ASSIGNMENT 08A01 Introduction to AccountingPart A (20 points).docx

ASSIGNMENT 08
A01 Introduction to Accounting
Part A (20 points)
Prepare in proper form journal entries for the following
transactions. Omit explanations.
October
2Owner made a cash investment into the company $5,000
8Bought supplies on account $100.
10Paid salaries, $700
15Paid for supplies purchased on October 8
21Received company telephone bill, to be paid later, $30
Part B (5 points each for a possible total of 50 points)
Record the following selected transactions for January in a two-
column journal, identifying each entry by letter:
(a) Earned $7,000 fees; customer will pay later.
(b) Purchased equipment for $45,000, paying $20,000 in cash
and the remainder on credit
(c) Paid $3,000 for rent for January.
(d) Purchased $2,500 of supplies on account.
(e) A. Allen $1,000 investment in the company.
(f) Received $7,000 in cash for fees earned previously.
(g) Paid $1,200 to creditors on account.
(h) Paid wages of $6,250.
(i) Received $7,150 from customers on account.
(j) A. Allen withdrawal of $1,750.

Part C
(1) (10 points) From the following items in the income
statement columns of the worksheet of Friend's Tutoring at
December 31, prepare the closing entries without explanation,
assuming that a $1,000 withdrawal was made during the period.
Income Statement
AccountDebitCredit
Tutoring Fees3,450
Wages Expense700
Rent Expense600
Supplies Expense450
Insurance Expense250_____
2,0003,450
Net Income1,450_____
$3,450$3,450
(2) (5 points each for a possible total of 20 points) A summary
of selected ledger accounts appear below for S. Ball for the
current calendar year.
Answer the following questions.
a. What was the total amount of withdrawals for the year?
b. What was the net income?
c. What was the total revenue?
d. What were the total expenses?

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International relations: One world, many theories.
Walt, Stephen M.
Foreign Policy. Spring98, Issue 110, p29. 17p. 1 Chart.
Article
INTERNATIONAL relations
REALISM
LIBERALISM

Discusses the theoretical traditions in the study of international
relations.
Evolution of realist theory; Challenges of liberal theories
against realist
theories; Explanation offered by Marxism on international
conflict.
INSET: Waiting for Mr. X.
5946
0015-7228
10.2307/1149275
382407
International Security & Counter Terrorism Reference Center
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: ONE WORLD, MANY
THEORIES
Why should policymakers and practitioners care about the
scholarly study of international affairs? Those who
conduct foreign policy often dismiss academic theorists
(frequently, one must admit, with good reason), but
there is an inescapable link between the abstract world of theory
and the real world of policy. We need theories
to make sense of the blizzard of information that bombards us
daily. Even policymakers who are contemptuous
of "theory" must rely on their own (often unstated) ideas about
how the world works in order to decide what to
do. It is hard to make good policy if one's basic organizing
principles are flawed, just as it is hard to construct
good theories without knowing a lot about the real world.
Everyone uses theories--whether he or she knows it

or not--and disagreements about policy usually rest on more
fundamental disagreements about the basic
forces that shape international outcomes.
Take, for example, the current debate on how to respond to
China. From one perspective, China's ascent is the
latest example of the tendency for rising powers to alter the
global balance of power in potentially dangerous
ways, especially as their growing influence makes them more
ambitious. From another perspective, the key to
China's future conduct is whether its behavior will be modified
by its integration into world markets and by the
(inevitable?) spread of democratic principles. From yet another
viewpoint, relations between China and the rest
of the world will be shaped by issues of culture and identity:
Will China see itself (and be seen by others) as a
normal member of the world community or a singular society
that deserves special treatment?
In the same way, the debate over nato expansion looks different
depending on which theory one employs.
From a "realist" perspective, nato expansion is an effort to
extend Western influence--well beyond the
traditional sphere of U.S. vital interests--during a period of
Russian weakness and is likely to provoke a harsh
response from Moscow. From a liberal perspective, however,
expansion will reinforce the nascent democracies
of Central Europe and extend nato's conflict-management
mechanisms to a potentially turbulent region. A third
view might stress the value of incorporating the Czech
Republic, Hungary, and Poland within the Western
security community, whose members share a common identity
that has made war largely unthinkable.

No single approach can capture all the complexity of
contemporary world politics. Therefore, we are better off
with a diverse array of competing ideas rather than a single
theoretical orthodoxy. Competition between
theories helps reveal their strengths and weaknesses and spurs
subsequent refinements, while revealing flaws
in conventional wisdom. Although we should take care to
emphasize inventiveness over invective, we should
welcome and encourage the heterogeneity of contemporary
scholarship.
Where Are We Coming From?
The study of international affairs is best understood as a
protracted competition between the realist, liberal,
and radical traditions. Realism emphasizes the enduring
propensity for conflict between states; liberalism
identifies several ways to mitigate these conflictive tendencies;
and the radical tradition describes how the
entire system of state relations might be transformed. The
boundaries between these traditions are somewhat
fuzzy and a number of important works do not fit neatly into
any of them, but debates within and among them
have largely defined the discipline.
Realism
Realism was the dominant theoretical tradition throughout the
Cold War. It depicts international affairs as a
struggle for power among self-interested states and is generally
pessimistic about the prospects for eliminating
conflict and war. Realism dominated in the Cold War years

because it provided simple but powerful
explanations for war, alliances, imperialism, obstacles to
cooperation, and other international phenomena, and
because its emphasis on competition was consistent with the
central features of the American-Soviet rivalry.
Realism is not a single theory, of course, and realist thought
evolved considerably throughout the Cold War.
"Classical" realists such as Hans Morgenthau and Reinhold
Niebuhr believed that states, like human beings,
had an innate desire to dominate others, which led them to fight
wars. Morgenthau also stressed the virtues of
the classical, multipolar, balance-of-power system and saw the
bipolar rivalry between the United States and
the Soviet Union as especially dangerous.
By contrast, the "neorealist" theory advanced by Kenneth Waltz
ignored human nature and focused on the
effects of the international system. For Waltz, the international
system consisted of a number of great powers,
each seeking to survive. Because the system is anarchic (i.e.,
there is no central authority to protect states
from one another), each state has to survive on its own. Waltz
argued that this condition would lead weaker
states to balance against, rather than bandwagon with, more
powerful rivals. And contrary to Morgenthau, he
claimed that bipolarity was more stable than multipolarity.
An important refinement to realism was the addition of offense-
defense theory, as laid out by Robert Jervis,
George Quester, and Stephen Van Evera. These scholars argued
that war was more likely when states could
conquer each other easily. When defense was easier than
offense, however, security was more plentiful,
incentives to expand declined, and cooperation could blossom.
And if defense had the advantage, and states

could distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons,
then states could acquire the means to defend
themselves without threatening others, thereby dampening the
effects of anarchy.
For these "defensive" realists, states merely sought to survive
and great powers could guarantee their security
by forming balancing alliances and choosing defensive military
postures (such as retaliatory nuclear forces).
Not surprisingly, Waltz and most other neorealists believed that
the United States was extremely secure for
most of the Cold War. Their principle fear was that it might
squander its favorable position by adopting an
overly aggressive foreign policy. Thus, by the end of the Cold
War, realism had moved away from
Morgenthau's dark brooding about human nature and taken on a
slightly more optimistic tone.
Liberalism
The principal challenge to realism came from a broad family of
liberal theories. One strand of liberal thought
argued that economic interdependence would discourage states
from using force against each other because
warfare would threaten each side's prosperity. A second strand,
often associated with President Woodrow
Wilson, saw the spread of democracy as the key to world peace,
based on the claim that democratic states
were inherently more peaceful than authoritarian states. A third,

more recent theory argued that international
institutions such as the International Energy Agency and the
International Monetary Fund could help overcome
selfish state behavior, mainly by encouraging states to forego
immediate gains for the greater benefits of
enduring cooperation.
Although some liberals flirted with the idea that new
transnational actors, especially the multinational
corporation, were gradually encroaching on the power of states,
liberalism generally saw states as the central
players in international affairs. All liberal theories implied that
cooperation was more pervasive than even the
defensive version of realism allowed, but each view offered a
different recipe for promoting it.
Radical Approaches
Until the 1980s, marxism was the main alternative to the
mainstream realist and liberal traditions. Where
realism and liberalism took the state system for granted,
marxism offered both a different explanation for
international conflict and a blueprint for fundamentally
transforming the existing international order.
Orthodox marxist theory saw capitalism as the central cause of
international conflict. Capitalist states battled
each other as a consequence of their incessant struggle for
profits and battled socialist states because they
saw in them the seeds of their own destruction. Neomarxist
"dependency" theory, by contrast, focused on
relations between advanced capitalist powers and less developed
states and argued that the former--aided by
an unholy alliance with the ruling classes of the developing
world--had grown rich by exploiting the latter. The
solution was to overthrow these parasitic elites and install a
revolutionary government committed to

autonomous development.
Both of these theories were largely discredited before the Cold
War even ended. The extensive history of
economic and military cooperation among the advanced
industrial powers showed that capitalism did not
inevitably lead to conflict. The bitter schisms that divided the
communist world showed that socialism did not
always promote harmony. Dependency theory suffered similar
empirical setbacks as it became increasingly
clear that, first, active participation in the world economy was a
better route to prosperity than autonomous
socialist development; and, second, many developing countries
proved themselves quite capable of bargaining
successfully with multinational corporations and other capitalist
institutions.
As marxism succumbed to its various failings, its mantle was
assumed by a group of theorists who borrowed
heavily from the wave of postmodern writings in literary
criticism and social theory. This "deconstructionist"
approach was openly skeptical of the effort to devise general or
universal theories such as realism or
liberalism. Indeed, its proponents emphasized the importance of
language and discourse in shaping social
outcomes. However, because these scholars focused initially on
criticizing the mainstream paradigms but did
not offer positive alternatives to them, they remained a self-
consciously dissident minority for most of the
1980s.
Domestic Politics
Not all Cold War scholarship on international affairs fit neatly
into the realist, liberal, or marxist paradigms. In
particular, a number of important works focused on the
characteristics of states, governmental organizations,

or individual leaders. The democratic strand of liberal theory
fits under this heading, as do the efforts of
scholars such as Graham Allison and John Steinbruner to use
organization theory and bureaucratic politics to
explain foreign policy behavior, and those of Jervis, Irving
Janis, and others, which applied social and cognitive
psychology. For the most part, these efforts did not seek to
provide a general theory of international behavior
but to identify other factors that might lead states to behave
contrary to the predictions of the realist or liberal
approaches. Thus, much of this literature should be regarded as
a complement to the three main paradigms
rather than as a rival approach for analysis of the international
system as a whole.
New Wrinkles in Old Paradigms
Scholarship on international affairs has diversified significantly
since the end of the Cold War. Non-American
voices are more prominent, a wider range of methods and
theories are seen as legitimate, and new issues
such as ethnic conflict, the environment, and the future of the
state have been placed on the agenda of
scholars everywhere.
Yet the sense of deja vu is equally striking. Instead of resolving
the struggle between competing theoretical
traditions, the end of the Cold War has merely launched a new

series of debates. Ironically, even as many
societies embrace similar ideals of democracy, free markets,
and human rights, the scholars who study these
developments are more divided than ever.
Realism Redux
Although the end of the Cold War led a few writers to declare
that realism was destined for the academic
scrapheap, rumors of its demise have been largely exaggerated.
A recent contribution of realist theory is its attention to the
problem of relative and absolute gains. Responding
to the institutionalists' claim that international institutions
would enable states to forego short-term advantages
for the sake of greater long-term gains, realists such as Joseph
Grieco and Stephen Krasner point out that
anarchy forces states to worry about both the absolute gains
from cooperation and the way that gains are
distributed among participants. The logic is straightforward: If
one state reaps larger gains than its partners, it
will gradually become stronger, and its partners will eventually
become more vulnerable.
Realists have also been quick to explore a variety of new issues.
Barry Posen offers a realist explanation for
ethnic conflict, noting that the breakup of multiethnic states
could place rival ethnic groups in an anarchic
setting, thereby triggering intense fears and tempting each
group to use force to improve its relative position.
This problem would be particularly severe when each group's
territory contained enclaves inhabited by their
ethnic rivals--as in the former Yugoslavia--because each side
would be tempted to "cleanse" (preemptively)
these alien minorities and expand to incorporate any others from
their ethnic group that lay outside their
borders. Realists have also cautioned that nato, absent a clear

enemy, would likely face increasing strains and
that expanding its presence eastward would jeopardize relations
with Russia. Finally, scholars such as Michael
Mastanduno have argued that U.S. foreign policy is generally
consistent with realist principles, insofar as its
actions are still designed to preserve U.S. predominance and to
shape a postwar order that advances
American interests.
The most interesting conceptual development within the realist
paradigm has been the emerging split between
the "defensive" and "offensive" strands of thought. Defensive
realists such as Waltz, Van Evera, and Jack
Snyder assumed that states had little intrinsic interest in
military conquest and argued that the costs of
expansion generally outweighed the benefits. Accordingly, they
maintained that great power wars occurred
largely because domestic groups fostered exaggerated
perceptions of threat and an excessive faith in the
efficacy of military force.
This view is now being challenged along several fronts. First, as
Randall Schweller notes, the neorealist
assumption that states merely seek to survive "stacked the deck"
in favor of the status quo because it
precluded the threat of predatory revisionist states--nations such
as Adolf Hitler's Germany or Napoleon
Bonaparte's France that "value what they covet far more than

what they possess" and are willing to risk
annihilation to achieve their aims. Second, Peter Liberman, in
his book Does Conquest Pay?, uses a number
of historical cases--such as the Nazi occupation of Western
Europe and Soviet hegemony over Eastern
Europe--to show that the benefits of conquest often exceed the
costs, thereby casting doubt on the claim that
military expansion is no longer cost-effective. Third, offensive
realists such as Eric Labs, John Mearsheimer,
and Fareed Zakaria argue that anarchy encourages all states to
try to maximize their relative strength simply
because no state can ever be sure when a truly revisionist power
might emerge.
These differences help explain why realists disagree over issues
such as the future of Europe. For defensive
realists such as Van Evera, war is rarely profitable and usually
results from militarism, hypernationalism, or
some other distorting domestic factor. Because Van Evera
believes such forces are largely absent in post-Cold
War Europe, he concludes that the region is "primed for peace."
By contrast, Mearsheimer and other offensive
realists believe that anarchy forces great powers to compete
irrespective of their internal characteristics and
that security competition will return to Europe as soon as the
U.S. pacifier is withdrawn.
New Life for Liberalism
The defeat of communism sparked a round of self-
congratulation in the West, best exemplified by Francis
Fukuyama's infamous claim that humankind had now reached
the "end of history." History has paid little
attention to this boast, but the triumph of the West did give a
notable boost to all three strands of liberal
thought.

By far the most interesting and important development has been
the lively debate on the "democratic peace."
Although the most recent phase of this debate had begun even
before the Soviet Union collapsed, it became
more influential as the number of democracies began to increase
and as evidence of this relationship began to
accumulate.
Democratic peace theory is a refinement of the earlier claim
that democracies were inherently more peaceful
than autocratic states. It rests on the belief that although
democracies seem to fight wars as often as other
states, they rarely, if ever, fight one another. Scholars such as
Michael Doyle, James Lee Ray, and Bruce
Russett have offered a number of explanations for this
tendency, the most popular being that democracies
embrace norms of compromise that bar the use of force against
groups espousing similar principles. It is hard
to think of a more influential, recent academic debate, insofar
as the belief that "democracies don't fight each
other" has been an important justification for the Clinton
administration's efforts to enlarge the sphere of
democratic rule.
It is therefore ironic that faith in the "democratic peace" became
the basis for U.S. policy just as additional
research was beginning to identify several qualifiers to this
theory. First, Snyder and Edward Mansfield pointed
out that states may be more prone to war when they are in the
midst of a democratic transition, which implies
that efforts to export democracy might actually make things
worse. Second, critics such as Joanne Gowa and
David Spiro have argued that the apparent absence of war
between democracies is due to the way that
democracy has been defined and to the relative dearth of
democratic states (especially before 1945). In

addition, Christopher Layne has pointed out that when
democracies have come close to war in the past their
decision to remain at peace ultimately had little do with their
shared democratic character. Third, clearcut
evidence that democracies do not fight each other is confined to
the post-1945 era, and, as Gowa has
emphasized, the absence of conflict in this period may be due
more to their common interest in containing the
Soviet Union than to shared democratic principles.
Liberal institutionalists likewise have continued to adapt their
own theories. On the one hand, the core claims of
institutionalist theory have become more modest over time.
Institutions are now said to facilitate cooperation
when it is in each state's interest to do so, but it is widely
agreed that they cannot force states to behave in
ways that are contrary to the states' own selfish interests. [For
further discussion, please see Robert
Keohane's article.] On the other hand, institutionalists such as
John Duffield and Robert McCalla have
extended the theory into new substantive areas, most notably
the study of nato. For these scholars, nato's
highly institutionalized character helps explain why it has been
able to survive and adapt, despite the
disappearance of its main adversary.
The economic strand of liberal theory is still influential as well.

In particular, a number of scholars have recently
suggested that the "globalization" of world markets, the rise of
transnational networks and nongovernmental
organizations, and the rapid spread of global communications
technology are undermining the power of states
and shifting attention away from military security toward
economics and social welfare. The details are novel
but the basic logic is familiar: As societies around the globe
become enmeshed in a web of economic and
social connections, the costs of disrupting these ties will
effectively preclude unilateral state actions, especially
the use of force.
This perspective implies that war will remain a remote
possibility among the advanced industrial democracies.
It also suggests that bringing China and Russia into the
relentless embrace of world capitalism is the best way
to promote both prosperity and peace, particularly if this
process creates a strong middle class in these states
and reinforces pressures to democratize. Get these societies
hooked on prosperity and competition will be
confined to the economic realm.
This view has been challenged by scholars who argue that the
actual scope of "globalization" is modest and
that these various transactions still take place in environments
that are shaped and regulated by states.
Nonetheless, the belief that economic forces are superseding
traditional great power politics enjoys
widespread acceptance among scholars, pundits, and
policymakers, and the role of the state is likely to be an
important topic for future academic inquiry.
Constructivist Theories
Whereas realism and liberalism tend to focus on material factors
such as power or trade, constructivist

approaches emphasize the impact of ideas. Instead of taking the
state for granted and assuming that it simply
seeks to survive, constructivists regard the interests and
identities of states as a highly malleable product of
specific historical processes. They pay close attention to the
prevailing discourse(s) in society because
discourse reflects and shapes beliefs and interests, and
establishes accepted norms of behavior.
Consequently, constructivism is especially attentive to the
sources of change, and this approach has largely
replaced marxism as the preeminent radical perspective on
international affairs.
The end of the Cold War played an important role in
legitimating constructivist theories because realism and
liberalism both failed to anticipate this event and had some
trouble explaining it. Constructivists had an
explanation: Specifically, former president Mikhail Gorbachev
revolutionized Soviet foreign policy because he
embraced new ideas such as "common security."
Moreover, given that we live in an era where old norms are
being challenged, once clear boundaries are
dissolving, and issues of identity are becoming more salient, it
is hardly surprising that scholars have been
drawn to approaches that place these issues front and center.
From a constructivist perspective, in fact, the

central issue in the post-Cold War world is how different groups
conceive their identities and interests.
Although power is not irrelevant, constructivism emphasizes
how ideas and identities are created, how they
evolve, and how they shape the way states understand and
respond to their situation. Therefore, it matters
whether Europeans define themselves primarily in national or
continental terms; whether Germany and Japan
redefine their pasts in ways that encourage their adopting more
active international roles; and whether the
United States embraces or rejects its identity as "global
policeman."
Constructivist theories are quite diverse and do not offer a
unified set of predictions on any of these issues. At
a purely conceptual level, Alexander Wendt has argued that the
realist conception of anarchy does not
adequately explain why conflict occurs between states. The real
issue is how anarchy is understood--in
Wendt's words, "Anarchy is what states make of it." Another
strand of constructivist theory has focused on the
future of the territorial state, suggesting that transnational
communication and shared civic values are
undermining traditional national loyalties and creating radically
new forms of political association. Other
constructivists focus on the role of norms, arguing that
international law and other normative principles have
eroded earlier notions of sovereignty and altered the legitimate
purposes for which state power may be
employed. The common theme in each of these strands is the
capacity of discourse to shape how political
actors define themselves and their interests, and thus modify
their behavior.
Domestic Politics Reconsidered
As in the Cold War, scholars continue to explore the impact of

domestic politics on the behavior of states.
Domestic politics are obviously central to the debate on the
democratic peace, and scholars such as Snyder,
Jeffrey Frieden, and Helen Milner have examined how domestic
interest groups can distort the formation of
state preferences and lead to suboptimal international behavior.
George Downs, David Rocke, and others have
also explored how domestic institutions can help states deal
with the perennial problem of uncertainty, while
students of psychology have applied prospect theory and other
new tools to explain why decision makers fail to
act in a rational fashion. [For further discussion about foreign
policy decision making, please see the article by
Margaret Hermann and Joe Hagan.]
The past decade has also witnessed an explosion of interest in
the concept of culture, a development that
overlaps with the constructivist emphasis on the importance of
ideas and norms. Thus, Thomas Berger and
Peter Katzenstein have used cultural variables to explain why
Germany and Japan have thus far eschewed
more self-reliant military policies; Elizabeth Kier has offered a
cultural interpretation of British and French
military doctrines in the interwar period; and Iain Johnston has
traced continuities in Chinese foreign policy to a
deeply rooted form of "cultural realism." Samuel Huntington's
dire warnings about an imminent "clash of
civilizations" are symptomatic of this trend as well, insofar as
his argument rests on the claim that broad
cultural affinities are now supplanting national loyalties.
Though these and other works define culture in widely
varying ways and have yet to provide a full explanation of how
it works or how enduring its effects might be,
cultural perspectives have been very much in vogue during the
past five years. This trend is partly a reflection
of the broader interest in cultural issues in the academic world

(and within the public debate as well) and partly
a response to the upsurge in ethnic, nationalist, and cultural
conflicts since the demise of the Soviet Union.
Tomorrow's Conceptual Toolbox
While these debates reflect the diversity of contemporary
scholarship on international affairs, there are also
obvious signs of convergence. Most realists recognize that
nationalism, militarism, ethnicity, and other
domestic factors are important; liberals acknowledge that power
is central to international behavior; and some
constructivists admit that ideas will have greater impact when
backed by powerful states and reinforced by
enduring material forces. The boundaries of each paradigm are
somewhat permeable, and there is ample
opportunity for intellectual arbitrage.
Which of these broad perspectives sheds the most light on
contemporary international affairs, and which
should policymakers keep most firmly in mind when charting
our course into the next century? Although many
academics (and more than a few policymakers) are loathe to
admit it, realism remains the most compelling
general framework for understanding international relations.
States continue to pay close attention to the
balance of power and to worry about the possibility of major
conflict. Among other things, this enduring

preoccupation with power and security explains why many
Asians and Europeans are now eager to preserve--
and possibly expand--the U.S. military presence in their
regions. As Czech president Vaclav Havel has warned,
if nato fails to expand, "we might be heading for a new global
catastrophe . . . [which] could cost us all much
more than the two world wars." These are not the words of a
man who believes that great power rivalry has
been banished forever.
As for the United States, the past decade has shown how much
it likes being "number one" and how
determined it is to remain in a predominant position. The United
States has taken advantage of its current
superiority to impose its preferences wherever possible, even at
the risk of irritating many of its long-standing
allies. It has forced a series of one-sided arms control
agreements on Russia, dominated the problematic
peace effort in Bosnia, taken steps to expand nato into Russia's
backyard, and become increasingly concerned
about the rising power of China. It has called repeatedly for
greater reliance on multilateralism and a larger role
for international institutions, but has treated agencies such as
the United Nations and the World Trade
Organization with disdain whenever their actions did not
conform to U.S. interests. It refused to join the rest of
the world in outlawing the production of landmines and was
politely uncooperative at the Kyoto environmental
summit. Although U.S. leaders are adept at cloaking their
actions in the lofty rhetoric of "world order," naked
self-interest lies behind most of them. Thus, the end of the Cold
War did not bring the end of power politics,
and realism is likely to remain the single most useful instrument
in our intellectual toolbox.
Yet realism does not explain everything, and a wise leader

would also keep insights from the rival paradigms in
mind. Liberal theories identify the instruments that states can
use to achieve shared interests, highlight the
powerful economic forces with which states and societies must
now contend, and help us understand why
states may differ in their basic preferences. Paradoxically,
because U.S. protection reduces the danger of
regional rivalries and reinforces the "liberal peace" that
emerged after 1945, these factors may become
relatively more important, as long as the United States
continues to provide security and stability in many parts
of the world.
Meanwhile, constructivist theories are best suited to the
analysis of how identities and interests can change
over time, thereby producing subtle shifts in the behavior of
states and occasionally triggering far-reaching but
unexpected shifts in international affairs. It matters if political
identity in Europe continues to shift from the
nation-state to more local regions or to a broader sense of
European identity, just as it matters if nationalism is
gradually supplanted by the sort of "civilizational" affinities
emphasized by Huntington. Realism has little to say
about these prospects, and policymakers could be blind-sided by
change if they ignore these possibilities
entirely.
In short, each of these competing perspectives captures
important aspects of world politics. Our understanding
would be impoverished were our thinking confined to only one
of them. The "compleat diplomat" of the future
should remain cognizant of realism's emphasis on the
inescapable role of power, keep liberalism's awareness
of domestic forces in mind, and occasionally reflect on
constructivism's vision of change.

Want to Know More?
For a fair-minded survey of the realist, liberal, and marxist
paradigms, see Michael Doyle's Ways of War and
Peace (New York, NY: Norton, 1997). A guide to some recent
developments in international political thought is
Doyle & G. John Ikenberry, eds., New Thinking in International
Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview,
1997).
Those interested in realism should examine The Perils of
Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International
Security (Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 1995) by Michael Brown,
Sean Lynn-Jones, & Steven Miller, eds.;
"Offensive Realism and Why States Expand Their War Aims"
(Security Studies, Summer 1997) by Eric Labs;
and "Dueling Realisms" (International Organization, Summer
1997) by Stephen Brooks. For alternative realist
assessments of contemporary world politics, see John
Mearsheimer's "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe
after the Cold War" (International Security, Summer 1990) and
Robert Jervis' "The Future of World Politics: Will
It Resemble the Past?" (International Security, Winter 1991-92).
A realist explanation of ethnic conflict is Barry
Posen's "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict" (Survival,
Spring 1993); an up-to-date survey of offense-
defense theory can be found in "The Security Dilemma
Revisited" by Charles Glaser (World Politics, October
1997); and recent U.S. foreign policy is explained in Michael

Mastanduno's "Preserving the Unipolar Moment:
Realist Theories and U.S. Grand Strategy after the Cold War"
(International Security, Spring 1997).
The liberal approach to international affairs is summarized in
Andrew Moravcsik's "Taking Preferences
Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics"
(International Organization, Autumn 1997). Many of the
leading contributors to the debate on the democratic peace can
be found in Brown & Lynn-Jones, eds.,
Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge, MA: mit Press,
1996) and Miriam Elman, ed., Paths to Peace: Is
Democracy the Answer? (Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 1997). The
contributions of institutionalist theory and the
debate on relative gains are summarized in David Baldwin, ed.,
Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The
Contempporary Debate (New York, NY: Columbia University
Press, 1993). An important critique of the
institutionalist literature is Mearsheimer's "The False Promise
of International Institutions" (International
Security, Winter 1994-95), but one should also examine the
responses in the Summer 1995 issue. For
applications of institutionalist theory to nato, see John
Duffield's "nato's Functions after the Cold War" (Political
Science Quarterly, Winter 1994-95) and Robert McCalla's
"NATO's Persistence after the Cold War"
(International Organization, Summer 1996).
Authors questioning the role of the state include Susan Strange
in The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of
Power in the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996); and Jessica Mathews in "Power
Shift" (Foreign Affairs, January/February 1997). The emergence
of the state is analyzed by Hendrik Spruyt in
The Sovereign State and Its Competitors (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1994), and its continued

importance is defended in Globalization in Question: The
International Economy and the Possibilities of
Governance (Cambridge: Polity, 1996) by Paul Hirst and
Grahame Thompson, and Governing the Global
Economy: International Finance and the State (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1994) by Ethan
Kapstein. Another defense (from a somewhat unlikely source) is
"The World Economy: The Future of the
State" (The Economist, September 20, 1997), and a more
academic discussion of these issues is Peter Evans'
"The Eclipse of the State? Reflections on Stateness in an Era of
Globalization" (World Politics, October 1997).
Readers interested in constructivist approaches should begin
with Alexander Wendt's "Anarchy Is What States
Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics"
(International Organization, Spring 1992), while awaiting
his Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). A diverse
array of cultural and constructivist approaches may also be
found in Peter Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of
sessmgr06&vid=2&Return… 10/12
National Security (New York, NY: Columbia University Press,
1996) and Yosef Lapid & Friedrich Kratochwil,
eds., The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory (Boulder:
CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996).
For links to relevant Web sites, as well as a comprehensive

index of related articles, access
www.foreignpolicy.com.
Waiting for Mr. X
The post-Cold War world still awaits its "X" article. Although
many have tried, no one has managed to pen the
sort of compelling analysis that George Kennan provided for an
earlier era, when he articulated the theory of
containment. Instead of a single new vision, the most important
development in post-Cold War writings on
world affairs is the continuing clash between those who believe
world politics has been (or is being)
fundamentally transformed and those who believe that the future
will look a lot like the past.
Scholars who see the end of the Cold War as a watershed fall
into two distinct groups. Many experts still see
the state as the main actor but believe that the agenda of states
is shifting from military competition to
economic competitiveness, domestic welfare, and environmental
protection. Thus, President Bill Clinton has
embraced the view that "enlightened self-interest [and] shared
values. . . will compel us to cooperate in more
constructive ways." Some writers attribute this change to the
spread of democracy, others to the nuclear
stalemate, and still others to changes in international norms.
An even more radical perspective questions whether the state is
still the most important international actor.
Jessica Mathews believes that "the absolutes of the Wesphalian
system [of] territorially fixed states. . .are all
dissolving," and John Ruggie argues that we do not even have a
vocabulary that can adequately describe the
new forces that (he believes) are transforming contemporary
world politics. Although there is still no consensus
on the causes of this trend, the view that states are of

decreasing relevance is surprisingly common among
academics, journalists, and policy works.
Prominent realist such as Christopher Layne and Kenneth Waltz
continue to give the state pride of place and
predict a return to familiar patterns of great power competition.
Similarly, Robert Keohane and other
institutionalists also emphasize the central role of the state and
argue that institutions such as the European
Union and NATO are important precisely because they provide
continuity in the midst of the dramatic political
shifts. These authors all regard the end of the Cold War as a far-
reaching shift in the global balance of power
but do not see it as a qualitative transformation in the basic
nature of the world politics.
Who is right? Too soon to tell, but the debate bears watching in
the years to come.
--Stephen Walt
COMPETING REALISM LIBERALISM
PARADIGMS
Main Theoretical Self-interested Concern for power
Proposition states compete overridden by economic/
constantly for political considerations
power or (desire for prosperity,
security commitment to liberal
values)
Main Units of States States
Analysis
Main Instruments Economics and Varies (international
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/

especially institutions, economic
military power exchange, promotion
of democracy)
Modern Theorists Hans Margenthau, Michael Doyle,
Kenneth Waltz Robert Keohane
Representative Waltz, Theory Keohane,
Modern Works of International After Hegemony
Politics Fukuyama, "The End of
Mearsheimer, History?" (National
"Back to the Interest, 1989)
Future:
Instability in
Europe after
the Cold War"
(International
Security, 1990)
Post-Cold War Resurgence of Increased cooperation
overt great as liberal values,
power free markets, and
competition international
institutions spread
Main Limitation Does not Tends to ignore
account for the role of power
international

change
COMPETING CONSTRUCTIVISM
PARADIGMS
Main Theoretical State behavior
Proposition shaped by elite
beliefs,
collective norms,
and social
identities
Main Units of Individuals
Analysis (especially
elites)
Main Instruments Ideas and
discourse
Modern Theorists Alexander Wendt,
John Ruggie
Representative Wendt, "Anarchy Is
Modern Works What States Make of
It" (International
Organization, 1992);
Koslowski &
Kratochwil,
"Understanding
Changes in
International
Politics"
(International

Organization, 1994)
Post-Cold War Agnostic because it
Prediction cannot predict the
content of ideas
Main Limitation Better of describing
the past than
anticipating the
future
~~~~~~~~
by Stephen M. Walt
Stephen M. Walt is professor of political science and master of
the social science collegiate division at the
University of Chicago. He is a member of FOREIGN POLICY's
editorial board.
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One World, Rival Theories.
Snyder, Jack
Foreign Policy. Nov/Dec2004, Issue 145, p52-62. 11p. 4
Illustrations, 1
Diagram, 1 Chart.
Article
POLITICAL science
INTERNATIONAL relations
REALISM
LIBERALISM
CONSTRUCTIVISM (Philosophy)
SOCIAL sciences

WORLD politics
PHILOSOPHY
DEMOCRACY
SEPTEMBER 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001
This article examines three political theories: realism,
liberalism, and
constructivism, and questions whether political theories need to
be
changed in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The
study of international relations is supposed to tell us how the
world
works. Familiar theories about how the world works still
dominate
academic debate. Instead of radical change, academia has
adjusted
existing theories to meet new realities. Has this approach
succeeded?
Does international relations theory still have something to tell
policymakers? Six years ago, political scientist Stephen M.
Walt
published a much-cited survey of the field in these pages ("One
World,
Many Theories," Spring 1998). He sketched out three dominant
approaches: realism, liberalism, and an updated form of
idealism called
"constructivism."Professor Michael N. Barnett's 1998 book
Dialogues in
Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order examines how the
divergence between state borders and transnational Arab
political
identities requires vulnerable leaders to contend for legitimacy
with
radicals throughout the Arab world--a dynamic that often holds
moderates hostage to opportunists who take extreme stances.

Recent
additions to the liberal canon are Bruce Russett and John R.
Oneal's
Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and
International
Organizations (New York: Norton, 2001) and G. John
Ikenberry's After
Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of
Order
After Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at
Columbia University
4854
0015-7228
1
1
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DOI:
Accession Number:
Database:
10.2307/4152944

14854212
International Security & Counter Terrorism Reference Center
One World, Rival Theories
The study of international relations is supposed to tell us how
the world works. It's a tall order, and even the
best theories fall short. But they can puncture illusions and strip
away the simplistic brand names--such as
"neocons" or "liberal hawks"-- that dominate foreign-policy
debates. Even in a radically changing world, the
classic theories have a lot to say.
The U.S. government has endured several painful rounds of
scrutiny as it tries to figure out what went wrong
on Sept. 11, 2001. The intelligence community faces radical
restructuring; the military has made a sharp pivot
to face a new enemy; and a vast new federal agency has
blossomed to coordinate homeland security. But did
September 11 signal a failure of theory on par with the failures
of intelligence and policy? Familiar theories
about how the world works still dominate academic debate.
Instead of radical change, academia has adjusted
existing theories to meet new realities. Has this approach
succeeded? Does international relations theory still
have something to tell policymakers?
Six years ago, political scientist Stephen M. Walt published a
much-cited survey of the field in these pages
("One World, Many Theories," Spring 1998). He sketched out
three dominant approaches: realism, liberalism,
and an updated form of idealism called "constructivism." Walt
argued that these theories shape both public
discourse and policy analysis. Realism focuses on the shifting

distribution of power among states. Liberalism
highlights the rising number of democracies and the turbulence
of democratic transitions. Idealism illuminates
the changing norms of sovereignty, human rights, and
international justice, as well as the increased potency of
religious ideas in politics.
The influence of these intellectual constructs extends far
beyond university classrooms and tenure committees.
Policymakers and public commentators invoke elements of all
these theories when articulating solutions to
global security dilemmas. President George W. Bush promises
to fight terror by spreading liberal democracy to
the Middle East and claims that skeptics "who call themselves
'realists' … have lost contact with a fundamental
reality" that "America is always more secure when freedom is
on the march." Striking a more eclectic tone,
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former Stanford
University political science professor, explains
that the new Bush doctrine is an amalgam of pragmatic realism
and Wilsonian liberal theory. During the recent
presidential campaign, Sen. John Kerry sounded remarkably
similar: "Our foreign policy has achieved
greatness," he said, "only when it has combined realism and
idealism.”
International relations theory also shapes and informs the
thinking of the public intellectuals who translate and
disseminate academic ideas. During the summer of 2004, for
example, two influential framers of
neoconservative thought, columnist Charles Krauthammer and
political scientist Francis Fukuyama, collided
over the implications of these conceptual paradigms for U.S.
policy in Iraq. Backing the Bush administration's
Middle East policy, Krauthammer argued for an assertive
amalgam of liberalism and realism, which he called

"democratic realism." Fukuyama claimed that Krauthammer's
faith in the use of force and the feasibility of
democratic change in Iraq blinds him to the war's lack of
legitimacy, a failing that "hurts both the realist part of
our agenda, by diminishing our actual power, and the idealist
portion of it, by undercutting our appeal as the
embodiment of certain ideas and values.”
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Indeed, when realism, liberalism, and idealism enter the
policymaking arena and public debate, they can
sometimes become intellectual window dressing for simplistic
worldviews. Properly understood, however, their
policy implications are subtle and multifaceted. Realism instills
a pragmatic appreciation of the role of power
but also warns that states will suffer if they overreach.
Liberalism highlights the cooperative potential of mature
democracies, especially when working together through
effective institutions, but it also notes democracies'
tendency to crusade against tyrannies and the propensity of
emerging democracies to collapse into violent
ethnic turmoil. Idealism stresses that a consensus on values
must underpin any stable political order, yet it also
recognizes that forging such a consensus often requires an
ideological struggle with the potential for conflict.
Each theory offers a filter for looking at a complicated picture.
As such, they help explain the assumptions
behind political rhetoric about foreign policy. Even more

important, the theories act as a powerful check on
each other. Deployed effectively, they reveal the weaknesses in
arguments that can lead to misguided policies.
IS REALISM STILL REALISTIC?
At realism's core is the belief that international affairs is a
struggle for power among self-interested states.
Although some of realism's leading lights, notably the late
University of Chicago political scientist Hans J.
Morgenthau, are deeply pessimistic about human nature, it is
not a theory of despair. Clearsighted states can
mitigate the causes of war by finding ways to reduce the danger
they pose to each other. Nor is realism
necessarily amoral; its advocates emphasize that a ruthless
pragmatism about power can actually yield a more
peaceful world, if not an ideal one.
In liberal democracies, realism is the theory that everyone loves
to hate. Developed largely by European
émigrés at the end of World War II, realism claimed to be an
antidote to the naive belief that international
institutions and law alone can preserve peace, a misconception
that this new generation of scholars believed
had paved the way to war. In recent decades, the realist
approach has been most fully articulated by U.S.
theorists, but it still has broad appeal outside the United States
as well. The influential writer and editor Josef
Joffe articulately comments on Germany's strong realist
traditions. (Mindful of the overwhelming importance of
U.S. power to Europe's development, Joffe once called the
United States "Europe's pacifier.") China's current
foreign policy is grounded in realist ideas that date back
millennia. As China modernizes its economy and
enters international institutions such as the World Trade
Organization, it behaves in a way that realists
understand well: developing its military slowly but surely as its

economic power grows, and avoiding a
confrontation with superior U.S. forces.
Realism gets some things right about the post-9/11 world. The
continued centrality of military strength and the
persistence of conflict, even in this age of global economic
interdependence, does not surprise realists. The
theory's most obvious success is its ability to explain the United
States' forceful military response to the
September 11 terrorist attacks. When a state grows vastly more
powerful than any opponent, realists expect
that it will eventually use that power to expand its sphere of
domination, whether for security, wealth, or other
motives. The United States employed its military power in what
some deemed an imperial fashion in large part
because it could.
It is harder for the normally state-centric realists to explain why
the world's only superpower announced a war
against al Qaeda, a nonstate terrorist organization. How can
realist theory account for the importance of
powerful and violent individuals in a world of states? Realists
point out that the central battles in the "war on
terror" have been fought against two states (Afghanistan and
Iraq), and that states, not the United Nations or
Human Rights Watch, have led the fight against terrorism.
d=8d1ce319-0b7c-46a7-8701-
Even if realists acknowledge the importance of nonstate actors

as a challenge to their assumptions, the theory
still has important things to say about the behavior and
motivations of these groups. The realist scholar Robert
A. Pape, for example, has argued that suicide terrorism can be a
rational, realistic strategy for the leadership of
national liberation movements seeking to expel democratic
powers that occupy their homelands. Other
scholars apply standard theories of conflict in anarchy to
explain ethnic conflict in collapsed states. Insights
from political realism--a profound and wide-ranging intellectual
tradition rooted in the enduring philosophy of
Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes--are
hardly rendered obsolete because some nonstate
groups are now able to resort to violence.
Post-9/11 developments seem to undercut one of realism's core
concepts: the balance of power. Standard
realist doctrine predicts that weaker states will ally to protect
themselves from stronger ones and thereby form
and reform a balance of power. So, when Germany unified in
the late 19th century and became Europe's
leading military and industrial power, Russia and France (and
later, Britain) soon aligned to counter its power.
Yet no combination of states or other powers can challenge the
United States militarily, and no balancing
coalition is imminent. Realists are scrambling to find a way to
fill this hole in the center of their theory. Some
theorists speculate that the United States' geographic distance
and its relatively benign intentions have
tempered the balancing instinct. Second-tier powers tend to
worry more about their immediate neighbors and
even see the United States as a helpful source of stability in
regions such as East Asia. Other scholars insist
that armed resistance by U.S. foes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and
elsewhere, and foot-dragging by its formal allies
actually constitute the beginnings of balancing against U.S.

hegemony. The United States' strained relations
with Europe offer ambiguous evidence: French and German
opposition to recent U.S. policies could be seen
as classic balancing, but they do not resist U.S. dominance
militarily. Instead, these states have tried to
undermine U.S. moral legitimacy and constrain the superpower
in a web of multilateral institutions and treaty
regimes--not what standard realist theory predicts.
These conceptual difficulties notwithstanding, realism is alive,
well, and creatively reassessing how its root
principles relate to the post-9/11 world. Despite changing
configurations of power, realists remain steadfast in
stressing that policy must be based on positions of real strength,
not on either empty bravado or hopeful
illusions about a world without conflict. In the run-up to the
recent Iraq war, several prominent realists signed a
public letter criticizing what they perceived as an exercise in
American hubris. And in the continuing aftermath
of that war, many prominent thinkers called for a return to
realism. A group of scholars and public intellectuals
(myself included) even formed the Coalition for a Realistic
Foreign Policy, which calls for a more modest and
prudent approach. Its statement of principles argues that "the
move toward empire must be halted
immediately." The coalition, though politically diverse, is
largely inspired by realist theory. Its membership of
seemingly odd bedfellows--including former Democratic Sen.
Gary Hart and Scott McConnell, the executive
editor of the American Conservative magazine--illustrates the
power of international relations theory to cut
through often ephemeral political labels and carry debate to the
underlying assumptions.
THE DIVIDED HOUSE OF LIBERALISM
The liberal school of international relations theory, whose most

famous proponents were German philosopher
Immanuel Kant and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, contends
that realism has a stunted vision that cannot
account for progress in relations between nations. Liberals
foresee a slow but inexorable journey away from
the anarchic world the realists envision, as trade and finance
forge ties between nations, and democratic
norms spread. Because elected leaders are accountable to the
people (who bear the burdens of war), liberals
expect that democracies will not attack each other and will
regard each other's regimes as legitimate and
nonthreatening. Many liberals also believe that the rule of law
and transparency of democratic processes make
d=8d1ce319-0b7c-46a7-8701-
it easier to sustain international cooperation, especially when
these practices are enshrined in multilateral
institutions.
Liberalism has such a powerful presence that the entire U.S.
political spectrum, from neoconservatives to
human rights advocates, assumes it as largely self-evident.
Outside the United States, as well, the liberal view
that only elected governments are legitimate and politically
reliable has taken hold. So it is no surprise that
liberal themes are constantly invoked as a response to today's
security dilemmas. But the last several years
have also produced a fierce tug-of-war between disparate strains
of liberal thought. Supporters and critics of

the Bush administration, in particular, have emphasized very
different elements of the liberal canon.
For its part, the Bush administration highlights democracy
promotion while largely turning its back on the
international institutions that most liberal theorists champion.
The U.S. National Security Strategy of September
2002, famous for its support of preventive war, also dwells on
the need to promote democracy as a means of
fighting terrorism and promoting peace. The Millennium
Challenge program allocates part of U.S. foreign aid
according to how well countries improve their performance on
several measures of democratization and the
rule of law. The White House's steadfast support for promoting
democracy in the Middle East--even with
turmoil in Iraq and rising anti-Americanism in the Arab world--
demonstrates liberalism's emotional and
rhetorical power.
In many respects, liberalism's claim to be a wise policy guide
has plenty of hard data behind it. During the last
two decades, the proposition that democratic institutions and
values help states cooperate with each other is
among the most intensively studied in all of international
relations, and it has held up reasonably well. Indeed,
the belief that democracies never fight wars against each other
is the closest thing we have to an iron law in
social science.
But the theory has some very important corollaries, which the
Bush administration glosses over as it draws
upon the democracy-promotion element of liberal thought.
Columbia University political scientist Michael W.
Doyle's articles on democratic peace warned that, though
democracies never fight each other, they are prone
to launch messianic struggles against warlike authoritarian

regimes to "make the world safe for democracy." It
was precisely American democracy's tendency to oscillate
between self-righteous crusading and jaded
isolationism that prompted early Cold War realists' call for a
more calculated, prudent foreign policy.
Countries transitioning to democracy, with weak political
institutions, are more likely than other states to get
into international and civil wars. In the last 15 years, wars or
large-scale civil violence followed experiments
with mass electoral democracy in countries including Armenia,
Burundi, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Russia, and the
former Yugoslavia. In part, this violence is caused by ethnic
groups' competing demands for national self-
determination, often a problem in new, multiethnic democracies.
More fundamental, emerging democracies
often have nascent political institutions that cannot channel
popular demands in constructive directions or
credibly enforce compromises among rival groups. In this
setting, democratic accountability works imperfectly,
and nationalist politicians can hijack public debate. The
violence that is vexing the experiment with democracy
in Iraq is just the latest chapter in a turbulent story that began
with the French Revolution.
Contemporary liberal theory also points out that the rising
democratic tide creates the presumption that all
nations ought to enjoy the benefits of self-determination. Those
left out may undertake violent campaigns to
secure democratic rights. Some of these movements direct their
struggles against democratic or
semidemocratic states that they consider occupying powers--
such as in Algeria in the 1950s, or Chechnya,
Palestine, and the Tamil region of Sri Lanka today. Violence
may also be directed at democratic supporters of
oppressive regimes, much like the U.S. backing of the

governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Democratic
d=8d1ce319-0b7c-46a7-8701-
regimes make attractive targets for terrorist violence by national
liberation movements precisely because they
are accountable to a cost-conscious electorate.
Nor is it clear to contemporary liberal scholars that nascent
democracy and economic liberalism can always
cohabitate. Free trade and the multifaceted globalization that
advanced democracies promote often buffet
transitional societies. World markets' penetration of societies
that run on patronage and protectionism can
disrupt social relations and spur strife between potential
winners and losers. In other cases, universal free
trade can make separatism look attractive, as small regions such
as Aceh in Indonesia can lay claim to
lucrative natural resources. So far, the trade-fueled boom in
China has created incentives for improved
relations with the advanced democracies, but it has also set the
stage for a possible showdown between the
relatively wealthy coastal entrepreneurs and the still
impoverished rural masses.
While aggressively advocating the virtues of democracy, the
Bush administration has shown little patience for
these complexities in liberal thought--or for liberalism's
emphasis on the importance of international institutions.
Far from trying to assure other powers that the United States

would adhere to a constitutional order, Bush
"unsigned" the International Criminal Court statute, rejected the
Kyoto environmental agreement, dictated take-
it-or-leave-it arms control changes to Russia, and invaded Iraq
despite opposition at the United Nations and
among close allies.
Recent liberal theory offers a thoughtful challenge to the
administration's policy choices. Shortly before
September 11, political scientist G. John Ikenberry studied
attempts to establish international order by the
victors of hegemonic struggles in 1815, 1919, 1945, and 1989.
He argued that even the most powerful victor
needed to gain the willing cooperation of the vanquished and
other weak states by offering a mutually
attractive bargain, codified in an international constitutional
order. Democratic victors, he found, have the best
chance of creating a working constitutional order, such as the
Bretton Woods system after World War II,
because their transparency and legalism make their promises
credible.
Does the Bush administration's resistance to institution building
refute Ikenberry's version of liberal theory?
Some realists say it does, and that recent events demonstrate
that international institutions cannot constrain a
hegemonic power if its preferences change. But international
institutions can nonetheless help coordinate
outcomes that are in the long-term mutual interest of both the
hegemon and the weaker states. Ikenberry did
not contend that hegemonic democracies are immune from
mistakes. States can act in defiance of the
incentives established by their position in the international
system, but they will suffer the consequences and
probably learn to correct course. In response to Bush's
unilateralist stance, Ikenberry wrote that the incentives

for the United States to take the lead in establishing a
multilateral constitutional order remain powerful. Sooner
or later, the pendulum will swing back.
IDEALISM'S NEW CLOTHING
Idealism, the belief that foreign policy is and should be guided
by ethical and legal standards, also has a long
pedigree. Before World War II forced the United States to
acknowledge a less pristine reality, Secretary of
State Henry Stimson denigrated espionage on the grounds that
"gentlemen do not read each other's mail."
During the Cold War, such naive idealism acquired a bad name
in the Kissingerian corridors of power and
among hardheaded academics. Recently, a new version of
idealism--called constructivism by its scholarly
adherents--returned to a prominent place in debates on
international relations theory. Constructivism, which
holds that social reality is created through debate about values,
often echoes the themes that human rights
and international justice activists sound. Recent events seem to
vindicate the theory's resurgence; a theory
d=8d1ce319-0b7c-46a7-8701-
that emphasizes the role of ideologies, identities, persuasion,
and transnational networks is highly relevant to
understanding the post-g/11 world.
The most prominent voices in the development of constructivist
theory have been American, but Europe's role

is significant. European philosophical currents helped establish
constructivist theory, and the European Journal
of International Relations is one of the principal outlets for
constructivist work. Perhaps most important,
Europe's increasingly legalistic approach to international
relations, reflected in the process of forming the
European Union out of a collection of sovereign states, provides
fertile soil for idealist and constructivist
conceptions of international politics.
Whereas realists dwell on the balance of power and liberals on
the power of international trade and
democracy, constructivists believe that debates about ideas are
the fundamental building blocks of
international life. Individuals and groups become powerful if
they can convince others to adopt their ideas.
People's understanding of their interests depends on the ideas
they hold. Constructivists find absurd the idea
of some identifiable and immutable "national interest," which
some realists cherish. Especially in liberal
societies, there is overlap between constructivist and liberal
approaches, but the two are distinct.
Constructivists contend that their theory is deeper than realism
and liberalism because it explains the origins of
the forces that drive those competing theories.
For constructivists, international change results from the work
of intellectual entrepreneurs who proselytize new
ideas and "name and shame" actors whose behavior deviates
from accepted standards. Consequently,
constructivists often study the role of transnational activist
networks--such as Human Rights Watch or the
International Campaign to Ban Landmines--in promoting
change. Such groups typically uncover and publicize
information about violations of legal or moral standards at least
rhetorically supported by powerful

democracies, including "disappearances" during the Argentine
military's rule in the late 1970s, concentration
camps in Bosnia, and the huge number of civilian deaths from
land mines. This publicity is then used to press
governments to adopt specific remedies, such as the
establishment of a war crimes tribunal or the adoption of
a landmine treaty. These movements often make pragmatic
arguments as well as idealistic ones, but their
distinctive power comes from the ability to highlight deviations
from deeply held norms of appropriate behavior.
Progressive causes receive the most attention from
constructivist scholars, but the theory also helps explain
the dynamics of illiberal transnational forces, such as Arab
nationalism or Islamist extremism. Professor
Michael N. Barnett's 1998 book Dialogues in Arab Politics:
Negotiations in Regional Order examines how the
divergence between state borders and transnational Arab
political identities requires vulnerable leaders to
contend for legitimacy with radicals throughout the Arab world-
-a dynamic that often holds moderates hostage
to opportunists who take extreme stances.
Constructivist thought can also yield broader insights about the
ideas and values in the current international
order. In his 2001 book, Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas
Shaped Modern International Relations,
political scientist Daniel Philpott demonstrates how the
religious ideas of the Protestant Reformation helped
break down the medieval political order and provided a
conceptual basis for the modern system of secular
sovereign states. After September 11, Philpott focused on the
challenge to the secular international order
posed by political Islam. "The attacks and the broader
resurgence of public religion," he says, ought to lead
international relations scholars to "direct far more energy to

understanding the impetuses behind movements
across the globe that are reorienting purposes and policies." He
notes that both liberal human rights
movements and radical Islamic movements have transnational
structures and principled motivations that
challenge the traditional supremacy of self-interested states in
international politics. Because constructivists
d=8d1ce319-0b7c-46a7-8701-
believe that ideas and values helped shape the modern state
system, they expect intellectual constructs to be
decisive in transforming it--for good or ill.
When it comes to offering advice, however, constructivism
points in two seemingly incompatible directions. The
insight that political orders arise from shared understanding
highlights the need for dialogue across cultures
about the appropriate rules of the game. This prescription
dovetails with liberalism's emphasis on establishing
an agreed international constitutional order. And, yet, the
notion of crosscultural dialogue sits awkwardly with
many idealists' view that they already know right and wrong.
For these idealists, the essential task is to shame
rights abusers and cajole powerful actors into promoting proper
values and holding perpetrators accountable to
international (generally Western) standards. As with realism
and liberalism, constructivism can be many things
to many people.

STUMPED BY CHANGE
None of the three theoretical traditions has a strong ability to
explain change--a significant weakness in such
turbulent times. Realists failed to predict the end of the Cold
War, for example. Even after it happened, they
tended to assume that the new system would become multipolar
("back to the future," as the scholar John J.
Mearsheimer put it). Likewise, the liberal theory of democratic
peace is stronger on what happens after states
become democratic than in predicting the timing of democratic
transitions, let alone prescribing how to make
transitions happen peacefully. Constructivists are good at
describing changes in norms and ideas, but they are
weak on the material and institutional circumstances necessary
to support the emergence of consensus about
new values and ideas.
With such uncertain guidance from the theoretical realm, it is
no wonder that policymakers, activists, and public
commentators fall prey to simplistic or wishful thinking about
how to effect change by, say, invading Iraq or
setting up an International Criminal Court. In lieu of a good
theory of change, the most prudent course is to use
the insights of each of the three theoretical traditions as a check
on the irrational exuberance of the others.
Realists should have to explain whether policies based on
calculations of power have sufficient legitimacy to
last. Liberals should consider whether nascent democratic
institutions can fend off powerful interests that
oppose them, or how international institutions can bind a
hegemonic power inclined to go its own way. Idealists
should be asked about the strategic, institutional, or material
conditions in which a set of ideas is likely to take
hold.
Theories of international relations claim to explain the way

international politics works, but each of the currently
prevailing theories falls well short of that goal. One of the
principal contributions that international relations
theory can make is not predicting the future but providing the
vocabulary and conceptual framework to ask
hard questions of those who think that changing the world is
easy.
Want to Know More?
Stephen M. Walt's "International Relations: One World, Many
Theories" (FOREIGN POLICY, Spring 1998) is a
valuable survey of the field. For a more recent survey, see
Robert Jervis, "Theories of War in an Era of Leading
Power Peace" (American Political Science Review, March
2002).
Important recent realist contributions include John J.
Mearsheimer's The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New
York: Norton, 2001) and Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to
Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). Important realist-
inspired analyses of post-9/11 issues include
"The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" (American Political
Science Review, August 2003), by Robert A.
Pape; "The Compulsive Empire" (FOREIGN POLICY,
July/August 2003), by Robert Jervis; and "An
Unnecessary War " (FOREIGN POLICY, January/February
2003), by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
d=8d1ce319-0b7c-46a7-8701-

Read about a current effort to inject realism into U.S. foreign
policy at the Web site of the Coalition for a
Realistic Foreign Policy. For a worried look at the realist
resurgence, see Lawrence F. Kaplan, "Springtime for
Realism" (The New Republic, June 21, 2004).
Recent additions to the liberal canon are Bruce Russett and John
R. Oneal's Triangulating Peace: Democracy,
Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York:
Norton, 2001) and G. John Ikenberry's After
Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of
Order After Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2001). To read about the dangers of
democratization in countries with weak institutions, see
Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, Electing to Fight: Why
Emerging Democracies Go to War (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 2005) and Zakaria's The Future of Freedom: Illiberal
Democracy at Home and Abroad (New York:
W.W. Norton & Co., 2003). Charles Krauthammer and Francis
Fukuyama tussle over strains of liberalism in a
recent exchange. Krauthammer makes the case for spreading
democracy in "Democratic Realism: An
American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World," an address to
the American Enterprise Institute, and Fukuyama
responds in "The Neoconservative Moment," (The National
Interest, Summer 2004). Krauthammer's rejoinder,
"In Defense of Democratic Realism" (The National Interest, Fall
2004), counters Fukuyama's claims.
Read more on constructivism in Alexander Wendt, Social
Theory of International Politics (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1999). Margaret E. Keck and
Kathryn Sikkink look at constructivism at work in
Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International
Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).

More focused works include Sikkink's Mixed Messages: U.S.
Human Rights Policy and Latin America (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2004) and Michael N. Barnett's
Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional
Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
For links to relevant Web sites, access to the FP Archive, and a
comprehensive index of related FOREIGN
POLICY articles, go to www.foreignpolicy.com.
The Leading Brands
A = Theories:
B = Realism
C = Liberalism
D = Idealism (Constructivism)
A
B
C
D
Core Beliefs
Self-interested states compete for power and security
Spread of democracy, global economic ties, and international
organizations will strengthen peace
International politics is shaped by persuasive ideas, collective
values, culture, and social identities
Key Actors in International Relations

States, which behave similarly regardless of their type of
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
d=8d1ce319-0b7c-46a7-8701-
fbfabeece84c%40sessionmgr103&vid=1&ReturnUrl=… 10/11
government
States, international institutions, and commercial interests
Promoters of new ideas, transnational activist networks, and
nongovernmental organizations
Main Instruments
Military power and state diplomacy
International institutions and global commerce
Ideas and values
Theory’s Intellectual Blind Spots
Doesn't account for progress and change in international
relations
or understanding that legitimacy can be a source of military
power

Fails to understand that democratic regimes survive only if
they
safeguard military power and security; some liberals forget
that
transitions to democracy are sometimes violent
Does not explain which power structures and social conditions
allow
for changes in values
What the Theory Explains About the Post-9/11 World
Why the United States responded aggressively to terrorist
attacks;
the inability of international institutions to restrain military
superiority
Why spreading democracy has become such an integral part of
current
U.S. international security strategy
The increasing role of polemics about values; the importance
of
transnational political networks (whether terrorists or human
rights advocates)
What the Theory Fails to Explain About the Post-9/11 World
The failure of smaller powers to militarily balance the United
States; the importance of nonstate actors such as al Qaeda; the
intense U.S. focus on democratization
Why the United States has failed to work with other
democracies

through international organizations
Why human rights abuses continue, despite intense activism
for
humanitarian norms and efforts for international justice
DIAGRAM: From Theory to Practice
PHOTO (COLOR)
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PHOTO (COLOR)
PHOTO (COLOR)
PHOTO (COLOR)
~~~~~~~~
By Jack Snyder
Jack Snyder is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of
international relations at Columbia University.
Copyright of Foreign Policy is the property of Foreign Policy
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holder's express written permission. However, users
may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
XMLPublishSM(2004/02/24) P1: JRX
10.1146/annurev.polisci.7.012003.104904
Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2005. 8:23–48
doi: 10.1146/annurev.polisci.7.012003.104904
Copyright c© 2005 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
First published online as a Review in Advance on Oct. 20, 2004
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THEORY AND
POLICY IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Stephen M. Walt
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138;
email: [email protected]
Key Words policy relevance, academia, policy evaluation,
prediction, social
science
■ Abstract Policy makers pay relatively little attention to the
vast theoretical liter-
ature in IR, and many scholars seem uninterested in doing
policy-relevant work. These
tendencies are unfortunate because theory is an essential tool of
statecraft. Many pol-
icy debates ultimately rest on competing theoretical visions, and
relying on a false
or flawed theory can lead to major foreign policy disasters.
Theory remains essential
for diagnosing events, explaining their causes, prescribing
responses, and evaluating

the impact of different policies. Unfortunately, the norms and
incentives that currently
dominate academia discourage many scholars from doing useful
theoretical work in IR.
The gap between theory and policy can be narrowed only if the
academic community
begins to place greater value on policy-relevant theoretical
work.
INTRODUCTION
If the scholarly study of international relations—and especially
work on IR
theory—were of great value to policy makers, then those
charged with the con-
duct of foreign policy would be in a better position today than
ever before. More
scholars are studying the subject, more theories are being
proposed and tested, and
outlets for scholarly work continue to multiply.1
The need for powerful theories that could help policy makers
design effective
solutions would seem to be apparent as well. The unexpected
emergence of a
unipolar world, the rapid expansion of global trade and finance,
the challenges
posed by failed states and global terrorism, the evolving human
rights agenda,
the spread of democracy, concerns about the global
environment, the growing
prominence of nongovernmental organizations, etc., present
policy makers with
1One recent study reports that “there are at least twenty-two
English-language journals

devoted exclusively or largely to international relations, aside
from the general politics and
policy journals that also publish IR articles” (Lepgold & Nincic
2001, p. 15). IR scholars
can also disseminate their work through weblogs, working
papers, and outlets such as the
Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) service.
1094-2939/05/0615-0023$20.00 23
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
24 WALT
problems that cry out for new ideas. These phenomena—and
many others—have
all been objects of sustained scholarly inquiry, and one might
expect policy makers
to consume the results with eagerness and appreciation.
Yet despite the need for well-informed advice about
contemporary international
problems, and the energy and activity being devoted to studying
these questions,
there has long been dissatisfaction with the contributions of IR
theorists (Morgen-
thau 1958, Tanter & Ullman 1972). According to former
diplomat David New-
som, “much of today’s scholarship [on international issues] is
either irrelevant or
inaccessible to policymakers. . .much remains locked within the
circle of esoteric
scholarly discussion” (Newsom 1995–1996, p. 66). Another

observer declares that
“the higher learning about international relations does not loom
large on the in-
tellectual landscape. Its practitioners are not only rightly
ignored by practicing
foreign policy officials; they are usually held in disdain by their
fellow academics
as well” (Kurth 1998, p. 29). The veteran U.S. statesman Paul
Nitze described the-
ory and practice as “harmonic aspects of one whole,” but he
believed that “most
of what has been written and taught under the heading of
‘political science’ by
Americans since World War II. . .has also been of limited value,
if not counterpro-
ductive as a guide to the conduct of actual policy” (Nitze 1993,
p. 15). Similarly,
George (2000) reports that policy makers’ eyes “would glaze as
soon as I used the
word theory.” Nor is the problem unique to the United States, as
indicated by the
Chief Inspector of the British diplomatic service’s comment that
he was “not sure
what the academic discipline of IR—if indeed there be such a
thing as an academic
discipline of IR—has to contribute to the practical day-to-day
work of making and
managing foreign policy” (Wallace 1994).
A low regard for theory is also reflected in the organizations
responsible for
conducting foreign policy. Although academics do work in
policy-making circles
in many countries, a sophisticated knowledge of IR theory is
hardly a prerequisite
for employment. In the United States, for example, there is no

foreign policy
counterpart to the President’s Council of Economic Advisors
(which is staffed
by Ph.D. economists), and being an accomplished IR scholar is
neither necessary
nor sufficient for appointment to the National Security Council
or other similar
bodies.2 Instead, senior policy makers are more likely to be
selected for their
intelligence, loyalty, and/or intimate knowledge of a particular
region or policy
area. Nor is there much evidence that policy makers pay
systematic attention to
academic writings on international affairs.
Dissatisfaction with the limited influence of IR has inspired a
small but growing
literature that seeks to reconnect the worlds of theory and
policy (George et al. 1971;
George & Smoke 1974; Feaver 1999; Hill & Beshoff 1994;
Kruzel 1994; Zelikow
1994; Lepgold 1998; Jentleson 2000, 2002; Lupia 2000; Nincic
& Lepgold 2000;
2Several academics have served as U.S. National Security
Advisor (e.g., Henry Kissinger,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, Condoleezza Rice), but so
have individuals with
little or no formal training in IR (e.g., William Clark, Colin
Powell, Sandy Berger, Robert
McFarlane, and John Poindexter).
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex

THEORY AND POLICY IN IR 25
Lepgold & Nincic 2001; Siverson 2001). Taken as a whole,
these works emphasize
several key themes.
First, the literature sees a wide gap between academic theories
of international
relations and the practical conduct of foreign policy. Most
works in this genre
deplore this situation and offer various remedies for correcting
it, although a few
authors warn that greater emphasis on “policy relevance” might
be detrimental
(Hill & Beshoff 1994, Stein 2000).
Second, these works attribute the gap in part to the complexity
of the policy
maker’s task and the limitations of existing social science
theories, but also to the
incentive structures and professional ethos of the academic
world. In other words,
IR theory is less relevant for policy makers because scholars
have little incentive
to develop ideas that might be useful.
Third, the literature tends to adopt a trickle-down model linking
theory and pol-
icy. General or basic IR theory is seen as too abstract to
influence policy directly,
although it can provide overarching conceptual frameworks and
thus influence
scholars analyzing specific regional developments or applied
“issue-oriented puz-
zles” (Lepgold 2000, Wilson 2000). These latter works will

inform policy analyses
of specific problems, thereby helping to shape the debate on
specific actions and
decisions. It follows that the current gap might be narrowed by
strengthening the
transmission belt linking these different activities, so that
academic ideas reach
the policy maker’s desk more readily.
The present essay explores these themes in greater detail. Can
theoretical IR
work help policy makers identify and achieve specific foreign
policy goals? What
are the obstacles that limit its contribution? Given these
obstacles, what should be
done?
WHAT CAN THEORY CONTRIBUTE TO THE
CONDUCT OF FOREIGN POLICY?
What Types of Knowledge Do Policy Makers Need?
Policy decisions can be influenced by several types of
knowledge. First, policy
makers invariably rely on purely factual knowledge (e.g., how
large are the oppo-
nent’s forces? What is the current balance of payments?).
Second, decision makers
sometimes employ “rules of thumb”: simple decision rules
acquired through ex-
perience rather than via systematic study (Mearsheimer 1989).3
A third type of
knowledge consists of typologies, which classify phenomena
based on sets of spe-
cific traits. Policy makers can also rely on empirical laws. An
empirical law is an

observed correspondence between two or more phenomena that
systematic inquiry
has shown to be reliable. Such laws (e.g., “democracies do not
fight each other”
3For example, someone commuting to work by car might
develop a “rule of thumb” iden-
tifying which route(s) took the least time at different times of
day, based on their own
experience but not on a systematic study of traffic patterns.
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
26 WALT
or “human beings are more risk averse with respect to losses
than to gains”) can
be useful guides even if we do not know why they occur, or if
our explanations for
them are incorrect.
Finally, policy makers can also use theories. A theory is a
causal explanation—
it identifies recurring relations between two or more phenomena
and explains
why that relationship obtains. By providing us with a picture of
the central forces
that determine real-world behavior, theories invariably simplify
reality in order to
render it comprehensible.
At the most general level, theoretical IR work consists of
“efforts by social

scientists. . .to account for interstate and trans-state processes,
issues, and out-
comes in general causal terms” (Lepgold & Nincic 2001, p. 5;
Viotti & Kauppi
1993). IR theories offer explanations for the level of security
competition between
states (including both the likelihood of war among particular
states and the war-
proneness of specific countries); the level and forms of
international cooperation
(e.g., alliances, regimes, openness to trade and investment); the
spread of ideas,
norms, and institutions; and the transformation of particular
international systems,
among other topics.
In constructing these theories, IR scholars employ an equally
diverse set of ex-
planatory variables. Some of these theories operate at the level
of the international
system, using variables such as the distribution of power among
states (Waltz
1979, Copeland 2000, Mearsheimer 2001), the volume of trade,
financial flows,
and interstate communications (Deutsch 1969, Ruggie 1983,
Rosecrance 1986); or
the degree of institutionalization among states (Keohane 1984,
Keohane & Martin
2003). Other theories emphasize different national
characteristics, such as regime
type (Andreski 1980, Doyle 1986, Fearon 1994, Russett 1995),
bureaucratic and
organizational politics (Allison & Halperin 1972, Halperin
1972), or domestic co-
hesion (Levy 1989); or the content of particular ideas or
doctrines (Van Evera 1984,

Hall 1989, Goldstein & Keohane 1993, Snyder 1993). Yet
another family of the-
ories operates at the individual level, focusing on individual or
group psychology,
gender differences, and other human traits (De Rivera 1968,
Jervis 1976, Mercer
1996, Byman & Pollock 2001, Goldgeier & Tetlock 2001,
Tickner 2001, Goldstein
2003), while a fourth body of theory focuses on collective
ideas, identities, and
social discourse (e.g., Finnemore 1996, Ruggie 1998, Wendt
1999). To develop
these ideas, IR theorists employ the full range of social science
methods: compar-
ative case studies, formal theory, large-N statistical analysis,
and hermeneutical or
interpretivist approaches.
The result is a bewildering array of competing arguments
(Viotti & Kauppi
1993, Dougherty & Pfaltzgraff 1997, Walt 1997a, Waever 1998,
Baylis & Smith
2001, Carlsnaes et al. 2002). With so many theories from which
to choose, how
do we know a good one when we see one?
What is a Good Theory?
First and most obviously, a good theory should be logically
consistent and em-
pirically valid, because a logical explanation that is consistent
with the available
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex

evidence is more likely to provide an accurate guide to the
causal connections that
shape events.
Second, a good theory is complete; it does not leave us
wondering about the
causal relationships at work (Van Evera 1997). For example, a
theory stating that
“national leaders go to war when the expected utility of doing
so outweighs the
expected utility of all alternative choices” (Bueno de Mesquita
& Lalman 1992)
may be logically impeccable, but it does not tell us when
leaders will reach this
judgment. Similarly, a theory is unsatisfying when it identifies
an important causal
factor but not the factor(s) most responsible for determining
outcomes. To say
that “human nature causes war,” or even that “oxygen causes
war,” is true in the
sense that war as we know it cannot occur in the absence of
these elements. But
such information does not help us understand what we want to
know, namely,
when is war more or less likely? Completeness also implies that
the theory has no
“debilitating gaps,” such as an omitted variable that either
makes its predictions
unacceptably imprecise or leads to biased inferences about other
factors (Nincic
& Lepgold 2000, p. 28).

A third desideratum is explanatory power. A theory’s
explanatory power is its
ability to account for phenomena that would otherwise seem
mystifying. Theo-
ries are especially valuable when they illuminate a diverse array
of behavior that
previously seemed unrelated and perplexing, and they are most
useful when they
make apparently odd or surprising events seem comprehensible
(Rapaport 1972).
In physics, it seems contrary to common sense to think that
light would be bent by
gravity. Yet Einstein’s theory of relativity explains why this is
so. In economics,
it might seem counterintuitive to think that nations would be
richer if they abol-
ished barriers to trade and did not try to hoard specie (as
mercantilist doctrines
prescribed). The Smith/Ricardo theory of free trade tells us
why, but it took several
centuries before the argument was widely accepted (Irwin
1996). In international
politics, it seems odd to believe that a country would be safer if
it were unable to
threaten its opponent’s nuclear forces, but deterrence theory
explains why mutual
vulnerability may be preferable to either side having a large
capacity to threaten the
other side’s forces (Wohlstetter 1957, Schelling 1960, Glaser
1990, Jervis 1990).
This is what we mean by a powerful theory: Once we
understand it, previously
unconnected or baffling phenemona make sense.
Fourth, at the risk of stating the obvious, we prefer theories that
explain an

important phenomenon (i.e., something that is likely to affect
the fates of many
people). Individual scholars may disagree about the relative
importance of different
issues, but a theory that deals with a problem of some
magnitude is likely to garner
greater attention and/or respect than a theory that successfully
addresses a puzzle
of little intrinsic interest. Thus, a compelling yet flawed
explanation for great power
war or genocide is likely to command a larger place in the field
than an impeccable
theory that explains the musical characteristics of national
anthems.
Fifth, a theory is more useful when it is prescriptively rich, i.e.,
when it yields
useful recommendations (Van Evera 1997). For this reason,
George advises schol-
ars to “include in their research designs variables over which
policymakers have
some leverage” (George 2000, p. xiv; also Glaser & Strauss
1967, Stein 2000). Yet
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
28 WALT
a theory that does not include manipulable variables may still
be useful to policy
makers. For example, a theory that explained why a given
policy objective was
impossible might be very useful if it convinced a policy maker

not to pursue such
an elusive goal. Similarly, a theory that accurately forecast the
risk of war might
provide a useful warning to policy makers even if the variables
in the theory were
not subject to manipulation.
Finally, theories are more valuable when they are stated clearly.
Ceteris paribus,
a theory that is hard to understand is less useful simply because
it takes more time
for potential users to master it. Although academics often like
to be obscure (be-
cause incomprehensibility can both make scholarship seem more
profound and
make it harder to tell when a particular argument is wrong),
opacity impedes sci-
entific progress and is not a virtue in theoretical work. An
obscure and impenetrable
theory is also less likely to influence busy policy makers.
How Theory Can Aid Policy (in Theory)
Although many policy makers dismiss academic theorizing and
many academics
criticize the actions of government officials, theory and policy
are inextricably
linked. Each day, policy makers must try to figure out which
events merit attention
and which items or issues can be ignored, and they must select
objectives and
choose policy instruments that will achieve them. Whether
correct or not, they do
this on the basis of some sort of theory.
Furthermore, policy debates in both domestic and foreign affairs

often hinge
on competing theoretical claims, and each participant believes
his or her preferred
policy option will produce the desired result. For example,
competing prescriptions
for halting the ethnic conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo rested in
part on different
theories about the underlying causes of these wars. Those who
favored interven-
ing to establish a multiethnic democracy in Bosnia (and
Kosovo) tended to blame
the fighting on the machinations of autocratic leaders such as
Slobodan Milose-
vic, whereas those who favored ethnic partition blamed the
conflict on a security
dilemma created by intermingled populations (cf. Kaufmann
1996, Stedman 1997,
Sambanis 2000). More recently, the debate over war against
Iraq hinged in part
on competing factual claims (did Iraq have weapons of mass
destruction or not?)
but also on competing forecasts about the long-term effects of
the war. Advo-
cates believed war would lead to a rapid victory, encourage
neighboring regimes
to “bandwagon” with the United States, hasten the spread of
democracy in the
region, and ultimately undermine support for Islamic terrorism.
Their opponents
argued that the war would have exactly the opposite effects
(Sifry & Cerf 2003),
and these disagreements arose in part because of fundamentally
different views
about the basic dynamics of interstate relations.
History also shows that bad theories can lead directly to foreign

policy disasters.
Prior to World War I, for example, Admiral Von Tirpitz’s
infamous “risk theory”
argued that German acquisition of a large battle fleet would
threaten British naval
supremacy and deter Great Britain from opposing German
dominance of the con-
tinent; in fact, the building of the fleet merely accelerated
Britain’s alignment with
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
Germany’s continental opponents (Kennedy 1983). During the
Cold War, Soviet
policy in the Third World was justified by Marxist claims that
the developing world
was evolving in a socialist direction, and that this evolution
would naturally incline
these states to ally with the USSR. This theory of cooperation
was flawed on both
counts, which helps explain why Soviet efforts to build
influence in the developing
world were costly and disappointing (Rubinstein 1990).
Similarly, U.S. interven-
tion in Indochina and Central America was justified in part by
the so-called domino
theory, even though the logic and evidence supporting the
theory were dubious at
best (Slater 1987, 1993–1994). All of these examples show how
bad IR theories
can lead policy makers astray.

The converse is also true, however: Sometimes good theory
leads to good policy.
As discussed above, the Smith/Ricardo theory of free trade has
for the most part
triumphed over mercantilist thinking and paved the way for the
rapid expansion of
the world economy after World War II, thereby facilitating an
enormous increase
in global wealth and welfare. In the same way, the theory of
deterrence articulated
in the 1940s and 1950s informed many aspects of U.S. military
and foreign policy
during the Cold War, and it continues to exert a powerful
impact today.4
The relationship between theory and policy is not a one-way
street. Theory
informs policy and policy problems inspire theoretical
innovation (Jervis, 2004).
For example, the development of the bureaucratic politics
paradigm and the the-
ory of nuclear deterrence illustrate how new political issues can
spark theoretical
developments, with implications that extend beyond the specific
problems that
inspired the theoretical innovation (Trachtenberg 1992). More
recently, efforts to
analyze the collapse of the Soviet empire (Kuran 1991,
Lohmann 1994, Lebow &
Risse-Kappen 1995, Evangelista 2002), the dynamics of
unipolarity (Wohlforth
1999, Brooks & Wohlforth 2000–2001), or the origins of ethnic
conflict (Posen
1993, Fearon & Laitin 1996, Lake & Rothchild 1998, Toft 2004)
show IR theo-

rists fashioning new theories in response to new concerns.
Theory and policy form
a web, even if the web has many gaps and missing strands.
Despite these gaps,
there are at least four ways that theoretical scholarship can help
policy makers:
diagnosis, prediction, prescription, and evaluation.
DIAGNOSIS The first contribution that theory can make is
diagnosis (Jentleson
2000). Like all of us, policy makers face a bewildering amount
of information,
much of it ambiguous. When seeking to address either a
recurring problem or a
specific event, policy makers must figure out what sort of
phenomenon they are
facing. Is expansionist behavior driven by a revolutionary
ideology or individual
megalomania, or is it rooted in legitimate security fears? Are
trade negotiations in
jeopardy because the participants’ preferences are incompatible
or because they
do not trust each other? By expanding the set of possible
interpretations, theories
provide policy makers with a broader set of diagnostic
possibilities.
4Of course, not all aspects of U.S. nuclear weapons policy
conformed to the prescriptions
of classic deterrence theory (Jervis 1984).
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30 WALT
Diagnosis does not require a sophisticated theory, however;
even simple ty-
pologies can help policy makers devise an appropriate response
to a problem. In
medicine, even if we do not know the exact mechanism that
produces a disease, we
may be able to treat it once the correct diagnosis is made
(George 2000). Similarly,
even if we cannot fully explain why certain international events
occur, we may
still be able to fashion a remedy once we have identified the
problem.
Theory also guides our understanding of the past, and historical
interpretations
often influence what policy makers do later (May 1975, May &
Neustadt 1984). Did
the Cold War end because the Soviet economy was dying from
“natural causes”
(i.e., the inherent inefficiency of centrally planned economies),
because Soviet
elites were persuaded by norms and ideas imported from the
West, or because
the United States was putting greater pressure on its
overmatched adversary? The
question is not merely academic; it tends to shape attitudes on
how the United States
should use its power today. Hardliners tend to attribute the
Soviet collapse to U.S.
pressure, and they believe similar policies will work against
contemporary enemies
(e.g., Iraq, Iran, North Korea) and future “peer competitors”
(Mann 2004). By
contrast, if the Soviet Union collapsed because of its own

internal contradictions, or
because Western ideas proved contagious, then U.S. policy
makers should consider
whether future peer competitors might be more readily coopted
than contained (cf.
Wohlforth 1994–1995, Evangelista 2002).
The recent debate on war with Iraq offers an equally apt
example. Analysts
who focused primarily on Saddam Hussein’s personality and the
nature of the
Ba’ath regime saw Hussein’s past conduct as evidence that he
was an irrational
serial aggressor who could not be deterred and thus could not be
permitted to
acquire weapons of mass destruction (Pollock 2002). By
contrast, scholars who
focused on Iraq’s external situation tended to see Hussein as a
risk-acceptant but
ultimately rational leader who had never used force in the face
of a clear deterrent
threat and thus could be deterred by superior force in the future
(Mearsheimer
& Walt 2003). Thus, interpretations about Iraq’s past conduct
were partly shaped
by contrasting theoretical views and had a clear impact on
contemporary policy
recommendations.
Once a diagnosis is made, theory also guides the search for
additional infor-
mation. As discussed above, policy makers inevitably rely on
different forms of
knowledge—including purely factual information—but theory
helps them decide
what sort of information is relevant. To take a simple example,

both policy makers
and IR theorists know that power is an important concept,
although there is no
precise formula for measuring the relative power of different
actors. We do not
judge the power of nations by examining the quality of their
opera productions,
the average hair length of the citizenry, or the number of colors
in the national flag.
Why? Because there is no theory linking these measures to
global influence. Rather,
both policy makers and scholars generally use some
combination of population,
gross national product, military strength, scientific prowess,
etc., because they
understand that these features enable states to affect others
(Morgenthau 1985,
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
Moul 1989, Wohlforth 1993, Mearsheimer 2001). That is why
U.S. and Asian
policy makers worry about the implications of China’s
economic growth but do
not express similar concerns about Thailand or Brunei.
PREDICTION IR theories can also help policy makers
anticipate events. By iden-
tifying the central causal forces at work in a particular era,
theories offer a picture
of the world and thus can provide policy makers with a better

understanding of
the broad context in which they are operating. Such knowledge
may enable policy
makers to prepare more intelligently and in some cases allow
them to prevent
unwanted developments.
To note an obvious example, different theories of international
politics offered
contrasting predictions about the end of the Cold War. Liberal
theories gener-
ally offered optimistic forecasts, suggesting that the collapse of
communism and
the spread of Western-style institutions and political forms
heralded an unusu-
ally peaceful era (Fukuyama 1992, Hoffman et al. 1993, Russett
1995, Weart
2000). By contrast, realist theories of IR predicted that the
collapse of the Soviet
threat would weaken existing alliances (Mearsheimer 1989,
Waltz 1994–1995,
Walt 1997c), stimulate the formation of anti-U.S. coalitions
(Layne 1993, Kupchan
2000), and generally lead to heightened international
competition. Other realists
foresaw a Pax Americana based on U.S. primacy (Wohlforth
1999, Brooks &
Wohlforth 2000–2001), whereas scholars from different
traditions anticipated ei-
ther a looming “clash of civilizations” (Huntington 1997) or a
“coming anarchy”
arising from failed states in the developing world (Kaplan
2001). Some of these
works were more explicitly theoretical than others, but each
highlighted partic-
ular trends and causal relationships in order to sketch a picture

of an emerging
world.
Theories can also help us anticipate how different regions or
states are likely
to evolve over time. Knowing a great deal about a particular
state’s current for-
eign policy preferences can be useful, for example, but this
knowledge may tell
us relatively little about how this state will behave if its
position in the world
were different. For that task, we need a theory that explains how
preferences (and
behavior) will evolve as conditions change. For example,
China’s foreign policy
behavior is virtually certain to change as its power grows and
its role in the world
economy increases, but existing realist and liberal theories offer
sharply differ-
ent forecasts about China’s future course. Realist theories
predict that increased
power would make China more assertive, whereas liberal
approaches suggest that
increased interdependence and/or a transition to democracy is
likely to dampen
these tendencies significantly (cf. Goldstein 1997–1998,
Mearsheimer 2001).
Similarly, there is a growing consensus that economic
development is encour-
aged by competitive markets, the rule of law, education for both
sexes, and gov-
ernment transparency. If true, then this body of theory identifies
which regions or
countries are likely to develop rapidly. In the same way,
Hudson & Den Boer’s

(2002, 2004) work on the impact of “surplus males” may
provide an early warning
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
32 WALT
about particular regions or countries.5 Dynamic theories of the
balance of power
offer similar warnings about effects of rapid shifts in relative
power and thus can be
used to identify potentially unstable regions (Gilpin 1981,
Friedberg 1993–1994,
Copeland 2000). In each of these cases, a theoretical argument
carries important
implications for future events.
The relationship between theoretical forecasting and real-world
policy making
is not straightforward, however (Doran 1999). Social science
theories are proba-
bilistic, and even a very powerful theory will make some false
forecasts. Moreover,
the objects of social science theory are sentient beings who may
consciously ad-
just their behavior in ways that confirm or confound the
theories on which they
have based their decisions. In response to Huntington’s forecast
of a “clash of
civilizations,” a policy maker who concluded that the clash was
inevitable would
be inclined to adopt defensive policies that could easily make
such a clash more

likely, but someone who felt it was avoidable could take steps
to minimize civ-
ilizational frictions and thus make Huntington’s predictions
appear false (Walt
1997b). In other cases, such as the Hudson & Den Boer study of
“surplus males,”
the knowledge that certain countries were prone to conflict
could enable policy
makers to take preventive steps against anticipated problems.6
In social science,
in short, the observed validity of a theory may be affected by
the degree to which
it is accepted and acted on by policy makers.
PRESCRIPTION All policy actions rest on at least a crude
notion of causality.
Policy makers select policies A, B, and C because they believe
these measures will
produce some desired outcome. Theory thus guides prescription
in several ways.
First, theory affects the choice of objectives by helping the
policy maker evaluate
both desirability and feasibility. For example, the decision to
expand NATO was
based in part on the belief that it would stabilize the emerging
democracies in
Eastern Europe and enhance U.S. influence in an important
region (cf. Goldgeier
1999, Reiter 2001–2002). Expansion was not an end in itself; it
was a means
to other goals. Similarly, the decision to establish the World
Trade Organization
arose from a broad multilateral consensus that a more powerful
international trade
regime was necessary to lower the remaining barriers to trade

and thus foster
greater global productivity (Preeg 1998, Lawrence 2002).
Second, careful theoretical work can help policy makers
understand what they
must do to achieve a particular result. To deter an adversary, for
example, de-
terrence theory tells us we have to credibly threaten something
that the potential
5Hudson & Den Boer argue that cultural preferences for male
offspring produce a demo-
graphic bulge of “surplus males” with limited marriage
prospects. This group generates
high crime rates and internal instability, and their presence may
also encourage states to
adopt more aggressive foreign policies.
6As I have written elsewhere, this feature “is both the purpose
and the paradox of social
science: by gaining a better grasp of the causal forces that shape
social phenomena, we may
be able to manipulate them so as to render our own theories
invalid” (Walt 1996, p. 351).
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
adversary values. Similarly, the arcane IR debate over the
significance of abso-
lute versus relative gains helped clarify the functions that
international institutions
must perform in order to work effectively. Instead of focusing

on providing trans-
parency and reducing transaction costs (as the original literature
on international
regimes emphasized), the debate on absolute versus relative
gains highlighted the
importance of side payments to eliminate gaps in gains and thus
remove a potential
obstacle to cooperation (Baldwin 1993).
Third, theoretical work (combined with careful empirical
testing) can identify
the conditions that determine when particular policy instruments
are likely to
work. As discussed above, these works focus on “issue-oriented
puzzles” (Lepgold
1998), or what is sometimes termed “middle-range” theory, and
such works tend to
produce “contingent” or “conditional” generalizations about the
effects of different
instruments (George & Smoke 1974, George 1993). It is useful
to know that a
particular policy instrument tends to produce a particular
outcome, but it is equally
useful to know what other conditions must be present in order
for the instrument
to work as intended. For example, the theoretical literature on
economic sanctions
explains their limitations as a tool of coercion and identifies the
conditions under
which they are most likely to be employed and most likely to
succeed (Martin 1992,
Pape 1997, Haass 1998, Drezner 1999). Pape’s related work on
coercive airpower
shows that airpower achieves coercive leverage not by inflicting
civilian casualties
or by damaging industrial production but by directly targeting

the enemy’s military
strategy. The theory is directly relevant to the design of
coercive air campaigns
because it identifies why such campaigns should focus on
certain targets and not
others (Pape 1996, Byman et al. 2002).
Fourth, careful scrutiny of an alleged causal chain between
actions and results
can help policy makers anticipate how and why their policies
might fail. If there is
no well-verified theory explaining why a particular policy
should work, then policy
makers have reason to doubt that their goals will be achieved.
Even worse, a well-
established body of theory may warn that a recommended policy
is very likely to
fail. Theory can also alert policy makers to possible unintended
or unanticipated
consequences, and to the possibility that a promising policy
initiative will fail
because the necessary background conditions are not present.
For example, current efforts to promote democracy in the
Middle East may be
appealing from a normative perspective—i.e., because we
believe that democracy
leads to better human rights conditions—but we do not have
well-verified theories
explaining how to achieve the desired result. Indeed, what we
do know about
democracy suggests that promoting it in the Middle East will be
difficult, expensive,
and uncertain to succeed (Carothers 1999, Ottaway & Carothers
2004). This policy
may still be the correct one, but scholars can warn that the

United States and its
allies are to a large extent “flying blind.”
EVALUATION Theory is crucial to the evaluation of policy
decisions. Policy makers
need to identify benchmarks that will tell them whether a policy
is achieving the
desired results. Without a least a sketchy theory that identifies
the objectives to
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
34 WALT
be sought, the definitions of success and failure, and the
purported links between
policy actions and desired outcomes, it will be difficult to know
if a policy is
succeeding or not (Baldwin 2000).
At the most general level, for example, a “grand strategy” based
on liberal
theory would emphasize the spread of democratic institutions
within states or the
expansion and strengthening of international institutions
between states. Success
would be measured by the number of states that adopted durable
democratic forms,
based on the belief that the spread of democracy would lead to
other desirable ends
(improved human rights performance, freer trade, decreased risk
of international
conflict, etc.) By contrast, a grand strategy based on realist

theory would devote
more attention to measuring the balance of power, and success
might be measured
by increases in one’s own relative power, the successful
courtship of powerful new
allies, or the disruption of an opponent’s internal legitimacy.
Similar principles apply in thinking about the role of external
intervention
in civil conflicts. If efforts to build democracy in a multiethnic
society (such as
Bosnia or Iraq) were based on the theory of consociational
democracy advanced by
Lijphardt (1969), then appropriate performance measures might
include a success-
ful census, high levels of voter turnout, the creation of
institutions that formally
allocated power across ethnic or other lines, etc. However, if
the underlying theory
of ethnic peace prescribed ethnic partition, then appropriate
performance mea-
sures would focus on settlement patterns (Kaufmann 1996, Toft
2004). And theo-
ries of postwar peace that emphasize the enforcement role of
third parties imply
that we should try to measure the staying power of outside
guarantors (Walter
2002).
EXPLAINING THE GAP: WHY THEORY
AND POLICY RARELY MEET
If theory can do all these things for policy makers, and if it is
impossible to
formulate policy without a least a vague theory that links means
and ends, then

why doesn’t theoretical IR scholarship play a larger role in
shaping what policy
makers do? Part of the explanation lies in the particular
qualities of contemporary
IR theory, and the remainder derives from the norms and
incentives that govern
the academic and policy worlds.
Is IR Theory Too General and Abstract?
A common explanation for the gap between theory and policy is
that important
works in the field operate at a very high level of generality and
abstraction (George
1993, 2000; Jentleson 2000, p. 13). General theories such as
structural realism,
Marxism, and liberal institutionalism attempt to explain patterns
of behavior that
persist across space and time, and they use relatively few
explanatory variables
(e.g., power, polarity, regime type) to account for recurring
tendencies. According
to Stein (2000), “international relations theory deals with broad
sweeping patterns;
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
while such knowledge may be useful, it does not address the
day-to-day largely
tactical needs of policymakers” (p. 56).

This criticism does not mean that general theories are of no
value, however. Gen-
eral theories provide a common vocabulary with which to
describe global issues
(such terms as globalization, unipolarity, credibility,
preemption, and free-riding)
and create a broad picture of the context in which statecraft
occurs. Moreover,
some general theories do offer strategic prescriptions that
policy makers can use to
make choices. Abstract models can also help us understand
many familiar features
of international life, including the role of information
asymmetries, commitment
problems, and dilemmas of collective action. Thus, even
abstract basic theory can
help policy makers understand the context in which they are
operating and suggest
solutions to some of the challenges they face.
Nonetheless, many prominent works of general theory are
simply not very
relevant for informing policy decisions (and to be fair, they are
not intended to
be). For example, critics of Waltz’s neo-realist theory of
international politics
have commonly complained that it is essentially a static theory
that offers little
policy guidance, a position reinforced by Waltz’s own
insistence that he did not
assay a “theory of foreign policy” (Waltz 1979, 1997; George
1993; Kurth 1998).
Although other scholars have found considerable policy
relevance in Waltz’s basic
approach (e.g., Elman 1997), it is nonetheless true that Theory
of International

Politics offers only very broad guidelines for the conduct of
statecraft. It provides a
basic perspective on relations between states and sketches
certain broad tendencies
(such as the tendency for balances of power to form), but it does
not offer specific
or detailed policy advice.7
Similarly, Wendt’s (1999) Social Theory of International
Politics is an impres-
sive intellectual achievement, and it has important implications
for how scholars
might study relations between states. But it does not offer even
general prescrip-
tions or insights concerning policy. Such works suggest that
societies have greater
latitude in constructing international reality than materialist
conceptions imply, but
they rarely offer concrete guidance for how policy makers might
create a better
world.
So Many Theories, So Little Time
A related problem arises from the limited explanatory power of
the available the-
ories. States’ actions, and the effects of those actions, are the
product of many
different factors (relative power, domestic politics, norms and
beliefs, individual
psychology, etc.), and scholars have therefore produced a host
of different theories
employing many variables. Unfortunately, we do not have a
clear method for com-
bining these partial theories or deciding when to emphasize one
over another. Policy

makers can perhaps be forgiven for failing to embrace the
theoretical scholarship
in the field, when scholars of equal distinction offer radically
different views.
7Waltz did offer specific policy recommendations in other
works (e.g., Waltz 1967, 1981).
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36 WALT
This problem is exacerbated by the nature of many policy
problems. In general,
social science theory offers the clearest advice when applied to
situations with
a well-defined structure: when the actors’ preferences can be
specified precisely,
when the results of different choices are known, and when there
are ample data
with which to confirm and refine conjectures. For example,
game theory and micro-
economics are clearly useful—though not infallible—tools for
analyzing public
policy problems whenever these conditions are present (Stokey
& Zeckhauser
1978, O’Neill 1994).8
Unfortunately, these conditions are often absent in the realm of
foreign pol-
icy, where actors’ preferences are frequently unknown, where
each participant has
many strategies available, and where the costs and benefits of

different outcomes
are uncertain. Nonlinear relationships and other systemic effects
abound, and pref-
erences and perceptions are constantly being revised (but not
always according to
Bayes’ rule) (Jervis 1997). Scholars, as well as policy makers,
often lack sufficient
data for statistical analysis, and the data that are available are
rife with endogeneity
problems and other sources of bias (Przeworski 1995).
These problems may be less acute when scholars descend from
the rarified
heights of general theory to the level of specific policy
instruments, where it is
sometimes possible to devise convincing quasi-experiments that
explain policy
effects. Not surprisingly, therefore, the literature on the theory-
practice gap tends
to extol the virtues of middle-range theory. Such theory focuses
on situations,
strategies, or tools that are of direct concern to policy makers
and can employ a
more controlled, quasi-experimental assessment of the tools in
question. Although
these efforts often face a paucity of data (e.g., Pape’s study of
coercive airpower
is based on a universe of only 33 cases, which is relatively large
for an IR study),
they can provide policy makers with at least a rough estimate of
the effects of a
given course of action.
These gains are bought with a price, however. Middle-range
theory often sacri-
fices parsimony and generality, and it tends to produce

contingent generalizations
of the form, “if you do X, then Y will occur, assuming
conditions a, b, c, and q all
hold, and assuming you do X in just the right way.” Indeed,
prominent advocates of
greater policy relevance see this feature as one of the main
virtues of middle-range
theory. It can sensitize decision makers to the contextual
features that will affect
the odds of success, and it emphasizes tailoring policy
instruments to particular
conditions (George 1993, Lepgold & Nincic 2001). The danger,
however, is that
the resulting generalizations become so heavily qualified that
they offer little guid-
ance beyond the original cases from which they were derived
(Achen & Snidal
1989). This problem does not arise in all middle-range theory,
but it is a legitimate
criticism of much of it.
8Game theory and decision theory have been used to design
public auctions of broadcast-
ing licenses, for example, and decision theory has been used to
develop more effective
antisubmarine warfare strategies. Microeconomic models are
commonly used to conduct
cost-benefit analysis and to estimate the impact of rent control,
health insurance, environ-
mental regulations, insurance plans, and a host of other public
policy initiatives.
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex

Efforts to analyze the effects of different policy instruments are
also bedeviled
by complicated selection effects. No matter how large the
universe of cases is, the
observable connection between causes (i.e., policy actions) and
effects is hard to
measure with precision, because policy makers tend to choose
the instruments that
they deem most likely to work in a given situation. As a result,
observed success
or failure rates do not necessarily tell us which policies are
“best” in any abso-
lute sense. We can try to minimize these problems through
appropriate research
designs and control variables, but these biases can never be
entirely eliminated.
A particular policy instrument can fail quite often, for example,
and still be the
best available choice in certain circumstances.9 These problems
help explain why
policy makers tend to view the results of even high-quality
academic research with
some skepticism.
Different Agendas
A recurring theme in the literature on theory and policy is the
fact that scholars
and policy makers have different agendas (Eckstein 1967,
Rothstein 1972, Moore
1983). Social scientists (including IR theorists) seek to identify
and explain recur-
ring social behavior, but policy makers tend to be concerned

with the particular
problems they are facing today. Policy makers should be curious
about general
tendencies—if only to know whether their current goal is
generally feasible—but
knowing what happens most of the time may be less pertinent
than knowing what
will happen in the particular case at hand. Thus, a scholar might
be delighted by
a theory predicting that, on average, a 20% increase in X would
produce a 25%
decrease in Y, but a policy maker will ask whether the problem
now occupying
his inbox is an outlier or an exception to this general tendency.
As a result, notes
Stein (2000), “in-depth experiential knowledge dominates
general theorizing and
statistical generalizations for the formation of policy” (p. 60).
Furthermore, policy makers are often less interested in
explaining a general
tendency than in figuring out how to overcome it. A theorist
might be content
to explain why states are strongly inclined to form alliances
against potential
aggressors, or to demonstrate why economic sanctions rarely
work, but a policy
maker (e.g., Bismarck on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War)
might be interested
in how balancing tendencies might be impeded or how a
particular sanctions
campaign might be given sharper teeth.
A third contrast is the different attitudes that theorists and
policy makers have
toward time. Scholars want to make their work as accurate as

possible, even if
this takes longer, but policy makers rarely have the luxury of
waiting. As Harvard
professor and former State Department official Robert Bowie
once put it, “the
policymaker, unlike the academic analyst, can rarely wait until
all the facts are in.
He is very often under strong pressure to do something, to take
some action” (quoted
in May 1984). A policy maker who sought scholarly input, and
was told that the
9For example, surgery to repair congenital heart defects in
infants often fails, but alternative
approaches (e.g., do nothing) are even less promising.
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
38 WALT
answer would require months of research and analysis, would be
understandably
reluctant to seek such advice again.
Finally, even a well-constructed and highly relevant theory may
not help pol-
icy makers with a key aspect of their jobs: implementation.
Theory can help
diagnose the situation and identify the appropriate policy
response, but the ac-
tual form of the response requires much more specific
knowledge. First, the
general decision (to seize foreign assets, declare war, reduce a

tariff, issue a
threat, etc.) must be fashioned into an action plan that identifies
what govern-
ment personnel will actually do (Zelikow 1994). And once the
policy design is
complete, the time-consuming work of overcoming bureaucratic
resistance, legal
constraints, fatigue, and partisan opposition still remains.
Contemporary IR theory
is largely silent on these problems, but they loom large in the
life of any policy
maker.
The Professionalization of the Discipline
The modest impact of contemporary IR theory on policy makers
is no accident,
because the creation of IR theory conforms to the norms and
incentives of the
academic profession rather than the needs of policy. IR
scholarship is often im-
penetrable to outsiders, largely because it is not intended for
their consumption;
it is written primarily to appeal to other members of the
profession. It is hard to
imagine busy policy makers (or even their assistants) sitting
down with a copy of
International Organization or World Politics or devoting a
weekend to perusing
Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, Wendt’s Social Theory
of International
Politics, or Powell’s (1999) In the Shadow of Power. Even when
theorists do have
useful ideas to offer, the people who need them will not know
they exist and would
be unlikely to understand them if they did.

This is not a new phenomenon; both scholars and policy makers
have been
complaining about it for decades (Rothstein 1972, Tanter &
Ullman 1972, Wallace
1994). It is a direct consequence of the professionalization of
the academic world
and the specific incentives that scholars within the academy
have established for
themselves. The academic field of IR is a self-regulating
enterprise, and success
in the profession depends almost entirely on one’s reputation
among one’s peers.
There is therefore a large incentive to conform to the norms of
the discipline and
write primarily for other academics.
Over the past century, the prevailing norms of academic life
have increasingly
discouraged scholars from doing work that would be directly
relevant to policy
makers. Membership in the profession is increasingly dominated
by university-
based academics, and the discipline has tended to valorize
highly specialized
research (as opposed to teaching or public service) because that
is what most mem-
bers of the field want to do.10 Younger scholars learn that the
greatest
10In 1900, there were fewer than 100 full-time teachers of
“political science” in the United
States; by the late 1970s, the American Political Science
Association (APSA) had over
17,000 members. In 1912, only 20% of APSA members were
academics; by 1970, that

15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
rewards go to those who can offer a new theory and that a
careful policy anal-
ysis that offered valuable advice but broke no new theoretical
ground would count
for relatively little (Jentleson 2000). When success depends on
the opinion of
one’s peers (rather than on the practical value of what one
knows), and when those
peers are all university-based scholars, there is a clear incentive
to strive for novel
arguments that will impress other scholars.
In the distant past, writers such as Machiavelli, Locke, Hobbes,
Madison,
Rousseau, and Marx were engaged in and inspired by the
political events of their
time. Similarly, the founders of modern political science in the
United States con-
sciously sought to use their knowledge to improve the world,11
and the American
Political Science Association was founded in part “to bring
political science to a
position of authority as regards practical politics.” Not so very
long ago, it was
even common for prominent IR scholars to work in policy-
making circles before
returning to active (and prominent) academic careers.

This situation is quite different today. Although “in-and-outers”
still exist, aca-
demics seem less interested in spending time in government
even temporarily.12
Prominent IR theorists rarely try to write books or articles that
would be directly
relevant to policy problems; policy relevance is simply not a
criterion that the
academy values. Indeed, there is a clear bias against it. Younger
scholars are cau-
tioned not to “waste” their time publishing op-eds, weblogs, or
articles in general
readership journals, and scholars who write for Foreign Affairs,
Foreign Policy, or
even peer-reviewed journals such as Political Science Quarterly
or International
Security run the risk of seeming insufficiently serious, even if
they also publish
in more rarified academic journals. According to Adam
Przeworski, “the entire
structure of incentives of academia in the United States works
against taking big
intellectual and political risks. Graduate students and assistant
professors learn to
package their intellectual ambitions into articles publishable by
a few journals and
to shy away from anything that might look like a political
stance. . .. We have the
tools and we know some things, but we do not speak about
politics to people outside
academia” (quoted in Munck & Snyder 2004, p. 31). Given
these biases—which
are even more prevalent in other parts of political science—it is
not surprising that
academic research rarely has immediate policy impact.

percentage was over 75%. Since World War II, only one APSA
President (Ralph Bunche)
has been a nonacademic at the time of election (Ricci 1984, pp.
65–66).
11The extreme case, of course, is Woodrow Wilson, the
president of APSA who became
President of the United States—but the same is true of such men
as Charles Merriam,
Quincy Wright, and Hans Morgenthau.
12During the past five years, about one third (just under 37%)
of International Affairs
Fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations were granted to
academics on tenure track
at universities, even though the original purpose of the
fellowship was to provide academic
scholars with an opportunity to get direct experience in
government. Data from 2000–
2001 to 2004–2005 are available at
http://www.cfr.org/about/fellowship iaf.php (accessed
9/2/2004).
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
40 WALT
Is a Division of Labor the Answer?
Most students of the theory-practice gap believe the chasm can
be bridged by a
division of labor between scholars and policy makers, because
scholarly theorizing
will eventually “trickle down” from the ivory tower into the

mind-sets, in-boxes,
and policy responses of policy makers.13 In this knowledge-
driven model of impact,
general theory establishes the key concepts, methods, and
principles that guide
the analysis of specific empirical puzzles (such as alliance
behavior, institutional
effects, crisis behavior, and ethnic conflict), and these results
are then used by
policy analysts examining specific cases or problems (Weiss
1978). The latter
works, in turn, provide the basis for advocacy and action in the
public arena and
in government (Lepgold 1998, Lepgold & Nincic 2001).
This is a comforting view insofar as it places academic theorists
at the pinnacle
of the status hierarchy, leaves scholars free to do whatever they
want, and assumes
that their efforts will eventually be of value. There is also much
to be said for
allowing scholars to pursue ideas that are not tied to specific
policy problems,
because wide-ranging inquiry sometimes yields unexpected
payoffs. But there are
also grounds for questioning whether the current division of
labor is optimal.
First, the trickle-down model assumes that new ideas emerge
from academic
“ivory towers” (i.e., as abstract theory), gradually filter down
into the work of
applied analysts (and especially people working in public policy
“think tanks”), and
finally reach the perceptions and actions of policy makers
(Haass 2002, Sundquist

1978). In practice, however, the process by which ideas come to
shape policy
is far more idiosyncratic and haphazard (Albaek 1995). An idea
may become
influential because of a single well-timed article, because its
author happened to
gain personal access to a key policy maker, or because its
inventor(s) entered
government service themselves. Alternatively, social science
theory may exert
its main impact not by addressing policy problems directly, but
via the “long-
term percolation of. . .concepts, theories and findings into the
climate of informed
opinion” (Weiss 1977).
Second, the gulf between scholars and policy makers may be
getting wider
as the links between theoretical research and policy problems
grow weaker. As
academic theory becomes increasingly specialized and
impenetrable, even those
scholars who are working on applied problems and other so-
called research bro-
kers (Sundquist 1978) may pay less and less attention to it. This
is even more likely
to be true in the world of policy-oriented think tanks, which are
increasingly dis-
connected from the academic world. As is well known, in the
1950s and 1960s the
RAND Corporation made seminal contributions to strategic
studies and interna-
tional security policy, as well as to social science more
generally, and many RAND
13The classic expression of this view is Keynes’ (1936) famous

statement that “practical
men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any
intellectual influence, are usually
the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority,
who hear voices in the air, are
distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few
years back.”
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
staff members had prominent careers in academe as well.
Today, by contrast, a
RAND analyst would be unlikely to be a viable candidate for an
IR position at a
major university, and RAND’s research products do not exert
much influence on
the scholarly world. Similarly, in the 1970s and 1980s, the
Foreign Policy Stud-
ies group at the Brookings Institution was not very different
from an academic
IR faculty, and publications by its staff were similar to works
produced within
prestigious departments.14 Moreover, the director of the group,
John Steinbruner,
held a Ph.D. from MIT, had previously taught at Harvard, and
was the author of
several important theoretical works (Steinbruner 1974, 1976).
Today, by contrast,
the Foreign Policy Studies staff a Brookings writes relatively
few refereed journal
articles or scholarly books and concentrates primarily on

producing op-eds and
contemporary policy analyses (e.g., Daalder & Lindsay 2003,
Gordon & Shapiro
2004). Consistent with this focus, the current director of
Foreign Policy Studies
is a lawyer and former government official with little or no
scholarly training. My
point is not to disparage the work done at Brookings (or at
similar institutions); it is
simply to note that the gulf between academic scholars and
policy-oriented analysts
is widening. One suspects that scholars in think tanks pay less
attention to their
academic counterparts than they did previously, and vice versa.
This tendency is
exacerbated by the emergence of “advocacy think tanks” (e.g.,
the Heritage Foun-
dation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute) in
which analysis is
driven by explicit ideological preferences (Wallace 1994,
Weaver & Stares 2001,
Abelson 2002). As connections between the ivory tower and
more policy-oriented
scholars become tenuous, the trickle-down model of scholarly
influence seems
increasingly questionable.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
The literature on the gap between theory and practice addresses
most of its recom-
mendations toward reforming the academic world, for two
obvious reasons. First,
scholars are more likely to read these works. Second, policy
makers are unlikely
to be swayed by advice to pay greater attention to academic

theory. If scholars
produce useful knowledge, policy makers will want to know
about it. If academic
writings are not useful, however, no amount of exhortation will
persuade policy
makers to read them.
What is needed, therefore, is a conscious effort to alter the
prevailing norms of
the academic IR discipline. Today’s professional incentive
structure discourages
many scholars—especially younger scholars—from striving for
policy relevance,
but the norms that establish that structure are not divinely
ordained; they are collec-
tively determined by the members of the discipline itself. The
scholarly community
gets to decide what it values, and there is no reason why policy
relevance cannot be
14I am thinking of the work of Richard Betts, John Steinbruner,
Joshua Epstein, Bruce Blair,
Paul B. Stares, Raymond Garthoff, Yahya Sadowski, William
Quandt, and others.
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
42 WALT
elevated in our collective estimation, along with the traditional
criteria of creativity,
rigor, and empirical validity.

What would this mean in practice? First, academic departments
could give
greater weight to real-world relevance and impact in hiring and
promotion deci-
sions. When evaluating job candidates, or when considering
someone for tenure,
reviewers and evaluation committees could consider what
contribution a scholar’s
work has made to the solving of real-world problems. Policy
relevance would not
become the only—or even the most important—criterion, of
course, and scholars
would still be expected to meet high scholarly standards. But
giving real-world
relevance greater weight would make it more likely that theory
would be directed at
real-world problems and presented in a more accessible fashion.
“Should it really
be the case,” Jentleson (2000) correctly asks, “that a book with
a major university
press and an article or two in [a refereed journal]. . .can almost
seal the deal on
tenure, but books with even major commercial houses count so
much less and arti-
cles in journals such as Foreign Affairs often count little if at
all?. . . The argument
is not about padding publication counts with op-eds and other
such commentaries,
but it is to broaden evaluative criteria to better reflect the type
and range of writing
of intellectual import” (p. 179). To put it bluntly: Should our
discipline really be
proud that relatively few people care about what we have to
say?
Second, academic departments could facilitate interest in the

real world of
politics by giving junior faculty greater incentives for
participating in it. At present,
academic departments rarely encourage younger faculty to take
time off to serve
in government, and very few departments will stop the tenure
clock for someone
doing public service. A scholar who is interested in acquiring
real-world experience
(or in helping to shape policy directly) generally has to wait
until after tenure has
been granted. By allowing younger faculty to “stop the clock,”
however, academic
departments would have more members who understood real-
world issues and
knew how to translate theoretical ideas into policy-relevant
analyses. One suspects
that such individuals would become better teachers as well,
because students,
unlike many scholars, do care about the real world and have
little tolerance for
irrelevant abstraction.
Third, academic journals could place greater weight on
relevance in evaluating
submissions,15 and departments could accord greater status to
journals that did
this. Similarly, prize committees could consider policy
relevance a criterion for
awarding noteworthy books and articles, instead of focusing
solely on contributions
to narrow disciplinary issues. Finally, creating more outlets for
work that translated
“higher-end” theory into accessible form (as the Journal of
Economic Perspectives
does in economics) would strengthen the “transmission belt”

from theory to policy.
The goal of such reforms is not to make the academic world a
homogeneous
mass of policy analysts or even worse, a community of co-opted
scholars competing
to win the attention of government officials. Rather, the purpose
is to encourage a
15Some peer-reviewed journals do this (e.g., International
Security and Security Studies),
but it is hardly a widespread practice.
15 Apr 2005 :935 AR AR244-PL08-02.tex
more heterogeneous community at all levels of academe: some
scholars who do
highly abstract work and others who do explicit policy analysis,
but where both
groups are judged according to their broad contribution to our
understanding of
critical real-world problems.
Is this vision a pipe dream? Perhaps not. Indeed, there are
encouraging signs
throughout the social sciences. In economics, for example, the
awarding of the
Nobel Prize to Douglass North, Amartya Sen, James Heckman,
Amos Tversky,
and Daniel Kahneman suggests a greater desire to valorize ideas
and techniques

that proved to be of value to public policy issues. In addition, a
group of prominent
economists has recently announced the creation of a new online
journal (The
Economists’ Voice) to provide a more visible outlet for policy
analysis informed by
rigorous economic reasoning. Within political science, the
perestroika movement
arose partly in reaction to the formalism and irrelevance of
recent scholarship, and
the movement deserves partial credit for the creation of the
journal Perspectives
on Politics and the increased intellectual diversity and policy
relevance of the
American Political Science Review. These developments remind
us that the criteria
of merit used in academic fields are always subject to revision.
In other words,
IR scholars need not accept things as they are; we collectively
determine how our
field develops. IR theorists can provide valuable ideas for
policy makers without
sacrificing our integrity and objectivity, but only if we decide
we want to.
The Annual Review of Political Science is online at
http://polisci.annualreviews.org
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Review of International Studies (2007), 33, 3–24 Copyright �
British International Studies Association
doi:10.1017/S0260210507007371
Introduction
Still critical after all these years? The past,
present and future of Critical Theory in

International Relations
NICHOLAS RENGGER AND BEN THIRKELL-WHITE*
Twenty-five years ago, theoretical reflection on International
Relations (IR) was
dominated by three broad discourses. In the United States the
behavioural revolution
of the 1950s and 1960s had helped to create a field that was
heavily influenced by
various assumptions allegedly derived from the natural
sciences. Of course, variety
existed within the behaviourist camp. Some preferred the
heavily quantitative
approach that had become especially influential in the 1960s,
while others were
exploring the burgeoning literature of rational and public
choice, derived from the
game theoretic approaches pioneered at the RAND corporation.
Perhaps the most
influential theoretical voice of the late 1970s, Kenneth Waltz,
chose neither; instead he
developed his Theory of International Politics around an austere
conception of parsi-
mony and systems derived from his reading in contemporary
philosophy of science.1

These positivist methods were adopted not just in the United
States but also in
Europe, Asia and the UK. But in Britain a second, older
approach, more influenced
by history, law and by philosophy was still widely admired. The
‘classical approach’
to international theory had yet to formally emerge into the
‘English School’ but many
of its texts had been written and it was certainly a force to be
reckoned with.2
* The authors would like to thank all the contributors to this
special issue, including our two referees.
We would also like to thank Kate Schick for comments on drafts
and broader discussion of the
subject matter.
1 Discussions of the development and character of so-called
‘positivist’ IR are something of a drug on
the market. Many of them, of course, treat IR and political
science as virtually interchangeable. For
discussions of the rise of ‘positivist’ political science, see:
Bernard Crick, The American Science of
Politics (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of

California Press, 1960). Klaus Knorr and
James Rosenau (eds.), Contending Approaches to International
Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1969) highlight the emergence of what might
be termed ‘classical’ behaviouralist
approaches. The growing diversity of the field can be seen in K.
J. Holsti, The Dividing Discipline
(London; Allen and Unwin, 1985) and the debates between
positivism and its critics traced ably in
the introduction to Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia
Zalewski (eds.), International Theory;
Positivism, and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996). Waltz’s move from a
traditional to a much more scientific mode of theory is found, of
course, in Theory of International
Politics (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1979).
2 The exhaustive (and exhausting) history of the ‘English
School’ is given in Bruno Vigezzi, The
British Committee for the Theory of International Politics
1954–1985: The Rediscovery of History
(Milan: Bocconi, 2005), though good accounts of the structure
and types of argument typical of it
can also be found in Andrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami,
The English School of International

Relations: A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
3
Relatedly, there were voices within the realist tradition,
elsewhere, drawing on older
traditions of thinking about international relations. Most
notably of these was
Hans Morgenthau, whose first (and most powerful) English
language book was a
concerted reaction against the ‘scientific’ approaches dominant
in his adopted
homeland.3
The third approach,4 often neglected in overviews of the
discipline, was to draw
on some form of Marxism. Much of this literature, though
plainly relevant to
international relations in the world, came from outside
‘International Relations’ as
an academic subject. World Systems analysis, for example, was
largely done in

departments of sociology or history rather than in departments
of political science or
international relations.5 Much the same is true of the peace
research of Johan
Galtung and his colleagues.6
Into this rather static world, in 1981, two articles were
published that announced
the arrival in International Relations of forms of theory long
familiar outside it.
These essays were Robert Cox’s ‘Social Forces, States and
World Orders’ published
in the LSE journal Millennium and Richard Ashley’s ‘Political
Realism and Human
Interests’ in International Studies Quarterly.7 Both these essays
deployed variants of
Frankfurt School critical theory to analyse the problematic of
modern international
relations. They were joined the following year by perhaps the
single most influential
book-length treatment of International Relations from a similar
trajectory, Andrew
Linklater’s Men and Citizens in the Theory of International
Relations.8 If these
works could be seen as the breach in the dyke, the torrent soon

became a flood as
theoretical ideas from many other areas of contemporary social
theory began to be
deployed in the context of international relations: feminism,
Neo-Gramscianism,
post-structuralism, post-colonialism; the list grew
exponentially.
Twenty-five years on, International Relations theory looks very
different. A
robust, analytical and still heavily ‘scientific’ US academy now
has strong elements
of critical theory of various sorts lodged within it. The so-called
‘constructivist turn’,
which is so influential in contemporary IR theory, draws very
heavily on aspects of
the critical turn that preceded it.9 In the UK and Europe, it is
probably fair to say
that various forms of ‘critical theory’, alongside the now
relaunched (and very
3 This was Scientific Man versus Power Politics (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1946),
though this was a view Morgenthau retained. See, for example,
Truth and Power: Essays of a

Decade (New York: Praeger, 1970).
4 It is worth adding that there have been many ways of cutting
up the evolution of IR theory: ‘Great
Debates’ (such as Realism versus Idealism), Traditions (like
Wight’s Realism, rationalism and
revolutionism); and Paradigms, such as the alleged ‘inter-
paradigm debate much discussed by some
British IR scholars in the 1970s and 80s. We do not take a view
on these readings, rather we are
simply situating the emergence of critical theory against other
reigning kinds of theory.
5 For some internal treatments of Marxism and IR, see Andrew
Cruickshank and Vendulka
Kublakova, Marxism and International Relations (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1985).
Wallerstein’s major statement of world systems theory remains
The Modern World System ((New
York: Academic Press, 1974).
6 For Galtung’s most explicit and detailed formulation of his
approach, see his Essays on
Methodology, 3 vols. (Copenhagen: Eijlers, 1977).

7 Robert Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond
International Relations Theory’,
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 10:2 (1981), pp.
126–55. Richard K. Ashley, ‘Political
Realism and Human Interest’, International Studies Quarterly,
25 (1981), pp. 204–36.
8 Andrew Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of
International Relations (London: Macmillan,
1982).
9 We will discuss the constructivist elements in the critical turn
in more detail later on.
4 Nicholas Rengger and Ben Thirkell-White
different) ‘English School’,10 constitute the main theoretical
alternatives within the
discipline. Cox and Ashley’s interventions have also helped to
open space for a
growing body of normative thinking on international issues and
a burgeoning interest
in the intellectual history, including history of international

thought, even if these
developments are often not self-consciously part of the tradition
of critical IR
theory.11 This interest crosses the Atlantic as well as involving
philosophers, lawyers
and political theorists from outside the study of international
relations.12 In short,
critical theory – in all its various guises – has had a huge
impact on the study of
international relations over the last twenty-five years.
Now is an appropriate time, then, for a closer look at precisely
what that impact
has been, where the various strands that have made up ‘critical
theory in inter-
national relations’ now stand, what problems they face and what
their future might
be. That was the brief given to the contributors to this Special
Issue of the Review of
International Studies. The third section of this Introduction will
introduce the essays
that make it up. First, though, we lay the groundwork by
providing an overview of
the main strands of critical IR theory that have emerged since
1981. We go on to

outline some of the most important reactions to the critical turn,
both hostile and
sympathetic. The essays can then be read in that intellectual
context, as defences of
critical theory against its more radical critics or as engagements
with controversies
that have taken place within the critical camp. We conclude
with a short exposition
of what we see as the state of critical theory within the IR
discipline.
Trajectories in critical theory
This section draws out what we see as the four core strands of
critical IR theory:
Frankfurt School critical theory, neo-Gramscian theory,
feminism and various
strands of post-structuralism. Obviously, this is a somewhat
restrictive conception
but it was already more than enough to deal with in a single
Special Issue. In the next
section, we draw out the relationship between these strands of
theory and other
critical approaches that might have been included, notably
critical constructivism, the

‘new normative theory’ and some kinds of critical IPE.
The influence of the Frankfurt School
In retrospect, it was predictable that, just as the scientific
assumptions that generated
much of the dominant work in International Relations from the
1960s onwards came
10 See, for example, Barry Buzan, From International to World
Society : English School Theory and the
Social Structure of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004).
11 Good examples would include, David Boucher, Political
Theories of International Relations (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999); Thomas Pangle and Peter
Ahresndorf, Justice Among Nations: The
Struggle for Power and Peace (Kansas, KS: University of
Kansas Press, 1999); and Brian C.
Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy (New York: SUNY
Press, 1998).
12 See, for example, the discussions in Chris Brown,
Sovereignty Rights and Justice: International

Political Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).
Introduction 5
into the subject from other fields (natural science, mathematics,
and economics),13
other theoretical innovations would make their way into the
study of international
relations. It was also predictable that they would initially be
couched largely in
opposition to those trends. It should not be surprising, then, that
it is Frankfurt
School critical theory14 that was the first on to the field. Cox’s
Millennium essay,
made use of the founding document of Frankfurt School critical
theory to illustrate
the differences between the approach he saw as dominant, and
that which he saw as
necessary. That document was Max Horkheimer’s essay ‘On
Traditional and Critical
Theory’.15 Cox pointed out, as Horkheimer had, that
‘traditional theory’ –

represented, for Cox, by US style ‘positivist’ International
Relations – assumed that
it somehow stood ‘outside’ the phenomena it was investigating.
This forced it to
assume a stance of evaluative neutrality (‘value-free social
science’) and to adopt an
effective complicity with the world as it was. It became, in
Cox’s words, ‘Problem-
solving theory’, taking the world as an untheorised given and
trying to work out how
better to theorise, given that world.
Critical theory, on the other hand, recognises that the theorist is
situated as much
as a creature of the historical circumstances of the time as that
which is being
investigated. ‘Theory’, Cox said, is ‘always for someone and for
some purpose’;16 it
speaks from a particular socio-historical situation and to one.
As such it recognises
the historical particularity of that situation and seeks to
understand why and how it
came to be as it is and what possibilities for change there might
be implicit in it.
Critical theorists refer to this method as immanent critique.

This method raises a second concern that is present in Cox’s
work but became
much more explicit in Andrew Linklater’s Men and Citizens the
following year, and
in Mark Hoffman’s influential Millenium article from 1987. The
search for the
possibilities of change should be anchored in an emancipatory
project that seeks, not
just the possibility of change as such, but rather points to
change in a certain –
progressive – direction. This is what led Hoffman to suggest, in
his article, that
critical IR theory was, as he put it, ‘the next stage’ of IR theory,
since it included a
normative, emancipatory element.17
In a later essay, Linklater neatly summarises the main planks of
what we might
now call ‘Frankfurt School’ critical international theory as
follows. First, that it takes
issue with ‘positivism’ (as critical theorists of all stripes tend to
refer to the allegedly
scientific mainstream of IR theory). Second, it opposes the idea
that the existing

structures of the social world are immutable and ‘examines the
prospects for greater
freedom immanent within existing social relations’. Third, it
learns from and
overcomes the weakness inherent in Marxism by emphasising
forms of social learning
13 For the integration of these fields into political science, see
William Poundstone, Prisoner’s Dilemma
(New York: DoubleDay, 1992).
14 The literature on the Frankfurt School is now vast. The most
exhaustive general history is Rolf
Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1994); the best account of its origins,
Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (Boston, MA: Little,
Brown, 1973); and perhaps the clearest
exposition of its central tenets, David Held, Introduction to
Critical Theory: From Horkheimer to
Habermas (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of
California Press, 1980).
15 Horkheimer’s original essay was published in the Zeitschrift
fur Sozial Forschung (the house journal
of the Institute for Social Research which he directed and which

was the institutional home of the
School) in 1937, as ‘Traditionelle und kritische theorie’, ZfS,
6:2 (1937), pp. 245–94.
16 Cox, ‘Social Forces’, p. 128.
17 Mark Hoffman ‘Critical Theory and the Inter-Paradigm
Debate’, Millennium, 16 (1987), pp. 231–49.
(drawing on Habermas’ reconstruction of historical materialism)
and opening up new
possibilities for constructing an ‘historical sociology with an
emancipatory purpose’.
Linklater suggests, then, that critical theory:
judges social arrangements by their capacity to embrace open
dialogue with all others and
envisages new forms of political community which break with
unjustified exclusion . . . [it]
envisages the use of an unconstrained discourse to determine
the moral significance of

national boundaries and to examine the possibility of post-
sovereign forms of national
life.18
This account, particularly in its stress on social learning
through open dialogue,
indicates just how powerfully critical theory in International
Relations has been
influenced by the work and thought of Jurgen Habermas. In fact,
Habermas’
influence in theoretical debates in International Relations
extends far beyond
self-confessed critical theorists. He has been an undoubted
influence on Construc-
tivist thought and has also influenced many figures who are
much closer to the
‘positivist’ mainstream, for reasons that we shall return to
shortly. But his first – and
still most important influence – has been on the work of those,
like Linklater, who did
most to establish the trajectory of critical theory in
International Relations.
Critical theory and social movements?

If Linklater has become the most influential Frankfurt school
‘critical theorist’ in
International Relations, then Robert Cox’s lasting influence has
been in a slightly
different direction. Cox came to the academy from a career in
international
organisations19 and has had a lasting interest in questions of
international institu-
tional and economic organisation. He has been most influential
in promoting
‘neo-Gramscian’ critical theory.
Italian communist Antonio Gramsci has had a pronounced
influence on the
European new left since the end of the Second World War.20
But especially since the
1970s his ideas, developed in his so-called Prison Notebooks,
had become increasingly
influential. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s 1985 volume
Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy, in particular, quickly achieved cult status on
the left.21 The idea of
hegemony was one they picked up and developed from Gramsci.
Cox, and soon after
a number of others, were following a similar trajectory in

International Relations
scholarship. Craig Murphy, Kees Van der Pijl, Barry Gills, Tim
Sinclair and Steven
Gill and a growing number of younger scholars, have all helped
to develop what is
now usually referred to as ‘Neo-Gramscian’ critical theory.
They have elaborated
18 Andrew Linklater, ‘The Changing Contours of Critical
International Relations Theory’, in Richard
Wyn-Jones (ed.), Critical Theory and World Politics (Boulder,
CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001).
19 For an account of Cox’s career and its significance for his
theoretical development see chapter 2
(‘Influences and Commitments’) in Robert Cox with Tim
Sinclair, Approaches to World Order
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
20 Good treatments of Gramsci can be found in A. Showstack-
Sassoon, Gramsci’s Politics (London;
Croom Helm, 1980), Chantal Mouffe (ed.), Gramsci and Marxist
Theory (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1979), J. Larrain, Marxism and Ideology (London;
Macmillan, 1983) and James

Martin, Gramsci’s Political Analysis: An Introduction (London;
Palgrave Macmillan, 1998). See also
James Martin (ed.), Antonio Gramsci: Contemporary
Philosophical Assessments, 4 vols. (London:
Routledge, 2001).
21 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist
Strategy (London: Verso, 1985).
Introduction 7
and expanded on its insights, particularly in subfields such as
International Political
Economy (IPE) and Global Governance.22
Gill (in ‘Gramsci’, 1993 – see n. 22) outlined the hallmark of
the ‘Gramscian’
research programme in International Relations as follows: First,
ongoing attempts to
reconsider epistemological and ontological aspects of world
order, in the context of
past, present and future. Second, continuous efforts in
methodological, theoretical

and conceptual innovation. Third, concrete historical studies of
the emerging world
order in terms of its economic, political and sociocultural
dimensions with a view to
its emerging contradictions and the limits and possibilities these
may imply. Fourth,
addressing and developing related ethical and practical
approaches to global
problems.
There are obvious parallels here to the Frankfurt inspired
agenda outlined by
Linklater above, but also some differences. Much less emphasis
is placed on the
kind of dialogic and discursive elements that interest Linklater,
much more on the
concrete empirical analysis of ‘real world’ processes and the
linking of that to
theoretical and emancipatory reflection and concrete political
struggle. It is no
accident that it is in IPE that Gramscian critical theory has
established itself most
firmly.
A not dissimilar trajectory is visible in another body of theory

that emerged in
International Relations at the same time: feminism. If neo-
Gramscian theorists
primarily tried to uncover the ways in which economic activities
had shaped the
international world that the mainstream tended to take as a
given, feminist theorists
pointed to the ways in which gender had done so. Given the
diffusion of feminist
scholarship through the academy over the last thirty to forty
years in a wide range of
fields,23 this development was long overdue. Though not all
feminist writers set out
to be critical theorists, there are clear affinities between the
feminist project of
uncovering the gendered nature of contemporary social reality
and the broader
critical project in IR, with its emphasis on theorising the
untheorised in an effort to
promote emancipatory change. Thus books like Cynthia Enloe’s
Bananas Beaches
and Bases became part of the critical turn, as much as Ann
Tickner’s Gender in
International Relations and Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Women and
War.24 Indeed, much

22 Volumes that have contributed to this developing position
would include: Stephen Gill, American
Hegemony and the Tri-Lateral Commission (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), Stephen
Gill (ed.), Gramsci: Historical Materialism and International
Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993); Craig Murphy, Global Institutions,
Marginalization and Development
(London: Routledge, 2005), and Kees Van Der Pijl,
Transnational Classes and International
Relations (London: Routledge, 1998).
23 The influence and growth of feminist scholarship across the
humanities and social sciences
since the mid–late 1960s awaits its major historian. Provisional
assessments can be found in
Margaret Walters, Feminism: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005),
and Nancy Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1987).
24 Major statements of feminist IR scholarship of this sort
would normally be held to include Ann

Tickner, Gendering World Politics (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2001); Jean Bethke
Elshtain, Women and War (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1987);
Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and
Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1989). For an excellent overview by an important voice,
growing in influence, see Kimberly
Hutchings, ‘Feminist Philosophy and International Relations
Theory: A Review’. Women’s
Philosophy Review, 27 (2001), pp. 31–60. For more post-
structurally inclined feminist writers see
below.
of the best and most acute writing in all the traditions that make
up critical IR
acknowledges the (sadly often unfulfilled) potential for fruitful
two-way interaction
between feminist writing and other critical traditions. In this
issue, for example, Craig
Murphy suggests that neo-Gramscian scholars could learn more

from the relation-
ship between scholarship and activism in the international
feminist movement and
Kimberly Hutchings points to the importance of feminist
explorations of the
relationship between difference and universality for broader
thinking in IR.
Deconstruction
Although the opening shots in the critical campaign were fired
by what we might call
the ‘emancipatory’ wing of critical theory, they were swiftly
joined by writers coming
out of a different theoretical trajectory. From the mid to late
1960s onwards, one of
the most important of all late twentieth century intellectual
fashions began to
influence (or infect, according to taste) a wide range of fields in
the humanities and
social sciences. Usually called post-structuralism (and often,
though not very
helpfully, postmodernism) this was actually a catch-all term for
a loosely related set
of theoretical positions derived from two principal sources, the

diffuse but very real
influence of Heidegger in France in the 1950s and the
disillusion with traditional
versions of Marxism that accompanied the rise of the student
left and the events
of 1968. In the ‘deep background’, as it were, and connected
with the influence of
Heidegger, was the growing stature of Nietzsche as a thinker.
The two major thinkers
to ride the crest of these waves were Michel Foucault and
Jacques Derrida and their
work became the most influential on scholars in International
Relations.
Perhaps the first IR scholar to really develop a post-structural
position was
Richard Ashley. Moving beyond the argument he had outlined
in Political Realism
and Human Interests, Ashley began to develop a more radical
critique of conventional
discourses of IR. Initially, on the basis of a reading of
Foucault’s work, Ashley
argued that ‘post-structuralism’ was a permanently ‘critical’
discourse, indeed the
only really critical theory, since it did not, indeed could not,

offer an alternative
position or perspective to any other as there was no ground
upon which such a
perspective could be established. This he took to be the logic
implicit in Foucault’s
view that all claims of knowledge implied a regime of power
and vice versa, and that
you could not therefore establish a position outside the
competing power/knowledge
claims.25
Elements of this reading persist in post-structurally influenced
IR theory – as
witnessed by David Campbell’s claim that his work should be
seen as a form of
political criticism, though one which significantly he sees as an
ethos – but it has also
changed in important ways. Now, most post-structurally
influenced scholars would
agree with William Connolly’s gentle critique of Ashley to the
effect that:
25 These arguments are perhaps most fully developed in his
critique of Kenneth Waltz, ‘The Poverty
of Neo-Realism’ [in R. Keohane (ed.), Neo-Realism and Its

Critics (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986)] and in his essay ‘Living on Borderlines: Man,
Post-Structuralism and War’, in James
Der Derian and Michael J. Shapiro, International/Intertextual
Relations: Postmodern Readings of
World Politics (New York: Lexington Books, 1989).
Introduction 9
(we) contend, in a way that overtly presents itself as a
contestable supposition, that we live
in a time when a variety of factors press thought into a rather
confined and closed field of
discourse . . . the political task at a time of closure and danger
is to try and open up that
which is enclosed, to try to think thoughts that stretch and
extend the normal patterns of
insistence’.26
Although this is the general position that post-structurally
influenced critical IR
theory has taken, there remain a wide variety of approaches to
applying post-

structural insights. Rob Walker, following perhaps Derrida more
than Foucault, has
sought to focus on the way in which a range of dichotomies can
be read as having
structured the conditions of modern IR: inside/outside (to use
the title of his best
known book) but also identity/difference, time/space, self/other,
inclusion/exclusion,
unity/diversity and universality/particularity.27 James Der
Derian shares something
of this sensibility, particularly the focus on the time/space
dichotomy, but has chiefly
focused on the implications of this for what he calls the
chronopolitics of security in
today’s world where chronology is elevated over geography and
pace over space.28
There are also feminist readings of not dissimilar problematics,
such as those of
Christine Sylvester and Spike Peterson on IR and IPE in general
and, in the UK,
Jenny Edkins’ meditation on Trauma and Memory in IR, Cindy
Weber’s work on
gender, representation and film in Contemporary IR and
Kimberly Hutchings’

articulation of a broadly post-structural feminist sensibility.29
Reactions to critical theory
Rejection
The critical turn was a self-conscious attack on the mainstream
of International
Relations. It should not surprise us, then, that most leading so-
called ‘positivist’
scholars, largely, though by no means exclusively, in the US,
have tried to reject the
entire critical project. They have two grounds for this rejection.
The first is based on
a largely methodological assumption – rarely argued for in any
detail – that IR
should be subsumed into something called ‘political science’
and the methods that
govern political science are essentially akin to the natural
sciences. The assumptions
26 See Connolly, ‘Identity and Difference in Global Politics’, in
Der Derian and Shapiro,
International/Intertextual Relations. See also Connolly’s
arguments in Identity/Difference: Democratic

Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
27 The only major statement of Walker’s view remains
Inside/Outside: International Relations as
Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993).
28 Der Derian has explored these positions in three major books
plus a host of articles, op-eds and
other writings plus at least one filmed documentary. For the
evolution of his views, see On
Diplomacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Anti-
Diplomacy: Speed, Spies, Terror and War
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); and Virtuous War: Mapping the
Military Industrial Media Entertainment
Network (Diane, 2001).
29 See, for example, Christine Sylvester, Feminist International
Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), Jenny Edkins, Trauma and the Memory
of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), Cindy Weber, Imagining America at
War: Morality, Politics and Film
(London: Routledge, 2005). Hutchings’ work on feminist IR has

been mainly in essays so far (such
as the one cited above and the one in the present issue). But see
also her studies Hegel: A Feminist
Revision (Cambridge: Polity, 2002) and International Political
Theory (London: Sage, 1999).
on which critical theory (of any sort) have always been based,
then, are simply
mistaken.
The second assumption, often spelt out in greater detail, is that
critical theory can
offer neither a proper explanation of IR nor appropriate
normative reflection since it
is essentially ‘relativist’ and cannot offer anything by way of
guidance for action or
policy. This was broadly Keohane’s strategy in his 1988
Presidential address to the
ISA (later published), ‘International Institutions: Two
Approaches’.30 Keohane
sought to suggest that IR scholarship was divided between a

rationalist ‘mainstream;
and a range of (very diverse) so called ‘reflectivist’ approaches.
Until (reflectivist)
critical theory developed its own ‘research design’ it would
remain forever on the
fringes of the field.
Some postmodern accounts, such as Ashley’s, would accept the
charge of
relativism. The vast majority of critical writers, though, would
not. As we saw above,
even many contemporary post-structuralists see themselves as
engaged with the
world of practice. When it comes to feminist IR, Frankfurt
School and neo-
Gramscian writing, the criticism is clearly too scattershot to hit
the mark. Even those
that it does catch – chiefly post-structurally inclined IR theory –
are not really
relativists in the rather ‘straw man’ sense usually implied.
Taking a hermeneutic
stance ‘beyond objectivism and relativism’ may be contestable
but it is not, by
definition, relativistic.

A minor variant of this critique has also been to suggest that
critical theory is
essentially what one prominent contemporary realist – Randall
Schweller – has called
‘fantasy theory’,31 that it consists chiefly of ever more
ingenious attempts to build
castles in the air but meantime, he suggests, the rest of us have
to live in the real world
of states and their conflicts. There is much that might be said
about this astonishingly
bad reading of what most critical theorists have been saying but
one obvious point
is simply to aver that few, if any, critical theorists of any stripe
would take the royal
road to what, in a different context, John Rawls called ‘ideal
theory’. The critical
theorists’ concern has always been, first and foremost, with the
situation of the here
and now and how it came about: only then might we find
possibilities of change
immanent within it. Their analysis might be wrong, of course,
but it is no more a
fantasy than is Schweller’s.
The original, methodological critique fairs no better, we

suggest. It is simply a
restatement of the claims to science that have been attacked by
a succession of
theorists of various stripes, at least since Hans Morgenthau’s
withering critique in
Scientific Man versus Power Politics in 1946. The ‘Critical’
version of it comes, as we
have suggested, in a variety of forms, all of which are certainly
arguable, but simply
restating the equally contestable claims of science in an ever
louder voice hardly
seems likely to persuade.
What we might term the ‘rejectionist’ critique therefore, seems
to us to fail, both
on its own terms, and because it does not really engage
seriously with the arguments
put forward by critical theorists.
30 Included in his International Institutions and State Power
(Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989).
31 The title of his contribution to the forum on Andrew
Linklater’s, The Transformation of Political
Community, in these pages. See Review of International

Studies, 25:1 (1999), pp. 147–50.
Introduction 11
Springboarding
A more significant response to the critical turn has been to use
the intellectual space
that was opened up by writers such as Cox and Ashley to push a
wide range of
intellectual projects. The rise of critical International Relations
theory started to
re-embed the discipline of International Relations more firmly
within the broader
social sciences.32 This has triggered a rapid expansion of the
theoretical scope of the
discipline. It may be a slight overstatement to claim that all
these new intellectual
developments are a direct consequence of the arrival of critical
theory, but the critical
turn was certainly an important factor in legitimating a wide
range of borrowings
from social and political philosophy. The result has been a huge

increase in the
diversity of perspectives within the discipline.
Keohane’s 1988 lecture was bracketed by two books each of
which could be seen
to make common cause with aspects of the critical turn but
which were also rather
different in both form and content. The first, Nicholas Onuf’s
World of Our Making33
appeared the year before Keohane’s lecture, and was the first to
suggest that IR
should draw on the wide range of work that had been
generically termed ‘construc-
tivist’ in other areas of the academy and which drew on, for
example, the later
philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. To see the world as a
construction, Onuf
suggests, liberates us from the flat and sterile materialism of
conventional IR theory
and allows us to investigate the manner in which the
construction was achieved and
thus also the possibilities for change and reconstruction within
it. This was obviously
close to the kind of things the emancipatory wing of critical

theory had been saying,
though in Onuf’s hands the emancipatory element was far less
pronounced.
The second book, appearing the year after Keohane’s lecture,
overlapped con-
siderably with Onuf’s but was also much less Wittgensteinean.
This was Friedrich
Kratochwil’s Rules, Norms, Decisions.34 Kratochwil’s book
was a study of the
manner of practical reasoning through rules and norms as it
affected both domestic
politics and international relations, and argued that in this
context the character of
international relations was established through such norms and
such practical
reasoning. He too, therefore, was arguing for a ‘constructivist’
account of inter-
national relations.
Again, much of the theoretical apparatus deployed so ably by
Onuf and
Kratochwil came from outside IR, indeed outside the social
sciences. The ‘construc-
tivist turn’ had been influential in philosophy and social theory

for some fifteen years
before it reached International Relations but, unlike the critical
theories just
discussed, it could be read in a more or a less ‘critical’ way. In
the hands of Onuf and
Kratochwil, it shared a good deal with aspects of critical
international theory, but in
other hands, for example those of Peter Katzenstein and
especially Alexander Wendt,
it came much closer to a modification of more conventional IR
theory than an
outright challenge to it. Saying the world is ‘constructed’ can
be taken in more or less
radical ways. For Wendt, for example, it led to the view that
‘ideas mattered’ in
32 See, particularly, Palan’s contribution in this issue.
33 Nicholas Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in
Social Theory and International Relations
(University of North Carolina Press, 1987).
34 Rules, Norms, Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and
Legal Reasoning in International
Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge

IR – that for example ‘anarchy is what states make of it’35 –
but this was still
understood within a framework that owed a good deal to more
‘conventional social
scientific’ assumptions than was the case with Onuf and
Kratochwil. His closeness to
those assumptions was perhaps indicated in the title he chose
for his major book,
Social Theory of International Politics; quite explicitly aligning
his argument with that
of Waltz (although also obviously criticising it as well).36
‘Constructivism’ quickly became the acceptable face of
‘reflectivism’, at least in
the United States, a development which to some extent sundered
the link of
constructivist scholarship with the wider critical turn. However,
the extent to which
that is true depends on which constructivist one looks at.

The critical turn also opened space for a far wider range of
‘critical’ approaches
than we have been able to focus on in this special issue. In
particular, there are now
a bewilderingly wide range of critical approaches in
contemporary IPE.37 Generally,
these approaches are more empirically driven than the work we
have focused on and
have had less impact outside questions of political economy, but
there are often clear
overlaps with themes we have addressed.
Perhaps the writing that has broadest significance in the wider
literature comes
from other versions of Marxism – for example those developed
by Fred Halliday,
Kees Van der Pijl and, perhaps more powerfully still, by Justin
Rosenberg.38
The other major source of inspiration has been the impact of
globalisation, which
has added powerful empirical impetus to consideration of key
critical themes –
identity, difference, meaning, discourse, the double implication

of ‘domestic’ and
‘international’, the role of conceptions of space and time, the
importance of the
‘destruction of distance’, the ambivalent but always present role
of technology and so
on. This empirical impetus has triggered work that is closer to a
more mainstream,
albeit still largely constructivist, set of debates (for example in
the work of Jan Art
Scholte or Richard Higgott) as well as some work in sociology
and wider areas of
social theory that was much closer to other areas of critical
theory (for example the
work of Zygmunt Bauman or Saskia Sassen).39
Finally, one should also include the ‘new normative theory’ –
some of which was
actually very old – which also supported these developments
even if the actual
positions adopted were not always close to those taken by
critical theorists. Perhaps
especially notable here is the evolving work of David Held,
Antony McGrew and
their various collaborators around the ideas of globalisation,
global governance and

35 Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is What States Make of it: The
Social Construction of Power Politics’,
International Organization, 46:3, pp. 391–425.
36 For Katzenstein’s view of ‘constructivism’, see his edited
book The Culture of National Security:
Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1996). For Wendt, of
course, most importantly, Social Theory of International
Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003).
37 For an overview, see Ronen Palan (ed.), Global Political
Economy: Contemporary Theories (London:
Routledge, 2000).
38 See, for example, Fred Halliday, Rethinking International
Relations (London: Macmillan, 1994); Van
Der Pijl, Transnational Classes; and Rosenberg, The Empire of
Civil Society: A Critique of the
Realist Theory of International Relations (London: Verso,
1994).
39 See, for example, Jan Art Scholte, Globalization (London:

Palgrave, 2000, 2nd edn. 2005); Richard
Higgot and Morton Ougard (ed.), Towards a Global Polity
(London: Routledge, 2002); Zygmunt
Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1998), Saskia Sassen,
Globalization and its Discontents (New York: The Free Press,
1998).
Introduction 13
cosmopolitan democracy which links with many of the ideas
motivating critical
theory in IR.40
Assessment
Overall, the critical turn has opened space for an enormous
expansion of methodo-
logical variety within the IR discipline. However, the
consequences of that are by no
means set in stone. As we saw in the previous section, Frankfurt
School and
neo-Gramscian theorists both expected a more complex

understanding of the
historical evolution of the international system to uncover the
potential for emanci-
patory change. Post-structuralists, on the other hand, were
inclined to draw the
message that almost nothing can be predicted and were
concerned that any attempt
to do so would be implicated in coercive structures of
power/knowledge. The
constructivist position seems to be sufficiently open to allow
one to adopt some of the
new methodological insights of the broader social sciences
without necessarily
adopting a recognisably critical position.
This variety of new approaches emphasises just how significant
the critical turn
has been in bringing the discipline of International Relations
into closer contact with
the broader social sciences. In the process, though, it has raised
a whole new set of
questions about the relationship between a variety of
ontological and epistemological
positions on the one hand, and different normative and political
commitments on the

other.
Immanent critique
Within the critical camp, debate has focused on exactly the
questions that were
raised at the close of the previous section. At its most basic, one
might think of the
conflict as between the post-structuralists on the one hand and
‘the rest’ on the other.
The issue goes right back to Theodor Adorno and Max
Horkheimer’s The Dialectic
of Enlightenment.41 Adorno and Horkheimer set out to
challenge the danger of
scientific totalitarianism that they saw in both liberalism and
classical Marxism. They
were concerned about the dominance of instrumental reason,
which threatened to
overwhelm the concern with human freedom and emancipation
ushered in by the
Enlightenment. Their hostility to prescription and social
engineering, though, tended
to deprive them of the philosophy of history that, for Marx, had
grounded a steadfast
confidence in progress. Adorno, famously, despaired to the

point where all he could
do was cling to the hope that his writing would be a ‘message in
a bottle’ for future
generations.42
40 See especially, amongst a large and growing literature, Held,
Democracy and Global Order
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995); Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and
Perraton, Global Transformations:
Politics, Economics, Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999);
and Held and McGrew, Globalization
and Anti-Globalization (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).
41 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Dialectic of
Enlightenment (London: Verso, 1997).
42 The quote appears to be anecdotal. For discussions of
Adorno’s ethical thought, see Martin Jay,
Adorno (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), and
Kate Schick, ‘Outside International
Ethics: Adorno, Suffering and Hope’ (University of St Andrews,
September 2006, mimeo).

The Habermasian response was a highly complex and
sophisticated rehabilitation
of reason as a non-instrumental, radically democratic, ‘dialogic’
collective enter-
prise.43 The neo-Gramscian response is less well articulated.
Gramsci himself seems
to have maintained a broad faith in the potential for a transition
to socialism on
essentially Marxian historical materialist grounds. IR neo-
Gramscians clearly accept
Marxist accounts of the development of capitalism. They are
historically materialist
in that the social relations of production are seen as a key driver
of history. However,
they are also generally inclined to keep potential ‘progress’
more open, seeing it as
contingent on the forms of social movement and struggle that
emerge in practice,
rather than dictated by the inevitable triumph of the ‘universal
class’. That has the
advantage of the potential to sidestep the narrow Marxian focus
on class exploita-
tion, but it does undermine the solid ground that Marx claimed

to have for believing
that progress would take place.44
Contemporary critical theorists working in both these traditions
are clearly uneasy
about the post-structuralist challenge. The more rigid one’s
philosophy of history
(and therefore the firmer the basis of confidence in
emancipation), the greater the
danger of subsiding into undemocratic and closed forms of
instrumentalism
becomes. On the other hand, the more one accepts contingency,
uncertainty and the
multiplicity of political projects, the less guidance emerges for
concrete political
action.
Much of the debate within the critical camp, then, revolves
around this central
question. Some theorists see others as having overly closed
emancipatory projects.
Feminist writers, in particular, have often rightly felt
marginalised from neo-
Gramscian writing.45 As we will see in this issue, others have
argued that there is a

critical silence surrounding the developing world and, perhaps
particularly, post-
colonial questions about culture. Habermasians and neo-
Gramscians, on the other
hand, both criticise the post-structuralists for a radical openness
that cuts out the
ground on which to stand in making a critique or looking for
progress.
The problems raised, of course, also have an impact on debates
with those outside
the critical camp. In an exchange with William Wallace, for
example, Ken Booth
rejected the charge that critical theorists were ‘monks’ –
flippant, self-indulgent, with
nothing to offer those who were engaged in, for example,
talking to diplomats in
newly emerging democracies about the difficulties and concerns
that would inevitably
confront them. In response, he claimed that critical theorists
were speaking to a
practical audience, but a different practical audience; civil
society, social movements,
activists, those in the international community) which certainly
might include some

working within state governments) who were working for a
better world and perhaps
43 For an excellent overview, see Held, Introduction to Critical
Theory.
44 The criticism is our own, but compare, for example, Robert
Cox, Production Power and World
Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1987) with
Cox’s ‘Reflections and Transitions’, in Robert Cox, The
Political Economy of a Plural World
(London: Routledge, 2002), and Craig Murphy, Global
Institutions.
45 Cox has recently explicitly suggested that counter-
hegemonic struggles might embrace racial, cultural
or gender emancipation (see, for example, Cox, ‘Reflections and
Transitions’). In practice, though,
even critical IPE rarely engages with feminist concerns – see
Georgina Waylen, ‘You Still Don’t
Understand: Why Troubled Engagements Continue between
Feminists and (Critical) IPE’, Review of
International Studies, 32:1 (January 2006), pp. 145–64.

Introduction 15
also for a different world. That was to be preferred to the role
of ‘technocrats, simply
trying to make the existing machine work better’.46
Underlying this tension, between more and less open political
projects and
conceptions of social causation, there is a very fundamental
philosophical question
that is not often addressed about the extent to which there is any
relationship at all
between knowledge of the world and action in it. It is a question
that has been
relatively well rehearsed in a wide range of philosophical
literature. There are a
variety of approaches, ranging from some interpretations of
Wittgenstein, to readings
of Heidegger, which suggest that the relation is nowhere near as
clear or direct as it
would have to be for the kind of carryover on which critical
theory has wanted to
rely. Once one engages with the kind of idealist, linguistic and

phenomenological
debates that triggered the critical turn, this kind of fundamental
philosophical
question can no longer be sidestepped.
Contents and themes of this Special Issue
Having reviewed the main strands of critical theory and the
kinds of debate that they
have triggered within the IR discipline, we now turn to the main
body of the issue.
The contributions all engage with this context in one way or
another. In particular,
most of them can be seen as providing answers to the questions
we raised in the
previous section. We have chosen to arrange them so that they
begin with articles that
focus primarily on methodological questions about the
philosophy of history and
conclude with more practically-oriented contributions on the
role of critical theory in
promoting political change. This section provides a brief
summary of each contri-
bution, relating it to the themes and criticisms raised above. We
then conclude with

a brief evaluation of the past contribution and future potential
of critical IR theory.
The issue begins with Friedrich Kratochwil’s assessment of
critical IR theory from
the point of view of a ‘sympathetic [constructivist] outsider’.
Perhaps predictably,
Kratochwil is inclined to see the principal contribution of
critical theory in terms of
an opening up of methodological space in the discipline. He
argues that critical
theory is ‘critical’ primarily in its reluctance to treat social
‘facts’ as natural kinds.
Theory in the social sciences should be evaluated on the basis
of ideas such as
completeness, relevance and appropriateness, rather than simply
the positivist criteria
of logical rigour, demonstrable proof and universal validity.
However, he is less sympathetic to Ashley’s particular project
in his 1981 article.
He argues that Ashley’s issues with the ‘silences’ of neorealism
did too little to
uncover the silences of classical realism. Instead, Kratochwil
raises three challenges

that he feels critical IR theory should address.
Firstly, in good constructivist fashion, he calls for a rediscovery
of politics in terms
of ‘which types of constitutive understandings authorise
particular practices’.
Hobbesian theory, for example, was politically significant
because it helped both to
authorise the sovereign state and the liberal distinction between
public and private
spheres. The place theorists can play in building the social
world in this way places
46 For this exchange, see William Wallace ‘Truth and Power,
Monks and Technocrats: Theory and
Practice in International Relations’, Review of International
Studies, 22:3 (1996), pp. 301–21, and
Ken Booth, ‘Discussion: A Reply to Wallace’, Review of
International Studies, 23:3 (1997),
pp. 371–7.

a responsibility on all academics as ‘experts’, one which is
sometimes neglected at the
expense of career building. Yet the issues of the constitution of
the international
system are increasingly crucial under globalisation and even
critical theories have
more to do in theorising these changes.47 Secondly, Kratochwil
takes issue with
variants of critical theory that continue to hold philosophies of
history that expect the
triumph of Enlightenment: the transformation of human beings
into ‘rational actors’
engaged in the ‘pursuit of happiness’. He argues that the
resurgence of complex and
significant identity politics continues to place straightforward
assumptions about
future universality in serious question. Finally, and most
fundamentally, he raises
questions about the adequacy of contemporary theories of
action. If we reject the
‘rational actor’ model, how do we account for the relationship
between rationality,
desire, appropriateness and duty in accounting for human
action?

Kratochwil avoids taking any position on specific political
projects. Instead, he
concentrates on methodological terrain, arguing that critical
theory has raised new
questions for International Relations. It has, appropriately,
complicated the task of
assessing different theories and views of the world. However, it
may not have done
enough to question old orthodoxies, particularly in terms of the
assumptions of
progressive Western Enlightenment.
Kratochwil’s article raises challenges that are most directly
relevant to our first
three articles by self-consciously critical theorists. Although
they might not describe
what they are doing in his terms, all three raise questions about
how we should
conceive the constitution of global politics and all three, to
different degrees, question
any conception of progression towards enlightened modernity.
In their different
ways, they all do this through an interrogation of the philosophy
of history.

Coming from a background in IPE, Ronen Palan is particularly
conscious of the
difficulties of discussing the contemporary globalised economy
within the framework
of state-centric IR theory. He argues that these difficulties
cannot be resolved by
‘bolt-on’ additions (‘institutions’, ‘interdependence’ ‘domestic
politics’, and so on).
Rather IR theorists should be (and critical theorists often are)
resituating inter-
national relations within the broader social scientific enterprise
of understanding the
human condition. This includes a sociological reflection on
some of the questions
Kratochwil raises about the nature of human agency. Drawing
on Deleuze and
Guatarri, Palan suggests that the ‘rationality’ of orthodox IR is
something that has
been produced through historical social processes. If orthodoxy
asks how (rational)
people achieve what is good for them; heterodoxy asks why
people desire what is
bad for them, how particular structures of motivation are
produced. The result is a
vision of international relations theory as analysis of a far more

complex set of social
processes, with a particular focus on those with an international
dimension, which
are often missed by other social science disciplines. (There are
echoes, here, of
Linklater’s ‘sociology of global morals with emancipatory
intent’). We need an
approach that is ‘globally encompassing, historically oriented
and focused on
political institutions’.
Palan goes on to sketch what such a critical IR/IPE would look
like. It is a vision
that might be particularly associated with a British approach to
critical IPE that sees
47 For instance, he points to the weaknesses of neo-Gramscian
theory in understanding the global
constitution of class in a context in which there are as many
conflicts of interest as there are points
of contact between the workers of the world.
Introduction 17

itself as following in the footsteps of Susan Strange. He argues
that even the
neo-Marxism of someone like Cox retains a somewhat
mechanistic, structural picture
of global political economy. Instead, we should work towards a
more contingent,
evolutionary conception, drawing on a conception of the state
that can be found in
rather different readings of Marx and Hegel, reaching its fullest
expression in French
regulation theory.
We should see the state as a historical juncture; as the mediator
between a variety
of social forces. Similarly, we should see capitalism as evolving
as much through
specific historical institutions and inter-state struggles (or
emulation) as through
some grand process of the unfolding of an abstract ‘mode of
production’.48 The
evolution of capitalism is full of experiments, some of which
have proved abortive
but others of which have diffused through a process of learning
and adaptation in

ways that have stabilised capitalist states against their expected
collapse. We need a
critical global political economy that understands the general
tendencies of capitalism
but also looks at the specifics of individual jurisdictions.
On the whole, Palan celebrates a newfound heterodoxy in the
International
Relations discipline. He provides an optimistic picture of a
discipline that already
partly exists. His principle criticism is of an overly
deterministic and mechanistic
conception of history that pays too little attention to the
changing, historical, social
construction of human agency and to the complex interactions
that shape it. Instead,
he calls for a more evolutionary conception of history that has
some broad tendencies
but also much more space for unexpected contingencies. It is a
much more plural
vision of international relations than the mainstream provides.
We may find,
therefore, that interesting things go on in the margins, as well
as at the centres of
power (one might think of Palan’s own work on ‘offshore’).49

In the end, though, Palan does not question the idea that what
will emerge is one
history of the development of contemporary capitalism, albeit a
more complex,
nuanced and disorderly one than we often find in orthodox IR.
Palan’s attention to
complexity, diversity and social construction in the
understanding of history have
echoes in our next two contributions, but these contributors also
set out to question
the idea that there may be ‘one’ understanding of history at all.
Kimberly Hutchings makes an argument about conceptions of
time that run
through different strands of critical theory. Like Kratochwil,
she is anxious about an
uncritical assumption of progress towards Western modernity.
Echoing Adorno and
Horkheimer’s critique of modernity, she argues that Marxian
accounts of critical
theory (including the Frankfurt School and neo-Gramscian
writing) tend to be
tainted by a conception of unitary progress, embedded in
particular philosophies of

history (Gramsci’s progress to socialism) or a faith in
supposedly transcendental
human capacities for freedom and reason (in more Habermasian
writing such as
Linklater’s or Ashley’s 1981 article).
The postmodern alternative, she argues, provides a powerful
corrective to the
danger of ‘messianic’ theories, that can only be redeemed by the
future. Post-
modernists are right to be concerned that even aspirations
towards justice will
frequently fail to do justice to the indeterminacy of the future.
However, postmodern
48 This is very much the Marx Hutchings discusses as Derrida’s
‘hauntological’ Marx, later in this
issue.
49 Ronen Palan ‘Tax havens and the commercialisation of state
sovereignty’, International
Organization, 56:1 (2002), pp. 153–78.

writing can still be deterministic in its own way. Postmodern
writing in the style of
Virilio or Der Derian, continues to privilege the shift from
modern to postmodern
time in a way that privileges an accelerated temporality, which
is primarily an
experience of the West. A Western experience of time comes to
stand for inter-
national political time in general. Although postmodern writing
that draws more
from Derrida avoids this problem, it too is forced to rely on an
unjustified and only
allegedly transcendental preference, in this case for the
‘inexhaustibility of the
possibilities of deconstructive critique’.
Hutchings argues for an approach that ‘embraces analytical
reason in pursuit of
social justice but does not allow it to erase the question of
heterotemporality from the
history of the modern subject’. She suggests that this kind of
theory may be assisted
through a multiple conception of time, which acknowledges a

range of intersecting
histories that evolve concurrently, each with their own logic and
meaning, but also
each vulnerable to unexpected and unpredictable interactions
with other processes
and other histories.
In more concrete terms, this kind of theorising would need to
learn some of the
lessons that feminist theory has learnt in dealing with the
contradictions between
universal values and particular historical circumstances. As
with Palan’s writing, the
vision is one of a mixture of predictability and contingency.
Hutchings argues that
this ‘permits a lateral kind of theorising in which multiple,
parallel and interacting
presents may be understood in relation to one another, in this
sense it is systemic as
well as pluralist’. The hope is to avoid, on the one hand,
subsuming different histories
under one privileged master narrative and, on the other,
retreating into an ethical
commitment to a mysterious ‘difference’.

Hutchings’ writing is based on some very abstract
considerations of the temporal
logic of particular forms of explanation. Hobson provides some
concrete historical
reasons for drawing similar conclusions. He argues that even
much critical IR theory
remains tied within a Eurocentric outlook that tends to read
history backwards from
contemporary Western hegemony. The result is a
misunderstanding of both the way
the current international system was constructed historically (an
overly endogenous
and predetermined understanding of the rise of the West), and
of the potential sites
of agency for future change (a systematic undervaluing of
Eastern agency). The East
is seen as a residual that either inevitably succumbs to the rise
of Western modernity
or as a place in which Western practices and values are adopted
and corrupted.
Hobson briefly sketches some of the lost East–West interactions
that have shaped
important parts of the modern world, through processes of
interaction, of ‘interstitial

surprise’. He highlights the way in which the thirst for Chinese
technology sucked the
Europeans into international expansion in the first place (in
attempts to acquire gold
to exchange for Chinese goods) and went on to drive military
revolutions in Europe.
He cites the way financial techniques ‘developed’ by Italian
bankers were borrowed
from the Islamic world and beyond. He also traces the
interactions between Western
and Eastern black liberation movements from the abolition of
slavery to the French
revolution, to Haiti and back to anticolonial movements and the
civil rights
movement in the US. We can see echoes here of Hutchings’
discussion of separate but
intersecting histories.
Hobson argues for what he provocatively calls a ‘post-racist’
IR, which would
read history in a less-Eurocentric way. In the process, it would
recover Eastern
agency in the past and open space for East–West dialogue in the
present. In a move

Introduction 19
that is very reminiscent of Linklater’s ‘praxeological’ approach,
Hobson argues for a
dialogical uncovering of neo-racist histories so that neo-racism
can be held up against
the professed ideals of the West in the same way that racist
colonialism once was. In
other words, where Hutchings draws largely post-structuralist
conclusions (though
non-relativist ones), Hobson calls for a more Habermasian use
of public debate and
reason to challenge existing conclusions.
So far, our discussions have been predominantly theoretical and
methodological.
They have primarily addressed questions about the philosophy
of history and how
those questions shape our understanding of possible political
futures. All three have
drawn attention to the need to continue to open up discussion
further and to allow
for more contingency than is present in much existing critical

theory. On the other
hand, all three have conceptualised that relationship differently.
Palan comes closest
to retaining a Marxist philosophy of history in which our
knowledge of the world is
not fundamentally problematic. However, we should constantly
guard against the
risk of over-simplifying causal processes and over-determining
our expected findings.
Hobson, too, sees problems with our actual understanding, more
than with our
potential ability to understand. His solution is very much a
Habermasian one of
improved dialogue but there is a particular emphasis on
dialogue about history and
with Eastern ‘others’. Hutchings is more radical still, implying
at least that even our
ways of knowing about history need to be problematised and
unsettled.
All three contributions, though, concentrate primarily on ways
of understanding
the world and move only a short distance in the direction of
thinking about how to
change it. Hobson and Hutchings both suggest that rethinking

history and histori-
ography is, itself, a potentially emancipatory exercise but say
little about the potential
political agency that might be involved in any subsequent
struggles. In our next
contribution, by Craig Murphy, that balance is reversed.
Murphy has something to
say about rethinking international relations but he is primarily
concerned with the
relationship between academic endeavour and political action.
He argues that Cox, and particularly Ashley’s interventions,
chimed with a mood
that was already present amongst many American graduate
students involved in
peace research. Increasingly complex game theory which
revealed the potential for
learning in repeated games, had paved the way for an
acceptance of the second of
Habermas’s three kinds of science, introduced in Ashley’s
article: the historical-
hermeneutic sciences with their focus on verstehen, or empathic
understanding of
other human beings, their histories and world views. Murphy
argues that critical IR

has managed to hold open a place for this kind of endeavour
within the US academy
but has struggled to avoid being marginalised.
He suggests that there is still much more that could be done to
listen to ‘voices
from below’. For Murphy, though, that is more likely to mean
connections with
anthropological and comparative work, rather than the
postcolonial cultural theo-
rists referred to by Hutchings and Hobson. He argues for greater
attempts to think
oneself into the world views of the marginal or, better still, to
lend them a voice
directly. Here, some feminist scholars have led the way in
uncovering women’s
experiences at the ‘margins’ of the international system.
Murphy also argues that feminist scholars have been better at
creating work that
forms a bridge between academics and activists: work in which
theorists take
seriously the potential to change the world through what they
write. He argues that
critical IR scholars have much to learn from the feminist

movement’s success in
creating UN resolution 1325 on ‘Women, Peace and Security’ or
from Mahbub ul
Haq’s role in producing the UN Human Development Reports.
While the human
development approach may be reformist, rather than
revolutionary, Murphy argues
that there is much to be learned from it. To change the world,
academic work needs
to create an inspiring vision but one that is incorporated into
and comes to inform
real struggles. It must be accessible and contain concepts that
can be reinterpreted to
be meaningful in a wide range of vernaculars, informing
struggles worldwide. The
overall message is one of (partial) success in the academy that
has yet to be matched
in terms of practical global impact and influence. Murphy is
inclined to concede
Wallace’s allegation that critical theorists tend to be ‘monks’.

What is required is
greater scholarly engagement with the world’s marginalised and
with social move-
ments in order to challenge political structures more directly
than simply through
engagement with problematic forms of knowledge in the
academy.
In his recent writing, Robert Cox has acknowledged that he has
perhaps been
better placed to theorise the world as it is than to perform the
role of a Gramscian
‘organic intellectual’, articulating a new common sense that can
intellectually unite a
potential counter-hegemonic block. Murphy praises his honesty
(one of the attrac-
tions of Murphy’s work, here and elsewhere, is his realistic
pragmatism; implicitly
academics should strategically consider how they can best
change the world).50
However, he also challenges academics to seek out
opportunities to become better
placed and to create opportunities for those that are to create
academic work. That

will help academic practice in lessening the distance between
theorist and political
actor, enhancing hermeneutic understanding of the objects of
research, and ensure
closer links between critical theory and political action.
Andrew Linklater’s piece appears, at first sight, to provide a
sharp contrast to
Murphy’s. Linklater’s work continues his attempts to create
critical theory on a
grand scale, looking for the forms of immanent sensibility that
can be built on to
create a more inclusive and cosmopolitan global order.
However, his piece also offers
a corrective to his earlier work, grounded in a concern with
uncovering new resources
that can be drawn on to increase the motivational purchase of
cosmopolitan ethics.
He argues that Kantian inspired critical theory, such as the work
of Habermas,
can privilege reason as a source of morality, at the expense of
other potential sources.
He argues that there is scope for an investigation of an
‘embodied cosmopolitanism’

building on the relationship between suffering and solidarity
found in early Frankfurt
School writing. Linklater draws on the writings of Weil,
Schopenhauer, Horkheimer
and Adorno to emphasise the importance of the recognition of
suffering, revulsion at
inhumane acts, and the idea of ‘injurability’, rather than the fear
of sanction or
meditation on categorical imperatives, in driving our ethical
convictions. These
themes are also echoed in approaches to human rights that
centre on vulnerability to
harm. He suggests that these primal ethical sensibilities may
represent the immanent
potential of a cosmopolitan ethics, to be realised fully through a
long process of
social learning, in the same way that Habermas famously argued
that the first speech
act contained the potential for communicative action.
50 See also Global Institutions where Murphy points to the role
of middle-class intellectuals, in contact
with more radical social movements, in creating more solidarist
global governance from the top
down.

Introduction 21
Linklater calls for a rediscovery of these themes and an
investigation of their role
in collective social learning over time. The impulse to assist
suffering strangers, that
is present universally but activated to varying degrees in
different societies, points to
a need for further exploration of the ways in which this
immanent ethical impulse can
be built on to create a cosmopolitan ethic that is based on more
fundamental human
impulses than the claims of reason.
Murphy and Linklater, in their different ways, raise doubts
about the motivational
purchase of contemporary critical IR theory. Nonetheless, they
are calling for a
continuing reinvigoration of the critical enterprise, rather than a
rejection of it.
Richard Devetak provides us with a robust defence of the

fundamentals of critical
theory, against charges of utopian imperialism. His article, then,
can be seen as a
response to some of the rejectionist critiques that we reviewed
earlier in this
Introduction. Devetak tries to show that critical
cosmopolitanism steers a middle-
course between statism and anti-statism. He begins with a
review of statist claims
that any support for humanitarian intervention reopens space for
metaphysically
sanctioned, violent, moral crusading, that transgresses the limits
to violence
inaugurated by the modern states system.
Devetak traces this kind of critique back to the statism of
Pufendorf who was
concerned to prevent the kind of religious warfare that plagued
early modern Europe.
He deploys an eminently critical theoretic critique of statist
claims to an autonomous,
value-free sphere of the political. He argues that this conception
of world order in
fact privileges the normative value of security over claims for
freedom. As Kant

pointed out in his own criticism of Pufendorf, law that is bereft
of moral standards
pertaining to freedom is morally and politically dangerous.
However, one does not have to be fully Kantian to offer this
kind of critique. For
one thing, Habermasian critical cosmopolitanism shifts the
imaginary dialogue of
rational individuals to a communicative form of actual public
dialogue. Perhaps
more importantly, Kant saw law as ultimately subordinate to
morality, while
Habermas sees the two as complementary. Human rights, then,
are not some form of
ghostly authority that descends from the heavens. Rather, they
are the product
of socially produced temporal authority in the form of
constitutionalism and
democracy. Likewise, the authority of law must be morally
questionable but through
public debate and constitutional processes, rather than unilateral
violent challenges.
When we return to the challenge of humanitarian intervention,
then, critical

theorists proceed cautiously. There is a recognition of the role
the sovereignty
principle plays in the constitution of world order but also a
reluctance to see that
sovereignty principle as transcendent and absolute.
Humanitarian intervention
should only be authorised through constitutionalised public
channels such as the UN
system and decisions should be made on a case by case basis,
weighing the evidence
and the important role that the non-intervention principle has in
limiting violence.
Conclusions
We should not expect everyone to endorse the critical project in
International
Relations – one of the authors of this Introduction broadly does,
one is broadly,
though sympathetically, sceptical. However, we would argue
that it is increasingly

difficult to deny its importance to the discipline. For some, who
would like to see the
discipline settle into a single paradigm of ‘normal science’, that
may be unsettling or
even a sign of weakness. For the rest of us, though, it is a sign
of strength. If Cox and
Ashley are right, critical theory in its broadest and most
fundamental sense, is
necessary and, indeed unavoidable. All theory is situated and a
single theory means
that we only get a view from one place in the world, with its
particular goals and
purposes. A diversity of theories helps us to understand, argue
over, and, for the
more optimistic, even accommodate a far wider range of
political positions. Critical
theory has moved the discipline a long way in the right
direction even if there
continue to be problematic silences – most notably about the
role of the non-Western
world in shaping contemporary international relations.
Within this widely shared enthusiasm for a more complex and
nuanced

understanding of the production of the social world, though,
there is room for a good
deal of variety and disagreement. In particular, as we suggested
in the section on
‘immanent critique’, there continue to be divergent views about
the relationship
between understanding the world and changing it. For post-
structuralists, any
contribution academia can make to change is largely through
adopting the attitude
of critique – through setting up constant challenges to orthodox
narratives and the
power they embody. For neo-Gramscians, on the other hand, for
whom there is
generally greater faith in the potential for social movements to
pursue active
emancipatory projects, there needs to be a closer relationship
between new under-
standings and active political action. Frankfurt School theory
seeks more to lay out
a road-map for forms of increasingly inclusive collective
reasoning that, presumably,
take place out in the world. Academics may play some role in
these processes but, for
Habermas at least, there is some danger in crossing the line

between theorist and
activist.51
We see those differences of opinion and orientation in the
different ways in which
our contributors propose engaging with the ‘East’, the
‘postcolonial’ or the
‘developing world’. Hutchings and Hobson see that engagement
in terms of
postcolonial theory, while Murphy points to involvement with
concrete political
struggles in the developing world (postcolonial theorists might
question the
distinction but many others would not).52
These differences certainly illustrate that critical theory has not
produced a
definitive answer to the ways in which emancipation is to be
promoted. At the same
time, though, they point to the potential for an ongoing and
creative process of
mutual engagement between different strands of critical theory.
It is this debate and
interaction that forces theorists to clarify their answers to
difficult questions and

challenges, such as the prospects for emancipation in the
developing world or the
precise relationship between academia, activism, and political
change (if any such
51 See his exchange with Nancy Fraser in the final section of
Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the
Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).
52 One of us, at least, would suggest that there is a far wider
literature on the developing world that
IR has yet to fully engage with than simply postcolonial
literature (for some emerging correctives to
this, see for example Anthony Payne, The Global Politics of
Unequal Development (Basingstoke:
Palgrave, 2005), and William Brown, ‘Africa and International
Relations: A Commentary on IR
Theory, Anarchy and Statehood’, Review of International
Studies, 32 (2006), pp. 119–43). One does
not have to be ‘orthodox’ to question the postcolonial or ‘post-
development’ approach – see for
example Jan Neverdeen Pieterse, ‘My Paradigm or Yours?
Alternative Development, Post
Development, Reflexive Development’, Development and
Change, 29:2 (1998), pp. 343–73.

Introduction 23
relationship can exist). Hopefully, the essays in this special
issue will encourage
exploration in all these issues.
Regardless of the outcomes of that exploration, critical theory
has provided vital
new resources for our understanding of international relations.
Many issues of
contemporary importance, particularly the continuing salience
of identity politics,
non-state violence and global economic processes, simply could
not be addressed
with the theoretical resources available within the discipline in
the 1970s. The critical
turn has forced scholars to develop a more nuanced
understanding of the historical
development of the world we inhabit and of the ways in which it
is sustained by
highly complex social processes. For some, that understanding
provides important

resources for confronting forms of exclusionary power. For
others it simply makes
the discipline of International Relations a far more
intellectually stimulating and
satisfying one to be working in. There is no reason to think that
critical theory will
cease to contribute to both these tasks in the years to come.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further
reproduction prohibited without permission.
Security Studies, 18:587–623, 2009
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0963-6412 print / 1556-1852 online
DOI: 10.1080/09636410903133050
The Security Dilemma: A Conceptual Analysis

SHIPING TANG
Critically building upon the work of Herbert Butterfield, John
Herz,
and Robert Jervis, this article advances a more rigorous
definition
of the security dilemma. It demonstrates critical implications of
the rigorously redefined concept. It examines several influential
extensions and expansions of the original concept, showing that
most have been inaccurate and misleading, and proposes
remedies
for correcting the mistakes. Finally, it identifies several areas of
future research that may yield important new insights into the
dynamics of the security dilemma.
The security dilemma is one of the most important theoretical
ideas in in-
ternational relations.1 In the years since Herbert Butterfield,
John Herz, and
Robert Jervis first developed the concept,2 it has been extended
and applied
to “address many of the most important questions of
international relations
Shiping Tang is Professor at the School of International

Relations and Public Affairs
(SIRPA), Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Prior to his
current appointment, he was Senior
Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore, where this article was finished.
I thank Stephen Van Evera, two anonymous reviewers, and the
editors of Security Studies
for their perceptive criticism and suggestions. I also thank Alan
Collins, Robert Jervis, Stuart
Kaufman, Andrew Kydd, Ned Lebow, Barry Posen, Robert
Powell, Randall Schweller, and
Stephen Van Evera for responding to a survey on the security
dilemma. Beatrice Bieger
provided excellent assistance on the bibliography. I dedicate
this article to Robert Jervis, on
the thirtieth anniversary of his seminal article, “Cooperation
Under the Security Dilemma.”
1 I differentiate the term “security dilemma” from “security
dilemma theory.” The security dilemma
is a concept for labeling a particular situation in international
politics. Security dilemma theory is the
body of knowledge that seeks to understand the underlying

causes, regulations, and implications of
the security dilemma. I also differentiate the security dilemma
from its close relative—spiral. Also, we
should differentiate a spiral from the spiral model. See section
“Toward A More Precise Understanding:
Remedies” below for details.
2 Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London:
Collins, 1951); John Herz, Political
Realism and Political Idealism: A Study in Theories and
Realities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1951); Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in
International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
587
588 S. Tang
theory and security policy.”3 The security dilemma is arguably
the theoret-
ical linchpin of defensive realism, because for defensive realists
it is the
security dilemma that makes possible genuine cooperation

between states—
beyond a fleeting alliance in the face of a common foe.4 For
offensive realists,
however, the security dilemma makes war inevitable and
rational.5 Realists,
moreover, are hardly the only scholars to utilize the concept.
Neoliberal
scholars argue that one of the functions of international
institutions is to
alleviate the security dilemma.6 Liberals claim that democratic
institutions
facilitate peace precisely because they too alleviate the security
dilemma.7
And constructivists have asserted that alleviating the security
dilemma is one
of the channels through which reshaping identity can remake
anarchy.8
Understood correctly, security dilemma theory and the broader
spiral
model constitute a powerful theory of war and peace via
interaction. They
capture general dynamics leading to the outbreak of war and the
mainte-

nance of peace (that is, by reversing or alleviating the security
dilemma). The
concept’s influence thus extends well beyond theory. The
security dilemma
has been deployed to help explain major events, such as the
First World
War,9 the origins and end of the Cold War,10 and the outbreak
of ethnic
conflicts in former republics of the Soviet Union, the former
Yugoslavia,
and Africa.11 More importantly, security dilemma theory and
the broader
spiral model have been deployed for prescribing policies for
some of the
most pressing challenges in international politics, including
managing arms
University Press, 1976), chap. 3; and Jervis, “Cooperation under
the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30,
no. 2 (January 1978): 167–214.
3 Charles L. Glaser, “The Security Dilemma Revisited,” World
Politics 50, no. 1 (October 1997):
171–201, quotation on 172.

4 For more, see Shiping Tang, “Fear in International Politics:
Two Positions,” International Studies
Review 10, no. 3 (September 2008): 451–70. This is also why
Jervis’s “Cooperation Under the Security
Dilemma” is the foundational work of defensive realism.
5 Dale C. Copeland, The Origins of Major War (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2000), chap. 2;
and John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
(New York, NY: Norton, 2001), 35–6.
6 Seth Weinberger, “Institutional Signaling and the Origin of
the Cold War,” Security Studies 12, no.
4 (2003): 80–115.
7 Michael W. Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign
Affairs,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12,
nos. 3 and 4 (Summer and Autumn 1983): 205–35, 323–53.
8 Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Makes of It,”
International Organization 46, no. 2
(Spring 1992): 391–425.
9 Jervis, Perception and Misperception, chap. 3; Jack Snyder,
“Perceptions of the Security Dilemma in

1914,” in Psychology and Deterrence, eds., Robert Jervis,
Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Stein (Baltimore:
John Hopkins University Press, 1985), 153–79; and Copeland,
Origins of Major War.
10 Robert Jervis, “Was the Cold War a Security Dilemma?”
Journal of Cold War Studies 3, no. 1
(Winter 2001): 36–60; Andrew Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in
International Relations (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2005); and Alan R. Collins, “GRIT,
Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War,” Review of
International Studies 24, no. 2 (1998): 201–19.
11 Barry Posen, ‘The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,”
Survival 35, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 27–47. I
address the problem of security dilemma and ethnic conflict in
Shiping Tang, “The Security Dilemma and
Ethnic Conflict: Toward a Dynamic and Integrative Theory of
Ethnic Conflict,” Review of International
Studies (forthcoming).
The Security Dilemma 589

races,12 designing a lasting peace to ethnic conflicts,13 and
avoiding a pos-
sible conflict between a rising China and the United States as
the reigning
hegemon,14 to name just a few.
Despite its centrality, many areas of disagreement or confusion
exist
among international relations theorists about the security
dilemma.15 In this
article, I critically revisit the concept of the security dilemma,
and some of
its most significant extensions, and advance a coherent and
systematic re-
statement of the concept.16 I accomplish five major tasks. First,
I build on
the writings of the three original proponents of the concept—
Herbert But-
terfield, John Herz, and Robert Jervis—to advance a more
rigorous definition
that provides a complete causal link from anarchy to the
security dilemma.
Second, I derive key implications of the rigorously redefined
concept, thus
preparing the ground for clarifying prevalent

misunderstandings. Third, I
reexamine several prominent extensions, showing that most
have been un-
necessary, misguided, or wrong.17 Fourth, I propose two major
remedies for
eliminating the areas of confusion within the existing literature.
Finally, I
suggest several directions for future research.
A MORE RIGOROUS DEFINITION OF THE SECURITY
DILEMMA
Confusion regarding the security dilemma exists principally
because many
scholars, including the three original proponents of the concept,
have de-
fined the concept in loose ways. By critically examining and
then building
on the original expositions, this section provides a more
rigorous definition
of the concept.
The Security Dilemma According to Butterfield, Herz, and
Jervis

Herbert Butterfield argued that the security dilemma can drive
states to war
even though they may not want to harm each other: “The
greatest war in
12 Charles Glaser, “When Are Arms Races Dangerous?”
International Security 28, no. 4 (Spring 2004):
44–84.
13 Chaim D. Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible

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