Inter Paradigm Debate
...s: more letters indicated more highly integrated countries - Critics argued that quality counts as much in IR as quantity: - For example, what about a letter delivered in a diplomatic pouch, making some promise or threat? This sort of communication counts differently than all of the letters delivered between friends, family, and business associates. -this is a very simple example, but the point is that reducing social relations of any kind to numbers for the purposes of manipulation necessarily loses something crucial to the relations you are trying to understand - The traditionalist’s argument, therefore, is that to understand social life, IR scholars needed social theory, rather than the theories of the natural sciences. This is not a debate that has in any meaningful way been resolved - There is still considerable IR scholarship that tries to fulfill the aims of the behavioural revolution Inter Paradigm Debate The inter-paradigm debate signals that there are a number of contenders, or paradigms debating about what the world looks like, what we ought to focus on when we study it, and what theory should be used for This opening up of the field beginning in the 1970s coincided with some important changes in the world of global politics. Perhaps the most important was the OPEC generated oil crises of the 1970s which went to show that even the United States was vulnerable, despite its enormous military capacity - In addition, there was the breakdown of international monetary agreements, the emergence of high unemployment and high inflation, and the moves beginning in earnest in the 1950s towards European integration - Taken as a whole, economic issues started to be more important, but realism doesn't really help policymakers understand that The other major development was the beginning of a defrost in the Cold War - The 1970s saw the emergence of 'detente' between the US and the USSR - This was a period of greatly reduced tensions and the signing of a number of important arms control agreements - While the Cold War intensified again in the 1980s, questions began to be raised about whether a theory of IR that was so focused on questions of war and security was appropriate - It began to be suggested that the near exclusive focus on East-West security relations was more constraining than helpful -The assumptions of realism meant that only some questions got asked, only some issues were treated as important; other questions never got asked and other issues were never even put on the table The result is a space for debate opens a debate which begins among a number of competing paradigms IR theories were traditionally dominated by the three perspectives: realism, idealism, and behaviouralism. The consequence of the first debate in the 1940s undermined the idealist perspective, while the second debate in the 1950s and 1960s enhanced the behaviouralist hegemony: what Jim George calls the ‘Positivist-Realist Legacy’. Afterwards, three dominant paradigms emerged in the IR literature in the 1970s and 1980s: realism/neo-realism, liberal/neo-liberalism, Marxism/radicalism, and all three paradigms were closely associated with the positivist epistemology of science. Realism Anarchy Military Polyarchy Economic Liberalism Interdependence Dependence While realists argue that the world is anarchic, and that there is little likelihood of cooperation among states, liberals maintain that state cooperation is possible in certain circumstances: there is some order despite the absence of central government: while liberals argue that the relations among states is mutually influence each other, Marxists claim that this is a domination-dependence rather than interdependence: and whereas Marxists are closely associated with the economic analysis of class, realists focus on military capabilities. In other words, Realists and Marxists agree in recognizing the role of power and struggle in contrast to the more harmony-oriented liberalism. Marxists and liberals together attack the narrow state universe of realists. And, of course, the Marxists on many issues meet a common front of realists and liberals who reject revolutionary changes. Structuralists argue more generally still that international behaviour can be understood only in terms of social, political and economic structures of which the greatest of these is economic. Many contributors to this genre are Marxists and when not, such as in the case of Johan Galtung, they are very influenced by Marxist thought. The crucial thing is that the role of decision for the structuralist is small. As a consequence of the victory of positivism in the second debate in the 1960s and the resurgence of realism in the late 1970s (e.g., Theory of International Politics by Kenneth Waltz in 1979), IR theories have been dominated by the positivism-realism approach. Waltz, in this context, follows scientific structuralism with his deductions approach: ‘theory’ seeks to identify the systemic generalized explanations of reality. He goes further with the following three key theoretical assumptions: (1) IR has to be developed through general theories of natural science. (2) This general theory can not be achieved if IR theories remain associated with ‘inductivist illusion’ and reductionism. (3) The general theory is achievable if IR theory seeks to explain the systemic order of international politics. Main features of Neo-Neo Debate • The Neo- Neo debate is not a debate between two polar opposite worldviews. They share an epistemology, focus on similar questions and they agree on a number of assumptions about international politics. This is an intra-paradigm debate. • Neo- liberals see institutions and regimes as significance forces in international relations. Neo-realists state that neo-liberals exaggerate the impact of regimes as an institution on state behaviour. • Neo-liberals claim that they facilitate co-operation, and neo-realists say that they don’t mitigate the constraining effects of anarchy on co-operation. • Both agree that international system is anarchic. Neo- realists say that anarchy puts more constraints on foreign policy and that neo- liberals minimize the importance of survival as the goal of each state. Neo- liberals claim that neo- realists minimize the importance of international interdependence, globalization, and the regimes created to manage these interactions. • Neo- liberals and neo-realists study different worlds of international politics. Neo-realists focus on security and military issues-the high politics issue area. Neo-liberals focus on political economy, environment and lately human rights issues. These issues have been called the low politics issue agenda. • Neo-realists explain that all states must be concerned with the absolute and relative gains that result from international agreements and co-operative efforts. Neo-liberals are less concerned about relative gains and consider that all will benefit from absolute gains. Reflectivist VS Rationalist Theories Along with the neo-neo synthesis, ‘reflectivism’ emerged as a counterpart of rationalism (Keohane 1988). Reflectivism emphasizes interpretations rather than empirical data, because norms and regimes are, according to relativists, unable to be studied by positivist methods. Instead, inter-subjective meanings are only researchable by non-positivist methods. As figure below shows, critical IR theories (reflectivist or post-positivist) emerged to challenge the positivist and rationalist frameworks of IR: What Lapid (1988) calls ‘the Third Debate’. Ontologically, they challenge the rationalist conception of human nature: interests and actions are not always rational, and emphasize the social construction of actors’ identities in shaping interests and actions. Epistemologically, they challenge the positivist approach to knowledge: there is no objective truth by countering the behaviouralist hegemony, and advocate a plurality of approaches by highlighting interpretative approaches. Rationalism Reflectivism Realism Neo-Neo Synthesis Liberalism Marxism While rationalists focus on material forces, constructivists emphasise the role of ideas: although materialism privileges the material structures, such as natural recourses, geography, forces of destruction, and mode of production, what constructivists call idealism claims that social structures are constructed by ideational factors rather than material forces. While rationalists research empirical data, deconstructivists research discourse: the rationalist methods favour empirical data, because they believe in (1) unity of science - there are no methodological differences between the natural and social sciences, (2) strong distinction between facts and values - facts are highly neutral between competing theories, (3) discovering regularities in the social world as natural scientists discover regularities in the natural world, and (4) empiricist epistemology - true statements are supported by empirical data. By contrast, deconstructivists insist that the social world can only be accountable for within specific discourses, rather than by reference to empirical data, More importantly, whereas constructivists are working with a foundationalists epistemology. Bridging the Gap: Social Constructivism • Social constructivism offers the prospect of bridging the gap between rationalist and reflectivist theories. • There are many constructivists but the best example is Alexander Wendt whose version of constructivism is summarised in his 1992 article 'Anarchy is what states make of it' and developed more fully in his 1999 book Social Theory of International Politics.. • Wendt's attempt is important because Robert Keohane pointed out that unless the Reflectivists could come up with a research programme then they would remain on the margins of the discipline. Wendt offers such a research programme because he promises to bring neo-liberals and Reflectivists together. • Wendt's key claim is that international anarchy is not fixed, and does not automatically involve the self-interested state behaviour that rationalists see as built into the system. Instead he thinks that anarchy could take on several different forms because the selfish identities and interests assumed by rationalists are in fact the products of interaction and are not prior it. Critique on Wendt • There are several important objections to Wendt's argument. • He is really a rationalist and a realist, so that he is not in fact bringing together rationalism and reflectivism, but is instead defining constructivism in a very narrow way, one that is acceptable to rationalists, but which would not be accepted by reflectivist who wants a far deeper definition of identity and interest than he provides. • Moreover, Wendt sees states as the 'givens' of world politics, but why should this be so instead of classes, or companies or ethnicities or genders? • Wendt certainly accepts that the most important actor in world politics are states and that their dominance will continue. This is much more restricted definition of world politics than the one that the reflectivists would want to propose. • Although, Wendt wants to bring says he wants to bring together neo-liberals and reflectivists (constructivists), it is clear that he is not bringing together two groups that share the same view of how to construct knowledge. • Finally, note that his view of identity is an ideational one, whereas many argue that material interests determine our ideas and therefore our ideational structures. In short, his account is really much more traditional and rationalist than at first seems to be the case. Post-modernism • Lyotard defines post-modernism as incredulity towards metanarratives, meaning that it denies the possibility of foundations for establishing the truth of statements existing outside of a discourse. • Foucault focuses on the power-knowledge relationship which sees the two as mutually constituted. It implies that there can be no truth outside of regimes of truth. How can history have a truth if truth has a history? • Foucault proposes a genealogical approach to look at history, and this approach uncovers how certain regimes of truth have dominated others. • Derrida argues that the world is like a text in that it cannot simply be grasped, but has to be interpreted. He looks at how texts are constructed, and proposes two main tools to enable us to see how arbitrary the seemingly ‘natural’ oppositions of language are. These are deconstruction and double reading. • Post-modern approaches are attacked by the mainstream for being too theoretical and not enough concerned with the 'real' world; but post-modernists reply that in the social world there is no such thing as the 'real' world in the sense of a reality that is not interpreted by us. Which one is dominated There are two different approaches to the analysis of social behaviour which can properly be called different paradigms. According to one paradigm, human beings are basically the same wherever they are found. They become cruel, kind, aggressive, pacific, and so on according to the norms of the society they are involved in but because of the underlying similarity the rules involved can be understood. This is the classic empiricist tradition, clearly stated in Hume, implied, I think, in Freud (DATE) (Gay 1985) and generally, if implicitly, accepted in the standard practice of economics and behavioural political science. This allows for the legitimacy of generalization. According to the other paradigm, the rules are far too numerous for anyone to understand. This is not just an issue of complexity which might be overcome, but an issue of principle as the understanding involved cannot be handed over to a computer, even in principle, but must be held in the mind of the individual, and our internal resources are inadequate. These two approaches are genuinely different ways of looking at the world and are hence paradigms in the Khunian sense. They are fundamentally different ways of looking at the world and the arguments which are made are of a conceptual nature not an empirical. If I wish to debate with Winch I do not amass more facts but engage in philosophical argument. On this, at least, we would be agreed. Thus we have two different concepts of social behaviour. The first asserts that generalization is possible. If so, we can move on to formulating deductive theories of social behaviour in the standard scientific way and devise a social science of behaviour in this mode. Thus is what many social scientists assert they do anyway. The second paradigm asserts that generalization is impossible. Its adherents may not totally deny this but argue that it applies only to a narrowly restricted class of events which are either very simple (such as parachute jumping) or so frequently repeated (such as learning a language) that the learning processes between one instance and the next are negligible, so the actions can be regarded as effectively the same. However, social events of any size and complexity, which would mean more or less anything studied by what, are today called the social sciences, do not fall under this rubric, and hence are effectively excluded from analysis by scientific methods as normally understood. While clearly these are not strict dichotomies as is the case with the classic paradigms, the difference between adherents of what might be called the moderate extremes, makes them effectively so. The research strategies of adopting one or the other are totally different. If we follow Winch, the whole work in the behavioural tradition involving data gathering and formal modelling is meaningless. Richardson (1960), Deutsch (for example 1953), Rapoport (for example 1974), Singer (for example 1968), Boulding (1962), Geutzkow (1981), and all the other toilers in the vineyard, has wasted their time. All we can do is look at the events in the world, and in the case of the International Relations specialist, the international scene, in isolation and as instances of themselves and themselves alone for there are no such things as classes of events. I, myself, think Winch is wrong. I do not argue this here and in any case the theme of my argument is that, while argument can clarify the issue, in the last analysis it is not decidable. Incommensurability Factor Incommensurability is a central if a controversial issue, particularly in the applications to the social sciences. Incommensurability comes about for two reasons. The first is that the theories involved are talking about different things. They are not commensurable in the sense that one cannot be compared with the other but they are not necessarily inconsistent. Suppose we argue that the basic reason for the widespread fact that men and women live together is the sexual drive. However, we can explain the marriage conventions in a particular society by reference to the mores of that society exhibited, perhaps, in the religious principles which again we explain in terms of the conditions of the society when these principles were formulated. Further we can explain a named couple getting together by reference to shared interests, particular reasons why they should be especially attracted to each other as opposed to other possible partners and so on. We cannot very well test one explanation in terms of the other and in this sense they are incommensurable. However, they are completely compatible and an explanation at one level does not mean we cannot accept an explanation at another level to explain the different types of principles raised. Banks appears to regard the incommensurability involved in the paradigms in International Relations to be of this sort and, if so, there are no real problems involved. However, another form of incommensurability is a true incommensurability where the two paradigms literally cannot be held simultaneously. This occurs when one of the central tenets of one of the theories contradicts the central tenets of the other, as clearly happened in the case of the solar system. An important class of frameworks where this occurs in the social sciences is when two different systems of explanation of the same phenomena are both tautological and explain everything. Thus, a realist or power political analysis of imperialism can be made tautological in that any apparent anomaly in the system can be incorporated by some redefinition of power or by assertions about the basic subordination of non-state actors (such as multinational corporations - extending far back in time as in the case of the British, French and Dutch East India Companies). The system always has sufficient flexibility within it to come with anything. If we now consider a structuralist picture of imperialism on the same lines as Reynolds then we can do the same. Everything is explained perfectly well by means of some readjustment of the terms involved and we appear to have again explained the phenomena completely but now inconsistently. The incommensurability depends on the tautological nature of the 'theories' involved. We seem to be in an impasse - though an impasse with which some scholars such as Reynolds appear quite happy. Even if we take the view that paradigms are properly incommensurable in the natural sciences and cannot be rationally compared, such shifts are relatively rare. The term does n...