a form of evaluation that entails judging, here we understand evaluation to include a more explicit set of normative standards by which to judge not only what is bad, wrong, or unjust but also what is good, right, or fair, etc. Not all evaluation of this kind necessarily entails prescription, understood as recommendations for action or policy change. However, prescription presupposes a prior evaluation, which is why we have paired them here. Like critique, evaluation and prescription are widely considered to be defining concerns of IPT, irrespective of whether they take the form of defending rules of right conduct, or elaborating principles of institutional design, procedural justice, legal or policy reform, or approaches to making practical judgements. In many IPT traditions, “morality” and “ethics,” and “moral” and “ethical,” are used interchangeably, but in some traditions they have distinct meanings. For some, moral principles are duties of proper conduct whereas ethical decisions are situated, practical judgements about how to act, all things considered. Against both these approaches, political theorists working in the realist tradition eschew a particular focus on the “ethical” or the “moral” and focus on what is unique about “the political.” As will be apparent in our discussion of “real politics” below, this realist tradition is not necessarily opposed to the tasks of evaluation or prescription, though it is opposed to a moralism that assumes away questions of order, conflict, and applicability in particular contexts.

Meta-normative reflection covers inquiry into the foundations of morality and ethics, and how we know when something is right, valid, good, or bad, and the sources of normative legitimacy. This includes critical reflection on methods of normative inquiry, including how norms are justified (for example, by reference to the virtues or to thought experiments to draw out, appeal to, or test different moral intuitions), the processes of practical judgement, and different types of moral, ethical, and legal reasoning. It also includes comparison and debates on the strengths and weaknesses of different traditions of normative inquiry in world politics and international law, whether between traditionalists and revisionists, cosmopolitans and communitarians, or deontologists, consequentialists, and/or virtue ethicists, to name only a few.

Given our focus on “real politics,” it may be helpful if we compare this way of conceptualizing the four different modes of inquiry with the much-cited distinction between “critical theory” and “problem-solving theory” set out in Robert Cox’s influential paper “People, States and World Order: Beyond IR Theory” ( Cox 1981 ). Cox begins with his famous pronouncement that “theory is always for someone and for some purpose,” although he qualifies this by saying that “sophisticated theory is never just the expression of a perspective” (p. 128). From this starting point he identifies two distinct kinds of theory: on the one hand, theory can attempt to be “a guide to solve the problems posed within the terms of the particular perspective which was the point of departure.” This is problem-solving theory , which “takes the world as it finds it with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organized, as the given framework for action” (p. 128). On the other hand, there is critical theory , which does not take institutions and power relations for granted, but calls them into question, examining their origins and the interests they serve. The framework for action, taken for granted by problem-solving theory, is here appraised and subjected to critique. The ceteris paribus assumptions and fixed limits which characterize problem-solving theory are here set aside—critical theory is concerned with historical change and a world in which all things are not considered equal or held in suspension for the purposes of analysis.

The distinction between problem-solving and critical theory has been central to the development of critical theory and indeed of IPT, but it is, arguably, much misunderstood. Partly Cox himself is responsible for this misunderstanding; although he states clearly that both modes of theorizing have their uses, he leaves the impression that problem-solving theory is a distinctly second-rate activity. The suggestion is that problem-solving theory is in some sense subsumed by critical theory; once the importance of critical theory is understood, the biases of problem-solving can be described as conservative and revealed as ideology ( Cox 1981 : 129). But this is unsatisfactory, because it implies that whereas problem-solving is ideological and based on a particular perspective, critical theory is not—which clearly goes against the proposition that “all theory is for someone and for some purpose.” More accurately, both problem-solving and critical theory reflect a perspective—indeed may represent different responses to the same perspective, different moments in the life of a theory.

The legitimacy of problem-solving theory is particularly important in the context of this Handbook, in which the engagement of IPT with real politics is a central theme and the proposition that there is something uncritical about attempting to solve problems must be resisted. In some respects, a distinction drawn by Stephen K. White in his Political Theory and Postmodernism is more to the point ( White 1991 ). Contrasting the driving force—moral, political, and aesthetic—behind the work of the leading Frankfurt School critical theorist of our day, Jürgen Habermas, with that which animates post-structuralists and post-modernists such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-François Lyotard, he distinguishes between “[a]‌ sense of ‘responsibility to act’ and a sense of ‘responsibility to otherness.’ Corresponding to this distinction is one relating to language: its ‘action-coordinating’ function and its ‘world-disclosing’ function” ( White 1991 : x). Taking these terms out of their original context, world-disclosing theory is clearly an important part of contemporary IPT, central to both Interpretation and Critique; but action-coordinating, problem-oriented theory, leading to Prescription, is every bit as important, and provides the focus for much of the material we present here. Of course, this type of theory necessarily entails judgements about what aspects of the world should be bracketed, and what aspects should be called into question in order to decide how best to respond to particular problems. Critical theorists should be able to justify what and what not to bracket, and also to reveal and understand the implications of these judgements.

Each of the modes of inquiry set out above can stand alone, but they are often combined. Prescription—particularly when it involves the defence of action-guiding norms—is typically preceded by evaluation and critique, which prepares the ground for reform by exposing problems, injustices, or harmful practices that prescription seeks to rectify. Indeed, some critical traditions of IPT seek to combine all or most of these modes while also crossing into the realm of positive/explanatory theory. The important point we want to make here is often missed by those who are too quick to condemn IPT for its failure to engage with the real world—namely, that not all these modes of inquiry necessarily depend on, or need to have any direct engagement with, real politics or empirical inquiry. For example, such an engagement is not necessary for the interpretation of historical or contemporary texts, or for certain kinds of meta-ethical reflection. But when it comes to identifying real-world problems and criticizing real-world practices, then empirical research on such problems and practices does become relevant. Likewise, when it comes to the development of action-guiding prescriptions that seek to change existing practices, then empirical research and feasibility constraints must be taken on board, although exactly how they are taken on board remains to be seen.

Political Realism and IPT

Our concern with real politics requires us to explore the relationship between the real and the ideal, and the often fraught relationship between realists and idealists.

One useful entry point into this relationship is offered by the sustained critique of “normative political theory” mounted by the so-called “new realists” in political theory (e.g. Williams 2005 ; Geuss 2008 ; Runciman 2012 ; Rossie and Sleat 2014 ; Sleat 2016 ). By “normative political theory” these critics have in mind what they see as an excessively abstract style of liberal moral and political philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition, much of which focuses on justice and follows in the footsteps of Rawls, although the argument is sometimes directed also at Habermasian critical theory. For the new realists, this body of political theory (and its international and global extension) fails to grasp the distinctiveness of “the political,” the conditions of possibility for the success of normative prescriptions, the centrality of power in its many dimensions, and the ineradicable nature of disagreement and conflict. This critique includes, but goes well beyond, a critique of the political feasibility of such theories. Indeed, it is primarily a methodological critique that takes issue with putting morality and ethics first in political theory. This is done when political theorists begin with what are seen to be “pre-political” moral norms (such as justice or autonomy) or the ultimate desired ethical end-states (happiness), assign them a foundational role in ordering political life, and then offer prescriptions that seek to realize or apply these norms. For the new realists, this is starting in the wrong place. The central feature of the new political realism is an assertion of the autonomy of the political; contra much modern analytical political theory, politics is not a branch of applied ethics, and political theory should focus on real political actors and institutions. That is, any political theory worth its name must start with the real world of politics , where disagreement (including moral disagreement) is rife, the need for stability and order is paramount, and coercion is therefore necessary. In a key statement of the new realism, “Realism and Moralism in Political Theory,” Bernard Williams (2005) critiques two accounts of the relationship between politics and ethics. First, he identifies the enactment model whereby principles, concepts, ideals, and values are formulated in theory, and politics is given the task of enacting what has been formulated, using persuasion or exercising power; utilitarian thought often takes this form. Then he outlines the structural model , in which theory lays down the conditions under which power can be justly exercised; unlike the enactment model, this account of morality doesn’t directly tell us what politics must achieve, but rather sets constraints on what politics can rightly do—the classic illustration here is Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1970) . In both these models the moral is prior to the political—Williams terms this “political moralism” and contrasts it with “political realism,” which reverses priorities. The first, unavoidable political question is that of securing order, and the “basic legitimation demand” is that order be secured in a way that is acceptable to all. The new realists draw no sharp distinction between the domestic and the international spheres of politics, since in both worlds morality and ethics can provide only a weak source of political motivation, and therefore play at best only a minor role. Instead of engaging in abstract theorizing, political theorists should focus on the struggle for the legitimation of political power, and should recognize their own roles as agents in this struggle ( Rossi and Sleat 2014 : 693). This necessarily requires a turn to the political sources of normativity, including the procedures by which political authority is acquired and collective decisions made, and the contexts, contingencies, and constraints that shape real-world decisions.

The new realist critique is not to be conflated with non-ideal normative political theory, but it shares with non-ideal theory a sensitivity to feasibility constraints, which means that what is desired or prescribed must be something that can be brought about by capable agents with the necessary motivation ( Gilabert and Lawford-Smith 2012 ). Likewise, for realists, the most important question is not who is causally or morally responsible for a harm or problem but rather who has the power and will to fix it. This is not to suggest that realists do not have ethical concerns, do not wish to see pressing global problems resolved, or do not wish to make normative interventions. It simply means that if capable and motivated social agents are missing, then the problem will remain unaddressed. To the extent that normative political theorists fail to address these questions, they are engaging in no more than wishful thinking that represents an escape from, rather than engagement with, politics.

To what extent does the new realism share attributes with the realism familiar to students of IR theory? The simple answer is: more than many new realists are prepared to admit. Figures such as Hans J. Morgenthau, George Kennan, and Reinhold Niebuhr are quite close in spirit to figures such as Geuss and Williams. Part of the problem here is to be found in the ambiguities associated with the term “realism” in the discourse of International Relations; Morgenthau et al. were concerned to find the right place for morality, but structural realists such as Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer are much more inclined to reject normative concerns altogether. Duncan Bell in Chapter 48 goes into these issues in greater depth.

Clearly the new realists raise important questions, and given our interest in real politics these questions cannot be swept under the carpet, nor would we wish to do so. Indeed, from one perspective, the chapters in this Handbook represent a collective response to the new realist perspective, a demonstration of how it is possible for IPT to engage with real-world problems without losing its sense of self, or its focus on normativity and prescription. As the Handbook unfolds it will, we hope, become clear that the more compelling aspects of the new realist critique address a very narrow target, in particular theories of global justice, and leave much of the rest of the discourse unscathed. As to the general critique of “ideal theory,” it will become apparent that, contra the new realists, this is a term which has a number of different meanings, only one of which involves a rejection of feasibility constraints (on which see Laura Valentini’s Chapter 50 ). Likewise, others have shown that the new realist critique of moralism does not always hit its mark (e.g. Estlund 2017 ).

Normative vs Positive/Empirical Inquiry

In much contemporary literature on IR theory, normative claims are characterized as value-based, prescriptive claims about what ought to be done, whereas empirical or positive claims are understood to be objective—descriptions of social facts or social reality. Positive theory and normative theory are understood to be distinct activities: positive theory tells us what can be done, normative theory tells us what should be done. The mainstream discourse of International Relations stresses that these theories involve categorically distinct claims. Normative prescriptions can be justified as appropriate, it is argued, but they cannot be logically “proved” or empirically verified, just as the “social facts” ascertained by empirical inquiry cannot be disputed because they are normatively unsatisfying. These categorical differences are alleged to underpin the development of normative and empirical inquiry as two very distinctive and highly specialized branches of inquiry, with very little interest in or contact with each other.

Yet normative and empirical inquiry have not always been separated in this way, and many branches of contemporary IR theory—in particular the “constructivist” movement—refuse to accept that there is a categorical difference between the normative and the positive. Certainly, the separation of normative and empirical inquiry has a long history reaching its apotheosis with the neo-positivist revolution in political science, which saw behaviouralist approaches dominate in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly in the US; but the post-positivist revolution in the social sciences has since challenged this dominance, and neo-positivism, while still important and perhaps the majority position in contemporary political science, is no longer unchallenged. However, and interestingly, the challenge to the positive–normative binary has largely focused on positive rather than on normative theory. In other words, while the pretensions to value-neutrality of positive theory have been extensively critiqued, the empirical insensitivity of normative inquiry has remained relatively unscathed until very recently. It is now widely recognized that ethical issues permeate social scientific research, from the selection of research questions, the conduct of research, the making of assumptions, the development of categories of knowledge to the interpretation and dissemination of research findings. Indeed, one of the tasks set for itself by the Oxford Handbook that stimulated the existence of this series was to highlight how “every international relations theory is simultaneously about what the world is like and about what it ought to be like” either explicitly or implicitly ( Reus-Smit and Snidal 2008 : 6). The assumption of normative or value neutrality in social scientific inquiry is no longer sustainable.

The second question guiding this Handbook explores whether and how far the charge can run the other way. Is indifference towards “social facts” or empirical research by IPT scholars sustainable? Under what circumstances, if any, can it be excused? The answer, as we have already partly foreshadowed, depends on the mode of normative inquiry. For those engaged in the interpretation of texts or meta-ethical reflection, this charge may not even be relevant, or may not apply in the same way. However, those engaged in normative critique and the evaluation and reform of real-world practices should, at the very least, be obliged to get their social facts right if their normative judgements are to have any traction. In principle, all normative theories make assumptions about the nature of the social domain and the nature of individuals as agents within that domain, which suggests an engagement with the empirical is not an option but a necessity ( Price 2008 ; Price et al. 2012 ). Likewise, while an “ought” cannot readily be derived from an “is,” “ought” nonetheless implies “can,” so those offering real-world prescriptions in the form of action-guiding norms should be sure that their interventions can operate and have effect in the world as intended. This should be a simple matter of due diligence, but it is often avoided or evaded.

Indeed, critics have lamented what they see as a “dismal disconnection” between political theory and empirical research ( Stears 2005 : 326). Rawls’s Theory of Justice reignited normative political inquiry in the English-speaking world and beyond from the 1970s, but it also sent the inquiry down a certain path. Indeed, the Rawlsian industry became excessively preoccupied with ideal, abstract theorizing about justice along with meta-normative reflection and was largely indifferent to issues of feasibility, empirical inquiry, and practical reform at the very time at which the welfare state was being dismantled ( Stears 2005 : 326). The aforementioned new realist critique was largely generated in response to this preoccupation.

Most of those who have addressed the bifurcation between normative and empirical research lament the strict separation but also rightly resist the idea that it can or should be collapsed altogether (e.g. Stears 2005 ; Bauböck 2008 ; Price et al. 2012 ). Academic specialization makes sense, and specializing in any or all of the normative modes of inquiry we have outlined enables greater mastery in certain areas and thereby produces a richer and deeper body of scholarship. But this still begs the question: in what ways can greater attention to empirical research serve to enrich normative inquiry, or is it only necessary to prevent embarrassment? Insofar as action-guiding prescriptions or meta-normative reflection rest on assumptions about human motivation and behaviour that are contradicted by theory-guided, empirical research, then they can be impugned. For just one example, feminist IPT scholars who wish to realize universal human rights for all women by offering action-guiding norms to end female oppression in its many different guises are well advised to pay heed to empirical research on the consequences of their prescriptions in different social and cultural settings. Indeed, feminist policy interventions of this kind, such as in campaigns to end female genital cutting, have sometimes backfired in harmful ways due to lack of local knowledge ( Snyder and Vinjamuri 2012 : 441).

In summary, these are complex issues, and it is time now for us as editors to turn them over to our contributors. As will be apparent, the forty-nine chapters that follow this introduction approach IPT from a number of directions; some of the topics addressed, for example on the history of the discourse, do not invite a close engagement with real politics or empirical research; others, for example on international public policy and governance, have no value without such an engagement. Although we have posed the same questions to each of our contributors, we have not attempted to enforce any kind of uniformity in the way in which they answer them. The multiple faces of modern International Political Theory is one of the most attractive features of the discourse, and although the way in which we have organized the Handbook imposes a certain kind of order, we have not looked to stifle this pluralism.

The Organization of the Handbook

The rest of this Handbook consists of forty-nine chapters, arranged in nine parts; following this introduction, Parts II–VII are headed by an “anchor” or lead chapter which provides an overview of the particular dimension of IPT covered therein or addresses overarching themes or issues.

Part II , “History, Traditions, and Perspectives,” is designed to situate the discourse of IPT both in terms of its past and in relation to cognate contemporary discourses. In Chapter 2 David Boucher anchors the section with a discussion of the history of international thought and an analysis of the process of reading texts in IPT. He distinguishes helpfully between the Emblematic, Practical, and Historical past, defending the central importance of practice in our reading of the classics. This is followed by Chapter 3 , in which Peter Sutch explores the recent history of the discourse and the usefulness or otherwise of the binary, cosmopolitanism and communitarianism; he argues that both terms remain relevant insofar as they are linked to an engagement with sociological and constructivist approaches to IR. In Chapter 4 Chris Brown traces the relationship between IPT and the wider discourse of International Relations, arguing that IPT preserves aspects of the discourse which the mainstream turn towards neo-positivst modes of theorizing has discarded. Gerry Simpson in Chapter 5 explores the relationship between IPT and international law, identifying the split between conceptions of law as the codification of the practice of states and law as a project for international reform, examining the contemporary problems of intervention and the prosecution of international crimes, and noting the turn of international lawyers back to the political and to the history of international thought. Chapters 6 and 7 focus on perspectives that are less linked to tradition and history. In Chapter 6 Seyla Benhabib and Anna Jurkevics examine the evolution of critical theory from its cosmopolitan Frankfurt School roots to its current eclecticism, incorporating deconstruction, feminist approaches, and post-colonialism, and a renewed focus on sovereignty. Laura Sjoberg in Chapter 7 explores the contribution of feminism to international political theory, using the issue of male prostitution and the military as an entry point to the discourse.

A major focus of contemporary IPT is international justice, covered extensively here in Part III of the Handbook. Simon Caney leads this part by identifying five ways in which empirical evidence is crucial for normative theorizing about international distributive justice. These include but go beyond the usual issue of feasibility to include conceptualizing the subject matter of international justice, formulating the questions that IPT should answer, assessing the desirability of principles of global distributive justice, and assessing their implications. Darrel Moellendorf illustrates many of these arguments in Chapter 9 by providing an account of egalitarian international justice that is dependent on an empirical understanding of real-world practice. In Chapter 10 , Toni Erskine examines the complex question of moral responsibility for international justice through the prism of agency, structure, and the neglected dimension of luck. She shows how a deeper reflection on the relationship between agency, chance, contingency, and causal complexity can unsettle established understandings. Hilary Charlesworth explores the relationship between international law and international justice in Chapter 11 . She highlights the tensions between the traditional Westphalian conceptions of justice grounded in respect for national sovereignty and the United Nations Charter conceptions of international justice that include a range of universal norms, including respect for human rights. In Chapter 12 Susanne Buckley-Zistel interrogates the burgeoning field of transitional justice as a response to legacies of violence. She tracks the historical development of transitional justice and teases out its different elements and normative foundations. Will Kymlicka in Chapter 13 examines the “minority question” in international justice debates by examining how minorities came onto the radar of international relations as a problem to be contained and then evolved into bearers of internationally protected minority rights but not to the point of defending place-based rights for minorities. In Chapter 14 , Edward Page tracks the conceptual development of sustainable development and its relationship to environmental justice, and draws out the normative questions that any theory of sustainable development must address.

An aspect of IPT which is both very traditional and very modern is covered in Part IV , “International Political Theory of Violence and Conflict.” In Chapter 15 Anthony F. Lang, Jr anchors the discussion, arguing that violence constrains and enables politics and is constrained and enabled by politics. He focuses on violence and authority, arguing that the latter notion receives too little attention in contemporary thought. This leads into two chapters on the Just War. In Chapter 16 Cian O’Driscoll explores the Just War tradition and its contemporary relevance, raising questions about the very definition of war, and its applicability to acts of force short of war and anticipatory defence. Janina Dill in Chapter 17 explores contemporary, individual rights-oriented approaches, sometimes know as “revisionist” just war theory. According to this approach it may be impossible to wage war in a morally appropriate way, which raises important questions about the relationship between real and ideal theory. Still in contact with “just war” thinking, in Chapter 18 Michael L. Gross investigates the moral dilemmas of asymmetric conflict, arguing that the conventional unwillingness to accept that non-state actors could be legitimate combatants is no longer sustainable. Christopher Coker in Chapter 19 assesses the impact of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs a.k.a. Drones) and autonomous weapons systems, and their capacity to overturn all previous approaches to the ethics of warfare; Thucydides describes war as “the human thing,” but the rise of killer robots challenges this in a fundamental way. In Chapter 20 , Brandon Valeriano and Ryan C. Maness offer an assessment of cyber security, arguing that the common emphasis on technology is mistaken; the appropriate framework for discussing cyber security has yet to emerge, but clearly ethical concerns will be central when it does. Mary Elizabeth King, in Chapter 21 , explores non-violent action in its various forms, stressing, somewhat counterintuitively, the relationship between the core idea and realist political practice.

Part V examines “Humanitarianism and Human Rights.” In Chapter 22 Michael N. Barnett anchors the discussion with an exploration of the different mindsets that are associated with these two closely associated concepts and their distinctive relationships to politics, noting that the discourse of humanitarianism is largely historical, while human rights are usually discussed in conceptual terms. Stephen Hopgood in Chapter 23 looks at the real-world politics of human rights, and anticipates a truncated role for human rights in the future unless they can be divorced from their current Western, liberal foundations. In Chapter 24 , Jennifer M. Welsh examines the role played by humanitarian actors in times of conflict, with a particular focus on the UN, which she suggests is developing new understandings of impartiality, which sometimes gel and sometimes clash with the acvtivities of the new “rights-based” humanitarian NGOs. This leads into James Pattison’s discussion of the “Responsibility to Protect” in Chapter 25 , which emphasizes the gaps between theory and practice that have emerged as this attempt to resolve the dilemmas of humanitarian intervention has evolved over the last decade. The sometimes vexed relationship between gender, multiculturalism, and rights is explored in Chapter 26 by Denise Walsh, who challenges the common assumption that a concern for gender equality will always clash with the respect for difference that multiculturalism mandates. In Chapter 27 Patrick Hayden examines the recent focus on health as a basic human right, arguing that the foundations for this claim are best found in recognition theory rather than in conventional liberal thinking on human rights. Finally in Part V , Anthony J. Langlois in Chapter 28 focuses on the increasingly salient but highly controversial area of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights, stressing the importance of moving beyond the mere assertion that “gay rights are human rights” to an examination of how these rights operate in real-world politics, including ways in which they can be misused.

Part VI addresses issues of “Democracy, Accountability, and Global Governance,” which are central to the approach to IPT adopted in this Handbook. Carol C. Gould sets the scene in Chapter 29 by exploring the context and the motivation for addressing democratic deficits in global governance. She defends a “common activities” approach, complemented by the “all-affected” principle, as providing a more dynamic and forwarding-looking basis for addressing global democratic deficits. In Chapter 30 Terry Macdonald develops a distinctive approach for reconciling global democratic values with the empirical facts of contemporary global governance. Instead of “piggy-backing” off democratic theories developed at the national level, she develops an approach based on the empowerment of collective agency. In Chapter 31 , Eva Erman shifts attention to the empirical and moral constraints on global democracy, understood as the conditions under which democracy should be construed (i.e. formulated and justified) and promoted in the real world of global politics. Milja Kurki continues this line of inquiry in Chapter 32 by examining the contested ethics of democracy promotion. She argues that democracy promotion nowadays tends to treat both democracy and its promotion as largely a “technical” challenge, which obscures liberal ethical commitments and fails to acknowledge the plurality of democratic ethics. In Chapter 33 Jens Steffek examines how ideas of deliberative democracy have been extended to governance beyond the state. He argues that both micro and macro conceptions of deliberation have considerable potential to enhance the epistemic quality of global governance, but that they suffer from an elite bias and need to confront the challenge of developing thicker input and accountability linkages with the lifeworlds of citizens. Kate Macdonald addresses these linkages in Chapter 34 in her examination of accountability norms and practices in global economic governance. She argues that normative analyses of transnational accountability must begin with real-world accountability problems, and she singles out four: unaccountable power, decentred political authority, adapting to multiple scales, and negotiating social and cultural difference. In Chapter 35 Frank Biermann tackles the daunting challenge of global governance in the Anthropocene, a new and self-endangering epoch in planetary history where humans have acquired geological (and not just environmental) agency in reshaping Earth systems processes.

Part VII takes a more practical turn, focusing on “Ethics and International Public Policy.” Chapter 36 by Christian Barry anchors this section by exploring how IPT should relate to public policy. Using Rawls’s duty of assistance as an illustration, he examines the degree to which normative principles should be abstract or concrete, and specific or indeterminate, and he shows that abstractness is a virtue when experts disagree. Tim Dunne, in Chapter 37 , examines the meaning of ethical foreign policy in a multipolar world. He argues that ethics and foreign policy have always been awkward partners, despite efforts by some realists to sever ethics and efforts by (mostly) liberals to bring ethics more to the fore at various times, and he offers a sober prognosis of a retreating liberalism in an increasingly multipolar world. Nicole Hassoun addresses the question of fair trade in theory and practice in Chapter 38 . Arguing against both complete theoretical accounts of fair trade as well as practice-based approaches, she defends a conditional approach that enables modest progress. Luara Ferracioli in Chapter 39 explores the public policy dimension of international migration and human rights, asking what would be the moral duties of liberal states in relation to different categories of migrant if they were willing to apply liberal cosmopolitan principles of justice, and what institutional changes would help to motivate states to do so. In Chapter 40 Steve Vanderheiden addresses the vexed question of climate equity in the real world in light of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Against the view that commitments to equity in the climate regime have only obstructed progress and that equity should be traded off for an effective treaty, he argues that the inclusion of substantive and procedural equity considerations have focused attention upon subjects and issues that might otherwise have been ignored. The question of the ethical rationale for international aid is taken up by Paul Collier in Chapter 41 . He defends minimal obligations that are reducible to two “duties of rescue,” one immediate (in response to catastrophes) and one prospective (development assistance), that seek to ameliorate mass despair for those with no credible hope for a better life, and argues that development assistance based on “mutual aid” rather than charity is ethically permissible if it can be shown to be the most effective means of fulfilling the duty of rescue. Fiona Robinson in Chapter 42 defends a feminist practical ethics of care as an appropriate global ethic, using the challenges of humanitarianism as an illustration. This approach is shown to be context-specific, relational, and located in the experiences and practices of care-giving and receiving rather than a priori principles of the right or the good.

Parts VIII and IX are somewhat different from the earlier parts of the Handbook, and do not have “anchor” chapters. Part VIII , “New Directions in International Political Theory,” picks out five areas where new perspectives are emerging, or in some cases re-emerging. In Chapter 43 Friedrich Kratochwil offers a conceptual sketch of new, and old, thinking on the issue of judgement; he argues that the formal logic of writers such as Kant may be less use than the insights provided by common-law interpretation, Humean common sense, and Aristotelian phronesis . Continuing this classical theme, in Chapter 44 , Steve Torrente and Harry D. Gould consider the impact of virtue ethics on IPT, exploring the renewed interest in Aristotle and, in particular, the capabilities approach associated with Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Renée Jeffery in Chapter 45 examines and contributes to the new literature on the role of emotions in international political theory; Sen also features in her account of the rise of a “sentimental cosmopolitanism,” although she places greater emphasis than he on the combination of reason and emotion in the making of impartial judgements. In Chapter 46 Anna Geis explores the international dimension of recent work on recognition, highlighting the danger that the self-recognition of the West as a benign force in world politics may not satisfy the need for recognition of non-Western, non-liberal actors. Finally, in Chapter 47 , Steven Slaughter examines the increasing importance of republican thought for IPT, exploring the different versions of republicanism current in the literature. Non-domination is central to most versions, but can be pursued in different ways with those versions of republicanism influenced by critical theory offering a different model to that of globalized sovereignty.

Part IX , “For and Against Real Politics and International Political Theory,” is an exercise in self-criticism in which the core themes of the Handbook are challenged from three different directions. In Chapter 48 Duncan Bell explodes a number of common myths about realism—that it is amoral, necessarily state-centric, and conservative—and shows that realists can be conservative, liberal, or radical, even utopian in certain senses. What unites realists is their rejection of “moralism” and their attentiveness to the hard and soft political constraints on efforts to realize normative arguments for a just international order. Continuing the themes of power and conflict, albeit from a different angle, Andrew Davenport offers a Marxist critique of IPT in Chapter 49 . He argues that IPT, both in its conceptualization of the international space and in its ideas of how to address and resolve problems such as inequality and violence, rests on an essentially liberal experience of the world and therefore on a critique of distributive justice that fails to comprehend the depth and extent of the power of capital. In Chapter 50 Laura Valentini rounds out the debate by providing a defence of “ideal theory,” understood either as idealizations or as normative theories that are insensitive to feasibility constraints. She concludes that most criticisms miss their mark, either because they mistake the role that idealizations play, or mistake purely evaluative theories as offering prescriptions rather than standards of evaluation.

In addition to providing an authoritative survey of the issues, debates, and traditions that preoccupy contemporary IPT scholarship, this Handbook seeks to prod IPT scholars to engage with the new realist turn in political theory as well as the turn to non-ideal theory in normative theory, and to reflect more generally on the multi-faceted relationship between normative theory, empirical research, and the so-called real world. IPT scholars have tended to avoid any critical engagement with IR realist theory, mistakenly assuming the entire tradition to be, at best, purely explanatory rather than normative or, at worst, amoral. Meanwhile, the new realist assault on idealistic or “moralistic” liberal political philosophy has not been especially preoccupied by what is distinctive about the international or the global compared to the domestic political sphere. Our view of the timeliness of this engagement is shared, it seems, by others. Since the chapters for this Handbook were commissioned, two special journal issues have appeared that engage with these or similar questions (see Floyd 2016 and Sabl and Sagar 2017 for introductions to each issue). We hope the engagement in this Handbook will encourage greater reflexivity regarding what is unique about IPT so that it may be better appreciated, and about the interrelationships and dependencies between IPT, other modes of inquiry, and the real world of international politics.

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The View of Encyclopedia

Theory and Approaches of International Politics

International relations is far behind other social sciences in the development of theories . It is quite natural as this discipline is of recent origin. Notwithstanding this limitation, some remarkable developments have already taken place in the sphere of the theory of international politics building.

The works of William Fox, Stanley Hoffmann, Klaus Knorr, Sydney Verba, Horace Harrison, James Rosenau, Morton Kaplan, J.W. Burton, Hans J. Morgenthau, J. David Singer, etc., have endeavored to develop a theoretical perspective of this discipline. Several factors inspire efforts to propound a general theory of international relations .

First of all, they are impressed and encouraged by the natural sciences’ achievement in precision and predictability. A theory is instrumental in bringing about an order in a mass of data. It may work as a guide to action in international life.

It is a crucial tool for understanding that gives meaning to the mass of phenomena. It would make international relations a real policy science that would greatly help politicians and decision-makers. It is also useful for further creative research. Thus, the significance of theoretical speculation and perspective in international relations cannot be ignored.

Meaning of Approach and  Theory of International Politics:

The word theory itself is full of ambiguity and confusion. The word theory derives from Greek, which means to look at. It is often used as a synonym for a thought conjecture or idea. Some people mean by theory an interpretation or a point of view, whereas others view it as the consummation of explanation.

However, most people agree that the chief function of theory is an explanation. But the problem, especially in international politics, is that there is no clear agreement on the question as to what should be explained and what can be explained. Scholars never agree on the nature or scope theory of international politics .

For example, some authors identify international relations as the interaction of foreign policies . Thus their criterion of collecting data for study would be determined by this consideration. This is a matter of approach. But when this approach is employed in foreign policy, a kind of theory emerges as an explanation of foreign policy as it is made and executed in each country.

A theory coming out of this way may be known merely as a foreign policy theory and, therefore, only a partial theory of international relations by an outsider. Still, one who views international politics as the interaction of foreign policies would regard this foreign policy theory as a theory of international politics.

In this way, the theory’s nature is determined by the approach, and the two are not easily separable. Because any theory of international relations is largely following a particular view about international politics, that is essentially a matter of approach.

The terms approach and theory represent two different steps in the study of international politics; the former can be understood only in the latter’s context. Although scholars give their theories, their approach can be known by a critical analysis of their theories.

If there is a difference in theories, it is due to the divergence of the approach behind those theories. Still, the approach comes first for a scholar or researcher, and theory in the study’s outcome is undertaken with a particular approach or viewpoint.

Definitions of Theory of International Relations:

Both traditional and modern behavioral scholars have given their definitions of the theory of international relations . Stanley Hoffmann, a scholar of the former school, has defined the contemporary theory of international relations as a systematic study of observable phenomena that try to discover the principal variables, explain behavior, and reveal the characteristic types of relations among national units . But Hoffmann points out that within the general limits of international relations theory , one should also incorporate the works of normative thinkers and policy scientists.

The former scholars with a philosophical orientation deal mainly with evaluating political reality and the generation of prescriptions or remedies leading toward a better political life. In the style of engineers, the latter attempt to go beyond description and explanation and endeavor to make policy (applied theory), that will serve a given political entity’s interest.

J. David Singer, a scientifically oriented scholar, has given a brief definition. The theory is a body of internally consistent empirical generalizations of descriptive, predictive, and explanatory power. For Singer, these generalizations should best be expressed in the form of hypotheses and propositions that are testable, verifiable, falsifiable, and quantifiable.

The traditional and behavioral definitions encroach upon each other. Both agree that the generalizations must be empirically derived, logically sound, and have the capability to describe, explain, and predict. It may be noted, however, that Singer denies a theoretical role to prescription. He argues that normative or prescriptive thinkers and policy scientists may benefit from scientific theory but that their prescriptive maxims are not part of the theory.

Categories of Approaches and Theories:

In international relations, several approaches and theories have been developed in the twentieth century. The same can be grouped under three broad categories as under:

The Traditional School

The traditional or classical approach is based primarily on philosophy, history, ethics, and law. It holds that general propositions cannot be accorded more than tentative and inconclusive status. Most of the traditionalists believe that international relations study patterns of action and reaction among sovereign states as represented by their governing elites.

It focused attention on the activities of the diplomats and soldiers who carry out their respective national government’s foreign policies. For this school, international relations is nothing but diplomacy strategy cooperation, and conflict. In simple words, it is the study of peace and war.

The traditionalists assume that several factors or variables affect diplomats’ and soldiers’ behavior as state policy executors. These variables are climate conditions, geographic location, population density, literacy rates, historical and cultural traditions , economic conditions and commercial interests, religious and ideological maxims of a given nation-state, as well as the capricious quirks of national leaders and their supportive elites.

But an effort to find the reasons behind a given government’s actions to a hierarchical order among these variables is a futile activity at best; it can produce only subtle hypotheses. Therefore, the traditionalists regard governments’ observed behavior as the most significant, which they explain in terms of concepts such as the balance of power , the pursuit of national interest, the quest for world order, and the diplomacy of prudence.

Both idealist and realist theories come under this category. However, the realist theories predominate in traditional schools. The chief contributors to this school are Raymond Aron, Stanley Hoffmann, Hans Morgenthau, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Arnold Wolfers. The representative of this school is the realistic theory propounded by Hans Morgenthau. The same will be subsequently discussed in detail.

In short, the traditionalists have presented some general propositions about international politics that explain and, to a limited degree, predict foreign policy elites’ responses in crises. Traditionalists generally regard international relations as a subfield of political science and philosophy , but a subfield with characteristics that give it a separate status.

Unlike political science , which they believe is mainly the study of the governance of established theory of international politics communities, traditionalists regard international relations as the study of the nearly anarchic relations existent among sovereign political entities. In this way, whereas traditionalists view entities as the analysis of order in distributing political goods in relatively stabilized and advanced political systems , they treat international relations as the study of disorder in a nearly primitive and egalitarian international system.

The Scientific or Behavioral School:

It is on the question of the discipline’s identity that the scientific or behavioral school of thought first denounced the traditionalists for the scientists generally consider international relations to be too broad and complex a field to be embraced by political science or any other single discipline.

Most advocates of the scientific approach believe international relations to be an interdisciplinary field and to rely not only on political science and history but also on other social and natural sciences. It should be clarified that both the traditionalist and the scientific schools are, to some extent, interdisciplinary.

The distinction between the two, explained Couloumbis and Wolfe, lies primarily in the latter’s effort to overcome the alleged imprecision of the former by employing quantitative techniques and model building. According to scientifically oriented scholars, international relations have reached a traditionalist plateau, and a new set of methodological tools must now be employed if the theory’s heights are to be ascended.

Scientists on the ground have criticized the traditionalist theories that they were too vague and inclusive of furnishing useful explanations of international political behavior or too impressionistic and flexible to withstand the rigorous scientific test of verification.

Scientific scholars believe in the empirical method, inductive reasoning, and comprehensive testing of hypotheses and explicit rules that must always be confirmed by repeated observation and testing. Scientific scholars emphasized the need for the operationalization of concepts by the precise measurement of variables.

Operationalization is a process by which one uses detailed rules for definition and coding to turn relevant facts into quantifiable data and, therefore, measurable. This paves the way for other independent observers to repeat the observations and check their accuracy.

According to their criteria, scientists believe that the time has not yet come to advance general theories of international relations. Various variables affect the international system’s behavior, and it is not feasible to put them together scientifically. Therefore, most scientists concentrate on intermediate-level projects that link and relate a few selected variables at a time. Step by step, they expect to achieve a consistent set of partial or middle-range theories that will stand the test of empirical verification.

Some scientific scholars have constructed conceptual frameworks and partial models of the international system. Others such as Deutsches, Kaplan, and Rosenau have given tentative hypotheses that provide sweeping analogs of political behavior in an international environment, but for the most part, their colleagues. J. David Singer Melvin Small, and Ole Holst have concentrated on middle-range or narrower, more tangible projects despite occasional criticism that they indulge in insignificant studies.

So far, the scientific school has produced more promise than performance, to quote Singer, and more process analysis than substantive experimentation. Its main achievement is in the sphere of methodology.  The application of the scientific method to international relations has brought to the field, say Coulombs and Wolfe, not only concepts and sophisticated research tools from other social sciences but also a body of pre-theory that lends itself to testing and verification procedures.

Although the scientists have thus far offered the political science community few fully substantiated theoretical propositions, the promise of their endeavors is worth awaiting, for its fulfillment will mean that theorists in international relations will be able to predict accurately and, by implication, to control the behavior of actors on the international scene.

Post Behavioral School:

The controversy between traditionalists and behaviorists waned in the 19705. In 19805, both schools of thought ceased putting arguments such as politics cannot be studied scientifically or that political science without quantification and value freedom is not very useful. The trend was towards eclectically oriented studies, which were also known as post-behavioral orientation.

It combined elements of the scientific approach with clear value objectives such as the control of nuclear weapons, the substitution of peaceful methods for war for dispute settlement, the control of the population, the protection of the environment, the eradication of poverty, disease, and human alienation and the quest for just international economic order.

Professor Rummel’s study can be cited as a fine example of the latest post-behavioral eclectic approach. In his study, Rummel, a known follower of the behavioral scientific orientation, using well-developed statistical methods to process his data, presented evidence confirming some of the earliest nineteenth-century liberal theory hypotheses regarding war causes.

Contrary to early behaviorists, Rummel stated in his article that he saw nothing incompatible between proposing normative or even ideologically oriented hypotheses, provided they are subjected to scientific testing designed to verify or falsify these hypotheses.

The late seventies and eighties saw the emergence of at least two new schools of thought within the post-behavioral approach involving scholars who have been challenging earlier paradigms of international relations. These two schools emphasized global dependency and interdependence, respectively. The interdependency school deals with the world order.

Both groups of scholars have questioned the studies of traditionalists and behaviorists as they concentrate only on nation-states, their governments, their capabilities, and their interactions in diplomacy, nonmilitary competition, and military conflict. In this way, they eccentrically view the world and ignore nonstate actors and entities.

They have oversimplified the complexity of the international situation and badly distorted reality. World order theorists have pointed out the increasing role of non-state actors, such as multinational corporations, regional and global international organizations, and terrorist organizations and movements. Any analysis that ignores these new actors will be insufficient and incomplete.

Dependency theorists taking inspiration from Marxist premises argue that class is a much better unit of analysis than states that an understanding of the international political economy and the dependencies of the poor peripheries on the rich centers of economic power explain more clearly the global phenomena that have been in the past.

In this way, both dependency and interdependency world order theorists strive for the growth of a well-organized world community regulating itself with effective global institutions that can contain the power of national governments. In a way, these schools are contemporary incarnations of idealism. It will be pertinent to discuss in some detail the major theories of international relations as follows.

Idealist Theory:

The devastating First World War in 1914 stimulated the quest for knowledge that could address contemporary world problems in general and war in particular. A theoretical perspective with sustainable generalizations about the conditions under which war might be avoided and peace maintained was urgently needed. For that purpose, a theory was required to foresee incoming wars reliably, and that could suggest to policymakers how to prevent their outbreak.

The diplomatic historical perspective prevailed in the years after the First World War. Marxist Leninist theory after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia also made a place for itself. However, the dominant theory between the two world wars in the Western world was political idealism . Its main advocates were Condorcet, Woodrow Wilson, Butterflied, and Bertrand Russell.

According to idealist theory, society and state are the outcomes of evolution. This process of evolution is leading us towards perfection from imperfection. At this stage, peace and justice can be established in society. Through the establishment of a family of nations, war, violence, and immorality can be curbed.

Idealism emerged in the eighteenth century and is regarded as the major inspiration behind the American and French Revolutions . Condorcet’s work of 1795 had everything considered the essential basis of idealism in international relations. He was for a world order sans war, Sans inequality, and sans tyranny.

A world of this kind would be marked by constant progress in human welfare brought about by the use of reason, education, and science. The theoretical premise of this is the result of the liberal outlook of the Condorcet type. Idealism envisions the future international society based on the idea of a reformed international system free from power politics , immorality, and violence.

The idealist theory promises to bring about a better world with morality, education, and international organization. The idealists think that political conflict is not for power but between inconsistent principles and ideals. Idealists present different viewpoints about world politics.

Basic Assumptions:

Kegley, Jr., and Wittkopf observe that what transformed their movement into a cohesive paradigm among Western scholars was assumptions about the reality they shared and the homogeneity of the conclusions their perspective elicited. According to them, idealists projected a worldview usually resting upon the following axioms:

• H uman nature is essentially good and capable of altruism, mutual aid, and collaboration.
• T he fundamental instinct of humans for the welfare of others makes progress possible.
• B ad human behavior is the product not of evil people but of evil institutions and structural arrangements that create incentives for people to act selfishly and harm others, including war.
• W ars represent the worst feature of the international system.
• W ar is not inevitable and can be eliminated by doing away with the institutional arrangements that encourage it.
• W ar is an international problem that requires global rather than national efforts to eliminate it and therefore
• I nternational society has to reorganize itself to eliminate the institutions that make war likely.

To be clear, not all idealists subscribe to each of these tenets with equal emphasis. Many of them would probably disagree with some of them. Nevertheless, these tenets jointly explain the basic assumptions articulated in one way or another by the statesmen and theorists whose orientation toward world affairs captivated world politics in the interwar period. This discussion embraced ideals like moralism, optimism, and internationalism.

Suggestions for Reform:

The idealists offered the following remedies for solving international problems.

1 . Moral nations should act according to moral principles in their international behavior, eschew all kinds of traditional power politics , and follow policies of non-partisanship. Behaving this way may gradually minimize the bad effects of power politics.

2. Attempts should be made to create supranational institutions to replace the competitive and war-prone territorial states system. The setting up of the League of Nations and an insistence on international cooperation in social matters as approaches to peace were symptomatic of idealists’ institutional solutions to war. Many idealists went further in suggesting that power politics could only be abolished by instituting a world government. Thus in the ultimate analysis, this theory aspires to the ideal of world federation or one world.

3. The legal control of war was also suggested. It called for new transnational norms to check the initiation of war and, should it occur, its destructiveness. The Kellogg Briand Pact of 1928, which outlawed war as an instrument of national policy, represents the legal approach’s high point. They also advocated more faithful adherence to international law.

4. Another way suggested by idealists was to eliminate weapons. The attempts towards global disarmament and arms control (the Washington Naval Conference of 19205, for example) were symbolic of this peace path.

5. The efforts should be made to see that the totalitarian forces cease to exist, as the idealists believe that the struggles so far have been between democratic and totalitarian states. Totalitarianism is one of the main causes of war, and it must be eliminated.

6. Some idealists saw the way to peace and welfare in restructuring the international monetary system and eliminating barriers to international trade. Still, others saw in the principle of Self-determination the possibility of redrawing the world’s political map under the conviction that a world so arranged would be a peaceful world.

Critical Evaluation:

Idealist theory can be criticized on many counts. Most of the assumptions on which it is based are only partially correct. Though full of ideas and norms, it is far from reality. No wonder it is dubbed as imaginary, impracticable, and thus utopian. Suggestions given by it to reform the international situation are difficult to implement. For example, at the international level, nations seldom bother to follow moral precepts, nor do they strictly adhere to international law and treaties.

Despite several serious attempts towards disarmament, no spectacular achievement has been made in this field. It is impossible to eliminate totalitarianism. World government or world federation is nowhere in sight. Kegley and Wittkopf rightly remarked that much of the idealist program for reform was never tried, and even less of it was ever achieved. Thus, idealists have enriched man’s thoughts, their ideas command respect, but the same cannot be realized or executed in international relations.

Criticism apart, the theory has its importance because no science, at least no social science, can exist without a normative aspect. It was also realized about international politics by writers like Reinhold Niebuhr, Herbert Butterflied, and E.H Carr. The theory offers solutions to many international problems. If they cannot be followed, the fault lies not in theory but in nations and their leaders who are unable or constrained to put them into practice.

Realist Theory:

Unlike the idealist approach, the realist approach regards power politics as the be-all and end-all of international relations of all the approaches, the one that was widely debated by the students and scholars was the power or realist approach. The theory of realism is an old theory in existence even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and revived after World War II.

The credit of being the first noted realist of the twentieth century is usually given to NJ. Spykman, who sometime in the late thirties, insisted in his book, America’s Strategy in World Politics, that the “preservation and improvement of its power position about other states” must be the state’s primary objective.

The contribution of reviving the theory more coherently after the Second World War goes to Hans J. Morgenthau. He is regarded as the most persuasive advocate of this theory in the post-war era. Among the other principal prophets of this worldview were E.H. Carr (1939) from the United Kingdom and those writing in the United States , including Morgenthau (1948), Kenneth W. Thompson (1958, 1960), Reinhold Niebuhr (1947), and George.  Kennan (1954 and 1967) and later Herny A. Kissinger (1957 and 1964). Scholars like Harold Lasswell, Quincy Wright, Martin Wight, George Schwarzenberger, and Raymond. Aron, Stanley Hoffmann, and Arnold Wolfers have either supported or critically analyzed this theory.

Meaning and Explanation:

In international relations, realism does not mean either the Platonic doctrine, which attributes reality to abstract ideas, or the political doctrine of expediency with which Machiavelli is so often associated, or the philosophic doctrine of empiricism given by John Locke . Its meaning revolves around security and power factors. These notions are the outcome of an individual’s belief that others are always trying to destroy him, and hence he must be constantly ready to kill others to protect himself.

The realists assume that rivalry, strife, and the power struggle continue among nations in some form or the other, and it cannot be controlled by international law or government. Therefore, diplomacy and statesmanship’s main job is to check the contest for power, and the means to be adopted for it is a new balance of power. As the power struggle is a permanent phenomenon, realism is indifferent to the relationship between means and ends in international politics.

The realist theory explains international politics in terms of the concept of interest defined in terms of power interest guides the statesman more than anything else. It is useless to try and understand his actions in terms of his motives or his ideology. Ideology is only a cloak for power politics. Politicians think and act only in terms of national interest.

Realists put the moral significance of politics differently. To them, morality means weighing the consequences of political action. They do not believe in ethics, which lays down abstract universal principles, and judge all actions by their conformity with such principles.

Most realists express awareness of other standards of judgment, viz the moral or legal, but argue that both history and experience prove that it has paid only to follow the political standard, namely national interest, moderated by legal and moral considerations. Thus, they give first place to the political standard, that is, judging by political action’s consequences.

Tenets and Assumptions:

Kegley and Wittkopf sum up what many realists want to convey in the form of the following assumptions and tenets :

• A reading of history teaches that humanity is by nature sinful, and wicked.
• O f all of man’s evil ways, no sin is more prevalent or more dangerous than his instinctive lust for power, and his desire to dominate his fellowmen.
• I f this inexorable inevitable human characteristic is acknowledged, realism dismissal the possibility of progress in the sense of ever hoping to eradicate the instinct for power.
• U nder such conditions, international politics is a power struggle, a war of all against all.
• T he primary obligation of every state in this environment, the goal to which all other national objectives should be subordinate, is to promote national self-interest, defined in terms of the acquisition of power.
• N ational self-interest is best served by doing anything necessary to ensure self-preservation.
• T he fundamental characteristic of international politics requires each state to trust no other, but above all, never entrust self-protection to an international organization or international law.
• T he national interest necessitates self-promotion, especially through the acquisition of military capabilities sufficient to deter attacks by potential enemies.
• T he capacity for self-defense might also be augmented by acquiring allies, provided they are not relied upon for protection, and
• I f all states search for power, peace, and stability will result through the operation of a balance of power propelled by self-interest and lubricated by fluid alliance systems.

Political realism seemed relevant in a world where suspicion of others’ motives was the rule and where prospects for peace were not bright. The development of superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and its expansion at the global level in the name of the cold war between East and West blocs, the proliferation of nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the seemingly continuous turmoil around the world all these symptoms testify the realist theory.

To many, the opinion that, in a threatening international environment, foreign policy takes precedence over domestic problems and policies was also relevant. Thus in the post-Second World War period, the picture of the world depicted by the political realists obsessed many scholars’ minds.

Six Principles Of Morgenthau’s Realism:

Morgenthau, in his famous book Politics Among Nations, has developed the Realist theory in the form of six principles of political realism. The same is explained in brief:

1. Objective Laws of Human Nature . Political realism believes that politics is governed by objective laws that have their roots in human nature. The laws by which man moves in the social world are eternal. He cannot get rid of those laws because they are eternal and permanent. Man is a mixture of good and bad, selfishness and altruism, loving and quarrelsome traits, and possessive and sacrificial qualities.

His is the story of the struggle for survival. Human nature has not changed, and this explains the constancy and repetitious nature of political conduct. The complexity of international politics can best be understood only with the help of these objective laws. If one desires to appraise the nature of foreign policy, it can be done only when one examines the statesmen’s activities, who always act in a manner that safeguards their country’s interests.

2. Interest in terms of power, The Concept of interest is defined in terms of power. National interests are the motivating force of a state’s activity in the sphere of international politics. The state meets these interests with the help of power. That is why every nation wants to acquire more and more power.

In this way, international politics is a power struggle. The theory of realism does not bother about what is desirable or immoral. It cares only for the national interests which are desirable under concrete circumstances, time, and place.

In other words, this theory preaches that states should not be led by ideologies, ethics, or motives, as they do not govern the field of international politics. In short, the main function of a state and its state is to protect national interests with the help of power.

3. Interests are dynamic. The meaning attached to interest and power is not static and fixed once and for all. National interests are changed and shaped by the circumstances. If the circumstances make the state a powerful one, its national interests become different from what they had been when the state was weaker. Not only interests are dynamic, but the power position of most countries also varies with time. The content and manner of the use of power are themselves determined by political and cultural Circumstances.

4. Universal mural principles are inapplicable. Realism maintains that universal moral principles cannot be applied to states’ actions in their abstract universal formulations. They must be filtered through the concrete circumstances of time and place.

Prudence is the supreme virtue in politics and political ethics judges actions ultimately by its political consequences. An individual may sacrifice his interests to safeguard the abstract or moral value, but the state cannot and should not sacrifice its interests. On the contrary, the states generally sacrifice abstract or moral laws for the sake of national interest.

5. Moral Aspirations of Nations. Political realism refuses to identify a particular nation’s moral aspirations with the moral laws that govern the nation. This theory considers the nations as actors of international relations that strive to pursue and achieve their national interests with power.

The actions of the states can only be interpreted with this principle. The moral laws that govern the universe do not apply to states. Realism seeks to distinguish between truth and idolatry. Each state is tempted to identify its particular aspirations and actions in terms of universal moral principles.

6. The autonomy of the political sphere. Realism declares the autonomy of the political Sphere. The difference between political realism and other schools of thought is real and profound. A political realist thinks in terms of interest defined as power, whereas an economist thinks about utility, a lawyer in terms of conformity of conduct with legal rules, and a moralist of such conformity with moral principles. He is exclusively concerned about the relevance of a particular policy to national power . Although this theory is aware of other than political thoughts , it regards and puts them subordinate to political science.

Despite its wide acceptability, the realist theory suffers from many weaknesses and limitations. Many scholars on the ground have criticized it that it is an incomplete theory. The content and manner of the use of power are themselves determined by political and cultural Circumstances. Benno Wasserman said that no scientific progress could be made in studying international politics so long as Morgenthau’s realist theory continues to have influence. Robert Tucker criticized Morgenthau’s theory because it is inconsistent both with itself and with reality.

According to Hoffmann, this theory is full of anomalies and ambiguities and ignores the discussion of ends. Sprout objects to Morgenthau’s theory because it neglects the objectives of national policy. Quincy Wright criticizes this theory for not having considered the impact of values on national policy. Aron objects to this theory for having ignored the relationship between ideologies and policies. Thus various arguments against this theory can be  summed up as under:

Not the only motivation. Man is seldom motivated only by power consideration. There are other drives and urges, like the drive for participation and community. Man is not merely a political being interested only in the control of the actions of others. Realism suffers from the same defect as utopianism. If utopianism wrongly assumes that conditions for permanent harmony already exist, realism erroneously assumes power politics’ permanence.

2. Leads to continuous war:

Morgenthau believes that all nations seek power and persistently struggle for it. This generalization would mean that the states should be in a continuous state of war. The peace era is just a deviation from it. To prove his hypotheses, Morgenthau looks into reality, while he should have done just the opposite.

3. The element of  ‘should’ :

When Morgenthau states that all states seek power, he means that all states should seek power. The element of ‘should’ takes Morgenthau’s theory away from realism and near idealism or to a position where it is not a dependable description of either human nature or the reality of international politics. The element should convert this theory into a normative theory. That is why  “Tucker” and Waltz have found it difficult to accept this theory as a realist.

4. Wrong Concept of human nature:

Some difficulties beset Morgenthau’s concept of human nature. First, he takes a very deterministic and pessimistic view of human nature. Second, in a general sense, human nature is responsible for all human actions. Therefore, to say that international behavior comes out of human nature does not mean anything else’s version of human nature is unscientific because science consists of theories or hypotheses whose truth or validity must be established by critical experiments or testing. But this theory is based not on such hypotheses but on what Benno Wasserman calls absolute and unverifiable essentially law.

5. Full of Contradictions:

If this theory is taken seriously, man’s fate will be a perpetual war. Morgenthau contradicts his views when he revives his faith in man’s honesty by saying that there is the possibility of establishing peace through diplomacy. The high hopes he has pinned on diplomacy are unrealistic.

He suggests that the statesman must shape foreign policy based on national interest and the political scene, viewed by Other nations. These are contradictory ideals divorced from the logical relationships between themselves.

Morgenthau believes that able politicians can successfully carry out diplomacy. These able statesmen are rare. They cannot be produced by education or by anything else. Only the will of God can produce some able statesmen in society. Here he becomes somewhat religious, which again is in contradiction with his theory of realism.

6. Objective interest questionable:

The idea of an objective national interest is also debatable. It makes sense only in the earlier periods in which the survival of international politics units is rarely at stake. Units pursue limited ends with limited means. But in the present world, society’s survival is always at stake.

As such, the concept of national interest is of no use in this unstable period because various courses of action can be suggested as a valid choice for survival in such circumstances. The concept of national interest becomes subjective.

Thus in the making of national policies, there is a greater emphasis on subjective elements of survival than objective factors because it is impossible to examine the objective factors.

7. Ignores non-political relations:

Kaplan rightly observed that Morgenthau’s conception of power would hardly exclude any relationship (not even the relationship in families and business) that does not involve power and is not political. But there are certain non-political relationships and activities. Thus international sports events, circulation of books and other leading matters, private letters and telegrams, etc., are not political activities. However, Morgenthau does not suggest any criterion by which political activities may be detached from nonpolitical activities.

8. One-sided theory:

This theory overemphasizes one single factor to power. That is why Hoffmann calls it power monism which does not account for all politics. According to this theory, the world is a static field in which power remains the perpetual goal of every nation for all times and places. International relations change their character from time to time; this theory’s static qualities lead to confusion.

As such, it is quite logical to assume that Morgenthau’s theory can be stated not for all times and places, but instead for different parts of the world and different historical periods. Moreover, after all, power is an instrument, and therefore, it should not be given a key position and sole importance.

9. Politics not autonomous:

Morgenthau reiterates the autonomy of the political sphere. However, he is not clear in his mind about what type of autonomy he has been talking about. The political Sphere cannot be fully autonomous. A man is an economic, religious, moral, and political man at the same time.

All these fields and aspects of life are interrelated. Long ago, Aristotle suggested that the study of politics should integrate all the facets of human nature. Behaviorist in the modern age also believes in an interdisciplinary approach. No single aspect should be overemphasized, and no single discipline can work in isolation.

10. Raise new questions:

According to Kegley and Wittlcopf, this theory raises many more questions than it could answer. For example, were alliances a force for peace or a factor for destabilization?  Was the United Nations merely another stage for the push and show believed to characterize world politics or a tool for reforming national instincts for pure self-advantage?  Did arms contribute to security or encourage costly arms races that ultimately counter the efforts for security? Were the Cold War and the policies that sustained it a blessing or a curse? Did an ideological contest serve or undermine the national interest?

11. locks methodology:

The above questions are empirical ones. They can be answered only through empirical methods. Political realism fails in this respect. Having a distinctive perspective on international affairs but lacking methodology for resolving competing claims, the realist theory lacked criteria for determining which data would count as significant information and which rules would be followed in interpreting the data.

But despite all this criticism, the realist theory is a pioneer in the development of international theory. Morgenthau’s theory is the starting point for providing us with a theoretical orientation to the study of international politics. Morgenthau can be regarded as a great theoretician and a forerunner in international politics in the post-war period.

It is undoubtedly a partial theory of international relations, yet it interpreted the outcome of the Second World War, which had given a serious jolt to the idealist theory. Its importance and relevance lie in the fact that much of the world continues to think about international politics in terms of this viewpoint. Its intellectual contributions cannot be ignored. On the one hand, its deficiencies and limitations and the emergence of new behavioral theories in the sixties made this theory obsolete.

Systems Theory:

The concept of systems is considered useful for both theoretical and practical analysis. Political scientists like David Easton, Gabriel Almond, and Morton Kaplan have developed the Systems Theory or General Systems Theory. Easton and Almond propounded this theory in the sphere of national politics and Kaplan and McClellan in international politics. It includes general system theory and the concept of international Systems, subsystems, and subordinate state systems, past or present.

A prominent scholar of international systems, James Roseau, has suggested that systemic research be pursued not only in terms of local, national, and international systems that is, actors and their relational pattern as a focal point but also in terms of issue areas.

Before its application by political scientists, the Systems Theory was developed in biology, physics, anthropology, sociology, and ecological studies. Later on, it was applied to behavioral and social sciences. It is a significant development of the behavioral sciences today.

The general conception of an international system and international systems also became a part of many international relations studies, especially undertaken by Morton Kaplan, Karl Deutsch, Raymond Aron, and McClellan.

Assumptions:

The theory assumes the existence of an international system at the global level. Aron explains, that there has never been an international system including the whole of the planet, but the postwar period, when for the first time humanity is living the same history, has witnessed the emergence of a kind of global system.

But at the same time, it must be admitted that such a system suffers from great heterogeneity and is perhaps too loose to be properly designated as a system. An international system, in the words of Hoffmann, is a pattern of relations between the basic units of world politics, which is characterized by the scope of the objectives pursued by these units and of the tasks performed among them, as well as by the means used to achieve those goals and perform those tasks.

Actors on the international scene, according to Kaplan, are of two types, National actors or supranational actors. National actors are the nation-states like the Soviet Union, the USA, India, etc. The supranational actors are such international actors as the NATO, Warsaw Pact, the UNO, etc.

This theory also assumes that a theory of international politics normally cannot predict individual actions because the interaction problem is too complex and has too many free variables. However, it can be expected to predict characteristics or model behavior within a particular kind of international system. Thus, this theory analyses international behavior from an empirical investigation of political facts, classified and arranged inappropriate categories.

Kaplan’s Six Models:

Morten Kaplan is the main propounder of the system theory; he has the most comprehensive and successful characterization of international politics in the frame of reference for system analysis. According to him, the international system can be divided into six models based on functions and stability.

Kaplan defines a system of action as a set of variables so related in contradistinction to its environment that desirable behavioral regularities characterize the internal relationship of the variables to each other and the external relationship of the set of individual variables to combinations of external variables. All models of Kaplan are based on this definition of a system of action. His six models are :

• The balance of power system,
• The loose bipolar system,
• The tight bipolar system,
• The universal system,
• The hierarchical system in its directive and nondirective forms, and
• The unit veto system.

Each system has separate rules and principles of operation. These models serve as a useful framework for the classification and analysis of regularities of states’ international behavior patterns at proper levels to formulate a coherent body of timeless propositions.

In a situation where too many actors influence international relations, it becomes difficult to strike a perfect balance of power position, and a loose bipolar system develops. The universal international system grows when the universal actor, like the UN, takes over many of the functions of powerful units in a loose bipolar system.

In such a system, the universal actor becomes powerful enough to prevent a war among nations, but national actors retain their individuality. In the hierarchical international system, the universal actor becomes too powerful, and the international community becomes a sort of world state.

The unit veto system develops as a result of weapons development. When too many national states develop a highly destructive capacity, they create a system of one-level actors, each of whom possesses a veto power by his devastating capability.

In a loose bipolar system, a few nations possess such destructive weapons. In a tight bipolar system, only two nations possess such destructive weapons and immense economic power. The non-aligned nations become irrelevant in this condition.

A system has an identity over time. Its description can be given in its successive states. The state of a system designates a description of the variables of a system. Proper examination of all variables will ensure the formulation of predictable laws of the particular system. Moreover, systems may operate under larger systems, or they may also have their subsystems.

Haas has described twenty international subsystems, ten in Europe (divided chronologically from 1649 to 1963), six in Asia (covering the years 1689 to 1964), and five in Hawaii (between 1738 and 1898). Rosencrance has given a complete volume on nine European subsystems, over the period 1740 to 1960, in one of the well-known international systems studies. Brecher has looked at Southern Asia as a  subordinate state system, and Binder has taken a similar approach to the Middle East as a subordinate international system.

Many authors have severely criticized Kaplan’s system theory. His typology of international relations into six systems has been arbitrary, and one can minimize or maximize such categories in another analytical framework. Out of his six models, only the first two were in actual Operation.

The balance of power existed mostly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the loose bipolar system became workable in the late fifties and sixties of this century. Now again, there is a multi-polar world. The other four systems never worked at any time in history. He simply predicts the future possibility, which is the toughest task in a theoretical analysis. Thus this theory is inoperative and impracticable.

According to Kaplan, the loose bipolar system was converted into a tight bipolar system in which there would be no non-aligned nations. In previous decades, we witnessed that non-aligned nations became more and more stable when many new nations started following non-aligned policies. There is no possibility of transforming a loose bipolar system into a tight bipolar system in the foreseeable future.

It is an inadequate theory as it ignores many concepts necessary for the completeness of the system theory. Kaplan never explained the forces and factors that determine the behavior of states.

Hoffmann criticizes it as a huge misstep in the right direction in the direction of systematic empirical analysis. He observes that this theory endeavors to make universal scientific laws of international political behavior at the expense of our understanding of the field of political science. What one can aspire to utmost in this discipline is a statement of trends. Too much discussion on methodology and building of models are activities in futility.

The systems theory does not predict what will happen, but it only forecasts what will happen if certain conditions develop, which rarely, if ever, develop exactly as envisaged. The hypotheses cannot be tested correctly based on empirical observation.

Therefore, the models appear to be too far away from reality to be testable. They are based on postulates about the variable’s behavior, which are either too arbitrary or too general. The choice here is between perversion and platitude. Besides, this theory neglects the domestic determinants of the national actors, and Kaplan’s model ignores the forces of change operating within or across the actors.

Despite severe criticism, Kaplan will always be remembered for his contribution to international relations in a highly systematic and comprehensive theory. Through a fairly comprehensive explanation of historical illustrations, Kaplan believes that this perspective will provide a useful guide to developing a general international theory.

Decision-Making Theory:

This theory was developed especially in the sphere of foreign policymaking. It concentrates on the persons who shape international events rather than on the international situation as such. The makers of foreign policies are examined, and national policies and international situations are viewed from this perspective. This theory was initiated in 1954 by Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin. It examines international politics through the analysis of the complex determinants of state behavior.

The decision-making approach emphasizes the question of how and why a nation acts in international politics. As the state of knowledge about international politics is not perfect, decision-making as a focus is wise. A good way to study is where decisions are made because much of international politics revolves there.

The best way to understand international politics lies in knowing the processes by which the official decision-maker makes his final choice of a policy out of a series of alternatives. It seeks to identify some of the important variables psychological (individual) and sociological group or organizational that determine national responses to concrete situations. It synthesizes insights and conceptual guides from sociology and social psychology.

Decision-making is a process that results in the selection of a socially defined, limited number of problematical, alternative projects of one project to bring about the particular future State of affairs envisaged by the decision-makers. It results in certain actions and a sequence of activities. The final choice involves valuation and evaluation in terms of a frame of reference. Priorities are given to alternative projects. The action of decision-makers can be described in terms of three basic determinants sphere Competence, communication and information, and motivation.

The foreign policy is examined, and the following factors are studied:

• Purpose of the Foreign Policy
• Decision-makers
• Principles of decision making
• Process of decision-making and policy planning
• Means of decision-making and policy planning
• Internal situations of the state, and
• External factors.

This approach assumes that activities are more or less explicitly motivated and that behavior is not random. It is based on the assumption that the analysis of international politics should be centered, in part, on the behavior of those where the action is the action of the state viz the decision-makers. It conceives state action resulting from the way the identifiable official decision-makers define the situation of action. It seeks to determine why a decision is made at all and why a particular decision is made rather than some other.

It considers all the elements and factors that enter into the consideration of a decision-maker, such as the internal setting, external setting, and the decision-making process. This official decision-maker takes action in the name of the state. Therefore, his definition of the situation, his expectations, perception, personality, final choice, and the various agencies and processes involved in decision-making.

This approach, too, has many deficiencies.

First, Hoffmann is doubtful if politics is over really made of conscious movers and choices that can be examined in neat categories. Yet, it is the chief assumption of this theory.

Second, it neglects all those things that are not more in addition to separate decisions made by various units. It is correct for foreign policy analysis, but it is too weak for the rest of International Relations.

Third, this theory gives only post hoc explanations and historical reconstruction of particular decisions. Its conceptual elements fail to make predictions of future foreign policymaking. It has been proved useful only in analyzing past major decisions and not developing a general international theory.

But exponents of this theory like Snyder hope that the analysis of past occurrences will be the stepping stone towards building a predictive theory.

Fourth, this theory is based on the principle of indetermination and fails to suggest which one of the numerous elements that go into the many sides of the box is relevant.

Fifth, the theory goes ahead with a value-free approach since it merely endeavors to analyze the various decisions taken in foreign affairs without caring as to which decisions are right and which are wrong.

Sixth, whatever the circumstances, the focus of decision-making is often obscure as the man in authority

may delegate most of his foreign policy powers to a subordinate or, especially in a weak government, a subordinate may actively take the initiative, a line of action that may be legitimized by the legal authority.

Seventh, causes may sometimes dominate, and man may be compelled to make a certain decision because otherwise, he would face personal risks he dare not take.

In the end, it can be said that this theory has contributed a great deal to the understanding of the process of foreign policymaking, which all other theories have ignored. This theory successfully analyses the deeper roots of states’ behavior patterns; in fact, it greatly improves the institutional approach. Instead of simply describing the interaction of states, it explains diverse patterns of interaction.

Marxian Theory:

Though Karl Marx has written extensively throughout his life and produced numerous works that recognized Turner as a great philosopher and theorist of modern tunes, he did not put forward any international relations theory as Morgenthau, Kaplan, Snyder, etc.,  did. Thus he is not a theorist of international relations in the sense Morgenthau, Kaplan, Snyder, etc.; there is mention in his various works, here and there of wars between states, proletarian internationalism, world change, world revolution, etc., His utterances about world politics and struggles between states lie scattered m his different works, and hence there is no basic text or treatise on international relations by Marx.

However, later on, his followers like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and many other scholars and leaders endeavored to update his views according to changing world scenarios and explained the phenomenon of international relations with the help of Marx’s principles. For example, through his Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin attempted to present a coherent theory of international politics. Scattered views of Marx on international politics and subsequent attempts by his followers towards theorization have been classified as Marxian or Marxist theory of international relations. Despite the constraint mentioned above in subsequent paragraphs, this theory is being explained.

Basic Assumptions and Tenets:

These can be described in brief as follows :

1. Economic factors play a decisive role in international relations. They have been the root cause of many struggles and wars at the international level in the past.

2. Class instead of Nation-states is the basic unit in international relations. First of all, the national interest is the interest of the master class, which changes with the rise and fall of classes.

3. Capitalism culminates into imperialism. That divides the world into imperial powers and colonies in haves and have-nots

4. Wars break out when capitalist nations clash with each other to build their colonies in different parts of the world to serve as markets for their product.

5. Proletariat or working classes do not belong to any other particular nation. They unite at the global level to fight out exploitation. Proletariat internationalism would lead to a world revolution.

6. With the passage of time, imperialism, which is the highest stage of capitalism, the world suffers from three contradictions. First, there would be contradictions and conflicts among capitalists for occupying more and more colonies resulting in world wars. Second, class conflict between capitalists and workers. Working-class would demand more rights and facilities. Third, the struggle between imperialists and the people of the colonies. Colonial people fight for their independence. These three contradictions would lead the world to the brink of revolution, causing imperialism to collapse.

7. The goal is not a balance of power or equilibrium but international disequilibrium to change the world to establish world socialism.

8. Lasting peace can only be established after a world revolution. With the world revolution, imperialism would collapse, and there would be no classes and no states. In such a classless and stateless society, there will be no irritant left for struggles and wars. Such a society will be an ideal world.

9. It may take a long time for the world revolution to be successful globally. In the meantime, the principles of national self-determination and peaceful coexistence will continue to occupy an important place.

Four Seminal Theories:

Arum Bose firmly believes that there is a Marxian analytical framework for analyzing international political conflicts, which serves as a guide to action to work out Marxist strategies. According to him, this framework comprises four seminal theories about international politics in the modern era, which con into ideas that overlap to some extent and may be regarded as offshoots of the primal theory of proletarian internationalism. The four Marxian theories described by Bose are as follows.

Proletarian Internationalism:

Lenin coined this term in his Preliminary Theses on the national and colonial questions, submitted to the Communist International in 1920. However, the basic ideas were formulated by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the Communist Manifesto and adopted by the First International in 1847. These ideas are :

• The world proletariat has a common interest, independent of all nationalities.
• Working men have no country since each country’s proletariat must first acquire political supremacy and must first constitute itself the nation; it is itself national.
• United action (by the proletariat) is one of the first conditions for the proletariat’s emancipation.
• In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will come to an end.

Anti-imperialism.

According to Lenin, imperialism is the final stage of capitalism. This famous dictum became the basis of his critique of capitalist imperialism as a world system, his prediction of a successful October Revolution, his reformulation and amplification of the Marxian theory of national self-determination, and the Marxian theory of proletarian internationalism. In Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin defined imperialism as the monopoly stage of capitalism and listed its five basic features:

• The concentration of production and capital develops to such a high stage that it creates monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.
• Bank capital merges with industrial capital, which results in the creation of the financial oligarchy’s financial capital.
• The export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance,
•   The resulting formation of the international monopolistic capitalist, associations share the world among themselves, and
• As the final culminating point, the whole world’s territorial division among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.

The main ideas of the anti-imperialism theory are:

(i) Capital has become international and monopolistic, but

(ii) Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism, hence

(iii) The proletarian socialist revolution is possible first not only in several countries of Europe, or at least the civilized countries, as visualized in a somewhat Eurocentric vision of the proletarian revolution in the Communist Manifesto but even in one capitalist country, taken singly, which

(iv) would form the nucleus, the base, the hegemony, of the world socialist revolution, attracting to its cause the oppressed Classes of other countries, raising revolts against capitalism, and engaging in the event of necessity in internationalist defensive and offensive wars against exploiting classes and states in other countries. In re-examining the theory of proletarian internationalism in the context of imperialism of his times, Lenin thus made major new departures in the Marxian understanding of the nature of the national and colonial questions.

National self declination:

The Communist Manifesto stresses a specific Marxian “class” approach to the national question, according to which classes that attain political supremacy constitute the nation. In each country, the working class must acquire political supremacy (later defined by Lenin as the proletariat’s dictatorship) and must constitute itself the nation. Thus the goal of national self-determination was to be realized through proletarian self-determination within each nation.

This basic tenet of the Marxian theory on the national question makes the Marxian understanding fundamentally different from any non-Marxian theory on the national question. Taking a hint from rethinking by Marx, especially on the Irish demand for separation from the UK, which Marx had at first opposed), and based on his analysis of the new, imperialist stage of capitalism , Lenin arrived at an assessment of the arousing of national antagonism instead of their subduing as visualized in the Communist Manifesto, in the days of imperialism and the world socialist revolution in this extension of the Marxian theory on the national question which was now explicitly and emphatically linked with the colonial question Lenin made three mortifications, viz.

(i). A distinction was made between the Oppressed nations and the Oppressor nations,

(ii). The oppressed nations were identified as the victims of imperialism as national revolutionary reserves or allies of the world socialist revolution’s proletariat.

(iii). The recognition of the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination was now explicitly interpreted to mean not only the right of the oppressed nations to secede freely but the desirability of secession to remove “distrust” and prejudices among the oppressed nations.

However, all three modifications were still within the framework of the overall programmatic aim of the United States of the world and not of Europe alone as the state form of national federation and national freedom which is associated with socialism until the complete victory of Communism brings about the total disappearance of the state in later developments, the Soviet voluntary confederation, first of the USSR, and then (by implication) of the Warsaw Pact powers seems to have served as means of transition to the socialist voluntary confederalism of the future.

Bose observes that all this means that although the assessment of the declining importance of the national factor was demeaned, Lenin’s theory of imperialism and the national and colonial question amplified rather than contradicted the Marxian theory of proletarian internationalism.

Peaceful Coexistence of States:

As Marxian theory reiterated by Lenin during the First World War, capitalism means war. The socialist states’ task is to raise revolts against capitalism; it is not evident how a theory of peaceful coexistence of states coincides with the Marxian theory of proletarian internationalism. But once this theory was enlarged by a theory of anti-imperialism, inter-imperialist contradictions, and the uneven development of imperialism, propositions about the chances of peaceful coexistence of socialist and capitalist states had to be sorted out. The law of uneven development of imperialism meant:

(i). The proletarian socialist revolution could be victorious first in several countries, or even in one country

(iii). It had to survive capitalist encirclement by relying on inter-imperialist contradictions over and above its internal and external support from the world proletariat and its “reserves,” and

(iii). T he best method to accomplish this was to try to work out relations of “peaceful eta existence” between socialist states and at least some if not all the capitalist states. On the other hand, the Marxian theory of national self-determination had as corollaries

(IV). The possibility of peaceful co-existence of peoples, national freedom and equality within a voluntary union of socialist states, and

(ii). The possibility of peaceful co-existence between the socialist states and the liberated national, sovereign states of the “oppressed nations” after they secede from the imperialist states of the “oppressor nations,” whether or not they become socialist in the process of their national liberation, or even if their political independence is a mere cover for economic-financial and military dependency upon the imperialist states.

Four Model Strategies:

Arun Bose integrates the above seminal Marxian theories in different ways to work out Marxist strategies in international politics, represented by modern communist states’ foreign policies. These four distinct “model” strategies seem to represent the basic, logical thrust behind the foreign policy experiments adopted by modern Communist states. These strategies are :

• “Transnational” or “cosmopolitan.”
• The “non-aligned”,
• “The Soviet-centric” and
•   The “Sino-centric.”

The last two strategies are geared to the notions that the ”genuine,” “reliable” nucleus or base, or ”protector” of the world socialist revolution is the Soviet Union or Communist China, respectively. The other two “model strategies,” carry no such ”country” labels.

The “transnational” or ” cosmopolitan” model strategy rejects the idea of “socialism in one country.” It leaves no scope for idealizing the role of socialism in any one country or group of countries as the base of the world revolution.

The non-aligned model strategy is also strictly “poly-eccentric,” insisting that each country’s socialism is fighting for socialism only in one’s own country. For want of space, these strategies are not discussed in detail, nor is it necessary either.

Marxian theory of international relations can be denounced as unscientific impracticable unscientific inconsistent, and utopian. Its shortcomings can be described in brief as follows:

i. All four seminal theories presented by Arun Bose remained in an embryonic state. The propositions or these theories could not Find any further development theoretically or realize practically all these years. Therein lies the failure of these theories.

2 . The main theory of proletariat internationalism proved wrong as the proletariat of different states thought about their nationality and national interests. During different wars and struggles, working men worked for the victory of their own country, setting at naught Marxian dictum that working men have no country. It seems that the proletariat of the world has ignored Marx’s call for “united action” at the global level for their emancipation.

3. Lenin’s theory of imperialism is historically wrong because historical facts contradict Lenin’s famous saying: “Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism” Imperialism existed even before the advent of capitalism, e.g., Roman and Greek empires in the ancient period.

4. According to the tie theory of imperialism, every capitalist country must grow into an imperialist country. However, in reality, many capitalist countries e. g. Switzerland. Canada, Australia, etc., did not indulge in empire-building.

5. Economic factors are not the exclusive factors accounting for imperialism and wars. Empires were built, and wars were taught for several other non-economic reasons such as religious, cultural, political, military, personal ambitions of rulers, etc.

6. Nation-states remained the basic unit of international relations analysis despite Marxists’ insistence on the class as its basic unit.

7. Imperialism collapsed after the Second World War but not capitalism as predicted by Marxist theory. Contrarily, in many countries, capitalism gained strength after that. Moreover, after decolonization, imperialism again raised its ugly head under the garb of nee colonialism, economic imperialism, and Red imperialism. In other words, old and overt imperialism re-emerged covertly.

8. With the failure of proletariat internationalism world revolution became a far cry. It has been relegated to the realm of impossibility.

9. Marxian theory of national self-determination is also fraught with contradictions. It could not be practiced even by socialist countries themselves. For example, the Soviet Union’s hold over East European countries for many decades and the unwilling Republics and nationalities within the Soviet Union made this a futile theory.

10. Peaceful coexistence at times proved successful and, at other times, futile. The long Sino-Soviet and Soviet-American rivalry belied this theory.

11. Marxian theory also suffers from subjectivity and inconsistency. Later on, Marx was propounded and revised and revised by Lenin, whose theories were, in turn, reformed by Stalin. After Stalin, a process of DE-stabilization took over. Later on, Gorbachev restructured everything that his predecessors built assiduously. The same thing happened in China after Mao. Tito, Castro, and Ho Chi-Minh have also interpreted Marxian theory about the situation in their countries.

Notwithstanding the above criticism, the theory is adored by Marxists in Bose’s words; this theory is, first, an action guide based on the dictum that a man discovers the truth in action. Consequently, all Marxian analysis of international relations is meant to change international relations since the basic purpose is not merely to interpret what exists but to change the world.

Such analyses lead to predictions and strategies about the future, which have been tested or are yet to be tested by intent. However, it is agreed by many a scholar that this theory has failed to serve as an objective guide to action; it has failed to change the world and make valid predictions.

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The debates of methodology and methods: reflections on the development of the study of international relations

Review of Economics and Political Science

ISSN : 2631-3561

Article publication date: 12 May 2021

This paper aims to explore the interplay between methods and methodologies in the field of international relations (IR) over the 100 years of its lifetime reflecting on the relationship between the rise of new research methods and the rise of new methodologies.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper looks in retrospect into the field’s great debates using a historiography approach. It maps chronologically the interplay of methods and methodology throughout the stages of the development of the study of IR.

This paper argues that inspite of narratives of triumph being common in the field, the coexistence of competing research methods and methodologies is the defining feature of the field. All theories, all methods and all methodologies have undergone a process of criticism, self-criticism and change. New methodologies have not necessarily accompanied the rise of new research methods in the field.

Originality/value

Drawing a map of the field’s methodologies and methods reveals necessarily its dynamism and its plurality. An honest map of the field is one that highlights not only theoretical differences but also ontological, epistemological and methodological differences embedded in the field’s debates.

• Research methods
• Methodology
• Historiography
• Post-positivism

Abou Samra, A. (2021), "The debates of methodology and methods: reflections on the development of the study of international relations", Review of Economics and Political Science , Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/REPS-06-2020-0063

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Amira Abou Samra.

Published in Review of Economics and Political Science . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence maybe seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

International relations (IR) theorists, especially since the second half of the 20th century, had been inclined to consider concerns over ontology, epistemology and methodology to fall outside the scope of their interest, to be of concern to the field of philosophy ( Hay, 2006 ). Today, however, as IR theory is witnessing its “fourth debate,” quite frequently described as a “metatheoretical debate,” these concerns are no longer dismissible. There is a growing awareness that discussions over methodology have been marginalized in favour of discussions over theories and that this is something that needs to be remedied ( Chernoff, 2007 , p. 2).

This paper argues that learning about the theoretical assumptions, without paying due attention to methodological and methodical aspects behind them, leaves researchers halfway through, either blinded to the plethora of possible alternative ways available to deal with political reality or rather totally unequipped to deal with it. Whilst highlighting the methodological and methodical debates that have been going on in the field, this paper argues that telling the history of the relationship between research methods and methodology is an important alternative way of telling the story of the field debates, leading to the appreciation of deeper differences and similarities between its paradigms and theories and to the answering of important questions about methodological plurality in the field, the meaning of science and future concerns for the study of IR.

Hence, the paper is not concerned with the great debates of the field as such, but rather interested in drawing a historiographical map of field debates in a way that specifically addresses the interplay between methodology and methods, seeking, thereby, to answer a number of questions: If it is common to highlight changes in the research methods of the field by referring to two basic tracks, the traditionalist-behaviouralist-post-behaviouralist track and the positivist, post-positivist track ( Mostafa, 2016 , pp. 57–70; Mosafa, 2010 , pp. 840–846), where do methodologies diverge and converge in these two tracks? What is the relationship between the emergence of new research methods and the emergence of new methodologies in IR? How does literature in the late 1980s exploring a methodological turn in IR ( Little, 1991 , pp. 463–478) differ from literature in 2017 lamenting over an overdue methodological turn ( Kanfo, 2017 )? Do new research methods and new methodologies coexist with old ones? Do they necessarily compete? If methodology is the process of establishing scientific inquiry ( Kaplan, 1964 , pp. 22–24), what impact does the existence of multiple methodologies have on the meaning of science?

For conceptual clarity, methodology and research methods fit into a matrix of interconnected and interrelated concepts as broad as epistemology, ontology, methodology and theory. In philosophical traditions, “ontology” corresponds to the study of being or existence, where the answers to major questions about the relationship between human beings, the universe and nature are reflected upon. The ontology generates a specific view of knowledge, that is, the epistemology. Epistemology answers questions such as: What can we know and what are the sources of knowledge? What is the purpose of knowledge? Is “certain” knowledge ever achievable? Is the development of knowledge and science progressive in nature so that newer theories necessarily carry more knowledge than older ones? The epistemology provides the background foundation for all theorization. Directly derivable from the epistemology are both the ontology of the field and its methodology ( Abul-Fadl, 1994 ; Krauss, 2005 ).

It is important to distinguish between the philosophical understanding of ontology, where ontology as a theory of existence serves as a driver of epistemology, a theory of knowledge and methodology as a process of producing science on the one hand, and between ontology in the understanding of the field of IR, where the word “ontology,” though borrowed from philosophy, stands for the content of political reality in the field, e.g. “identities, individuals, social collectivities, states, regimes, systems, or some combination of the above.” ( Hay, 2006 ). Ontology in social sciences answers also the question of “what is reality,” hence, whether reality has a solid and an independent existence from researchers or whether reality is just “fluid and constructed the result of human perception and claims about it” ( Lacatus et al. , 2015 ).

Methodology is defined by Abraham Kaplan (1964 , pp. 22–24) as “the logic of scientific research”; the process by which science is produced. Kaplan’s definition of methodology is broader, even more neutral, than definitions that, later on, directly link methodology to empiricism, whereby empiricism is a methodology used to “form theoretical claims and to test their empirical implications.” In such a narrow definition of methodology only what is empirically testable, hypotheses that can lend themselves to falsification by being subjected to a test of reality, is science ( Sprinz and Wolinsky-Nahmias, 2004 , p. 4). This definition of methodology is inseparable from a definition of theory that regards theory as a set of assumptions to be tested against reality for accuracy, validity and quality ( Sprinz and Wolinsky-Nahmias, 2004 , p. 4).

In its broad definition, however, methodology refers to a process that produces science. Even if that science is not testable against reality; for so many reasons, amongst which might be the belief that there is no neutral or independent existence of reality that it can be tested against to begin with, as will be furtherly explained throughout the paper.

Ultimately, what one considers as “science” and what one accepts as “theory” are products of what one believes in, epistemologically, ontologically and, by consequence, methodologically.

Methodology produces theories that end up producing or making use of approaches or research methods which answer the question: What are the specific steps that the researcher must follow to get to answer his research question?

This paper is divided into two main parts looking in retrospect into the debates of the field, chronologically mapping the interplay of methods and methodology through the stages of the development of the study of IR. The first part, divided into three sections, tells the story of the development of the study of IR over a time span of around 60 years until the end of the 1970s or mid-1980s which mark the beginning of the “relative” demise of the behaviouralist “hegemony” over the field.

The second part of the paper, divided into three sections, covers the period starting from the relative “demise of the empiricist positivist promise for a cumulative positivist science” in the late-1970s and mid-1980s until our present time ( Little, 1991 , p. 463), asking whether the past four decades have brought along some methodological turn in IR or simply a shift in research methods and techniques.

Part I: traditionalism-behaviouralism-post-behaviouralism

Traditionalism vs. behaviouralism: from the science of advice to the science of grand theories.

The positivist enlightenment project though produced in Europe, flourished and boomed in the USA. Positivism was and still is a dominant feature of the American understanding of social reality ( Smith, 2000 , p. 375). Behaviouralism as a positivist methodological approach to the study of political science had its origins in the USA in the 1920s and 1930s and has been usually associated with the University of Chicago and the works of Charles Merriam ( Grigsby, 2011 , p. 15). Behaviouralism was influenced by behaviourism ( Hafner-Burton et al. , 2017 , pp. S1–S3), a school of psychology reflecting positivism, a “belief in the infinite possibilities of science” and “in the powers of the human mind,” where logic and reason constitute the only source of all certain knowledge ( Herakovic, 1983 , p. 10). In behaviourism, human behaviour can be simplified to the extent that it can be measured in the here and now without any reference to past experiences or inner motives ( Herakovic, 1983 , pp. 70–82). Human behaviour can be observed, monitored and interpreted based on its external features ( Hamati-Ataya, 2012 , pp. 3–4). Behaviourist assumptions were influenced by the “stimulus and response idiom”, and were, hence, advocating that living organisms – be they animals or human beings – interact with all forms of external stimuli in a manner that seems to be quite uniform. Behaviouralism was furtherly influenced by the behaviourist belief that “the same laws that governed the physical world could be applied to human nature,” hence came the appreciation for controlled laboratory experiments and empiricism, where the senses are the main sources of knowledge. Although behaviouralism later on distinguished itself from behaviourism ( Hamati-Ataya, 2012 , pp. 3–4), behaviourism’s impact on social sciences in general and political science in particular could not be mistaken. Behaviourism had already been influential in other social sciences since the past decades of the 19th century ( Davis, 1965 ; Smith, 1989 ). There, “tough minded empiricism overthrew the hegemony of the moral philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” and carried along an “epistemic transformation” to social sciences ( Davis, 1965 ; Smith, 1989 ) replacing “absolute sources of truth” with the “boundless belief in the powers of the human mind” ( Herakovic, 1983 , p. 10). This is why the behaviouralist turn in IR was not just a methodological turn, but rather mainly an epistemic turn.

In the field of IR, behaviouralists in the 1950s were propagating to be the missionaries of a “scientific revolution,” endorsing the following set of basic assumptions:

First, IR as an independent social science: Behaviouralism advocates the ability of IR to exist as an independent social science. That advocation stands in deep contrast to a traditional perception of IR as a common/joint research area shared by many fields and sciences – such as philosophy, law, economics and even political science ( Finnegan, 1972 , p. 40). Interestingly, behaviouralism borrowed approaches from other fields such as mathematics, physics, biology, economics, sociology and psychology, hence not only from natural sciences but also form social sciences that were already witnessing a behaviourist turn, fields that traditionalism did not consider as relevant to political science though ( Hamati-Ataya, 2012 , p. 5).

Second, the unity of scientific knowledge: behaviouralists considered IR (as a social science) to be quite similar to the natural sciences, where description, measurement, observation and quantitative, mathematical and statistical tools were essential research tools. Traditionalists rather considered IR to be closer to humanities, closer to literature and philosophy, where analysis and contemplation were key to understanding international reality.

Third, science is value-free: In contrast to the traditional perception in which values are inseparable from science and where, therefore, history, political theory and law are indispensable to the understanding of the international phenomenon ( Chernoff, 2007 , p. 2); behaviouralism promoted the possibility of establishing an objective, value-free science in which researchers play a completely neutral role. The reproducibility of knowledge is a key behaviouralist assumption; just by following the same steps, researchers anywhere can get almost the same results ( El-Hayagna, 2001 , p. 111).

Fourth, the possibility of producing major and general theories in IR: A good theory in traditionalism is to be tested against history, political theory and law ( Chernoff, 2007 , p. 2). Behaviouralism claims a good theory is a simple theory that depicts as “less complex causal mechanisms” as possible. Hence, it relies on measurable variables for explaining, even predicting phenomena under study ( El-Hayagna, 2001 , pp. 83–89).

The behaviouralist-traditionalist divide is much more than a divide over research methods; it is a divide over the appropriate methodology for producing “science,” with some clear epistemological and ontological aspects of divergence that will be furtherly discussed in the following section.

Rise of behaviouralism: a journey not void of criticism

Traditional approaches to thinking about political reality were quite prevalent in political science in the early 20th century ( Druckman et al. , 2006 , p. 627).

The early beginnings of the field in the aftermath of the First World War seemed strongly influenced by the ideas of idealists. The likes of the idealist Wilson were driven by a desire to “guide the conduct of states in their IR (towards a more peaceful world), rather than focusing on the actual behaviour of states” ( Hellman, 2011 , p. 18). This explains why the study of IR from an idealist perspective was guided by an interest in political philosophy, international law and diplomacy, the approaches quite familiar to traditionalism ( Hellman, 2011 , p. 18).

Behaviourialism in the field of IR had many critics along the process of its relative rise – Hedley Bull and Stanley Hoffman just to name a few ( Hamati-Ataya, 2012 , p. 17).

Some criticized the fact that behaviouralist studies overlooked cultural diversity and ignored the richness of human experience ( Dyer and Mangasarian, 1989 , p. XVII).

Some criticized behaviouralist claims about the existence of value-neutral science, especially given the growing tendency to equate “observation” with “quantification.” Although behaviourialism did not completely displace values from scientific research, it limited its study to the empirical manifestations of values. An interest for values in a normative sense was relegated to the realm of political philosophy ( Hamati-Ataya, 2012 , pp. 7–10).

Growingly, some warned against the dangers of being “attached to spurious statistical and mathematical correlations” drawing, therewith, the attention to the importance of “testing sophisticated statistical methods” for “real correlations, questioning the significance of these correlations in the absence of human judgement to evaluate them” ( Forward, 1971 , pp. 18–20).

Strikingly, some behaviouralists seemed to struggle with their own behaviouralism. They complained about the lack of data and the confidentiality of many aspects of relations between states. They struggled with the large number of variables affecting IR and with the absence of a clear classification for them. They even complained about cultural and social differences they encountered whilst studying states, a discovery that seemed to impede their pursuit of general laws ( Davis, 1965 , pp. 15–16).

Obviously behaviouralism was not walking its way of empirical political analysis in the absence of research difficulties or amidst general satisfaction. Behaviourialists – in a way maybe comparable to post-positivists today – complained even about their inability to communicate easily with decision-making circles and to influence them ( Forward, 1971 , p. 20).

But the criticisms of behaviouralism – from Europe mainly and sometimes from within the USA itself – did not prevent the spread of behaviouralism, even in Europe ( Hamati-Ataya, 2012 , pp. 6–7).

Although behaviouralism – as previously mentioned – was mainly a product of an American social and political context ( Hamati-Ataya, 2012 , p. 2) and was originally loaded with epistemological, ontological and methodological claims driven from the particularity of positivist enlightenment ( Herakovic, 1983 , p. 10), the traditional-behaviouralist debate – most probably under the influence of the behaviouralist disinterest in philosophy – was usually presented as a debate over appropriate research methods, rather than a debate over the appropriate scientific methodology or the philosophy of science itself. The debate ignored the questions of what constitutes science and whether social sciences have a distinct nature from natural sciences, questions that remained vibrant in the field of philosophy at that time ( Little, 1991 , p. 468).

Looking in retrospect, however, it makes a lot of sense to talk about behaviouralist methodology, not only behaviouralist methods, although the advocation that behaviouralism is charged with epistemological, ontological and methodological content was not that common during the rounds of traditional-behaviouralist debate.

According to Richard Little (1991) , the methodological difference between traditionalists and behaviouralists – though existing since the very beginning – remained unexplored in the field of IR at least until Kenneth Waltz introduced his neo-realist theory in the 1970s ( Little, 1991 , p. 446). The following section explains this statement. The section revolves around the relationship between behaviouralism and realism on the one hand and behaviouralism and neo-realism on the other hand and how the emergence of neo-realism influenced the methodological and methodic debate taking place in the field of IR.

Behaviouralism and realism: the joint journey

With the end of the Second World War, the field became more receptive to realist assumptions. To realism, some attribute the credit for shifting the study of IR from the “science of international values and ethics” – that many have lost their faith in as a result of the Second World War experience – to the “science of studying power and interest” ( Badran, 2000 , pp. 71–72). This obviously was not only implying an ontological shift, moving away from the study of what ought to be to the study of what really is. It was implying an epistemological shift from transcendental meanings of right and wrong, good and bad to a man-centred definition of interests and morality. Many of the realists advocated the need for a general explanatory theory of IR ( Forward, 1971 ; Davis, 1965 ; Hamati-Ataya, 2012 ). Behaviouralism, therefore, was highly compatible with the realist needs, the former allowed for “the pursuance of Realism’s scientific aspirations with the emerging methods and techniques of the age” ( Hamati-Ataya, 2012 , p. 12). The realist-behaviouralist partnership set the stage for their mutual rise within the field.

Maybe the relative rise of behaviouralism can be explained by the field’s longing for a more predictable international environment that is subjectable to accounts of reason and logic to encounter a dangerous Cold War international environment ( Forward, 1971 , p. 20) or just a by-product of the American victory in the Second World War; just a triumph of the knowledge preferences of the more powerful; saying nothing about the quality or worth of behaviouralism per se . Anyway, many consider the period after the Second World War to be the period of the “second and serious foundation of the discipline” dedicated to the reconstruction of a US-led world order ( Ekkehart Krippendorff, 1987 , p. 57). So, and regardless of possible explanations for that, the behaviouralist empirical studies presented themselves from the 1950s onward as the only possessors of a “scientific methodology” in IR ( Chernoff, 2007 , pp. 79–130). Studies sometimes even still refer to behaviouralism as the “scientific approach” to the study of IR, a label that might misleadingly suggest to the unexperienced reader that only behaviouralism is capable of producing “scientific” knowledge in the field.

Under the behaviouralist-realist collaboration, many research methods/approaches were introduced to the study of IR, amongst the most famous of which are rational choice methods such as the game theory, the decision-making approach in foreign policy, etc., mainly oriented towards the study of great power politics with special emphasis on questions of war and military conflict ( Forward, 1971 ).

Of particular importance is the shift in the thinking about the study of IR brought along by Kenneth Waltz (1979) . Waltz, arguably a behaviouralist himself ( Dolan, 2014 , p. 59), directed serious criticism to behaviouralists.

Waltz’ theory revolved around the assumption that anarchy restricts the behaviour of states, forcing them to adopt a conflictual-competitive attitude in a way that reproduces this anarchy over and over and guarantees the continuity of the state system itself. Waltz claimed that the global failure to develop a general IR theory is explicable by the failure of IR theorists to understand this methodological background from which all theories and approaches should depart. To Waltz, his neo-realist systems theory was not just a theory, it was the only viable methodology in IR.

Already as early as the 1970s and 1980s, Waltz’s theory came under scrutiny, especially with the emergence of neo-liberalism and neo-Marxism. The neoliberal theory criticized Waltz’s insistence on ignoring non-competitive forms of relations between states such as those embodied in developments of international law and international institutions ( Little, 1991 , pp. 463–466). On its part, neo-versions of Marxism mainly criticized the claims of systems theory that political power was distributed almost equally between states, because these claims remained oblivious to power relations between different social groups ( Linklater, 1986 , pp. 301–312). These criticisms set the stage for what will become known as the neo-realist, neo-liberal, neo-Marxist debate and later on as the inter-paradigm debate ( Hoffman, 1989 , pp. 60–61), embracing theoretical plurality in the field ( Little, 1991 , p. 463). Interestingly, some of the most prominent neoliberal and neo-Marxist theories were behaviouralist theories, the neoliberal institutionalism and the neo-Marxist Wallerstein’s world-system theory are but examples.

More importantly, in opposition to Waltz’s claim of being in possession of the only scientific methodology, some studies in the field of IR began to raise doubts – finally explicitly – about what the philosophy underlying knowledge in the field of IR should be, whether the field had ever actually been comparable to natural sciences with static laws built in the structure of the universe itself, whether IR was not rather similar to humanities ( Ferguson and Mansbach, 1988 , pp. 656–657). These criticisms were directly targeting the positivist understanding of the world underlying the behaviouralist project and its theoretical advocates – be they neo-realist, neo-liberal or neo-Marxist, reopening, therewith, the way for history, political thought, culture and values to influence the study of IR ( Badran, 2000 , pp. 69–96).

It is important to note that the failure to explain and predict the end of the Cold War was not the only shortcoming of Waltz’s theory. Reality kept surprising neo-realists, whose theory could not later on explain things as major as the continued existence of NATO, inspite of the end of the Cold War ( McCalla, 1996 , pp. 445–475) or developments in the integration process of the European Union.

Theoretical promises to provide exhaustive answers were not fulfilled even in the case of a theory as popular as Waltz’s, declaring, thereby, that realism cannot become a “methodology” for studying IR as Waltz wanted for it to be, but more importantly declaring the “demise of the empiricist positivist promise for a cumulative behavioural(ist) science” ( Little, 1991 , p. 463).

The accumulated criticism to the behaviouralist scientific project would acquire sometimes the title of “post-behaviouralist revolution” ( Hoffman, 1989 , p. 60), revolting against some essential behaviouralist assumptions:

Some post-behaviouralist studies criticized the marginalization of history, the history of the West and the history of peoples around the world in a way that impoverished “the content, the perspectives and tools of IR theory” ( Ekkehart Krippendorff, 1987 , p. 28).

Moreover, some studies criticized the marginalization of normative theorizing in IR, the deliberate neglection of nonmaterial aspects of international politics. For example, the English school would direct serious criticism to the absence of “normative inquiry into the relationship between order and justice,” and social constructivism would complain about the negligence of the role of norms in shaping states’ identities and interests ( Reus-Smit , 2009a, 2009b , p. 66).

Worth noting also is how some studies criticised behaviouralist claims of science being value free and produced early attempts at highlighting some relationship between knowledge and interests by criticizing an American hegemony over the field. Some noted that behaviouralist IR theorizing managed to make the behaviour of the USA become a standard and everyone became dedicated to “justify the unique and frightening accumulation of power in conjunction with the world mission of the United States of America,” rather than challenge or even criticize it ( Ekkehart Krippendorff, 1987 , p. 28).

Post-behaviouralist criticisms to behaviouralism seemed to reiterate many of the traditionalist concerns about the utility and quality of behaviouralist theorizing in IR. However, advocating these criticisms were now several separate theories that began to emerge throughout the late 1970s, 1980s and 1990s: the English school, the postmodern theory, the social constructivist theory, the feminist theory, etc. These theories would gradually line up in the face of the three theories of the inter-paradigm debate. The latter would collectively be called the traditional theories or the mainstream theories of IR ( Sprinz and Wolinsky-Nahmias, 2004 , p. 5). This would leave the field in an unprecedented state of – basically ontological and methodic – fluidity far from being able to agree on the core aspects of the international study such as the main actors, the main issues or even the nature of international processes as vital as globalization itself, growingly realizing that the mainstream theories in the field were incapable of catching up with the complexity of reality and its rapidly changing nature ( Mostafa, 2016 , pp. 70–98).

Criticisms would evolve to produce two different calls in terms of methods and methodology. The first call will defend and retain the positivist character of the field, opening up only to a plurality of research methods, whereas the second call will defend the need for a completely new research attitude towards IR, advocating a post-positivist methodological turn in IR. In the following part, these two calls and the ensuing developments will be tackled in some detail.

Part II: from post-behaviouralism to post-positivism

Easy way out: a call for reconciliation between research methods.

Early responses to criticism to behaviouralist approaches came in the form of calls for “reconciliation” between quantitative – using tools such as statistical analysis, regression coefficients, simple mathematical calculations – and qualitative approaches to international political analysis – using tools such as event analysis, case study, content analysis, interviews, comparisons, etc. ( Mahoney and Goertz, 2006 , pp. 227–228) ( Boassen, 1991 , pp. 192–207), acknowledging some of the analytical shortcomings of quantification and accepting a degree of plurality of research methods in the field. Here, shortcomings of behaviouralism were addressed by responses at the level of research methods, rather than the level of methodology.

Obviously, quantitative and qualitative studies were still supposed to “worship the same (positivist) God,” where science is all about testable observation, even if they disagreed on smaller goals, qualitative studies producing “cause of effect explanations” and quantitative studies producing “effect of cause explanations” ( Mahoney and Goertz, 2006 , pp. 227–228).

A similar conclusion was reached by Sprinz and Wolinsky-Nahmias who believed “methodological pluralism” became a necessity ( Sprinz and Wolinsky-Nahmias, 2004 , pp. 7–8). It is important to note that their reference to methodology is closer in meaning to “approaches or research methods,” rather than methodology as a process of scientific inquiry. This is because the advocated plurality of quantitative and qualitative approaches remained a plurality within the confines of an understanding of science as testable observation, embodying the logic of causation. Enough proof is that a one-third of studies published in prominent journals were discarded from the analysis of Sprinz and Wolinsky-Nahmia’s study – though calling for methodological plurality – because of being “devoid of scientific methodology,” i.e. because of being descriptive and historical ( Mahoney and Goertz, 2006 , p. 8).

Hence, the emergence of qualitative studies as such did not undermine the positivist epistemology and its related methodology in a way that would justify a real methodological distinction between qualitative and quantitative research. It is important not to confuse the positivist qualitative approaches with the post-positivist qualitative approaches to be discussed later on.

Still in the 21st century, admitting the deficiencies of behaviouralism is not an easy task for its advocates. Rather than criticizing the product of empirical behaviouralism, some explained the failure of behaviouralist studies to provide sober political analysis for major events by the failure of behaviouralist studies to grasp the real essence of experimentation, claiming that behaviouralist studies never really conducted an experimental study “in the sense of controlled manipulation as when a single factor is modified, whilst holding everything else constant,” what they did was rather closer to non-experimental empirical tests far from satisfying the “modern meaning of experimentation” ( Druckman et al. , 2006 , pp. 628–629). Here, behaviouralist studies failed, because they were not behaviouralist enough.

Yet, although the advocates of behaviouralism are obviously still far away from being disenchanted with it, most of them have become disenchanted with the goal of reaching a general theory in IR. Instead, the goals of experimental research – whatever the definition of experimentation – have become much more modest serving three purposes: searching for facts to “adjucate disputes” in cases in which studies seem to reach contradictory results, to test the accuracy of certain theoretical assumptions and to advise the political leadership ( Druckman et al. , 2006 , pp. 632–633).

So, new was just a degree of humility about the ability to generalize the conclusions of quantitative studies and a degree of humility about the limited ability of quantitative and experimental research to address some specific research areas, such as the study of civil wars, terrorism or regime stability ( Druckman et al. , 2006 , p. 633), all leading to the above highlighted calls for a reconciliation between qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Anyway, according to this view, the traditional descriptive research methods remain inferior to the quantitative or qualitative research methods that allow the production of studies based on “testable observation.” Traditional approaches pay attention to philosophy, history, values and law in a way that neither these quantitative nor qualitative approaches recognize as “scientific.”

It is not surprising that this very same path will lead today to the so-called “revival of behaviouralism” ( Hamati-Ataya, 2012 , p. 19) or the “new behavioural revolution” ( Hafner-Burton et al. , 2017 , pp. S1–S3) in which contemporary behaviouralism is becoming more modest about the formulation of general theories, is becoming more aware of psychological influences on rationalization, is providing alternatives to or complementing rational choice models and is shifting its goal to the explanation of “the causes and consequences of heterogeneity across actors, including (deviation) from rationalist expectations” ( Hafner-Burton et al. , 2017 ; Mintz, 2007 ) rather than searching for similarities. This explains the interest of contemporary behaviouralists in neuroscience and neurobiology in the study of foreign policy and diplomacy, for example ( Hamati-Ataya, 2012 , p. 19). Obviously, these studies have not abandoned the dream of establishing a science very similar to the natural sciences nor did they give up on the value of an empirical understanding of reality.

Calls for a return to experimental research are on the rise because of technological and software advances that highly improve the results of this kind of research, even allowing for the emergence of new experimental approaches such as the multi-investigator experimental survey or the use of laboratory experiments to explore the impact of media, for example ( Druckman et al. , 2006 , p. 630).

Some even advocate the “end of theories,” meaning the decline in the need for explanatory models. They claim that the role of human beings in interpretation and analysis could be dispensed with. That role is now performed by the machine, which – relying on a huge amount of information; the big data – can make sound enough decisions on its own ( Moawad, 2020 , pp. 9–14). It is interesting to note how these calls maintain the same early behaviouralist tones of the value free science – only in a more modern language – where the role of researcher in the research process itself is reducible to that of a neutral observer, now even replaceable by an advanced computer.

Regardless of different assessments of the contemporary weight of behaviouralism, there is no doubt that behaviourialism has left a highly influential impact on the field of IR in its contemporary form. Even amongst the most informed academic circles, it still does not go without resistance to introduce studies in IR that are not based on testable observation. Cherishing the behaviouralist contribution to IR, Inanna ( Hamati-Ataya, 2012 , p. 20) wonders what the field would have looked like, if it had not been for behaviouralist insistence not to surrender:

[…] to the easier options of either asserting transcendental truths with no concern for their empirical accuracy or impact on human life, or of offering a loosely descriptive account of the world from an uncommon-sense, or introspective perspective.

Exactly because of this continued appreciation of a positivist understanding of the social world, the road ahead of post-positivist theories in the field of IR has not been that easy. The following section addresses some of the challenges facing post-positivist methodology and research methods in the field.

Overdue confession: positivism is not the only viable scientific methodology

The reconciliation between qualitative and quantitative research methods and the reconsideration of the possibility of formulating general theories in IR have only addressed some aspects of criticism directed at behaviouralism. In the corridors of the theory of IR, other aspects of criticism directed at behaviouralism were still lingering. Some theoretical developments would cast serious doubts about the positivist understanding of neutrality and objectivity, about the quality of the political analysis that ignores nonmaterial aspects such as ideas, values, interpretations and about the nature of political reality and its independent existence from researchers trying to understand it. It is these critical trends that would gradually draw attention to a metatheoretical relationship between neo-realism, neo-liberalism and Marxism, the theoretical trilogy that Rennger [quoted in ( Hamchi, 2011 , p. 214)] described as variations of “the same traditional Western epistemology and its methodological correlates – rationalism, positivism and pragmatism,” even though the three of them were supposed to be rivals.

By the late 1980s, calls would emerge to acknowledge an implicitly ongoing process of “(meta)theoretical restructuring of international relations theory” ( Neufeld, 1995 , p. 3), calls drawing attention to the emerging critical post-positivist theorizing.

“Post-positivism” is a quite ambiguous label. The term has been used at different stages of the development of the study of IR to describe different kinds of theoretical contributions. In the 1970s and 1980s, those dissatisfied with the behaviouralist obsession with a value-free science focusing mainly on the material aspects of the social world were sometimes referred to as post-positivists. This explains why the label “post-positivism” was granted to early contributions from the English school, social constructivism, feminism, etc. ( Reus-Smit , 2009a, 2009b , p. 66). Later, the label “post-positivism” will be more cautiously granted only to change seeking/reflexive/deconstructive, rather than problem-solving ( Eun, 2017 , pp. 593–607), contributions in the field, as a result of some growing awareness that a mere concern with values or other non-materialist aspects of the social phenomena is not a guarantee of a different mode of scientific theorizing – not a guarantee of a departure away from positivism ( Hamchi, 2011 ; Wiener, 2004 ).

Actually, it makes a lot of sense to claim that many of the theories that would fall today under the critical post-positivist category have a positivist version as well. This explains one classification of theories in the field that distinguishes between positivist critical theories and post-positivist critical theories ( Lamp, 2020 ). Feminism is different from critical feminism, and conventional or classical constructivism is different from interpretive/critical constructivism, even the critical theory itself has at least two generations ( Neufeld, 1993 ; Neufeld, 1995 ).

This is partly the reason why IR literature disagrees on how to label this mainstream-critical divide, whether to call it a third debate or a fourth debate ( Diez and Steans, 2005 , p. 127) to clearly distinguish it from a third debate that accepted theoretical plurality and opened up gradually not only to neo-liberal and neo-Marxist contributions but also to a feminist theory, a green theory, a constructivist theory, etc., a plurality that would, nonetheless, still be placeable under the umbrella of positivism.

Post-positivism departs from a complete set of alternative assumptions

First, theoretical reflexivity: theories are not just neutral descriptions of interactions between social actors (states, individuals, organizations, etc.). Whilst positivist theories develop hypotheses to be tested against reality ( Neufeld, 1990 , p. iii), post-positivist theories consider the “givens” of reality as non-given; as products of the theory itself, therefore, reality can never really become the judge of good theory ( Diez and Steans, 2005 , pp. 129–130).

Besides, how a researcher chooses his topics, how he selects his research methods and how he interprets or understands them is a derivative from his research preferences ( Ferguson and Mansbach, 2020 ), from his intellectual and political interests and from the historical setting that shapes his understanding of reality, i.e. his “historical circle” ( Diez and Steans, 2005 , p. 139). Bias is embedded in all theories regardless of how objective or neutral they claim to be. This is why realism is usually identified in this literature as an ideology that served the goals of establishing an international system with American hegemony after the end of the Second World War ( Ferguson and Mansbach, 2020 ). Knowledge can, therefore, only be understood within a context of time, space and interests ( Krauss, 2005 , p. 759).

Post-positivist theorizing warns against “self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecies” that result from “people theorizing about the behaviour of people” ( Diez and Steans, 2005 , p. 141). Theories play a role in shaping the world which in turn is continuously reproduced in a way that reflects the understandings of the theories that seek to understand it. Leaders believing in realism will only see an international environment fraught with perils, they will most likely act according to a realist logic, even though they know of the existence of international cooperation or others, leading thereby to the fulfilling of realist prophecies about a world of anarchy and self-help ( Krauss, 2005 , p. 759).

Second, interpretivism: the post-positivist reflexive methodology conflicts with the logic of causation. It distinguishes between constitutive and causal relationships, taking pride in producing knowledge beyond what is observable, tangible, measurable and empirically testable ( Diez and Steans, 2005 , p. 141). No matter how similar behaviours appear to be, the difference in the real motives and the “uninterpreted facts” behind them necessarily makes them widely different from each other ( Ferguson and Mansbach, 2020 ). Therefore, quantitative and mathematical research tools for analysing international reality are far from sufficient, just in a way similar to the understanding of a language, where knowing the rules of grammar and the meaning of words is not enough for understanding what people say; the motives behind the words would make a true difference in meaning ( Diez and Steans, 2005 , p. 138).

Third, commitment to social change: post-positivist theorizing has a fundamental function of social criticism oriented toward emancipation, giving preference to change over stability and over the maintenance of the status quo by solving its problems ( Chernoff, 2007 , p. 131), believing in the creative role of human consciousness to guide the process of change ( Neufeld, 1990 , p. 3). The ability to subject one’s own assumptions to self-criticism is just an innate feature of post-positivist theorizing; continuously re-evaluating their commitment to change and emancipation, reassessing the extent to which their theorizing has managed to rid itself of Eurocentric, modern and positivist biases, thereby quite often producing new versions of the same theory at every stage. Though self-criticism is usually a point of strength, it sometimes seems to impede the ability of critical post-positivist theorizing to provide some stable, accumulated theoretical structures (Abou Samra, 2016, pp. 1409–1508).

Fourth, a commitment to plurality: post-positivist theorizing will draw the attention to the irony embedded in the dedication in non-Western peripheral academic circles to a consumption of the American positivist scientific project, inspite of its shortcomings in grasping the essence of non-Western reality or representing non-Western interests ( Jones, 2004 ).

Though post-positivist literature seriously acknowledges cultural diversity and its impact on the understanding of IR, it is important to note that the fourth debate remains a debate confined to theories competing within a secular world view. Even if the human mind is unable to explain all the aspect of political reality with reference to what is observable and empirically testable as post-positivists believe, the hidden part of the phenomenon remains produced – according to them – by social interactions ( Ekkehart Krippendorff, 1987 , pp. 29–30). “The emancipatory reference for critical theory is immanent to practices of the society itself, rather than an external, transcendental criterion for ethical judgement” ( Oliveira, 2018 , p. 9). Some reflection on alternative non-secular answers to questions of IR follows in the conclusion.

Post-positivism evaluated

The evaluation of the contribution of post-positivist theories to the field is quite controversial. Critics hold them responsible for turning the field into a field of “isolated theoretical islands” with no particular subject, characterized by fluidity in the absence of a clear-cut methodology ( Lamont, 2015 , p. 13), turning the field into a field where anything goes ( Ferguson and Mansbach, 2020 ). Critics accuse post-positivist theories of being unable to answer the most important questions in the field on how to explain war or how to maintain peace between states ( Neufeld, 1995 , pp. 330–331), even of being normative and detached from reality.

It is important to note that most of these criticisms depart basically from an inability to acknowledge the post-positivist methodology as a viable “scientific” methodology ( Ferguson and Mansbach, 2020 ). Obviously, many of the theorists – who accepted relatively easily some plurality of research methods, failed to welcome a plurality of methodology, even less a plurality of epistemologies ( Smith, 2000 , p. 375).

Post-positivism, in these criticisms, seems to be judged against the dictates of a methodology that it came to revolt against. Post-positivism is not there to better provide causal explanations of reality, it is there to better change reality.

In return, many cherish the fact that the post-positivist stage of the development of the study of IR has brought some serious novelty into the field at the level of approaches and research methods.

First, inspite of their diversity, post-positivist theories will appear to complement each other, rather than compete against each other ( Diez and Steans, 2005 ). This is not to be confused with the neo-neo consensus, acknowledged since the 1990s, for example ( Jackson and Sorenson, 2003 , p. 128), where neo-liberals and neo-realists, though having much in common, will remain competing against each other. Post-positivist theories are mutually reinforcing, their approaches are reciprocated and their concerns and aspirations for changing international reality are shared. That is why compound titles such as critical feminism, feminist post-colonialism, critical constructivism and deconstructive linguistic approaches are quite familiar ( Achilleos-Sarl, 2018 , pp. 34–46). Concepts such as emancipation, deconstruction and the power of knowledge are well known in post-positivist literature in a way that seems better representative of real plurality, where all theories are capable of complementing each other, whilst maintaining their unique characteristics and assumptions.

Second, post-positivist theories have developed, sometimes borrowed, some unique multi-levelled research approaches.

At one level, the assumptions of post-positivist theories themselves will serve as approaches to IR. It is quite common to encounter the terms feminist approach, post-colonial approach or poststructuralist approach ( Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2006 , p. 105). Here, the mere elaboration of the post-positivist critical assumptions and the mere exposure of biases, both in theory and in reality, against the excluded, the weak and the marginalized in different social contexts become a research goal in itself ( Tickner, 2020 , p. 628).

At a second level, some specialized research methods were developed sharing the goal of making “the voices of the voiceless heard.” Here, critical post-positivist theories quite often rely on interdisciplinary approaches – approaches from the fields of philosophy, linguistics, literature, history, sociology and anthropology. These approaches are also quite often referred to as “qualitative research methods,” but they differ greatly from the positivist qualitative methods previously addressed. All post-positivist qualitative approaches share the assumption that reality is not independent of those who seek to understand it, and they work on revealing biases behind common sense understandings of reality. The ethnographic approach, focusing on everyday life and global processes, dealing with experiences as diverse as life in refugee camps and online shopping ( Windsor, 1989 , pp. 229–270), and the discourse analytic approach, focusing on the construction of realities through political discourse ( Jackson, 2007 , pp. 394–426) are some telling examples of such approaches.

At a third level, “metatheoretical approaches” emerged in the field, addressing the level of the metatheory of IR; the epistemological approach, with the Afrocentric feminist epistemological approach being an example ( Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2006 , pp. 80–84), the constructive engagement approach, revealing cultural similarities at the level of philosophy ( Dottin, 2019 , pp. 40–41), are but examples of approaches revealing biases against non-mainstream epistemologies and contemplating on power relations existing at the levels of epistemology, ontology and methodology.

Post-positivism is, therefore, credited with a gradual expansion of the field of IR, theoretical and methodological expansion, disciplinary expansion – beyond IR and political science, substantive expansion and territorial expansion beyond the West ( Hellman, 2011 , p. 21).

An overview of the development of the study of the field reveals a complex interplay between theories, methodologies, research methods and reality. It is quite difficult to say whether the neo-realist relative failure – in the face of the end of the Cold War – caused the demise of the empiricist behaviouralist project or whether the failure of behaviouralism to grasp the aspects of the international phenomena left the neo-realist theory – and later on the neoliberal and neomarxist theories – with limited analytical resources in the face of a highly complex world in which poverty, climate change, religious resurgence, even epidemics seem to be not less dangerous to human existence than wars, free trade and the spread of capitalism – the issues of utmost priority to traditional IR theories. By the same logic it is quite difficult to say, whether the emergence of post-positivist research tools was the result of new developments in reality that were not understandable using positivist techniques, or whether the post-positivist tools have made us identify some aspects of reality to which we were completely insensible. For sure, post-positivist theorizing managed to expose some biases built into our understanding of IR; biases favouring the white, the male, the Western, the secular, the rich, the materially powerful, the rational, etc. ( Grosfoguel, 2007 , pp. 211–223). The interplay between reality on the one hand and theories, methods and methodologies in IR on the other hand is undeniable and quite complex.

Besides, although the narratives of the field prefer to tell the story of the triumph of realism over idealism, the triumph of behaviouralism over traditionalism and the triumph of American positivism over non-positivist alternatives, an overview of the methodological history of the field, in its first 60 years, showed that neither realism, nor behaviouralism, nor positivism have ever gone uncriticized in the field, not even in the 1960s or 1970s which used to be considered as the heydays of these scientific endeavours. In the past 40 years, these very same endeavours have been continuedly challenged in a way that further raised doubts about stories of “triumph,” at least stories of absolute triumph.

One conclusion, therefore, is that the field has never really surrendered to advocates of “the single scientific methodology” discourse. Throughout its development, calls for embracing theoretical plurality, methodic plurality, methodological plurality, epistemological plurality, etc., have been a recurring feature of IR.

It makes sense to claim that the field of IR has witnessed not only methodic plurality but also methodological plurality through the stages of its development. Different research methods and different methodologies – though sometimes highly critical of each other – seem to coexist in the field of IR to this day. Years of fierce theoretical debates just led to the de facto coexistence of behaviouralist, empirical, statistical, mathematical, qualitative and quantitative research methods on the one hand and post-positivist, reflexivist, deconstructivist and interpretivist research methods on the other, reflecting methodic plurality and methodological plurality. Nothing is sacred in IR; all theories, all methods and all methodologies have undergone a process of criticism, self-criticism and change. Drawing a map of the field’s methodologies and methods reveals necessarily its dynamism and its plurality.

The impact of the whole paradigmatic understanding of IR on methodologies and methods is sometimes subjected to serious criticism, because it restricts knowledge, making one unaware of a lot of things just because they fall outside the scope of concern of their adopted paradigm, hence, making researchers “method driven rather than problem driven” ( Hellman, 2011 ).

The need to sometimes cross the strict boundaries of theoretical frameworks has been acknowledged under different labels; analytic eclecticism proposed by Sil and Katzenstein is one of them, where a degree of interdisciplinarity and a degree of complementarity between different approaches of different theoretical traditions become highly cherished ( Sil and Katzenstein, 2010 , p. 417).

However, the rise of new theories and the rise of new research methods have not necessarily been accompanied by the rise of new methodologies. Positivism – in its methodological aspects – has been underlying much of the theories of IR, even those that present themselves as rivals such as neorealism, neoliberalism, some main strands of the English school or of constructivism.

More importantly, positivism – in its aspects as a secular theory to existence – remains the dominant underlying view of positivist and post-positivist theorizing in IR.

This paper has basically reflected on the interplay between methodology and methods as manifest in the Western course of development of IR theory. An emerging non-Western research course has been deliberately left out for future research. An “Islamic Civilizational Paradigm of IR” would clearly distinguish itself from positivism and post-positivism, calling, thereby, upon a methodology that combines reason and revelation and research methods that comfortably accept this duality ( Mostafa, 2016 ; Abou Samra, 2019 ). Attempts at developing a Chinese theory of IR – though strongly benefitting from a constructivist turn – would suggest the importance of making use of Chinese philosophical heritage ( Noesselt, 2012 ). A Chinese theory and an Islamic paradigm are just but examples of many emerging non-Western alternative theoretical understandings of IR reflecting cultural particularity. These reflections even furtherly suggest that a plurality of methodologies and methods can go far beyond the positivist and post-positivist understandings of a world making one wonder how different IR in the age of a truly “global IR” can look like ( Acharya and Buzan, 2017 , p. 7), a stage opening up slowly and somewhat hesitantly to diverse understandings of reality, history, life and existence from around the world.

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Further readings

Akinyoade , D. ( 2012 ), “ Ontology and epistemology for peace and conflict studies ”, International Conference on the Security Sector and Conflict Management in Nigeria (University of Ibadan, Nigeria), 14-16 August .

George , S. ( 1976 ), “ The reconciliation of the ‘classical’ and ‘scientific’ approaches to international relations ”, Millennium Journal of Scientific Studies , available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/03058298760050010301

Lapid , Y. ( 1989 ), “ The third debate: on the prospects of international theory in a post-positivist era ”, International Studies Quarterly , Vol. 33 No. 3 .

Lapid , Y. ( 2020 ), “ 25 years after the third debate: two (pianissimo) bravos for IR theory, the ‘third debate’ 25 years later symposium ”, available at: www.isanet.org/Publications/ISQ/Posts/ID/304/25-Years-after-The-Third-Debate-Two-pianissimo-bravos-for-IR-Theory ( accessed 2019 ).

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Article contents

International political economy: overview and conceptualization.

• Renée Marlin-Bennett Renée Marlin-Bennett International Studies, Johns Hopkins
•  and  David K. Johnson David K. Johnson Political Science, Johns Hopkins University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.239
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 22 December 2017
• This version: 22 January 2021
• Previous version

The concept of international political economy (IPE) encompasses the intersection of politics and economics as goods, services, money, people, and ideas move across borders. The term “international political economy” began to draw the attention of scholars in the mid-1960s amid problems of the world economy and lagging development in the third world. The term “global political economy” (GPE) later came to be used frequently to illustrate that what happens in the world is not only about interactions between states and that the GPE includes many different kinds of actors. The survey aims at a comprehensive picture of the different schools of IPE, both historically and as they have developed in the early 21st century. Authors of antiquity, such as Aristotle and Kautilya, explored the relationship between the political and the economic long before the term “political economy” was coined, presumably by Antoine de Montchrestien in 1613. The mercantilist writings of the 17th and 18th centuries, including those of Colbert, Mun, and Hamilton, argued in favor of the state using its powers to increase its wealth. List, writing in the 19th century, emphasized the tension between national economic self-determination and free markets. The 19th- to 20th-century iteration of the mercantilist view can be found in the form of economic nationalist policies, which link to a realist approach to international relations more generally. Theorists of the Global South have adapted economic nationalist policies to address the problem of development. The liberal tradition of IPE also has historical antecedents, beginning with classical political economy. Examples include the influential works of Locke, Hume, Smith, and Ricardo. After World War II, the economic writings of Keynes, Hayek, and Friedman were influential. Variants of neoliberal IPE can be found from the 1950s with scholarship on integration and from the late 1970s with scholarship on international regimes. Late-20th-century and early-21st-century liberal scholarship has also explored varieties of capitalism and economic crises. An alternative stream of IPE can be traced through Marxian political economy, beginning with the work of Marx and Engels in the 19th century and proliferating globally. This approach provides a critique of capitalism. Other critical approaches that have emerged in the 20th and 21st centuries include feminist global political economy and postcolonial critiques of liberal and Marxian analyses. Trends in scholarship include analyses of China and transition of the neoliberal order, queer theory for global political economy, and studies of growing trends toward precarious forms of labor. A final section discusses research beginning in the 1990s that is relevant to the global political economy of transborder transmission of disease, a topic of special concern in light of the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020.

• international political economy
• global political economy
• mercantilism
• economic nationalism
• classical liberalism
• neoliberal institutionalism
• neoclassical liberalism
• postcoloniality

Updated in this version

Light revision throughout, added discussions of postcoloniality and Covid-19

Introduction

Research in the field of international political economy, as described in this overview, includes work grounded in different schools of thought and drawing upon distinct conceptualizations of important concepts, relationships, and causal understandings. Antoine de Montchrestien ( 1889 ) is reputed to have introduced the term œconomie politique in his treatise of 1613 , by which he referred to the study of how states should manage the economy or make policy. The concept of international political economy has come to encompass a larger range of concerns, including the intersection of politics and economics, as goods, services, money, people, and ideas move across borders. The term “international political economy” (IPE) began to appear in the scholarly literature in the mid-1960s as problems of the world economy and development in the third world gained scholarly attention. The term “global political economy” (GPE) came into sporadic use at about the same time. GPE was (and is) often used more or less synonymously with IPE, though IPE approaches usually emphasize the individual nation-state as the basic unit of analysis, while GPE approaches tend to be more holistic, placing states and other kinds of actors within larger structures or the global system. Gill ( 1990 ) notes that in the 1980s, the terminological difference between IPE and GPE came to mark a difference in methodological orientation, mapping onto more or less “mainstream” and “critical” approaches, respectively. By the end of the 1990s, the GPE came to be used by both mainstream scholars (Gilpin, 2001 , and Cohn, 2016 , are examples) and critical scholars, although critical scholars are more likely to use GPE exclusively. (This article omits a full discussion of the development of IPE in the Global South and its engagement with GPE, a topic covered in Deciancio and Quiliconi, 2020 ). This survey of IPE and GPE scholarship proceeds in a roughly historical plan and consists of eight sections. It begins with some very early works on the intersection of politics and economics, and then it turns to the mercantilist school and its 20th-century successor, economic nationalism. The next section traces the development of the liberal tradition of political economy, including classical political economy, Keynesianism, neoclassical economics, and neoliberalism. This discussion is followed by sections on the Marxian, feminist, and postcolonial global political economy. The penultimate section briefly discusses some trends of scholarship in the 21st century , especially moving into the 2020s. The survey concludes with a discussion of scholarship (published prior to May 2020 ) that is relevant for assessing the global political economy reverberations of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Politics and Economics: Early Works

The study of the relationship between economic activities and state interests originated long before the term “political economy” was coined. Two examples of very early works include writings by Aristotle ( 384–322 bce ), who criticized Plato’s conception of communal ownership and placed the state in the role of guarantor of private property in The Politics , and Kautilya ( ca . 350–283 bce ), the Indian author of Arthashastra , a book of statecraft, who wrote of the need for the ruler to send spies to the marketplace to ensure fair weights and measures (Kautilya, 1915 ). In the Middle Ages, Islamic social theorist Ibn Khaldun ( 1332–1406 ) wrote about the relationship between governing structures and productivity of people (Ibn Khaldun, 1967 ). Another Muslim scholar of this era, Al-Maqrizi (d. 1442) ( 1994 ), analyzed governmental policies, including monetary policy. Niccolò Machiavelli ( 1469–1527 ), generally seen as a political theorist, was mindful of the relationship between the state and the economy as well, at least in the sense that a primary role of the prince or of a republican government is to protect private property. He called “public security and the protection of the laws [. . .] the sinews of agriculture and of commerce,” and suggested that the protection of property rights was important “so that the one may not abstain from embellishing his possessions for fear of their being taken from him, and [. . .] not hesitate to open a new traffic for fear of taxes” (Machiavelli, 1882 , p. 448; see also Machiavelli, 1979 , ch. XVI, on how princes ought to spend—or not spend—money).

Governments traditionally were held responsible for defending their own citizens’ property, but they had no such obligation toward conquered peoples. The European Age of Exploration led unsurprisingly to the expropriation of resources, since the purpose of those conquests was to bring home wealth in the form of gold, silver, and other precious materials. Enslavement of the indigenous peoples and profiting from their resources was considered consistent with natural law, as Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, drawing on Aristotle, argued in 1550 (Garcia-Pelayo, 1986 ).

Sepúlveda’s opinion was commonly, but not universally, held. The famous opposition to Spain’s inhuman treatment of indigenous people was published by Bartolomé de Las Casas in 1552 . He charged that the “avarice and ambition” that motivated the Spaniards and led them to perpetrate acts of barbarism were, to use a modern term, “illegitimate” (Las Casas, 2007 ). At a time when imperial conquest was considered the natural goal for states, Las Casas sounded a normative message—that the state cannot act with impunity and that the quest for riches does not excuse unjust forms of violence. The Sepúlveda–Las Casas debate prefigured future debates over the norms of international political economic interaction.

From Mercantilism to Economic Nationalism

Adam Smith referred dismissively to the various theories and policies on how states should intervene in markets to increase wealth and power as “mercantilism.” The more neutral-sounding “economic nationalism” became the successor term in more recent times. In both cases, assumptions about the role of the state conform to a general realist model, although a form of economic nationalism has also been espoused by theorists and polities of the Global South with the aim of “delinking” from relations of dependency on the North. This section traces the development of theories of mercantilism and economic nationalism from the 16th century to the 21st .

Mercantilism

The two-volume history of mercantilism by Eli Heckscher ( 1935 ) outlines at least four elements of this school of thought. Following List, and especially Schmoller, mercantilism is identified as the economic element of creating national states from disparate regions. Mercantilism is also characterized as a specific conceptualization of the nature of wealth that stresses the critical nature of inflows. The lack of reciprocal demand, the difficulty of facilitating accumulation in early agrarian societies, and the differential ability of various economic pursuits regarding generating employment opportunities are central to this element. A third characterization of mercantilism is as a body of policy designed to decrease the cost of inputs and facilitate production in the face of competition. Finally, mercantilism is characterized as a belief in the importance of enhancing the power and wealth of a state, so that it is better able to direct resources both at home and abroad. The best-known mercantilist theories focus on maintaining a positive balance of trade and payments by limiting imports or encouraging exports. One variant, bullionism, focuses on the desirability of increasing a country’s supply of gold and silver. (See Viner, 1937 , for a detailed history of English writings on mercantilism and “bullionism” prior to Adam Smith. A more recent and strongly proneoclassical liberal discussion of the relationship of historical theories of mercantilism to monetary policy can be found in Humphrey, 1999 .)

European exploration and conquest of new lands led to intellectual debate, starting in France in the 16th century , over which policies would best achieve these ends. An influx of gold and silver led to instability in the value of money. Commentators began to consider the government’s role in determining the value of money, the terms of trade, and other facets of what scholars since the mid- 20th century would call international political economy. Jean Bodin, for example, wrote in 1568 about how the value of specie would fluctuate with supply and demand and warned that government interference would only worsen the situation. “A ruler,” he wrote, “who changes the price of gold and silver ruins his people, country and himself” (cited in Turchetti, 2018 ). Instead, as Luigi Cossa ( 1880 , p. 117) noted, Bodin argued that the oversupply of money that resulted in price increases “would be turned to better advantage by a fiscal system promoting the growth of national manufactures in opposition to the excessive consumption of foreign goods.” Antoine de Monchrestien drew heavily on the work of Bodin to advocate for government protection of manufactures. (See Ashley, 1891 , and Perry, 1883 , for discussions of Monchrestien’s work.)

An influential supporter of mercantilism was Jean Baptiste Colbert, minister of finance for King Louis XIV of France. He increased taxes, created benefits for production that would substitute for imports, and worked to bring wealth into the country through his policies, which were referred to as Colbertism. In 1664 , he wrote a memorandum to the king in which he argued “that only the abundance of money in a State makes the difference in its greatness and power.” He advocated government intervention in markets to increase domestic manufactures, to encourage imports of raw materials to be used for manufactures, and to support the exportation of manufactured goods. To encourage French traders to sell goods widely, he also advocated rewards for building or buying new ships and for long-distance voyages (Colbert, 1998 ). Thomas Mun, a director of the British East India Company, expressed similar views in a widely read defense of mercantilism. He argued that a country’s wealth is increased if a positive balance of trade is maintained. England should try to produce as much of what it must consume as possible and import as little as possible for its own consumption. People should tame their appetites to avoid wanting foreign garments and foods. However, having English traders purchase valuable wares from distant locales, bring them back to England, and, from England, reexport them would, according to Mun, serve to increase the national treasure. Mercantilism, in other words, would result in a net inflow of gold and silver—commodities not produced in any great quantity from English mines—and this would be the only way for England to increase its wealth (Mun, 1895 ).

The protectionist policies of mercantilism held considerable attractiveness as countries sought to industrialize and develop their economies. Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, provided a Report on Manufactures to Congress in which he outlined steps that the young country should take to secure its economy, especially in opposition to the economic might of other countries. Creating an economy based on manufactures, Hamilton argued, would protect the United States from being dependent on other countries “for military and other essential supplies.” He implicitly countered the argument of the physiocrats, discussed in the section “ Early Liberal Writers ,” who stressed the importance of agriculture over manufactures. Hamilton maintained that the country was best served by encouraging the development of manufacturing. Using machines would allow for the full employment of the population (including women and children) in order to increase the country’s self-sufficiency—and therefore its wealth and security (Hamilton, 1913 , p. 3).

Friedrich List, a German scholar and politician who later became a naturalized American citizen, extended Hamilton’s argument by emphasizing that states should take advantage of their own human resources—that is, the ability of people to produce agricultural and manufactured products through their innovation, hard work, and the natural environment. He argued that “it is of the utmost concern for a nation [. . .] first fully to supply its own wants, its own consumption with the products of its own manufactures,” he wrote. Only then should a country trade with others. List also developed the proposition that young economies could not compete with more established, more technologically advanced ones until the younger country had invested in developing its domestic industry. He emphasized “that a nation is richer and more powerful in proportion as it exports more manufactured products, imports more raw materials, and consumes more tropical commodities.” Government policies should therefore work toward these goals (List, 1909 , pp. 76–77). For a classic but much overlooked contribution to the tensions between protectionism and free trade in theories of IPE, see E. H. Carr ( 2001 , pp. 41–62).

Economic Nationalism

The 20th century marked a shift in theoretical labels. “Mercantilism” was supplanted by “economic nationalism,” a more neutral term and one that is more easily interpreted from a realist perspective. Economic nationalists are realists who expect the contest for wealth to mirror the contest for power in international relations. However, they often articulate a somewhat schizophrenic view: theorists who write about economic nationalism often see it as an unfortunate, economically inefficient, but unavoidable fact of international life. For example, in 1931 , T. E. Gregory criticized economic nationalism, but explained that such policies continued to be implemented because citizens and governments were reacting to six factors. They (a) feared “dependence on foreign markets for the sale of your products”; (b) saw “the danger of intervention in the domestic market by the foreign capitalist”; (c) desired “to reserve for the intelligence of the country itself such positions of honour and prestige as are offered by the existence of growing industries and a growing financial structure”; (d) realized “the undesirability of allowing [. . .] raw materials to be owned by foreigners”; (e) worried about the risk “that in a period of war, if you depend on foreign food supplies, you may find yourself in a very difficult situation, and therefore you ought to grow your own food”; and (f) believed that keeping “agriculture going as a type of economic production” would guarantee a supply of “vigorous manhood”—men who would be strong soldiers in times of war (pp. 292–294). Similarly, Gregory’s contemporary, Charles Schrecker, begins his discussion of “the causes, characteristics and possible consequences” of economic nationalism with the caveat that he “consider[s] this tendency [toward economic nationalism] in its ultimate effects to be regrettable and detrimental to the future economic welfare of humanity” (Schrecker, 1934 , p. 208).

This differentiation between the scholars’ personal beliefs and their analytical stance continues in more recent scholarship. Judith Goldstein ( 1986 ) discusses the principle of “free and fair” trade as a norm of U.S. trade policy, and she finds that while “free trade” is consistent with liberal economic analysis (which, by implication, she endorses), “fair trade” refers to protecting U.S. firms from unfair trade practices of other countries. In other words, U.S. trade policy ultimately pursues mechanisms that support the interests of those groups that capture the state and persuade policymakers of their claims. Eric Helleiner ( 2002 ), through a careful reading of the 19th-century economic nationalists, makes the sophisticated argument that economic nationalism has always been nationalist—that is, realist—first and economic second. In other words, he argues that countries choose economic policies for nationalist purposes. Sometimes these policies will be liberal, when it suits the country to deploy liberal policies; sometimes the policies will be protectionist, when protection is expected to lead to desired ends. In this analysis, liberal policies may be wholly consistent with theoretical explanations of economic nationalism. In a similar vein, Robert Gilpin clarifies the separation of analytical tools and preferred outcomes. He implicitly accepts the normative goals of liberalism while interpreting behavior in terms of “state centric realism,” a theoretical perspective closely connected to economic nationalism. He writes, “Although realists recognize the central role of the state, security, and power in international affairs, they do not necessarily approve of this situation. [. . .] It is possible to analyze international economic affairs from a realist perspective and at the same time to have normative commitment to certain ideals” (Gilpin, 2001 , pp. 15–16). Cohn ( 2016 ) elaborates these difficulties in the treatment of “neomercantilism.”

Economic Nationalism and Development

For many theorists, however, economic nationalism takes on a more positive hue when argued from the position of infant industries and developing country economies that need to develop internally before they can compete in global markets. Thus, tenets of economic nationalism have appealed to many writers in the Global South. Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania, could be considered a (somewhat ironic) example. Nyerere’s ujamaa (“familyhood”) policies can be divided into two: a frankly socialist “villagization” policy in which people were moved onto collective farms and a mercantilist self-reliance policy in which Tanzania was supposed to detach itself from dependence on the industrialized world. Ultimately, his policy failed on both counts: the collective farms were unproductive, Tanzania became more dependent on aid from other countries, and the democratic ideals of the movement deteriorated (Prashad, 2008 , pp. 191–203). The idea of self-reliance, however, resonates closely with economic nationalist emphasis on the ability of states to produce for their own basic needs (Amin, 1990 ; Nyerere, 1967 ).

In general, theories advocating import substitution industrialization fall into this category of developing country economic nationalism. Economist Raúl Prebisch, working on behalf of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, formulated the theory of dependent development, which explained how industrialization in the developing world could continue to keep countries dependent on advanced economies in the “core.” These peripheral country economies were too closely tied to production for export. Instead, he argued that developing countries needed to implement import-substituting industrialization (ISI) policies. By delinking from the dependent economic relationships that they have with core countries, developing countries could build their own economies. He advocated the mechanization of agriculture, industrialization, and technological advance (Prebisch, 1986 ). In short, “the fundamental arguments of [Alexander] Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures have a striking similarity with those of Prebisch and his staff” (Grunwald, 1970 , p. 826). (Of course, the results of ISI policies have been highly uneven. See, for example, the analysis of Albert Hirschman, 1968 , and Vijay Prashad, 2014 , on the difficulties of ISI as a development strategy.)

From Classical Liberalism to Neoliberal Institutionalism and Neoclassical Liberalism

In contrast to the emphasis on state power and state interests that characterizes mercantilism and economic nationalism, liberalism emphasizes possessive individualism and the individual as the bearer of rights (Macpherson, 1973 ). The political economic theory that results from the emphasis on the individual is grounded in the idea that markets should be allowed to function as freely as possible and that the purpose of economic activity is not to benefit the government but rather to benefit individuals who, through their efforts, earn income, purchase goods, and constitute the basic unit of economic life.

Early Liberal Writers

Among the most important of these liberal rights from the perspective of political economy is that of property. For John Locke ( 1884 ), the right to property was natural; for David Hume ( 1992 ), the right to property was the result of interactions over time between people. (See also Sugden, 1989 , on Hume’s view of property.) Liberals reject the idea that the purpose of the state is to gather wealth. Instead, the state exists to provide security and to safeguard property.

In the liberal tradition, “political economy” came to be associated expansively with the relationship between governments, markets, welfare, and wealth. Discourse on Political Economy by Jean-Jacques Rousseau ( 1983 ), originally written for Diderot’s Encyclopédie , was an example of this. For Rousseau, political economy referred rather generally to those policies and laws that aim to protect and promote society being governed. What set Rousseau’s view apart from mercantilism was the liberal ethos that pervaded his writing: citizens were individuals who held rights; they had private wills; and collectively the community as a whole had a general will. States were bound by the rule of law and, in adhering to the general will, had the responsibility for protecting citizens’ rights, including property rights, but Rousseau was silent on what later writers would term “laissez-faire” policies, a free market vision of popular (as opposed to tyrannical) political economy. Instead, Rousseau seemed to have a very specific view of important government intervention in the economy: “One of the most important functions of the government” is to prevent extreme differences in wealth, since extremes of opulence and poverty erode the sense of “common cause” among citizens. To prevent such inequality and to provide the other functions of government, the state must tax, but, because the right to one’s own property was fundamental, taxation must be limited and levied fairly and progressively (those living at subsistence levels paying nothing, the rich paying relative to their wealth), in accordance with the general will. Rousseau’s popular political economy was thus liberal in protecting rights yet interventionist with respect to taxation and the uses of taxes.

The physiocrats introduced the idea of laissez-faire , laissez-passer (“let do and let pass,” in other words, the government should not interfere in the market) as a goal for states. They argued that the state should avoid intervention wherever possible, and especially avoid the taxation of agriculture. François Quesnay’s Economical Table presented a view of economics that placed a strong emphasis on the value of agriculture and the “sterility” of manufactures (Quesnay, 1968 ), in contrast to the mercantile emphasis on encouraging manufactures. The physiocrats favored agriculture because, in their calculation, the value of the output—crops—exceeded the value of the inputs used to produce the crops: land, labor, seeds, and the like. Artisans who manufactured things, the physiocrats maintained, only produced goods that equal the value of the inputs because competition would drive prices down to the level that only covered costs. Quesnay and the other physiocrats understood the limited supply of land and the ability of farmers to produce more than was needed for subsistence as evidence of the superior productivity of agriculture (Quesnay, 1968 ; also Bilginsoy, 1994 ). A major policy goal of the physiocrats was to “prevent deviations of the market price of industrial goods from their fundamental price, and to guarantee the maintenance of the proper price in the agricultural sector—the price high enough to cover the unit costs and rent” (Bilginsoy, 1994 , p. 531). The government, in their view, should limit taxes on agricultural products to ways that meet this goal. The French policies then in place of protecting manufacturers from foreign imports and of the government selling the right to tax farming to wealthy citizens thus had a particularly deleterious effect on the economy (Quesnay, n.d. ).

Adam Smith, whose Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is often seen as the foundational work in the field of political economy, built on the work of the physiocrats, as well as that of Hume. Smith, who first referred to political economy in the eighth paragraph of the introduction to the book, understood the term as concerning causal theories about what governments believe they ought to do—which policies they think they should implement—to increase their wealth. The purpose of political economy, according to Smith ( 1904 ), was

first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign. (Book IV, Introduction)

The first purpose is achieved primarily through free markets, with Smith advocating for reliance upon “invisible hand.” The second is achieved through some government involvement in the economy, including the provision of funds for militias to defend against foreign invaders; setting up a system to pay for the administration of justice (with revenues for this purpose coming, perhaps, from court fees); providing public works such as roads, bridges, and postal services (which, with fees attached, may produce revenue for the government); and education (Viner, 1948 ).

For what later came to be known as international political economy, Adam Smith, like the physiocrats before him, made a major intellectual contribution with his rejection of the common mercantile practices of his age. In contrast to mercantilists like Colbert and Mun, Smith opposed the government’s intervention in markets to maintain a positive balance of trade. Smith ( 1904 ) wrote:

We trust, with perfect security, that the freedom of trade, without any attention of government, will always supply us with the wine which we have occasion for; and we may trust, with equal security, that it will always supply us with all the gold and silver which we can afford to purchase or to employ, either in circulating our commodities or in other uses. (IV.1.11)

Some IPE scholars, however, have highlighted Smith’s “agonism” in relation to the contradictions of the free market system, reading Smith not so much as an unequivocal supporter of the laissez-faire economics, as he is often assumed to be, but rather as a careful observer of the positive and negative aspects of the market economy (Arrighi, 2007 ; Blaney & Inayatullah, 2010 ; Shilliam, 2020 ). This reading both contributes to a reappraisal of the classical tradition and serves as a critique of its contemporary reception in neoclassical economic theory, suggesting a different path for economic studies at large.

Immanuel Kant, in his famous essay on perpetual peace, extended the liberal optimism about the beneficial effects of trade. An international federation of republics would naturally trade with each other, and the positive effects of commerce would stand as a bulwark against hostilities. “The spirit of trade cannot coexist with war, and sooner or later this spirit dominates every people. For among all those powers (or means) that belong to a nation, financial power may be the most reliable in forcing nations to pursue the noble cause of peace (though not from moral motives)” (Kant, 1983 , p. 125). Thus, as scholars such as Jahn ( 2013 ) and Ince ( 2018 ) have demonstrated, classical liberal thought has always contained an essentially international dimension, the study of which is instructive for understanding later forms of liberal IPE.

Comparative Advantage

An important question for international political economy is, Why engage in international trade? In On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation , Englishman David Ricardo ( 1821 ) built upon Smith’s support for international trade. In this work, Ricardo outlined the theory of comparative costs (comparative advantage), a cornerstone of trade theory to the present day. The common view had been that states trade with one another when one has an absolute advantage in the production of something and the trading partner has an absolute advantage in the production of something else. (If England produced cloth more cheaply than Portugal did, and Portugal produced wine more cheaply than England did, then both countries would profit from trade.) Ricardo’s insight was that even if a country produced both wine and cloth more cheaply than another, it still made sense for the countries to specialize in and export that good it had the greatest advantage in producing. This theory depended on another theoretical contribution from Ricardo, the labor theory of value: the value of a product can be represented in the amount of labor (person-hours) needed to produce it (a good summary of the theory can be found in Ruffin, 2002 ).

Comparative advantage continued to be a topic of discussion in international political economy. Swedish economists Eli Hecksher and Bertil Ohlin ( 1991 ) contributed a major extension of Ricardo’s theory by focusing on the role that factor endowments play in determining comparative advantage. Since land, labor, and capital move less easily than goods, a country should specialize in those products that are produced with the factors that are relatively abundant in the country. (Jacob Viner, 1937 , pp. 500–507, provided a summary and critical analysis of this theory, and Wolfgang Stolper and Paul Samuelson further developed the theory by examining what happens to prices when two countries move from not trading to trading. The consequence can be higher prices, which can affect income distribution, as discussed in Lindert and Kindleberger, 1982 , pp. 58–60.)

Some scholars have begun to note areas in which the traditional understanding of comparative advantage no longer fits the evidence. For example, Michael Storper ( 1992 ) finds that

the world of production has changed fundamentally since the time of Ricardo. We now live in a world where factors of production for technologically stable products are not endowed, but produced as intermediate inputs. Almost any developed country making the effort can become as efficient as the next country in a technologically stable manufacturing sector. (pp. 63–64)

Storper ( 1992 ) argues that products that depend on technological innovation are traded with respect to “technological advantage” rather than comparative advantage.

Another question about the validity of comparative advantage is raised by strategic trade theory. James Brander and Barbara Spencer ( 1985 , p. 83) showed how protection through subsidies would “change the initial conditions of the game that firms play” and make a firm more profitable. By calibrating the protection properly—not too much, not too little—states, according to strategic trade theory, can lead to an equilibrium that may be jointly suboptimal, but the protecting country still gains because its firm is able to earn more. Although strategic trade theory shares some elements with mercantile support for the protection of infant industry, those arguing for strategic trade theory place themselves within a liberal model and seek rational intervention at the best possible levels (i.e., levels that provide net benefits). Some scholars suggest that strategic trade theory is most useful when considering the challenges faced by industries when there are large economies of scale, high learning curves, and knowledge-intensive advanced manufacturing processes. Paul Krugman and others offer a cautionary note, however. The benefits of strategic trade theory fall mainly to the protected firm or industry, not to the domestic economy. Overall costs are likely to outweigh benefits, especially when protectionism leads to trade war (Krugman, 1994 ).

Two Strands of Liberalism: Keynesianism and Neoclassical Liberalism

As the questions raised by strategic trade theory suggest, liberals wrestle with the appropriate role of the state in the economy. Since the middle of the 20th century , liberalism has been bifurcated into two major strands: Keynesianism and neoclassical liberalism. Keynesian economics, named after John Maynard Keynes, sees direct government intervention in markets as a way to improve welfare and make the economy function better, especially given inescapable market failures and inefficiencies. Neoclassical economics, sometimes understood as libertarianism, draws on the writings of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and others who believed that governments had become too involved in the economy and that freedom suffered as a result. Keynesianism filtered into international political economy, with variants consistent with integration theory, neoliberal institutionalism, and regimes (which are a form of neoliberal institutionalism). Neoclassical liberalism can be seen in the “Washington Consensus,” which has led to deregulation of global and domestic economies, decreases in foreign aid, and further reliance on marketization.

Keynesianism and Neoliberal Institutionalism

John Maynard Keynes ( 1883–1946 ) served on the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 . He resigned from this position in opposition to the draconian terms of peace. The Allies, in ending the war “with France and Italy abusing their momentary victorious power to destroy Germany and Austria-Hungary now prostrate, they invite their own destruction also, being so deeply and inextricably intertwined with their victims by hidden psychic and economic bonds” (Keynes, 1920 , I.4). During World War II, he served on the British delegation in the Bretton Woods negotiations on the postwar monetary order. Central to Keynesian economics is the idea that free markets will not ( contra classical theory) always find an equilibrium at full employment. Instead, crises of underemployment call for public expenditures, for example, in public works (Keynes, 1936 , 1937 ; Galbraith, 1968 .)

Integration Theory

An important inference from Keynesianism is that institutions and governance can be used to create better political, social, and economic outcomes. In contrast to economic nationalism and to neoclassical economics, as James Caporaso ( 1998 , pp. 3–4) noted, integration theorists understood that institutions matter because institutions alter the conditions in which exchanges of various kinds take place by establishing rules. In addition, integration theorists explicitly tied a goal of peaceful relations among nations to integration: liberal markets, with well-functioning institutions, would lead to peaceful outcomes that would be conducive to commercial ties, which would once again feed back and encourage more cooperation. Drawing on both Keynesian liberalism and contributions from sociology to an understanding of cooperative action (Parsons, Shils, & Smelser, 2001 ), integration theory sought a formula for creating the institutions that would promote positive, peaceful outcomes.

Historically, integration theory emerged with discussion by David Mitrany ( 1948 ) of functionalism and world organization. With the cataclysmic effects of both world wars firmly in mind, Mitrany described a world in which functional integration—cooperation and institution building on specific functional tasks and in specific functional areas—would lead to a more peaceful outcome. He wrote:

If one were to visualize a map of the world showing economic and social activities, it would appear as an intricate web of interests and relations crossing and recrossing political divisions comes that would be conducive to commercial, but a map pulsating with the realities of everyday life. They are the natural basis for international organizations: and the task is to bring that map, which is a functioning reality, under joint international government, at least in its essential lines. The political lines will then in time be overlaid and blurred by this web of joint relations and administrations. (Mitrany, 1948 , pp. 358RERL)

Karl Deutsch and Ernst Haas both furthered the study of how functional cooperation may lead to political cooperation. Deutsch found “economic ties,” communication across territorial borders and social strata, “mobility of persons,” and a wide range of different kinds of communication and transaction (among other factors) to be necessary conditions for amalgamation of separate states into a “security-community” (Deutsch, 1957 , p. 58). Haas ( 1964 ) further emphasized the connection between liberalism and functional integration theory. “Integration,” he wrote, “is conceptualized as resulting from an institutionalized pattern of interest politics, played out within existing international organizations. [. . .] There is no common good other than that perceived through the interest-tinted lenses worn by the international actors” (p. 35). Having functional interests in common, states would be able to cooperate, especially when international organizations create the conditions that would facilitate cooperation. Unfortunately, this theory failed in that the hopeful expectations about how international organizations would foster integration and peaceful cooperation did not come to fruition (at least not in the near term, after the publication of these works). Philippe Schmitter offered a revision of the theory that was at once more modest in its predictions and less precise in its specifications of complex expected interactions. Schmitter ( 1970 ) thus presents a less deterministic version: under some conditions, integration may result from the complex functional interactions of states.

Interdependence, Regimes, and Neoliberal Institutionalism

Although it soon became apparent that the hopeful expectation about how international organizations would foster integration and peaceful cooperation would not come to fruition, the main liberal tenets of integration theory continued to play a role in IPE theory. Neoliberal institutionalism soon superseded integration theory as the major approach to IPE among those who followed this Keynesian side of liberalism. The “institutionalism” in neoliberal institutionalism may have been drawn from the economics literature, in which institutionalism referred to “an approach which stresses the interactions between social institutions and economic relationships and aspects of behavior, aims to present an orderly arrangement of economic phenomena in which institutions are elevated from the status of the exception and the footnote, and integrated with the main body of economics” (Eveline Burns, in Homan et al., 1931 , p. 135). Both sociology (Parsons, 1935 ) and political science (Apter, 1957 ) adopted the term, to refer to approaches that explore how organized groups are and what they do in society.

Early links between institutionalism and political economy can be found in an International Studies Association conference panel on “Patterns of International Institutionalism” (Rohn, 1968 ). James March and Johan Olsen ( 1984 ) reviewed the revival of institutionalist thought in political science in the 1970s and 1980s and suggested that the new institutionalism is “simply an argument that the organization of political life makes a difference.” From this parsimonious insight, however, institutionalists opened the examination of how cooperative interactions could regularly, even ubiquitously, comprise IPE. These investigations resulted in the development of both interdependence theory and the concept of international regimes.

“Interdependence,” encapsulating various kinds of interactions and mutual dependencies that promoted peaceful interactions, did not rise to the level of significant scholarly appreciation until the 1970s. The idea had been around for a while. In 1958 , John Foster Dulles, then Secretary of State of the United States, referred specifically to interdependence when he asserted that providing development aid and encouraging trade would combine with military security cooperation to prevent developing countries from falling into the Soviet orbit. A few years later, Vincent Rock ( 1964 ) suggested, perhaps in a fairly unrealistic vein, that interdependence in scientific, trade, and other kinds of interactions would lead to peace between the United States and the Soviet Union. Edward L. Morse refined the concept of interdependence to argue that the “low policies” that involved economic transactions and welfare interests were becoming more important for international relations than the “high policies” of military strategic concerns. Consequently, “the classical goals of power and security have been expanded to, or superseded by, goals of wealth and welfare. [. . .] [T]he old identification of power and security with territory and population has been changed to an identification of welfare with economic growth” (Morse, 1970 , pp. 379–380). Richard Cooper ( 1972 , p. 159) further developed the idea “to refer to the sensitivity of economic transactions between two or more nations to economic developments within those nations.” Cooper, however, saw interdependence as a policy conundrum for states, rather than as a means to more peaceful outcomes in international relations. Richard Rosecrance and Arthur Stein ( 1973 , p. 22) emphasized the unpredictability of the situation in the 1970s: “Whether interdependence will emerge as positive or negative will depend largely on old-fashioned cooperation among governments.”

In a 1974 publication, Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr., focused on interdependence between the United States and Canada. Drawing on Oran Young’s definition of interdependence (Young, 1968 ), Keohane and Nye ( 1974 , p. 606) studied “patterns of interdependence, particularly with regard to symmetry” on policy issues and how patterns of interdependence were “used as sources of bargaining power.” Keohane and Nye ( 1977 ) further developed this concept into “complex interdependence,” in which actors would have varying levels of sensitivity or vulnerability to each other across “multiple channels” (i.e., across different issue areas) in which military issues would not be more important but rather there would be no clear hierarchy among the issues; and in which these ties across these issues would preclude the use of military force.

Attention to interdependence and international institutions highlighted how states and other actors were sensitive and vulnerable to each other. Scholars also questioned whether the interdependence would lead to coordinated action to solve collective international public goods problems. Even if integration, in the functional sense, was not happening completely and directly, could some sort of coordination short of full-fledged integration be going on? International “regimes,” a term borrowed from the legal scholarship by Ernst B. Haas, provided a tentative affirmative answer to this question. In Haas’s description, international regimes were “collective arrangements among nations designed to create or more effectively use scientific and technological capabilities” and that would “minimize the undesired consequences associated with the creation and exploitation of such capabilities” (Haas, 1975b , p. 147; see also Haas, 1975a ). Later debates over the definition of the term included Haas’s restatement: “ Regimes are norms, rules, and procedures agreed to in order to regulate an issue-area ” (Haas, 1980 , p. 358 (emphasis in the original); see also Young, 1980 ). Keohane and Nye ( 1977 , p. 19), in their book on interdependence, took up the issue of regimes as well, referring to them as “the sets of governing arrangements that affect relationships of interdependence.”

The concept of regimes became more formalized in 1982 with the publication of a special issue of the journal International Organization edited by Stephen D. Krasner ( 1982a ), which was republished as an edited book (Krasner, 1983 ). The group of influential scholars writing for this publication agreed upon a uniform definition:

Regimes can be defined as sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors that affect relationships of interdependencees” (Haasterdependence would lead to coordinated action to solve collective inte. Norms are standards of behavior defined in terms of rights and obligations. Rules are specific prescriptions or proscriptions for action. Decision making procedures are prevailing practices for making and implementing collective choice. (Krasner, 1982b , p. 186)

Under this umbrella definition, the authors divided themselves into three separate groups: those who understood regimes to be ubiquitous, “Grotians,” since their views were consistent with that of the 17th-century scholar of international law, Hugo Grotius (Young, 1980 ; e.g., Puchala & Hopkins, 1982 ); those who saw in regimes a possibility for states to escape—sometimes—the pessimistic outcomes of a realist world by creating opportunities for rational actors to cooperate (the “modified structuralists,” like Stein, 1982 ); and those, represented in the volume by Susan Strange ( 1982 ), who thought that regimes obscured, rather than elucidated, what was really going on in the world. (None of these authors questioned who “gave” the issue area, or how it was given, a question that was later raised by constructivists such as Onuf, 1989 , and Marlin-Bennett, 1993 .)

Notwithstanding criticisms, the usefulness of the analytical construct of regimes was that it shifted attention to issues, those questions of international political economy around which negotiations were held, agreements struck, deals kept or not kept. The regimes literature spawned a host of studies of different kinds of issues. By looking at the institutions and the normative structures that made cooperation possible, regimes theorists and empirical researchers opened up the opportunity to see how the vast majority of interactions in the world—those that do not involve military hostilities—actually occur and are ordered. Among the many such works are Rittberger ( 1993 ), Martin and Simmons ( 1998 ), Nadelmann ( 1990 ), Nye ( 1987 ), Peterson ( 2005a ), and Cogburn ( 2017 )

The attention to institutions and the role they play under conditions of a relatively liberal international political economy led scholars to start referring to all these approaches to integration and regimes in a globalizing world as “neoliberal institutionalism” (Keohane, 1984 ). Often contrasted with structural realism, neoliberal institutionalism assumes that rational actors can cooperate under conditions of anarchy because institutions provide rules that the actors are willing to accept and because actors are happy with absolute gains, rather than struggling for relative gains (as a state-centric realist or economic nationalist would assume), from any set of proposed arrangements. Many, however, see flaws in the theoretical edifice of neoliberal institutionalism. Robert Powell ( 1991 ), for example, suggests that both structural realism and neoliberal institutionalism are special cases of a single model of states attempting to pursue their interests under conditions of anarchy and constraints imposed by different capabilities among the actors in the system. Others contest neoliberal institutionalism’s empirical validity (Drezner, 2001 , among others) and its conceptualization of anarchy (Grieco, 1988 ). Yet others disagree with the implicit assumption that neoliberal institutionalist cooperation is good , that cooperation necessarily leads to more peaceful, more materially comfortable, and more emancipatory outcomes (Keeley, 1990 ; Kokaz, 2005 ; Marchand, 1994 ). The intellectual history by Cohen ( 2008 ) provides an overview and assessment of the development of regimes theory.

Neoclassical Liberalism

The other major stream of liberalism diverges from the neoliberal institutionalism and the Keynesian emphasis on coordination through regulation of (global) economic interactions. The neoclassical liberals, including economists of the Austrian School and leading U.S. economists such as Milton Friedman, understood government intervention as damaging to markets and consequently to the economic freedoms of society. Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. von Hayek, two leaders of the Austrian School, advocated antisocialist, antigovernment intervention policies (Hayek, 1994 ; von Mises, 1998 ).

Milton Friedman similarly argued in favor of letting markets operate without government intervention. Government policies that seek to manipulate markets for political outcomes are unavoidable errors, in his view. In an article coauthored with Anna J. Schwartz, the economists conclude that

leaving monetary and banking arrangements to the market would have produced a more satisfactory outcome than was actually achieved through governmental involvement. Nevertheless, we also believe that the same [political] forces that prevented that outcome in the past will continue to prevent it in the future. (Friedman & Schwartz, 1986 , p. 311)

For Friedman, the role of government is important but limited. With Rose Friedman, he wrote:

“Government is essential both as a forum for determining the ‘rules of the game’ and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.” Markets, on the other hand, “reduce greatly the range of issues that must be decided through political means, and thereby [. . .] minimize the extent to which government need participate directly in the game.” (Friedman & Friedman, 1982 , p. 15)

The ascendancy of laissez-faire economics resulted in the dominance of the “Washington Consensus,” which changed the way the international financial institutions (especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) and governments made policies on foreign aid from the 1980s through the 1990s. Proponents of the Washington Consensus placed efficiency of the economy as their highest objective. Further, they did so under the assumptions that efficiency was good and that they understood mechanisms of economics sufficiently to identify good, efficient policies (Williamson, 1993 , p. 1330). Though pursuing equity or more fair distribution of resources had often been considered a goal of policy, supporters of the Washington Consensus were not concerned with equity; at best, they saw the possibility that some improvements in equity could come about “as a byproduct of seeking efficiency objectives” (Williamson, 1993 , p. 1329). As Dani Rodrik ( 2006 ) sardonically recounted:

Any well-trained and well-intentioned economist could feel justified in uttering the obvious truths of the profession: get your macro balances in order, take the state out of business, give markets free rein. “Stabilize, privatize, and liberalize” became the mantra of a generation of technocrats who cut their teeth in the developing world and of the political leaders they counseled. (p. 973)

Ultimately, the popularity of the Washington Consensus waned as it failed to produce positive economic growth in developing countries. By 2005 , the World Bank issued a careful analysis of the failures of its own policies that implemented the neoclassical economics of the Washington Consensus (Zagha & Nankani, 2005 ). The failure of the Washington Consensus cast attention back onto other liberal, but not neoclassical, political economy theories, specifically those dealing with how institutions can resolve externalities and other forms of market failure in an otherwise liberal global political economy.

In the wake of the decline of the Washington Consensus and the financial crisis beginning in 2008 , special mention of the scholarship of Susan Strange must be made. Strange, who could be classified, broadly, as a liberal in her understanding of markets and efficiency, strongly criticized the neoclassical position. She understood that markets did not function in the absence of good governance. Indeed, in 1986 and again in 1998 she analyzed a global political economy in which states had ceded control to markets, with the expectation of disastrous results for volatility and the health of the global economy (Strange, 1986 , 1998 ). She saw clearly the danger of fast-moving financial flows in a global political economy in which no government provided the appropriate regulation to ensure fair dealing and protect against the negative externalities that result when rational self-interested agents pursue their self-interest in the absence of such regulation. No one has been overseeing the global financial system, and the result has been, as Strange ( 1986 ) predicted, serious harm.

Strange’s contributions have only been confirmed in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008 , in response to which liberal theorists have been challenged to critically reformulate the ideal and real relations between market forces and state planning. Landmark works in the empirical study of financial crisis and contemporary inequality such as Picketty ( 2014 ) and Tooze ( 2018 ) are essential contributions to the study of the contemporary salience of finance and financial crisis in contemporary global capitalism. Indeed, as John Ikenberry ( 2018 ) observes, the liberal international order faces grave challenges from resurgent economic nationalisms and social conservatisms. In addition to this 21st-century political challenge, the liberal tradition has historically been most broadly and deeply challenged by Marxian theories of global political economy.

Marxian Global Political Economy

The third major school of thought in international political economy has been Marxism, along with several “neo”-variants. Karl Marx, along with Friedrich Engels and (later) Vladimir Lenin, is considered the progenitor of a political economy that emphasizes the role class plays in society. Although the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the systemic changes within the People’s Republic of China have demonstrated the failures of Marxian-influenced policies, Marxian thought offers a useful critique of the structure of the global political economy by shedding light on capitalism and the production of inequities.

Marx, writing in the mid- 19th century , combined philosophical investigation of political economy with activism. He witnessed a world that was being changed by industrial development, in which the workers were increasingly subject not just to the authority of the state but also to the control of the capitalist. Marx adapted Hegel’s dialectic to the material world, seeing the contradictions within capitalism driving change, which he expected to lead to revolutionary transformation of society. This notion of the dialectic and the teleological view of history—that these contradictions would inexorably lead to a communist society as the predictable end state and (ironically, somewhat self-contradictorily) that this unavoidable revolutionary change should be fomented—has not been borne out and, arguably, has been contradicted. The Communist Manifesto (Marx & Engels, 1983 ) remains, though, the clearest explication of Marx’s view.

In terms of the development of political economy, Marx broke with the liberals in his identification of the sphere of production, as opposed to the sphere of exchange, as the focal point of sociopolitical and economic dynamics. Market mechanisms were relatively fixed, but the politics of production—whether it is on land used to grow food or on the shop floor—determined the nature and dynamics of the social order. Though there are several “Marxian” variations of the broad sweep of history, we basically find a succession of stages that are differentiated by the nature of the ownership of the means of production. Early history is characterized as an era of “primitive capitalism” without specialization where all members of the human community were essentially equal in the tasks they pursued and the status they held. A long period characterized by slavery followed, where some people subjugated others to the status of chattel and appropriated their labor power directly. This system is inefficient and comes to be plagued with high costs involved in maintaining order and overseeing production. In Europe, the period of slavery is followed by feudalism, where direct ownership of individuals ends, but peasants are nonetheless tied to the land, which itself can be owned. The peasant thus owes the owner of the land a level of labor dues. The transition to capitalism emerges when the social relations of production (the social overlay of the feudal system in this latest stage) become impediments to further development. Feudalism’s limits lead to changes that find landowners failing to control their charges, and peasants taking up a new position in the economy. They are stripped of their land and put in a position where they must sell their labor power in the market for a wage.

Marx extended this concept of alienated labor in two ways that are important for the study of global political economy. First, he emphasized the alienation of labor as the definitive element in the capitalist system. The division of labor in an industrializing society meant that workers would have no choice but to sell their labor power as a commodity to survive. In doing so, the worker sells his power of production to the capitalist. The alienation of the worker from his own labor gives a special viciousness to the class relations that characterize the capitalist mode of production (Marx, 1983a ). Second, Marx examined how the alienation of labor led to the accumulation of “surplus value,” the profit that accrued to the capitalist when the price of a good exceeded the wages the capitalist paid the laborer for its production. The wage laborer would only earn enough for their subsistence, but the capitalist would be able to take in the surplus, which would be much greater than that needed for the capitalist’s subsistence (Marx, 1983b ).

Vladimir Lenin’s tract, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism—A Popular Outline , brought Marxian thought into the global political economy. Lenin extended Marx’s predictions, showing how capitalism would spread around the world, leading to an ultimate contradiction of inter-imperialist conflict. As capitalism became more advanced, the accumulation of surplus value led to the concentration of ownership through the rise of monopolies. Bank ownership became concentrated and closely interconnected with the interests of monopoly capital. According to Lenin, the results were monopolistic “finance capital.” Further, the connections between capital and banks were “completed” by tight connections between each of these and the state. The consequence, Lenin wrote, was a shift in capitalism. “Under old capitalism, when free competition prevailed, the export of goods was the most typical feature. Under modern capitalism, when monopolies prevail, the export of capital has become the typical feature” (Lenin, 1982 , p. 62). He argued that the “superabundance of capital” in the advanced capitalist countries drove exports, and capitalism spread throughout the world. Furthermore, imperialism was the natural result, as finance capital moved to expropriate the raw materials of the colonies. The result was the immiseration of the masses, both within the advanced capitalist countries and abroad, “for uneven development and wretched conditions of the masses are fundamental and inevitable conditions and premises of this mode of production” (Lenin, 1982 , pp. 62–63 [emphasis in the original]). The ultimate contradiction between capitalism and monopoly and the push for domination eventually must lead, Lenin stated, to inter-imperialist rivalry and, finally, the decay of monopoly capitalism.

Where Marx saw the spread of the capitalist mode of production to all societies as inevitable, other critical scholars were concerned that capitalism was creating not models of itself but of a new kind of social order. Dependency scholars argued that instead of facilitating the growth of capitalism in the third world, capitalist and imperialist actions were leading to a system where real capitalism could not possibly develop. What we were witnessing, they argued, was “the development of underdevelopment” (Gunder Frank, 1969 ). Dependency scholars argued that capitalist interests often strengthened precapitalist forms of exploitation. Hence, large landowners would solidify their position in a society by reaping the benefits of a captive population of laborers in a system more akin to feudalism than capitalism, but without the internal contradictions that would lead to its transformation. The ability of one society to warp the subsequent developmental path of another, given the incentives that trade relations with capitalists offered, was described by Sweezy ( 1942 ), Baran ( 1957 ; Baran & Sweezy, 1969 ), Gunder Frank ( 1969 ), Cardoso and Faletto ( 1979 ), dos Santos ( 1970 ), and Amin ( 1976 ). Amin, for example, examined how accumulation differs in the core of developed countries and the periphery of developing countries. In the wealthier core, the masses are essentially co-opted through the production and availability of the consumer goods needed to satisfy them. In the periphery, production is focused on luxury goods and exports, thereby further enriching the dominant classes and leaving the needs of the masses unfulfilled and the people marginalized.

Marxist scholars considered this analysis to be flawed by its concern for actions taking place in the sphere of exchange (trade between core and periphery) and not the sphere of production (more class-based analysis). Supporters of the original Marxian formulation like Laclau ( 1971 ) and Warren ( 1973 ) produced critical analyses of dependency arguments. Brenner ( 1977 ) labels dependency and related schools of thought “neo-Smithian” in orientation and therefore fundamentally un-Marxian.

Dependency scholarship was quite popular given its ability to explain both underdevelopment and the failure of class politics to grow along traditionally identified Marxist paths. In the 1970s, Immanuel Wallerstein brought dependency and a desire to reconceptualize the developmental paths of the advanced industrial states in the long-term approach of Fernand Braudel ( 1982–1984 ) together to form world-systems analysis. Wallerstein ( 1974 ) dated the origins of the development of the “capitalist world-economy” to the long 16th century . He was able to add political and cultural conditions to the essentially materialist analyses of longer-term critical history. Wallerstein ( 2004 ) understands a world-economy as

A large geographic zone within which there is a division of labor and hence significant internal exchange of basic or essential goods as well as flows of capital and labor. A defining feature of a world-economy is that it is not bounded by a unitary political structure. Rather, there are many political units inside the world-economy, loosely tied together in our modern world system in an interstate system. And a world-economy contains many cultures and groups—practicing many religions, speaking many languages, differing in their everyday patterns. This does not mean that they do not evolve some cultural patterns, what we shall be calling a geoculture. It does mean that neither political nor cultural homogeneity is to be expected or found in a world-economy. What unified the structure most is the division of labor which is constituted within it. (p. 23)

Wallerstein also came under critical scrutiny for keeping “capitalism” at the core of his analysis. Scholars like Chase-Dunn and Hall ( 1991 , 1997 ) sought to push the elements of world-system analysis to earlier eras in explicitly comparative work. Others, like Gunder Frank and Gills, argued for the abandonment of “capitalism” as the core of global developmental concerns, and argued for the development of a world system history that would cover the last 5,000 years of human history (Gunder Frank, 1998 ; Gunder Frank & Gills, 1993 ). All these works are essentially emancipatory in their intent. They share the view that poverty is a central problem, that global inequalities should be addressed, and that remedies must be adopted.

Italian communist Antonio Gramsci continues to have a major influence on the field of international political economy. Gramsci, who was influenced by Marx, Lenin, and other socialist and communist thinkers, contributed the concept of Gramscian hegemony to the study of IPE. While in liberal and realist IPE, hegemony simply refers to a single state having a preponderance of power, Gramsci looked at the complex interconnection between the material and productive base of the social order (the structure) and philosophy, ideas, culture, and relationships (the superstructure). Hegemony is in place “in so far as it creates a new ideological terrain, determines a reform of consciousness and of methods of knowledge” (Gramsci, 1988 , p. 292). For Gramsci, a class is hegemonic when it is able to lead through the consent of those it controls, because of this complex set of dominant “ethico-political” ideas, and through force, in terms of ownership and organization of economic activity. Giovanni Arrighi ( 1994 ) summarizes Gramsci’s definition of hegemony as

the capability of a state to lead the system of states itself in a desired direction—that is, to set the rules for the system in ways that buttress rather than undermine the world power of the hegemon. [. . .] (p. 365)

Here we should remember Gramsci’s point that intellectual and moral leadership (Machiavelli’s consent) is as critical to the effective exercise of hegemony internationally as coercion pure and simple is at the national level. Henk Overbeek ( 1994 ), however, emphasizes that hegemony in the global political economy has to do more with dominance of a class—specifically of the capitalist class.

Another important Gramscian term is “historical bloc,” which refers to the dynamic dialectical relationship between the material and productive base and the superstructure of ideas. As Robert W. Cox ( 1999 , p. 5) explains, “Gramsci was less concerned with the historic bloc as a stable entity than he was with historical mutations and transformations, and with the emancipatory potential for human agency in history.” In short, the relationship between civil society and the state within any historical bloc will embody both the existing hegemony and the seeds of counterhegemonies. “Civil society was the ground that sustained the hegemony of the bourgeoisie but also that on which an emancipatory counterhegemony could be constructed” (Cox, 1999 , p. 3).

Like Gramsci, Karl Polanyi ( 2001 ) saw society resisting the negative consequences of capitalist markets. In The Great Transformation , he argued that a “double-movement” resulted from social forces pushing back against the aspects of a market-driven society. Polanyi also saw the relationship between society, markets, and the state as historically situated, with technological and policy innovations leading to changes in society. Polanyi traced the creation of the self-regulating market economy through the commodification of land, labor, and specie, social changes that made the industrial revolution and the rise of “haute finance” possible.

Both Gramsci and Polanyi have influenced a cohort of critical IPE scholars, including Robert Cox ( 1996 ), Stephen Gill ( 2003 ; see also Gill & Mittelman, 1997 ), Craig Murphy ( 2005 ), James Mittelman ( 2004 ), and Mark Rupert ( 2000 ). Gramscian global political economy has been particularly relevant to the study of globalization and the spread of liberal markets around the world. These approaches to global political economy suggest that the existing tension in the world between the antiglobalizers and the proglobalizers has at root a dialectical contestation between hegemonic and counterhegemonic groups. These authors focus on the importance of groups and other nonstate actors, as well as states, since civil society within the global political economy includes a variety of types of actors.

The global financial crisis of 2008 provided the impetus for Marxian-influenced scholarship focusing on globalization. Marxian analyses of global financial crises differ from their liberal counterparts in emphasizing the structural nature of these periodic crises. That is, Marxian theorists tend to locate the tendency for economic crisis in the very nature of the system, as a necessary and (relatively) predictable feature, impossible to explain by reference to the individual decision-making of leaders and firms alone (Harvey, 2010 ; Krippner, 2011 ).The tensions between a liberal and a Marxian analysis of capitalism’s crisis tendencies are displayed in the substantive critique of the liberal approach in Crashed by Adam Tooze ( 2018 ; see Anderson, 2019 ). Some of this research, as discussed in the section “ Postcolonial Approaches ,” emphasizes the consequences of capitalist crises in postcolonial societies (e.g., Krishna, 2009 ).

Feminist Global Political Economy

Despite the differences among them, the three most common approaches to global political economy (liberal/neoliberal, mercantile/economic nationalist, and Marxian) tend to assume that the buying, selling, and production of goods and services are what matter. Important actors in the analysis, be they firms and consumers, states, or classes, are all engaged in buying and selling, producing goods and services for sale, and seeking wealth (Tickner, 1992 ). Feminist approaches to global political economy highlight two important points that are usually overlooked. First, people are gendered, and gender is generally understood hierarchically, with men and activities that are understood as masculine (competing, making money) being valued more highly than women and women’s activities. Second, productive (i.e., market-based) activities are not the only things that happen in society; rather, society needs, but, again, does not value as highly, the activities of the reproductive economy—the unpaid work necessary to create a home life, provide leisure activities, and care for family members. These reproductive activities are almost universally associated with feminine characteristics and are not considered by mainstream global political economy analyses. As V. Peterson ( 2005b ) argues, however, understanding the analytical implications of gendered hierarchies provides a more complete understanding of processes of the global political economy (see also Griffin, 2007 ). The approach by J. K. Gibson-Graham ( 2006 ) to decentering and reconceptualizing the capital-labor relation opens an analytical space for feminist theorizations of GPE along these lines.

The marketization of the global political economy, including the integration of emerging market economies, also has important gender implications. As some scholars note, these changes are not necessarily simply good or bad. On the negative side, the informalization of labor—the changing nature of available jobs from regular, full-time employment to part-time, temporary, or independent contracting arrangements—adds significant uncertainty to households’ economic stability. The effect is more pronounced on women’s work and on the feminized jobs held by men. On the positive side, globalization has also brought increasing equity in educational opportunities and increased access to some jobs (Benería, Floro, Grown, & MacDonald, 2000 ; Peterson, 2005b ). Similarly, Jacqui True, in a case study of the Czech Republic, finds that “the commodification of gender is facilitating the extension of markets,” with the dual effect of “empower[ing] women as much as it subjects them to new forms of discipline and market civilization” (True, 1999 , p. 363).

Consequently, a further contribution of feminist GPE has been to challenge the pervasive association of the study of the global or the totality with a masculine drive to dominance. Instead of combatting the impulse to study the global by turning to a study of microrelations, feminist GPE has developed theories and methods for understanding gender as a mechanism of producing and rationalizing the inequalities within global capitalism (Bhattacharya, 2017 ; Fraser, 2013 ; Tepe-Belfrage, 2016 ). Hozic and True ( 2016 ) bring together a variety of feminist and queer perspectives on global financial crisis, highlighting how these concerns cannot be consigned to the margins of the study of global economic processes.

Postcolonial Approaches

A burgeoning literature in postcolonial political economy has emerged through critical conversation with traditional IPE. This literature mobilizes a critique of Eurocentrism in political economy and foregrounds the structural impact that colonial histories continue to exert on global economic life (Dirlik, 1994 ; Grovogui, 2011 ; Lowe, 2015 ; Shilliam, 2018 ). Another key contribution of postcolonial theory to political economy has been its critique of Eurocentric epistemologies and its attention to the knowledge traditions and economic formations of the non-West (Agathangelou & Ling, 2003 ; Blaney & Inayatullah, 2010 ; Ling, 2000 ; Shilliam, 2012a , 2020 ). Robbie Shilliam ( 2009 , 2012b ), for example, theorizes about Atlantic slavery and its consequences for our understanding of liberal and Marxian IPE.

Debates continue over whether Marxian theory is essential to a postcolonial project of emancipation and self-determination (Rao, 2017 ). On the one hand, the reading of Marx by Dipesh Chakrabarty ( 2008 ) has inspired new possibilities for the critique of the coloniality and the racism of capitalism’s history and present (e.g., Persaud & Sajed, 2018 ; Tilley & Shilliam, 2018 ). On the other hand, Hobson ( 2012 , 2013a , 2013b ) argues that Marx and Lenin’s theoretical edifice is too indebted to a colonial worldview in which the West represents the model of future progress and social development. An influential Marxian critique of postcolonial studies can be found in Chibber ( 2013 ). Notwithstanding these tensions, scholars continue to draw inspiration from both postcolonial theory and Marxian theory to construct critiques of contemporary global capitalism. For example, Anievas and Nişancıoğlu ( 2015 ) have brought the sensibilities of the Marxian tradition together with postcolonial theory to highlight the irreducibly global or intersocietal history of capitalism, and Khalili ( 2020 ) takes stock of the colonial echoes that resonate within global trade flows from the standpoint of the Arabian Peninsula.

Upon entering the third decade of the 21st century , three rapidly evolving areas of scholarship, discussed briefly in this section, are likely to continue to be of interest and grow in importance: China and the transition of the neoliberal world order, queer global political economy, and “precarity” of the global workforce.

Prior to the 1990s, research on China generally focused on processes of development and modernization of a peripheral country. As China made initial changes to its economy and began to participate more in global trade, new questions emerged. Jacobson and Okensenberg ( 1990 ), for example, examined the impact of the participation of China, a developing country with a command economy, in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (it had been a member since 1980 ) and the likely consequences for the global economic order of its signing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. At the end of the 20th century , China’s economy underwent a major transformation, including the growth of its private sector, reliance on exports, and full engagement with international trade and finance. These changes spurred assessment of the IPE implications of China as a rising power. This research is consistent with mainstream IPE schools of thought, framing China’s opening and market reforms in terms of realist/economic nationalist expectations of conflict between China and the liberal capitalist countries (Layne, 2018 ) or liberal expectations that China will end up conforming to Western liberal capitalist norms (Deudney & Ikenberry, 2018 ; Ikenberry, 2009 ).

The new trend in the research moves away from this “binary orthodoxy” (De Graaff, ten Brink, & Parmar, 2020 ). Instead, this trend provides empirical and theoretical analysis of how China reshapes but does not necessarily remake global capitalism—not overturning global capitalism and the neoliberal order but rather exerting influence on and shaping its contours (Hung, 2009 , 2015 ). This stream of research avoids theorizing China as a unitary actor and instead looks closely at the global consequences of how the Chinese economy is organized domestically and in the global context. Hung ( 2008 ) assesses the overaccumulation of capital in China resulting from the state’s decentralization of regulatory authority, local actors’ overinvestment in productive capacity, and widespread underconsumption. China has been able to maintain strong growth and an export-driven trade policy in this unstable circumstance only because of overconsumption and debt in the United States. Other scholars have explored how China’s trade policy is both influenced by and promoted by transnational networks that Chinese elites have entered (de Graaff, 2020 ; Huo & Parmar, 2020 ). Disruption of neoliberal globalization is another important theme. For example, Hopewell ( 2016 ) argues that Chinese inconsistency—sometimes supporting and sometimes contesting neoliberal rules—is the root of its disruptiveness. Ironically, by supporting liberal rules, China shines a light on the “hypocrisy” of illiberal trade policies of the United States and other Western countries. Weinhardt and ten Brink ( 2020 ) suggest that explanation for this inconsistency can be found in domestic differences in the structure and degree of government intervention in sectors. McNally ( 2020 ) identifies the source of instability in the contradictions of Sino-capitalism, described as both neoliberal and neostatist and as organized top-down by the state and bottom-up through networks of entrepreneurs.

The second trend, queer global political economy, can be seen within the broader category of queer international relations (IR) theory (Weber, 2015 ), while overlapping substantially with feminist and other critical approaches. Queer IR theory uncovers and problematizes the political consequences of assumptions, grounded in naturalized cultural practices, of binary constructions of identity—of assuming the world is divided into male and female or similarly into normal and abnormal, heterosexual and homosexual, or other taken-for-granted dichotomies. Applied to the substantive domain of global political economy, this approach focuses attention on “heteromasculine and cissexist assumptions and biases” and “the differential—and productive—impact of processes and policies associated with neoliberal globalization sexualized and gendered subjects, practices, and kinship relations” (see article “Queer International Relations”). Peterson ( 2014 ), for example, explores “global householding,” a term that encompasses the many transborder processes of social reproduction necessary to sustain families and the wider society, especially in the Global North. These processes include “marriage/partnership, earning income, managing daily life, securing childcare, eldercare, healthcare, and education, acquiring domestic ‘help,’ relocating for retirement” (p. 606). Smith ( 2016 ) investigates how neoliberal policy responses to global financial crises disadvantage those whose lives differ from that of the presumed “normal” family, a husband and a wife and their children. “Imaginaries” of the family, she argues, reproduce the neoliberal economic order.

The growing “precarity” of the global workforce, the subject of the third new direction of research discussed here, has emerged as a grave side effect of the processes of globalization, a reality acknowledged by all the different schools of IPE. Guy Standing ( 2016 ) has introduced and popularized the concept of the “precariat,” which he regards as a new stratum of the working class marked by an extreme lack of job security and basic benefits like healthcare and paid time off. This class, according to Standing, represents a growing contingent of the global workforce, a verdict corroborated by many empirical studies, especially from a comparative political economy perspective (Agarwala, 2013 ; Kalleburg, 2018 ; Mosoetsa, Stillerman, & Till, 2016 ). This framing of the issue of precarious labor, however, is not without its critics. With a properly global analytic lens, some argue, precarity does not appear to be a new phenomenon at all but a condition that has characterized the Global South since its inception and which now threatens the North as well (Scully, 2016 ). Moreover, as Ritu Vij ( 2019 , p. 504) has argued, the idea of precarity as it is popularly conceived rests on “the pathologization of vulnerability,” an ideological process which normalizes a liberal individualist political economy and understands nonliberal forms of life as “abject.”

It is also worth mentioning a trend that seems to have petered out. At the time the original 2010 version of this article was drafted, communitarianism seemed to be a promising, emerging stream of normative research that would address problems of global capitalism. Largely associated with the work of Amitai Etzioni ( 1991 , 2004 ), communitarianism can be seen as a countertheory to the idea that liberal markets are natural and that men and women are naturally economically rational, self-interested agents. Etzioni’s communitarianism does not eschew liberal economics wholly, nor does he advocate a loss of individual freedoms; instead, he looks for a via media in which the interests of individuals are balanced by the interest of the communities of which they are a part. The local, national, and global political economies are in essence communities. The connection to community seems to draw on the feminist idea of an ethic of care (Tronto, 1987 ). William Galston ( 2002 ), in a similar vein, argues for a rejection of both socialist and laissez-faire economics in favor of an approach that he calls “mutualism”; the policy implementation would be a “progressive market strategy,” in which policies would promote “moderate self-interest, regard for others, and internalized norms” of responsibility. Communitarian global political economy, however, failed to gain traction, perhaps because other, more normatively progressive critical approaches came to the fore.

GPE Research Relevant to COVID-19

As this article was being prepared for publication ( May 2020 ), it became difficult to ignore the severe implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for the global political economy. The robust literature dealing with the global history of pandemics and the dangers that a new pandemic would pose in a world marked by increasingly intensifying processes of economic globalization are highlighted here.

A review of GPE’s engagements with the history of global pandemics reveals a wide variety of analytical lenses, including descriptive accounts of the impact of environment on society and more politically focused accounts of the differential impacts suffered by different peoples. The account by McNeil ( 1998 ) of the history of plagues is notable for its emphasis on intersocietal transmission, highlighting how the world’s peoples have been interconnected long before the emergence of 20th-century globalization. The work of Pirages ( 1995 , 1997 , 2007 ) deserves special mention for its wide historical and geographical scope and its sensitivity to the intersections between international politics, infectious disease transmission, and the coordinated social responses (or lack thereof) that have been implemented historically to combat the worst consequences of infectious disease. Work by Paul Farmer ( 2004 ) seeks to highlight how the social toll of pandemics largely depends on preexisting power relations and inequalities in society, which he theorizes in terms of “structural violence.” Another key scholar of pandemics is Mike Davis ( 2005 ), whose study on the Avian Flu offered a prescient warning of the political–economic threat of a new global pandemic. Davis ( 2020 ) has published an analysis of COVID-19 in a periodical issue focused on the pandemic (NLR Editors, 2020 ).

A special issue of Review of International Political Economy on Political Economies of Global Health, edited by Susan K. Sell and Owain D. Williams ( 2020b ), appeared online just a few months before the first reported cases of COVID-19. The issue focuses on global capitalism’s effects on the health of the world’s people across multiple scales and through multiple processes. Neoliberalism and policies insisting on free markets, Sell and Williams ( 2020a ) argue, have negative effects on global health through “regimes and institutions in areas such as trade and investment policy, austerity programs, pharmaceutical and food governance, and the rules that support globalized production and consumption” (p. 1). Though this observation focuses on health more generally, the global, national, and local responses to pandemics are certainly a part of the larger global health system. Three of the articles are especially relevant to the GPE aspects of pandemics and other instances of the spread of infectious disease. Rebecca J. Hester and Owain D. Williams ( 2020 ) ground their exploration of the political economy of the “somatic-security industrial complex,” upon influenza and its movement around the world. Stefan Elbe and Christopher Long ( 2020 ) explore global assemblages of medical molecules that become valuable for biodefense against disease outbreaks, bioterrorist attacks, and the like. João Nunes ( 2020 ) examines Brazil’s domestic political economy within the neoliberal order, the precarity of health workers’ jobs, and the consequences for Brazil during the Zika virus outbreak.

Much of the salient research on the global politics of infectious diseases prior to COVID-19 has occurred in fields of global health governance (Huang, 2014 ; Youde, 2018 ) and security studies (Davies, 2008 ; Price-Smith, 2009 ), and these studies will likely prove essential for future pandemic-related knowledge production in GPE. New materialist approaches that privilege the impact of nonhuman life processes will likely contribute in important ways to pandemic research (White, 2015 ).

Though COVID-19 was only recognized as a global pandemic in March 2020 , the sheer scope of the crisis resulted in immediate scholarly attention. Notable analyses of the pandemic and its reverberations in the global economy include the world-systems approach of Silver and Payne ( 2020 ) and a short but generative series of contributions to the journal of Foreign Policy (Walt et al., 2020 ). Certainly, many scholars of GPE will be turning to these contributions and constructing their own in responses to the global crisis of COVID-19.

Links to Digital Materials

• Library of Economics and Liberty . Funded by a libertarian nonprofit educational organization, the online library has many key liberal texts available in an easy-to-read format.
• Project Gutenberg . Volunteers upload plain text versions of public domain texts. A useful source for older, well-known works.
• The Internet Modern History Sourcebook . Though focusing on history, several of the references here have relevance for international political economy.
• Resources for the Study of International Relations . An excellent source of general international relations documents, with a broad selection of documents specifically relevant to international political economy. Collected by Vincent Ferraro.
• International organizations of importance to IPE/GPE include the World Bank , the International Monetary Fund , World Trade Organization , and the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development .
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• Amin, S. (1990). Delinking: Towards a polycentric world . New York, NY: Zed Books.
• Anderson, P. (2019, September-October). Situationism à L’envers? New Left Review , 104 , 47–93.
• Anievas, A. , & Nişancıoğlu, K. (2015). How the West came to rule: The geopolitical origins of capitalism . London, UK: Pluto Press.
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• Baran, P. A. , & Sweezy, P. M. (1969). Monopoly capital: An essay on the American economic and social order . New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.
• Benería, L. , Floro, M. , Grown, C. , & MacDonald, M. (2000). Globalization and gender. Feminist Economics , 6 (3), 7–18.
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• Bilginsoy, C. (1994). Quesnay’s tableau economique: Analytics and policy implications. Oxford Economic Papers , 46 (3), 519–533.
• Blaney, D. L. , & Inayatullah, N. (2010). Savage economics: Wealth, poverty and the temporal walls of capitalism . Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
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• Brenner, R. (1977, July–August). The origins of capitalist development: A critique of neo-Smithian Marxism. New Left Review , 104 , 25–92.
• Caporaso, J. (1998). Regional integration theory: Understanding our past and anticipating our future. Journal of European Public Policy , 5 (1), 1–16.
• Cardoso, F. H. , & Faletto, E. (1979). Dependency and development in Latin America . Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Carr, E. H. (2001). The twenty years’ crisis, 1919-1939: An introduction to the study of international relations . New York, NY: Perennial.
• Chakrabarty, D. (2008). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Chase-Dunn, C. , & Hall, T. (Eds.). (1991). Core/periphery relations in pre-capitalist worlds . Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
• Chase-Dunn, C. , & Hall, T. (1997). Rise and demise: Comparing world-systems . Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
• Chibber, V. (2013). Postcolonial theory and the specter of capital . London, UK: Verso Books.
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