Causes of a divided discipline: Rethinking the concept of cause in International Relations theory

Review of International Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 189-216

  Kurki, Milja ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33744777532     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: 14699044     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S026021050600698X     Document Type: Review

References (99)

1. Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 1.
2. Hollis and Smith, Explaining and Understanding, pp. 1-7.
3. G. King, R. O. Keohane and S. Verba, Designing Social Inquiry; Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
4. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 4.
5. There has been a tendency to see these approaches as mutually exclusive, incommensurable accounts as Hollis and Smith portrayed them. Hollis and Smith, Explaining and Understanding, pp. 196-216.
6. For descriptions of early accounts of cause, see for example R. J. Hankinson, Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought (Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1998);
7. Jonathan Lear, Aristotle; the Desire to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
8. Aristotle, Metaphysics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998), p. 115.
9. For an account of the historical changes in the concept of cause in the modern period see W.A. Wallace, Causality and Scientific: Explanation, vol. I (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1972),
10. and K. Clatterbaugh, Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy 1637-1739 (New York, London: Routledge, 1999).
11. Rene Descartes, Key Philosophical Writings (Ware: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, 1997).
12. R. Chavez-Arvizo, 'Introduction', in Descartes, Key Philosophical Writings, p. ix.
13. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 157.
14. Hume, Treatise, pp. 165-6.
15. The term regularity-determinism was coined by Roy Bhaskar. Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1978), p. 69.
16. Humean assumptions were accepted, however, with a distinct anti-causal twist. Logical positivists argued that since we can only legitimately talk of regularities of events, we should refrain from using causal terminology. Instead, they talked of 'functionally determinate' relations between 'laws'. See, for example, A. J. Ayer, Logical Positivism (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1959),
17. R. Carnap. Logical Foundations of Probability (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950).
18. K.R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson of London, 1959),
19. C. G. Hempel (ed.), Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (New York: Free Press, 1965).
20. The influential 'growth of knowledge' debates on philosophy of science were, for example, implicitly underpinned by Humean assumptions. Although the logical positivist and Popperian models of scientific progress have come under criticism from philosophers such as Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, these attacks have not challenged the Humean notion of cause embedded in these accounts of scientific progress.
21. For a classical logical positivist/behaviourist view of social sciences see Marie Neurath and Robert S. Cohen (eds.), Otto Neurath: Empiricism and Sociology (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishing, 1973).
22. C. Frankfort-Nachmias and D. Nachmias, Research Methods in the Social Sciences (London: Edward Arnold, 1992);
23. King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry.
24. Peter Winch, The Idea of Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1990).
25. Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 56.
26. Winch, Idea of Social Science, p. xii.
27. Positivism is understood here to refer to those approaches that (1) believe in 'a scientific method' that is applicable across sciences and hence (2) assume naturalism, (3) empiricism, (4) believe in value neutrality of scientific method and (5) emphasise the importance of instrumental (predictive) knowledge. Gerard Delanty, Social Science: Beyond Constructivism and Realism. Concepts in Social Sciences (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997), p. 12. Empiricism is more narrowly an epistemological approach to the construction of knowledge (through empirical observation). However, empiricist epistemology is understood to be a crucial ingredient of a positivist approach to science.
28. Examples of the ' harder' Humean approach can be seen advocated explicitly in American journals, such as the Journal of Conflict Resolution. Many democratic peace theorists can be seen as examples of hard Humeanism because of their statistical approach. See, for example, Z. Maoz and B. Russett, 'Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace 1946-1986', American Political Science Review. 87:3 (1993), pp. 024-38;
29. R. I. Rummel, 'Democracies Are Less Warlike Than Other Regimes', European Journal of International Relations, 1:4 (1995), pp. 457-79;
30. Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles of Post-Cold War World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
31. The neo-neo contenders share a common, arguably, empiricist conception of science as highlighted by Baldwin. D. A. Baldwin (ed.), Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 9.
32. This conception is arguably largely compatible with King, Keohane and Verba's precepts. For an application of King, Keohane and Verba in a more historical inquiry see, for example, Randall L. Schweller, Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler's Strategy of World Conquest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
33. King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, pp. 81-2.
34. King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, Ibid, pp. 99-114.
35. King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, Ibid., pp. 208-30.
36. King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, Ibid., pp. 104, 182-3.
37. King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry, Ibid., p. 86.
38. Especially evident in Maoz and Russott, 'Normative and Structural Causes', pp. 624-38.
39. Waltz's work, for example, is geared around methodologically individualism and, also, 'closed system' regularity -deterministic logic. Regularity of war is logically deduced from assumptions about 'structure' premised on an individualistic understanding of states as actors. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (London: McGraw-Hill, 1979).
40. For an excellent, critique of Waltz's individualism see Alexander Wendt, 'Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory', International. Organization, 41:3, (1987), pp. 335-70,
41. Alexander Wendt, 'Anarchy Is What States Make of It', International Organization, 46:2 (1992), pp. 391-425.
42. Robert Cox, 'Realism, Positivism and Historicism', in Robert Cox and Timothy Sinclair (eds.), Approaches to World Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1.995), p. 51.
43. Cox, 'Social forces, states, and world orders', in Cox and Sinclair (eds.), Approaches, p. 98.
44. Jenny Edkins, Poststructuralism and International Relations: Bringing the Political Back In (London: Lynne Rienner, 1999), p. 15.
45. Edkins, Poststructuralism, p. 9-10.
46. Campbell, Writing Security, p. 4.
47. Campbell, Writing Security, Ibid., p. 4.
48. In National Deconstruction, for example, Campbell argues that the 'ontopology' of binding together of territoriality, statism and mono-culturalisrn in Western liberal discourses has had some crucial implications on how the West viewed and dealt with the situation in Bosnia. David Campbell, National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity and Justice in Bosnia (London: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
49. See his discussion of Bhaskar's reasons as causes account. Nicholas Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia, CA: University of Southern California Press, 1989), p. 49.
50. R. Koslowski and F. Kratochwil, 'Understanding Change in International Politics: The Soviet Empire's Demise and the International System', in T. Risse-Kappen et al. (eds.), International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War (Now York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 136.
51. See also F. Kratochwil, 'Constructing a New Orthodoxy? Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics and the Constructivist Challenge', Millennium, 29 (2000), pp. 73-101.
52. Koslowski and Kratochwil, 'Understanding Change', p. 137.
53. J. G. Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Organization (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 34.
54. See also J. G. Ruggie, 'What Makes the World Hang Together? The Neo-Utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge', in Krasner et al. (eds.), Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), p. 229.
55. Note that philosophical realism should not be equated with the IR tradition of realism, which being based on empiricist assumptions in many cases is, in fact, largely anti-realist.
56. Rom Harre and Edward H. Madden, Causal Powers: A Theory of Natural Necessity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975).
57. Roy Bhaskar, A Realist Theory of Science (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1978), p. 12.
58. J. Lopez and G. Potter, 'After Postmodernism: The Millennium', in J. Lopez and G. Potter (eds.), After Postmodernism: an Introduction to Critical Realism (London: Athlore Press, 2001), p. 9.
59. Short for realist 'critical naturalism' Roy Bhaskar, Possibility of Naturalism: A Critique of the Contemporary Human Sciences, 3rd edn. (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 28.
60. Paul Lewis, 'Agency, Structure and Causality in Political Science: A Comment on Silicon', Politics, 22:1 (2002), pp. 17-23.
61. Andrew Sayer, Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 111.
62. See, for example, Sayer, Method in Social Science.
63. Heikki Patomäki, After International Relations: Critical Realism and the (Re) Construction of World Politics (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 79.
64. Sec, for example, Heikki Patomäki and Colin Wight, 'After Post-Positivism? The Promises of Critical Realism', International Studies Quarterly, 44 (2000), pp. 213-37:
65. Patomäki, After International Relations;
66. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
67. David Dessler, 'Beyond Correlations: Towards a Causal Theory of War', International Studies Quarterly, 35:3 (1991), pp. 337-55.
68. Harre and Madden, Causal Powers, p. 5.
69. Paul Lewis, 'Realism, Causality and the Problem of Social Structure', Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 30: 3 (2000), pp 255-7.
70. Bhaskar, Possibility of Naturalism, p. 89,
71. Sayer, Method in Social Science, p. 111.
72. Lewis, 'Agency', pp. 20-21.
73. Alexander Wendt, 'Why a World State is Inevitable', European Journal of International Relations, 9:4 (2003), pp. 491-542.
74. Wendt, 'Why A World State?', p. 495.
75. Nancy Cartwright, 'Causation: One Word, Many Things', Philosophy of Science, 71 (2004), p. 805.
76. Lear, Aristotle, p. 6.
77. S. Waterlow, Nature, Change and Agency in Aristotle's Physics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), P. 11.
78. F. A. Lewis, 'Aristotle on the Relation between a Thing and its Matter', in M. L. Gill (ed.), Unity, Identity and Explanation in Aristotle's Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 248.
79. Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 77-88.
80. For Hume, causes had to be observed independently from effects, and causes were identified as defining thorn as those observables that were observed before the 'effects'.
81. E. Gilson, From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution (Indiana, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 5.
82. Wendt, 'Why the World State is Inevitable'.
83. D. V. Porpora, 'On the Post-Wittgenstein Critique of the Concept of Action in Sociology', Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 13 (1983), pp. 129-46.
84. For a similar account of reasons as final causes see Ruth Groff, Critical Realism, Postpositivism and the Possibility of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 2004).
85. However, importantly, simply because we assign certain things as causes for our explanatory interest does not make factors outside our accounts non-causal. We merely designate them as unimportant background causes for our explanatory interests. This is similar to what the 'manipulability theorists' argue. See R. G. Collingwood, Essay in Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940).
86. For an interesting manipulability account of causation in IR, see Suganami, On the Causes of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
87. Robert Cox, 'Social Forces', in Cox and Sinclair (eds.), Approaches, p. 87.
88. Koslowski and Kratochwil, 'Understanding Change', p. 127.
89. D. Campbell, National Deconstruction, p. 84.
90. Campbell, Writing Security, p. 4.
91. Wendt, Social Theory, p. 86.
92. As is implied in Waltz's regularity-deterministic account for example. See fn. 31.
93. For an appreciation of the importance of these wider analyses see, for example, Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey (eds.), Democracy, Liberalism and War: Rethinking the Democratic Peace Debate (London: Lynne Rienner, 2001).
94. Compare, for example, Koslowski and Kratochwil, 'Understanding Change'
95. and R. D. English, 'Power, Ideas, and the New Evidence on the Cold War's End', International Security, 26: 4 (2002), pp. 70-92,
96. to S. C. Brooks and W. C. Wohlforth, 'Power, Globalization and the End of the Cold War: Reevaluating a Landmark Case for Ideas', International Security, 25:3 (2000), pp. 5-53.
97. A point also made by Gaddis. J. L. Gaddis, 'On Starting All Over Again: A Naïve Approach to the Study of Cold War', in O. A. Westad (ed.), Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretation. Theory (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 28.
98. Campbell, Writing Security, pp. 207-27.
99. See Patomäki and Wight, 'After Post-Positivism?', pp. 213-37.