Theory and History in International Relations

Donald J. Puchala

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136074585
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Theory and History in International Relations is an eloquent plea to scholars of global politics to turn away from the "manufacture" of data and return to a systematic study of history as a basic for theory. While the modest use of empiricism will always be important, Puchala rejects the logical positivism of the so-called "scientific revolution" in the field in favor of a more complex, even intuitive, vision of global politics. He addresses the potential uses of history in studying some of the major debates of our time-the Cold War as a struggle between empires, the collision of civilizations, cultural encounters and colonies in the ancient world, and liberal approaches to the understanding of history and ethical contributions to the dialogue over theory.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Reviewing Adda Bozeman's Politics and Culture in International History in 1961, Harold Lasswell welcomed the study as “sagacious, literate, luminous and opportune.”¹ That same year, however, another reviewer, in the American Political Science Review, opined that in Bozeman's book “the American political scientist whose special interest is international relations will not find much that is centrally pertinent to his work.”² This second reviewer's conclusion probably said more about American political science in 1961 than about Bozeman's study. Caught up in the aspiring scientism of their discipline, its ahistoricism and the attention-focusing environment of superpower competition, American political scientists in 1961 were preoccupied with coding and counting, correlating, minimaxing and modeling, and expecting that all of this, in addition to propelling scholarship forward, would somehow also lend the United States an advantage in competition with the Soviet Union. In this disciplinary context, Bozeman's examination of six thousand years of intercultural history might not have appeared centrally pertinent.

Yet it was by examining those six thousand years of peoples coming together that Bozeman was able to suggest in 1960 that the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in the mid-twentieth century was a historical epiphenomenon. Though potentially apocalyptic, and therefore immediately important, the Cold War was not the most historically meaningful international phenomenon occurring at the time. There had been other cold wars in international history, indeed many of them, as well as countless “hot” wars, and other endless contests of power. But the strutting and fretting of states and their heroes through these episodes over millennia accomplished little more than to intermittently reconstruct political geography, desecrate a sizable proportion of humankind's artistic and architectural heritage, waste wealth, and extinguish hundreds of millions of lives.

A little more than a decade ago, an invitation to lecture on the topic “Culture and International Relations” afforded me opportunity to reread Bozeman's Politics and Culture in International History. Moving carefully through this remarkable work in the late 1980s, some twenty years after its publication, I noticed that time amplified its wisdom and fortified its conclusions. But the experience also raised questions about patterns and directions in international history. By the late 1980s, the Cold War was already fading from international history. But historically speaking, was this the end of something or the beginning? Had a grand cycle of power run its course, or was a new cycle starting—or does it really make any sense at all to think about international relations in terms of power cycles? Perhaps the Cold War had actually been an instance of great empires colliding. One empire collapsed; it imploded and then fragmented. Does this always happen when empires collide? Probably not, some would say, but then, why not? And what, in light of past experience, might happen to the empire left standing? Then again, in broader perspective, would it not be more meaningful to think of the entire last half of the twentieth century as an era of collapsing empires—first the Ottoman and the Austrian, later the British, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, the residual Spanish and the Russian—thus making postimperial succession the signal characteristic of our age? What exactly does this mean? Has it happened before? And what will follow? The period extending from roughly 500 to 1500 was also an era of postimperial succession, in this case the aftermath of Roman imperium, and after a great deal of rather painful shaking down, weeding out, sorting, and arranging, the durable European state system was the end result. Is this what usually happens during and after a period of postimperial succession?

Looked at somewhat differently, many aspects of the modern world were by the late 1980s beginning to look somewhat medieval. Structures and processes that identified twelfth-century international relations were reappearing in modern contexts. For one thing, ethnic frontiers in our contemporary world were beginning to obscure political frontiers—just, perhaps, as in medieval times: “-lands,” “-marks,” and “-stans” were better defined and sometimes politically more important than the “-doms” of the kings. Has it, for example, made much difference to the Kurdish peoples of recent decades as to where such places as Iraq, Iran, or Turkey begin and end, or to Pashtuns as to where Afghanistan ends and Pakistan begins? Is Serbia more usefully identified as the state pictured on political maps of the contemporary world, or as the place(s) where Serbs live? Might we say the same for Albania? In some regions by the 1980s, intercommunal politics appeared to be superseding interstate politics, and sub- and suprastate ethnic interactions appeared to be conditioning, sometimes canceling, state-to-state transactions. Elsewhere, substate politics of other sorts appeared to be approximating interstate politics, as was also characteristic of the medieval world. By the 1980s, present-day warlords vied for and from their exclusive fief-doms, tribes defended and extended tribal domains, and mafia strongmen fortified strongholds. Cities, too, appeared to be becoming increasingly autonomous as well as increasingly interlinked in commercial and communication networks, not entirely different from the networks of the Hanseatic league or medieval Venetian connections in the Mediterranean. States themselves were becoming highly varied in character, function, and capability. Only a very few could be considered actual states, and this too was reminiscent of medieval times. If such “medievalization” can be observed today, how is to be explained? More intriguing, is periodic medievalization a recurrent feature of international history? If so, what typically causes it and what typically comes after?

It also seemed in the late 1980s that the main axis of world politics had already shifted from East-West to North-South. As this shift was occurring, interstate relations remained vital, but intercultural relations became increasingly significant. Glimmerings of what we now call “the West and the rest” appeared. This is what Bozeman was writing about. But what exactly are intercultural relations? Are intercultural relations about power and domain, like interstate relations? Or are they about ideas contained in myths, creeds, philosophies, theologies, and ideologies? Are they benign or destructive, uplifting or regressive, pacific or violent? Intercultural relations have certainly been prominent at other times in history, as Greeks and Romans, Christians and Muslims, and Aztecs and Spaniards could surely attest. Yet what exactly does happen when cultures encounter one another, and what, if anything, does this have to do with interstate relations? Are the two kinds of encounters—intercultural and interstate—complementary, contradictory, or mostly exclusive, and, historically again, which have been more significant, consequential, or meaningful, and why?

Is plusça change, plus c'est le mçme chose the leitmotif of international history, or is it simply plusça change, plusça change? One implication of the notion of “modernization” is that the present is different from the past and the future will likely be different from the present. Successive eras may differ in “evolutionary” ways—in which case, if we understand the mechanism of development, it may be possible to anticipate, perhaps even predict, the future. On the other hand, perhaps “revolutionary” change is what international history is really all about. Here, we probably can know a good deal more about the causes of revolutions, which are patterned and recurrent, than about their effects, which are manifold and varied. Regarding revolutions, therefore, it will always be easier to reflect than to project. So much more is this the case if change is at the same time directional and dialectical. Theses and antitheses always yield syntheses, although the latter are never predictable from either of the former. It is always possible, of course, that changes in the course of international history are both nonrecurrent and random, which would render the study of change most perplexing and attempts at theoretical understanding most frustrating.

Theory and History

This book is about international history, which I define as the history of relations among states and peoples. It has to do with encounters and their outcomes—that is, encounters among states and other organizations that interact across political and cultural boundaries and encounters among communities, ethnically, nationally, or civilizationally defined. Most of the essays that comprise the chapters of this book examine what happens when states and peoples come together in space and in time. Important parts of the ensuing discussions are also directed toward how we identify, describe, and explain what happens as a result of such encounters. It will become very clear in the pages that follow that I have great respect for the writings of historians. But I am not myself a historian, and I cannot claim to have uncovered anything from the records of the past of which historians are unaware. I am, rather, a scholar of international relations, and as such, what I mainly want to do in this book is to look at history through lenses crafted and polished by theorists in my discipline. I want to use international theory to interpret international history.

Theory and History in International Relations is not as much about historical events as it is about historical patterns, and identifying and explaining patterns is a theoretical undertaking. Using theory, however, is not the same thing as theorizing. The distinction is important: in this book I am primarily a consumer of theory, not a producer. Offering up new theoretical formulations is not what I intended when I began the research for this book, and though I make some generalizations about historical patterns in some later chapters, these were not the objects of my writing. Instead, finding meaning in the history of international relations is more what I had in mind. International relations theory is already rich in insights as a result of the contributions of many of my colleagues, past and present. Fine minds have long been at work describing and deciphering patterns of interstate and intercultural encounter, and the corpus of abstract thought about international relations is constantly expanding. The object of theorizing about human affairs is to fashion and hone intellectual tools that, when used, sharpen, deepen, and enrich our understanding of human affairs. Much of this book is about using such tools. Therefore, if readers are interested, as I am, in knowing more about how international relations theory illuminates international history they may find this book helpful.

The Nature and Uses of Theory in International Relations

Since a good deal is going to be said in this book about the nature of the body of abstract thought that I identify as international relations theory, only a very brief preview of what is to come need be entered here. First, international relations theory is not scientific, and this may be an attribute rather than a fault. Most of the corpus of thought identified as international relations theory satisfies few of the criteria of scientific theory. Little, for example, can be directly deduced from it, and even less can be predicted. It does not build from simple propositions to more complex ones, and on to “middle-level generalizations” waiting to be knit together by a social scientific Einstein into Hempelian unified theory.³ For almost half a century, social scientists have been attempting to formulate scientific theories of international relations. As I shall try to make clear in later chapters, these efforts, if not misguided, have at least proven unsuccessful not only because the enigmas of the human condition are awesome, but also because the epis-temological assumptions of the social scientists are questionable. The world may simply not be “grabbable” in the ways that social scientists have wanted to grab it. Searching for truth, furthermore, is an elusive quest under any circumstances, and limiting the search by privileging one methodology and disparaging all others renders the quest all the more unpromising.

In any event, most of the theory that today provides the intellectual superstructure for the study and understanding of international relations is not the result of the kind of scientific inquiry that most scientists would approve of. But while it fails deductively and predictively, it nevertheless offers a rich and exciting array of heuristics that can help us identify what happens “out there” in the phenomenal domain we call international relations. Our theories also excellently frame our ponderings about how and why what happens happens—which, of course, is what heuristics are supposed to do. International relations theory is an intellectual treasure trove of Weberian ideal types of phenomena, structures, processes, causes, effects, and outcomes. I shall treat it as such in this book.

What I also try to show in this book is that theory of the kind we have in our field is a most useful tool for historical interpretation. Interpreting international history means attributing significance to events, or, more broadly, attributing meaning to human experience. Significance may be wholly historical: all events are parts of patterns, and in the context of such patterns particular events may represent beginnings or endings, causes, consequences, or turning points. For example, they may mark the beginnings or ends of cycles or the beginnings or ends of progressions. They may also be symbols of continuity or change, the proofs of human sagacity, or the consequences of folly. Otherwise, significance may be political, economic, social, cultural, aesthetic, or moral. Theory can be a guide to interpreting happenings in all of these domains. A great deal of theorizing about international relations has focused on historical patterns. There are, for example, macropatterns of politics and economics—patterns of war and peace or of rise and decline and constancy and change; disheartening patterns of carnage, destruction, and inhumanity; and promising patterns of collective action in pursuit of beneficial goals. To the extent that theories of international relations can guide us to seek out and identify such patterns in history, they become intellectual tools. They facilitate interpretation by alerting interpreters to the broader contexts within which particular events or sequences are occurring. Particular historical events, even monumental ones, like the French Revolution or the Second World War, for example, are almost always manifestations of something larger in human experience or something deeper in the human condition. Theories can point us toward these more inclusive contexts.

Because theories are often normative as well as explanatory, they may also cue insights into the aesthetic and moral meaning of historical happenings. It is true that there is not very much theorizing in the discipline of international relations per se that can guide us toward interpreting aesthetic or moral significance. My disciplinary colleagues and I have perhaps paid too little attention to questions about how international relations “feel” or questions about the “rightness” and “wrongness” of perpetrations and outcomes. But writings within the discipline of international relations per se are not the only sources of international relations theory. Philosophers, artists, theologians, and, of course, historians all have reflected on relations between states and peoples. Their works are replete with insights. I highlight these later in this book, because they are centrally important, yet frequently overlooked. Social scientists are not the only ones who theorize about international relations.

History and Theory

While theorizing is not my main objective in this book, I nevertheless find it difficult to resist making generalizations about patterns I observe in international history. In this, I find myself in accord with a current trend in my discipline. There has been in recent years a resurgence of interest in international history among students of international relations. More accurately, the renewed interest is mainly among American students of international relations, because European colleagues have adhered rather consistently— and productively—to Hedley Bull and Adam Watson's affirmation that “our subject can be understood only in historical perspective.”⁴ Be this as it may, some of the renewed attention to history is in reaction ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction
• 2 International Relations Theory in Perspective
• 3 The Pragmatics of International History
• 4 International Theory and Cyclical History
• 5 The Tragedy of War and the Search for Meaning in International History
• 6 The Dancing Dinosaurs of the Cold War
• 7 International Encounters of Another Kind
• 8 Colonization and Culture in the Ancient World
• 9 Myth, History, and Morality
• 10 Liberal Theory and Linear History
• 11 Beyond the Divided Discipline
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index