Globalizing IR Theory

Critical Engagement

Yaqing Qin

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367404710
• eBook ISBN: 9781000043006
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Despite attempts to redress the balance, international relations (IR) as a discipline is still dominated by Western theories. The contributors in this book explore the challenges of constructing an alternative, with a dialogue between global and local approaches.

Drawing on scholars with backgrounds in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America, this volume attempts to critically engage with and reflect upon existing traditions of IR theory to produce a deeply pluralist approach. Traditions, cultures, histories and practices from around the world influence their respective theoretical understanding and in turn explain why the Western tradition of IR is insufficient.

This book provides great insight for scholars of IR from around the world, looking for more diversity in IR theory.

1 Introduction

The global turn in IR and non-Western IR theory

Yaqing Qin

Introduction

International relations (IR) as a discipline is going more global at its centenary. It was formally founded in Europe, marked by the establishment of the Woodrow Wilson Chair in International Politics at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth in 1919 immediately after the end of World War I, and continued to develop for most of the next hundred years, mainly in the West, notably Europe and North America.

The beginning of the 21st century witnessed a global turn in IR. As the world has entered a globalizing era, a deeper plurality has been unfolding, a dynamic diversity has been appearing for knowledge production and a broader platform for developing IR theories is being set up. To some extent, a most remarkable event in this global turn is the rise of IR theories in non-Western or peripheral areas in the world. Two projects by Acharya and Buzan and Tickner and her colleagues, respectively, for promoting a global IR endeavor are significant because they promoted non-Western academies for intellectual creation and knowledge production. In fact, the success of a genuine global IR depends very much on whether there will be a healthy development of IR theories in the non-Western world.

This edited volume aims to promote the development of IR theories in non-Western areas through a conducive and critical dialogue between mainstream IR scholars from the core who embrace plurality and/or support the global IR project and scholars from the periphery who are eager to develop IR theories and ready to engage the mainstream in the West. In this introductory chapter, I will discuss the contributions of the two pioneering projects, provide a practical definition of non-Western IR theory and summarize the views and opinions of the contributors on the question, ‘How do we develop non-Western IR theories?’

The global turn in IR

A global turn in IR has emerged as a significant event at the discipline’s centenary. Two systematic projects have made particular contributions to this event: the Tickner project that criticizes the Western disciplinary domination and seeks diversity around the world and the Acharya-Buzan project that focuses on global IR via plurality and inclusivity.

The critical approach

The critical approach is a pioneer indeed to promote a global IR project. As early as 2004, Arlene Tickner and her colleagues began to think about a genuine global endeavor to transform the IR discipline. I term it the critical approach because it aims to deconstruct the dominant discourse of the discipline by laying special emphasis on the suppressive nature of the Western mainstream as the disciplinary state of the art. Tickner and her colleagues have since published the series Worlding beyond the West in the form of a trilogy to voice a strong opposition against the existing IR establishment.

Scholars of this approach have made a highly critical evaluation of the IR discipline as it is now. In the first book of the series, Wæver and Tickner describe the IR discipline as structured in an embedded core-periphery divide where the core, especially ‘a number of theories made in the U.S’, dominated¹ and the periphery, mainly the non-Western world, has witnessed little theorizing in IR. This core-periphery structure defines the role identities of the academies in the West and non-West, governs the knowledge production in IR and has stubbornly continued up to the present.²

Drawing on postcolonial theory that sees the core as the subject while the periphery is the object for the core to act on, ‘subject to governance, exploitation, and other processes of transformation’,³ they argue that in knowledge production, such a power relationship and the subject-object pattern of interaction are similarly structured. While the discipline does not reflect the global reality but makes an arrogant self-claim for universality, enabled by a distorted power relationship, it tends to marginalize voices in the periphery and make the periphery subject to its rules, standards and domination. The IR discipline, as such, ‘is not international in its own practices’.⁴

The critical approach argues against the view that Western IR theories are inadequate in explaining non-Western reality, as moderate globalist scholars often refer to and hold that such a view in fact blurs the domineering nature of mainstream Western IR and reinforces the notion that only Westerners conceptualize and are capable of ‘universal thought’⁵ by taking non-Western experiences as particularities and, therefore, non-universal. It sees that the problem of the discipline as a non-global one lies not in that Western IR has developed earlier than that in other geographical locations and, therefore, achieved an edge in theory construction. Rather, it ‘actively suppresses alternative views and visions’⁶ so that it is able to maintain its discursive hegemony and continue its monopoly in knowledge production.⁷ In addition, the embedded core-periphery structure perpetuates such a power relationship and the subject-object binary. As the subaltern objects, IR scholars in the periphery are outsiders to the established order of knowledge production and are rendered incapable of theorizing and original thinking. They are allowed to consume, but they can never produce, for they merely provide raw materials and apply theories made in the core. As a result, a production chain has been established where a superior and subjective self in the core orders and an inferior and objective other in the periphery follows.

Epistemological and methodological exclusiveness by positivism and neopositivism further consolidate the discursive dominance, drawing boundaries to make thoughts and views from the periphery permanent outsiders. The IR discipline, as a ‘science’ that follows rationalist positivism, is seen mainly as a function of American dominance, denying the pluralistic nature of IR. As Tickner and Blaney argue, ‘Neopositivism not only occupies the throne of science, granting it the power of the “god trick,” … but also its followers cannot help but try and convert others into believers from this elevated position’.⁸ In other words, ‘different’ theories, such as reflectivism and feminism, can be recognized as theories if, and only if, using Keohane’s words, they ‘adopt the scientific method, thus becoming like “us” ’.⁹

It is the Western mainstream that makes rules, sets standards, draws boundaries and has the power to decide what ‘scientific’ theory is and what it is not, and the state of the art of the discipline can only be described as inequality of identities and imbalance of power. Under such circumstances, a genuine dialogue is almost impossible. Plurality

in global IR is one that evolves within a (narrow) space allowed for by the United States and Western European core, which exercises a strong disciplining function in terms of the theories, concepts, and categories authorized to count as knowledge of world politics.¹⁰

Under such circumstances, dialogue among IR communities between the core and the periphery risks a great danger of reinforcing the core dominance in knowledge production through the explicit or implicit violent imposition of the theories, concepts and categories invented by the core.

Tickner and Blaney argue that it is not a mere ignorance of the history of imperialism by the mainstream; rather, and more importantly, it is ‘the active suppression of alternatives and competing perspectives that would place imperial practices at the heart of the disciplinary understanding and empower voices from the postcolonial world’.¹¹ Dependency theory provides a telling example in this respect.

To resist against the IR establishment, the critical approach proposes that IR theory in the periphery should be found and encouraged in order to enable non-Western or peripheral IR communities to become knowledge producers and theory builders or, in short, to be subjects rather than mere objects. It tries to explore different theoretical ideas through decentralizing the hierarchy of the IR discipline for meaningful diversity in knowledge production. Thus the first volume of the trilogy, International Relations Scholarship around the World, starts with trying to find and articulate different IR voices around the world. Scholars from different locations of the world contributed to this volume. Geographically, it is perhaps the most comprehensive study of IR scholarship in the world and scholars from various countries write mainly about the state of the art in their respective countries, providing an overall sketch of IR in the world. These descriptions further support the argument that IR is a Western/American social science and show the impoverishment of IR theories in the periphery. As Biersteker points out, non-Western IR scholars have been socialized into the Western knowledge production process.

American International Relations scholarship is globally hegemonic. American International Relations scholars are disproportionately read, assigned, and debated across the globe. Wherever one travels, IR scholars of almost every nationality are familiar with the canons of American realists and liberal thought – from Morgenthau, Kissinger, and Waltz to Gilpin, Nye, and Keohane.¹²

There are differences, but the differences are not that significant. The observed difference, in fact, does not make a difference in terms of IR as a core discipline. As Tickner and Blaney have pointed out, ‘Although International Relations is arguably different in distinct places, its difference does not reflect what we might have originally expected in terms of variation and “local” flavor’.¹³ To focus more on meaningful difference, three years later, they published the second volume, Thinking International Relations Differently, focusing on thematic differences while the same principle of promoting diversity through decentralizing and encouraging difference is maintained. Focal categories have been chosen for discussion in order to find how key concepts and categories, including security, the state and authority, sovereignty, globalization, secularism and the ‘international, are conceived in distinct geocultural settings’. The rationale is that distinct geographical and geocultural locations should have different understandings and interpretations of these same concepts.

While variation in meaning and usage of these concepts has been observed through the case studies in various parts of the world, (re)conceptualization of and theorization on these concepts are rare. It is a most interesting phenomenon. It may indicate that the difference is shallow, even using significant IR categories, for it is mere difference within a very limited space allowed by the established theoretical framework. In other words, understanding and interpretation of these Western IR concepts may vary to some extent, but the frame for the understanding and interpretation is Western theory and practice. As such, the variation cannot be significant enough to make a real difference at all. Without serious and innovative theorizing on the concepts or re-conceptualization and generation of new concepts, we still face the problem of ‘difference makes little difference’.

For knowledge production and reproduction, it is indeed important to recognize that there are worlds that coexist. These worlds are worlds of meanings as well as worlds of practices. Unlimited possibilities of knowledge production exist. Thus the critical approach, recognizing the Western IR mainstream’s boundary-drawing practice that actively suppresses the alternatives and dissidents, shows more revolutionary spiri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: the global turn in IR and non-Western IR theory
• 2 The second coming? Reflections on a global theory of international relations
• 3 How and how not to develop IR theory: lessons from core and periphery
• 4 Toward a pluralist international relations theory: a European Union perspective
• 5 Going beyond ‘the West/non-West divide’ in IR: how to ensure dialogue as mutual learning
• 6 Chinese values vs. liberalism: what ideology will shape the international normative order?
• 7 Toward a ‘global IR’? A view from Brazil
• 8 A multiverse of knowledge: cultures and IR theories
• 9 From heaven to Earth: ‘cultural idealism’ and ‘moral realism’ as Chinese contributions to global international relations
• Index