International Political Theory

Rethinking Ethics in a Global Era

Kimberly Hutchings, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9780761955160, 9780761955153
• eBook ISBN: 9781473946156
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

`A lucid, comprehensive analysis of normative approaches to international relations, and an original contribution to critical theory? - Andrew Linklater, University of Keele

`Hutchings combines a valuable account of the current state of the art with a lucid expositon of her own, highly distinctive, position. This will be required reading for students in international political theory, and indeed anyone interested in normative issues in international relations? - Chris Brown, London School of Economics and Political Science

Providing an invaluable overview of the competing schools of thought in traditional and contemporary international theory, this book seeks to path the way forward for new ways of thinking about international political morality.

First, the role and place of normative theory in the study of international politics is explained before a discussion of mainstream approaches within international relations and applied ethics. Here the student is introduced to the central debates between realists and idealists, and cosmopolitans and communitarians.

Second, the conceptual challenges of contemporary approaches in critical theory, postmodernism and feminism are outlined and then used as a platform to develop the author?s own Hegelian-Foucauldian approach for doing normative international theory.

Third, the insights drawn from each approach are applied to the study of two key topics in contemporary theoretical debate: the right to self-determination, and the idea of cosmopolitan democracy, and conclusions drawn for transcending the theoretical deadlock in international relations.

Accessibly written and wide-ranging, this text will quickly become essential reading for all students and academics of politics and international relations seeking a deeper understanding of the underlying tensions and future potential of international theory today.

PART ONE

MAINSTREAM DEBATES: NORMATIVE INTERNATIONAL THEORY

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1

Idealism and Realism

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Idealism

Realism

Conclusion

Notes

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Introduction

An investigation into contemporary normative international theory cannot take place without some explanation of what the term ‘normative international theory’ means. However, this is not a straightforward question of definition, since the term, as will be evident in much of the argument of this book, is essentially contested in the theoretical literature. For the moment, a preliminary and abstract statement of the range of meanings it holds must suffice. Normative theory is a very broad term which refers to any theorization of reality which is in some sense evaluative; this applies to the premises on which it is based and the questions it sets out to answer. Normative theories are usually explicitly or implicitly prescriptive, that is they are concerned with how to criticize, change and improve the world as it is. Within the study of politics in the Western tradition normative theories archetypally have been those concerned with the question of the best ways to organize and structure political, economic and social life (whether it be in the context of city-state, state or empire). This means that normative political theories are concerned with ontological questions about the elements which make up political, economic and social life, with epistemological questions about the justification of normative judgements and with the prescriptive implications which follow from those judgements. It follows therefore that normative international theory will be concerned with the question of the best ways to organize and conduct international political, economic and social life. This broad question is understood in terms that vary widely depending on the version of normative international theory under consideration. For the bulk of the post-1945 period, normative international theory has occupied a largely discredited place within the Anglo-American international relations academy and a marginal place within the disciplines of philosophical ethics and political theory. For much of this time consideration of normative questions in international politics has been largely confined to debates over the ethics of war and deterrence.¹ Over the past twenty years, however, this situation has changed and there has been an enormous growth of normative theory about issues in international politics other than war. Examples include work on international human rights, global distributive justice, nationality and nationalism, cosmopolitan citizenship and democracy.² In a recent work on normative international theory, Brown defines it as follows:

By normative international relations theory is meant that body of work which addresses the moral dimension of international relations and the wider questions of meaning and interpretation generated by the discipline. At its most basic it addresses the ethical nature of the relations between communities/states, whether in the context of the old agenda, which focussed on violence and war, or the new(er) agenda, which mixes these traditional concerns with the modem demand for international distributive justice. (Brown, 1992a: 3)

Normative theory in politics is closely intertwined with two other kinds of theorizing. On the one hand, explanatory theory (including theories of history), which describes and seeks to understand and explain the nature of politics as such, is, as will become evident below, inextricably bound up with normative assumptions. The question of what international politics is cannot be answered without reference to conceptual frameworks that are normatively inflected. On the other hand, moral theory, as suggested above by Brown, provides frameworks for judgement and prescription which have been adapted for use in the international political context. One of the crucial, perennial questions for normative theories of politics, and particularly of international politics, is the question of the extent to which normative political theory is an at least partially distinctive endeavour, i.e., something that is not reducible to either social scientific explanations of politics on the one hand or moral theory on the other. This is a question which dominates the debates with which this chapter is concerned. Different kinds of normative theory posit both different ideals and different understandings of the possibility of mediating in practice between the world as it is and the world as it might be; some are a good deal more pessimistic than others. Nevertheless all such theory is concerned with the possibility of explaining, arguing for, and defending political values, and with critically engaging with the world as it is.

In the discussion which follows I will be analysing international normative theory in terms of three elements: ontological, epistemological and prescriptive. These elements are heavily interdependent within any given normative theory but they are logically distinctive and any given example of normative work may be explicitly concerned with one (or two) of these elements rather than others. In this context, when I refer to the ontological component of normative theory, I am referring to the range of claims made in the theory about the stuff of which international politics is made. Traditionally, a distinction is made between two kinds or levels of stuff. On the one hand, there is metaphysical stuff, on the other hand there is empirical stuff. Metaphysical stuff refers to truths about existence which are not subject to direct empirical verification and are established through philosophical argument. These may include truths about nature, human nature, morality, politics and history. The claim that human nature is essentially bad or the claim that there is a teleological pattern to human history are examples of such metaphysical assertions which are made about the nature of international politics by different schools of normative international theory. In contrast to metaphysical assertions, according to the traditional account, are empirical truths about the real, concrete institutions and practices of international politics. Just as in domestic political theory arguments about the notion of punishment rest on empirical claims about the nature and operation of state and law in practice (as well as deeper assumptions about human nature, guilt and responsibility), so in normative international theory arguments about international justice rely on a large range of claims about the nature of states, inter-state relations, international law, the global economy and so on (as well as deeper assumptions about human nature and history).

However, on reflection, the traditional distinction between metaphysical and empirical types of stuff within international politics is a good deal more problematic than initially it seems. The problem is that the apparently straightforward matter of identifying the empirical substance of international politics turns out to be a metaphysical minefield. This is very well exemplified in the difficulties currently surrounding the concept of ‘international’ as it is used and criticized in normative arguments about international politics. The meaning of the term international is traditionally understood as referring to the modern state system in which states are conceived as independent authorities over whom no transcendent authority holds sway. It is commonly used as the contrary of domestic and refers primarily to the space/realm within which states are located and relate to one another. However, this whole picture is part of a conceptual scheme which does not and never has simply reflected the way the world is. Rather it is one of the (more influential) ways in which explanations and judgements of international politics have been constructed. Different normative theories disagree profoundly over the claim inherent in the traditional conception of the international realm that states are the only source of legitimate authority within that realm. These disagreements have as much to do with metaphysical disagreements about the sources of political authority (such as natural law, moral law, contract, individual right and so on), and with conceptual disagreements about the nature and scope of politics (how it relates to economics or morality for instance), as they do with the empirical facts of the case. In summary, the question of what international politics is is always a theoretical question. This is not because the concrete institutions and practices of international politics are irrelevant to international theory, it is because the issue of what is or is not relevant is a conceptual question. It is a question that is equally important to explanatory as to normative theory, and this is the principal reason why, as noted above, normative international relations theory is inextricably bound up with the social science of international relations and vice versa.³

Epistemology refers to the theory of knowledge, a branch of philosophy which is concerned with establishing how (and in relation to what) knowledge claims can be assumed to be reliable. The preoccupation of epistemology is with establishing what knowledge is and with identifying the distinction between valid and invalid claims to knowledge. In normative international theory the epistemological element concerns the question of how to validate normative judgements about how the international realm is or ought to be. Are the grounds for the legitimacy of such judgements to be found in rationally accessible universal principles or ideals? If so, what are these principles/ideals? If not, what weight do judgements of right and wrong in international politics carry? These kinds of questions are inextricably entwined with the question of normative truth, whether it exists and how it can be known and demonstrated. This epistemological element of normative international theory is where its interrelation with moral theory is most evident. Many of the answers to the question of normative truth in the international context are borrowed from or depend on claims derived from moral theory. This is particularly evident in the debates between cosmopolitans and communitarians in international ethics, which will be discussed in Chapter 2. However, epistemological concerns are also inseparable from questions concerning the referents of the substantive claims being made, which takes us back to the ontological element of normative theory considered above.

The prescriptive element of normative international theory follows from its ontological and epistemological claims. In the light of substantive, valid claims about how the world is or is not, normative theory purports to provide the resources from which both to judge whether the world is or is not as it ought to be and, insofar as is and ought are estranged, to prescribe how the world should be changed. Thus one of the key focuses of normative theory is on practical policy, what aspects of contemporary international politics are benign and should be supported or, alternatively, what aspects of contemporary international politics are dangerous and should therefore be discouraged. Sometimes the prescriptions of normative international theory are highly specific, such as proposals for the introduction of global redistributive taxation. Sometimes they are much more general, such as open-ended demands that the world should be made more peaceful or more just.

In this chapter and in Chapter 2 I will be tracing the predominant ways in which debates within normative international theory have been structured. The purpose of the first two chapters is to demonstrate the patterns of thinking which dominate most work in normative international theory and the problems raised by those patterns of thinking. I will begin the characterization of the dominant patterns of thinking in normative international theory by identifying two versions of it which have traditionally occupied the outer limits of what it is understood to mean within the international relations academy. These are the supposed extremes of idealism on the one hand and realism on the other. Idealism and realism are terms deriving from the vocabulary of international relations theory since the 1930s. However, as we shall see, they reflect broader traditions of thinking in political theory and philosophy. These theoretical alternatives continue to set the agenda for current debates both in their positive influencing of different theoretical approaches and as positions to be challenged and transcended. I will explain the ways in which the contrast between realism and idealism emerges, in relation to certain readings of canonic thinkers in international political theory, as part of establishing a distinctive framework for the study of international politics, particularly in the post-1945 period. It will emerge that the predominant characteristic of both idealism and realism is that these frameworks of thinking are distinctively structured in terms of a series of tensions which, I will argue, are governed by the ruling conceptual oppositions between reason and nature, ideal and real, universal and particular. These tensions create peculiar conceptual difficulties in formulating normative international theory. The result of this is that such theorizing tends to become bogged down in a perpetual and never-ending argument between apparently opposed, but actually complementary, positions.

The study of international relations as a distinctive academic discipline is very much a twentieth century phenomenon. It is not, of course, the case that international politics was not a matter of study prior to 1919 (when the first Chair of International Relations was established at Aberystwyth). Generations of philosophers, theologians, historians and legal scholars have had plenty to say about international relations (or its pre-nation-state correlates) in pre-modem and modem periods. However, the historical canon of international political science and political theory was and continues to be constructed in retrospect in the academic study of the international, a process which, as far as normative theory is concerned, has been distinguished by the invention of the past in terms of seemingly infinite variations on a standard theme. The standard theme is the distinction between idealist and realist understandings of the actuality and potentiality of international politics (to be explained below). This theme is read back into the history of political thought in order to identify forerunners of these schools (e.g., Kant is claimed for the idealists, Hobbes for the realists) or representatives of a ‘middle way’ between them (e.g., Grotius).⁴ What follows is a schematic account of idealism and realism, which uses particular thinkers (modem and canonic) to pick out key elements of the two poles of normative international theory. It is intended to identify paradigmatic features of opposed schools of thought in international relations rather than as an account which does full justice to the complexity of the work of any particular theorist.

Idealism

One of the most difficult things about grasping the different approaches to understanding and judging international politics is the variety of labels with which one has to deal. For purposes of clarity I use the term ‘idealism’ to refer to normative international theory with predominant features which are also present in approaches referred to in the literature under the headings of moralism, utopianism, revolutionism and liberalism.⁵ To speak of idealism as a tradition of thinking in international theory is in a sense misleading. Idealism is not a coherent ongoing chain of thinking. It would be more accurate to see idealism as referring to a set of overlapping themes which achieved significant influence in late eighteenth and nineteenth century liberal and socialist ideology and exercised a profound effect on the theory (and, possibly but contestably, the practice) of international politics in the period immediately following the end of the First World War until the early 1930s.⁶ Idealism has become identified as a substantive tradition very much in hindsight with the discrediting of its tenets in the work of the political realists (see below). For some time after the Second World War, idealism existed as little more than a suspect and shadowy other of realism in the common-sense thinking of international relations. For this reason it is easiest to identify idealism by looking back at its acknowledged canonic exponents.

In terms of canonic accounts, idealism as a perspective on international politics has its most obvious origins in late eighteenth century Enlightenment thought about human perfectibility, international law and the possibilities of peace between states. Because he is the theorist most commonly cited as a reference point for idealism in contemporary work, I will draw out the themes of idealism through an examination of the work of Immanuel Kant. In a very famous essay, ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’, Kant envisaged a combination of moral and self-interested factors leading to the setting up of a peaceful international federation of states, in which relations between states would be governed by cooperation and mutually agreed rules and norms (Kant, 1991a: 93–130). There are three elements to Kant’s argument in ‘Perpetual Peace’ which are of particular importance to the ways in which the idealist option has come to be understood in international theory⁷

The first element is the clear distinction made by Kant between morality and politics (Kant, 1991b: 40–7). This distinction is one aspect of Kant’s complex critical philosophy and it is impossible to explain it fully in a few sentences. However, it depends on a prior distinction between two different but related spheres of hum...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART ONE: MAINSTREAM DEBATES: NORMATIVE INTERNATIONAL THEORY
• PART TWO: CRITICAL CHALLENGES: RETHINKING INTERNATIONAL THEORY
• PART THREE: FUTURE DIRECTIONS: DOING INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL THEORY
• CONCLUSION
• Bibliography
• Index