![]()
Part I
The New Agenda
![]()
1
Introduction
A New Agenda for International Relations?
Stephanie Lawson
Introduction
There have been several defining moments over the course of the last hundred years that have been described as signalling a new age in world politics as well as stimulating new ways of looking at the phenomena involved. The most recent, and the one that continues to define the present period, was the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, although by then the Cold War that it symbolized had already come to an effective end as a result of the momentous changes that had taken place in Gorbachev’s Soviet Union since the mid-1980s. If the fall of the Wall, together with the events that followed with the unravelling of the Soviet empire, symbolized the end of one era and the beginning of another in world politics, it also prompted some serious rethinking about the nature, purpose, methods, scope and subject matter of the discipline that studies world politics, traditionally known as international relations (IR).1 With the collapse of polarization between the two superpowers and the threat of all-out nuclear warfare in rapid retreat, other significant concerns for world politics gained prominence. And it was not long before scholars and other observers of world affairs were talking about a ‘new agenda’ for the discipline of IR in a ‘post-Cold War era’.2
An early version of the new agenda that was put forward in 1991 identified a number of global policy concerns including the environment, drug trafficking, AIDS, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, migration and human rights. At a broader, systemic level, the phenomenon of globalization, and what seemed to be opposite tendencies towards fragmentation, were identified as being among the most significant ‘macro’ issues.3 All these, together with the very idea of global policy, have become prominent topics in the study of world politics, along with new conceptions of such crucial concerns as security which has expanded from a narrow military definition to encompass many of these new agenda issues. But these developments raise new problems and challenges for students of world politics in terms of how we now define our subject areas either within the broad field of IR or within specialist areas such as environmental politics or security studies. With respect to the latter, as Karin Fierke points out in chapter 8, if ‘security’ can now mean anything and everything, then it effectively means nothing at all.
This raises the question whether the broadening of the agenda to include an almost boundless array of problems and issues constitutes a problem for the integrity of the discipline itself. This is an especially interesting question in an era of globalization which is widely seen as leading to the almost complete ‘unbounding’ of the globe. If IR itself is to become unbounded, and to take on board the study of practically everything, then what, in the end, will constitute the core of the discipline and make it distinct from other disciplines? Or does it matter whether the discipline as such dissolves? Is IR becoming an ‘interdiscipline’ (rather than simply more interdisciplinary in its approach)? And, if so, would it be appropriate simply to abandon the whole idea of IR as a discipline in its own right and reassemble courses of study under something called ‘International Studies’? Breaking down the barriers between disciplines may well be a good thing in many respects. After all, how can one possibly contribute effectively to contemporary debates about, say, the role of culture in world politics without having a good understanding of highly influential anthropological approaches to the concept? On the other hand, where does the ‘unbounding’ of the discipline end, if not in the study of everything?
‘Everything’, as astronomer John D. Barrow notes, is a very big subject. None the less, he goes on to point out that contemporary trends in the study of the physical sciences also suggest that the quest for a ‘theory of everything’ is more popular than ever, having entered the mainstream of theoretical physics after a period in which it was sought only by a ‘few maverick thinkers and unconstrained speculators’ (including Einstein).4 The more conservative and parsimonious of IR theorists would join in repudiating the utility of any such undertaking. The idea that one can see or grasp ‘the whole’ and thus be in a position to theorize rationally about it is anathema to conservative social and political thought. And theoretical parsimony has, according to its proponents, been a prime virtue of realist IR thought in both its traditional and its neo-realist forms. Kenneth Walz, for example, defends his version of neo-realism as a theory limited to explaining a certain slice of political activity – not the entire spectrum of social and political concerns – on the grounds that a theory has to be about something, not everything.5
These are some of the concerns that have been expressed generally about IR in the last decade or so. But they have not all been raised simply as a result of the end of the Cold War. To assume so would be to underestimate the extent to which the discipline had already been undergoing substantial transformation – or had at least had its foundations severely shaken in the previous decade. Kal Holsti, writing in 1987, argued that international theory was in a ‘state of disarray’ as a result of challenges over the previous ten years or so which had broken down a ‘three-centuries-long intellectual consensus’ about international politics. In place of a fundamental consensus on the subjects of inquiry and theorizing, new conceptions and images of the world, and how it works, had arisen, most criticizing the realist, or classical, tradition.6 This fundamental consensus had evolved around three core assumptions: first, that the proper domain of study comprised the causes of war and the conditions for peace, security and order; second, that the focus of study must be on the essential units of analysis in the international system, namely nation-states, and their diplomatic/military behaviour; and, third, that states operated in a system characterized by anarchy, understood as the absence of any overarching authority in the international sphere.7
The Cold War period certainly produced a great deal of theory reflecting this consensus, which also strongly supported realist approaches. But, as is evident from Holsti’s remarks, the consensus was already under challenge well before the events of 1989. Even so, there is no doubt that the end of the Cold War provided a significant impetus for the various directions that IR had started to take, which included a reassessment of existing conceptual and methodological issues and an interest in alternative approaches. For many of the practical issues on the emerging agenda, a theoretical focus concerned almost exclusively with the play of power politics, which had indeed dominated throughout the Cold War period, seemed simply inappropriate or even irrelevant. Alongside more conventional approaches such as realism (and neo-realism) and liberal internationalism, the contemporary period has seen a burgeoning of other perspectives, including constructivism, postmodernism, feminism and critical theory, none of which now resides simply at the margins. Moreover, as Jack Donnelly emphasizes in chapter 11, we can also see much more potential for a dynamic engagement between these newer approaches and realism in its various forms.
At another level both the practical issues on the new agenda, as well as the perspectives and approaches that have been applied to their study (including the move away from realism), have combined to produce a much stronger focus on normative international theory. In an earlier work, Chris Brown notes that this refers to a body of work which addresses directly ‘the moral dimension of international relations and the wider questions of meaning and interpretation generated by the discipline’. In its most basic form, he says, ‘it addresses the ethical nature of the relations between communities [and] states’.8 As we shall see, normative theory underlies virtually all the issues dealt with in this collection. This is especially so with respect to the phenomenon of globalization and its impact on the nature of political community as well as forms of polarization other than those which were conventionally understood to characterize world politics in the Cold War period.
In thinking more generally about a new agenda for the discipline of IR in a new era of world politics – however we might characterize it – it is instructive to review briefly the development of the discipline along with developments in world politics from the earlier part of the twentieth century. By doing this, we can see both continuities as well as new departures more clearly.
IR in the twentieth century
As mentioned at the beginning, several defining moments over the course of the twentieth century seemed to mark the beginning of a new age in world politics as well as new ways of looking at problems and possibilities. To be more specific, there have been three such moments. The first two followed the end of the World Wars in the first half of the twentieth century, and were therefore born out of an experience of violence on a massive scale. In both cases, the world seemed ready for remaking.
The discipline of IR as a field of study in its own right, separate from law and history, was itself founded as a direct response to the horrific and unprecedented experiences of World War I. This was marked by the establishment in 1919 of the Woodrow Wilson Chair of International Politics at University College Wales, Aberystwyth. The main focus for the new discipline was, not surprisingly, on the causes of war and the conditions for peace. The discipline’s main initial intellectual impetus in the years after World War I drew on idealism; on a belief that the world could – and therefore should – be made a better and safer place for all of humankind. The optimistic idea of inevitable progress in the development of human society as a whole attracted many supporters then. But progress still had to be nudged along with the assistance of purposive human agency. One of the principal ideas of the time was that a new and peaceful world order required an overarching international organization that could mediate relations between the essential components of an anarchical international system – sovereign states – and thereby ensure a viable form of collective security. And so the League of Nations was created.
By the late 1930s, as Europe again descended into mayhem, the idealist approach to world politics with its strong normative basis seemed almost completely discredited. In the wake of this second catastrophic World War, and then with a Cold War between two major powers setting in immediately, a new approach to theory and practice was called for. The discipline therefore took the turn towards realism – a mode of analysis that promised to tell it how it really is. The core assumptions of this school, in its classic form of thought, were a rather pessimistic view of human nature and the inevitability, not of progress towards an ideal or at least better state of existence, but of the unremitting struggle for power.
Realist theories, moreover, gave explicit support to the view that issues of morality can have no place in the international sphere. The premise was that because a structure of sovereign authority is necessary to sustain moral rules and practices, and because such a structure is present only within states, it follows that there can be no true morality in the anarchical realm of the international sphere which is constituted by the spaces between states. In other words, the international sphere was nothing short of a moral vacuum. In addition, realists have generally supported the view that moral values and beliefs – which give rise to moral rules and practices – can only arise within a community and are more or less specific to that community. Here, the ‘community’ has usually been equated with a ‘nation’ which is in turn conflated with ‘the state’. In short, realist theory has tended towards the position that moral values are relative – and state-bound. In the post-Cold War era, this kind of position on normative issues has also attracted support from communitarian theory in so far as it has been applied to the international sphere.9
For many proponents of realism during the Cold War era, to imagine that an international organization could overcome the essential condition of anarchy and form an international community capable of implementing, collectively, an idealist agenda for world order was regarded as pure folly. None the less, another attempt to achieve a measure of international co-operation in the pursuit of collective security was made with the founding of the United Nations. And a commitment to the highest form of idealism was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly in 1948.
In the meantime, however, the contours of the international order were being moulded around a clear bipolar pattern of superpower rivalry and many IR scholars obviously applied themselves to the analysis of this most dangerous manifestation of confrontation. After Hiroshima, this pattern of world order was held together partly by fear as the nuclear arms race commenced. The development of ever more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction delivered not simply a balance of power but a balance of terror which could, if upset, lead to mutually assured destruction – a scenario appropriately labelled with the acronym MAD.
Other important developments in the post-war period included the formal demise of the colonial empires. With this, the principle of self-determination gained increasing prominence as well as practical expression, although independence for many countries in the Third World periphery was heavily compromised by a number of factors, not least of which were the dynamics of Cold War bipolarity. Moreover, for many people at the periphery, the war was far from ‘cold’. While the core powers refrained from direct physical confrontation with each other, the violence of the Cold War was played out in proxy wars among their clients.
The polarized structure of superpower relations in the Cold War period is often understood simply in military or strategic terms. But of course there was much more to it than that. A principal characteristic of the period was the bipolarity of ideologies – of normative visions of how the world should be – that were represented by each of the power blocs. The states comprising the Western power bloc championed the ideas and values underpinning capitalism and liberal democracy. The USSR and its ensemble of supporting states, on the other hand, justified their repressive methods of government as necessary for the realization of the common good through the establishment of communist society. So much is fairly commonplace.
It has also been said that as long as the communist bloc held together and sustained its challenge to the democratic West the space was created for authoritarian governments in the Third World to flourish.10 This may be true as far as it goes, but it is also the case that the US and its allies lent considerable support and encouragement to right-wing authoritarian regimes and movements around the world. In fact most right-wing regimes were – merely by virtue of their anti-communism – embraced as part of the ‘free world’. These included such notorious dictatorships as those of Marcos in the Philippines and Pinochet in Chile. It is little wonder that the messages about what constituted ‘democracy’ and acceptable human rights practices were somewhat mixed. And it is even less remarkable that the US – and many of its allies – have so often been charged with hypocrisy in foreign affairs. This also reinforced the realist notion that moral posturing in the international sphere is, in the final analysis, merely a reflection of specific self-interest masquerading as humanitarianism.
These issues aside, a remarkable feature of the Cold War period is that despite the emphatic left–right bipolarity of ideologies everyone actually agreed, in normative terms, that ‘democracy’ as such was a good thing and that there should be more of it. Moreover, virtually every government in the world claimed to be a democracy and each one certainly claimed to be concerned for the human rights of its citizens. The same generally applies today. As the rhetorical contest gained momentum in the early Cold War period, the philosopher W. B. Gallie put forward his now famous notion that democracy is an ‘essentially contested concept’.11 By this he meant that because democracy was almost universally regarded as something good and desirable it was something that everyone therefore wanted to claim as their own.12 But beyond this Gallie also implied that rival uses of the term by people in de...
