LIBERALISM

Devania Annesya

070810535

devania.annesya@gmail.com

As one of the two great philosophical products of the European Enlightenment, liberalism has had a profound impact on the shape of all modern industrial societies. It has championed limited government and scientific rationality, believing individuals should be free from arbitrary state power, persecution and superstition. It has advocated political freedom, democracy and constitutionally guaranteed rights, and privileged the liberty of the individual and equality before the law. Liberalism has also argued for individual competition in civil society and claimed that market capitalism best promotes the welfare of all by most efficiently allocating scarce resources within society. To the extent that its ideas have been realized in recent democratic transitions in both hemispheres and manifested in the globalization of the world economy, liberalism remains a powerful and influential doctrine. The journal will begin with an analysis of the revival of liberal thought after the Cold War. It will then explain how traditional liberal attitudes to war and the importance of democracy and human rights continue to inform contemporary thinking.

The end of Soviet Communism at the beginning of the 1990s improved the influence of liberal theories of international relations within the academy, a theoretical tradition long thought to have been discredited by perspectives which emphasize the recurrent features of international relations. Fukuyama claimed in the early 1990s that the collapse of the Soviet Union proved that liberal democracy had no serious ideological competitor: it was ‘the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution’ and the ‘final form of human government’ (1992: xi–xii). For Fukuyama, the end of the Cold War represented the triumph of the ‘ideal state’ and a particular form of political economy, ‘liberal capitalism’, which ‘cannot be improved upon’: there can be ‘no further progress in the development of underlying principles and institutions’ (1992: xi–xii).

For liberals, peace is the normal state of affairs: in Kant’s words, peace can be perpetual. The laws of nature dictated harmony and cooperation between peoples. War is therefore both unnatural and irrational, an artificial contrivance and not a product of some peculiarity of human nature. (Gardner 1990: 23–39; Hoffmann 1995: 159–77; Zacher and Matthew 1995: 107–50). According to Paine in The Rights of Man, the ‘war system’ was contrived to preserve the power and the employment of princes, statesmen, soldiers, diplomats and armaments manufacturers, and to bind their tyranny ever more firmly upon the necks of the people’(Howard 1978: 31). Wars provide governments with excuses to raise taxes, expand their bureaucratic apparatus and increase their control over their citizens. The people, on the other hand, were peace-loving by nature, and plunged into conflict only by the whims of their unrepresentative rulers.

Fukuyama also believes that progress in human history can be measured by the elimination of global conflict and the adoption of principles of legitimacy that have evolved over time in domestic political orders. It also leads to Doyle’s important claim that ‘liberal democracies are uniquely willing to eschew the use of force in their relations with one another’, a view which rejects the realist contention that the anarchical nature of the international system means states are trapped in a struggle for power and security (Linklater 1993: 29).

Although his ‘hypothesis remains correct’, the events of 9/11 have subsequently caused Fukuyama to reflect on resistance to political and economic convergence in the modern world and the reaction in many societies against the dominance of the West (Fukuyama 2002: 28).

In the 1990s Fukuyama revived a long-held view among liberals that the spread of legitimate domestic political orders would eventually bring an end to international conflict. This neo-Kantian position assumes that particular states, with liberal-democratic credentials, constitute an ideal which the rest of the world will emulate (Fukuyama 1992: xx). This approach is rejected by neo-realists who claim that the moral aspirations of states are dissatisfied by the lack of an overarching authority which regulates their behaviour towards each other. The anarchical nature of the international system tends to homogenize foreign policy behaviour by socializing states into the system of power politics.

Analysis

Fukuyama had reason to be optimistic. The spread of liberal democracies and the zone of peace was an encouraging development, as is the realization by states that trade and commerce is more closely correlated with economic success than territorial conquest. The collapse of Marxism as a legitimate alternative political order removes a substantial barrier to

the spread of liberal democracies, and there can be little doubt that the great powers are now much less inclined to use force to resolve their political differences with each other. It appears that liberal democracies are in the process of constructing a separate peace.

The globalization of the world economy means that there are few obstacles to international trade. Liberals want to remove the influence of the state in commercial relations between businesses and individuals, and the decline of national economic sovereignty is an indication that the corrupting influence of the state is rapidly diminishing. Globalization has undermined the nation-state in other ways that have pleased liberals. The capacity of each state to direct the political loyalties of its citizens has been weakened by an increasing popular awareness of the problems faced by the entire human species. The state cannot prevent its citizens turning to a range of sub-national and transnational agents to secure their political identities and promote their political objectives. Sovereignty is no longer an automatic protection against external interference called ‘humanitarian intervention’. And

decision making on a range of environmental, economic and security questions has become internationalized, rendering national administration often much less important than transnational political cooperation.

But, as Scott Burchill (2005) written in Theories of International Relations, realists would argue that liberals such as Ohmae are premature in announcing the failure of the nation-state. Realists cite a number of important powers retained by the state despite globalization, including monopoly control of the weapons of war and their legitimate use, and the sole right to tax its citizens. They would argue that only the nation-state can still command the political allegiances of its citizens or adjudicate in disputes between them. And it is still only the nation-state which has the exclusive authority to bind the whole community to international law. They would question the extent to which globalization today is an unprecedented phenomenon, citing the nineteenth century as period when similar levels of economic interdependence existed. They would also point to the growing number of states which reject the argument that Western modernity is universally valid or that political development always terminates at liberal-capitalist democracy. More recently realists have highlighted the expanding power and reach of the state as a result of the latest wave of anti-Western Islamic militancy – a significant reversal for liberals who anticipated the imminent decline of the nation-state in modern life. Islamism is a direct challenge to liberal assumptions about economics and politics terminating at a liberal capitalist consensus.

Unpredictable challenges of this kind have left liberalism on the back foot, questioning whether the linear path to improving the human condition is as straight and as inexorable as they thought only a few short years ago.

References:

-          Burchill,Scott,et al. 2005.Theories of International Relations.New York: Palgrave Macmillan

-          Jakson, Robert S. 2005. Pengantar Studi Hubungan Internasional. Jakarta: Pustaka Pelajar

MARXISM

Devania Annesya

070810535

devania.annesya@gmail.com

In the mid-1840s Marx and Engels wrote that capitalist globalization was seriously eroding the foundations of the international system of states. Conflict and competition between nation-states had not yet ended in their view but the main fault-lines in future looked certain to revolve around the two principal social classes: the national bourgeoisie, which controlled different systems of government, and an increasingly cosmopolitan proletariat. The outline of a radically new social experiment was already contained within the most advanced political movements of the industrial working class. Through revolutionary action, the international proletariat would embed the Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity in an entirely new world order which would free all human beings from exploitation and domination (Marx and Engels 1977).

Many traditional theorists of international relations have pointed to the failures of Marxism or ‘historical materialism’ as an account of world history. As Martin Wight maintained that Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) might seem to be a study of international politics but it was far too preoccupied with the economic aspects of human affairs to be taken seriously as a contribution to the field (Wight 1966). Marxists had underestimated the crucial importance of nationalism, the state and war, and the significance of the balance of power, international law and diplomacy for the structure of world politics.

For some, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the triumph of capitalism over socialism marked the death of Marxism as social theory and political practice. In the 1990s, some argued that the relevance of Marxism had increased with the passing of the age of bipolarity and the rapid emergence of a new phase of economic globalization (Gamble 1999). A biography of Marx which appeared in the late 1990s argued that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, his analysis of how capitalism breaks down Chinese Walls and unifies the human race had finally come of age (Wheen 1999). For others, the resurgence of national security politics since the terrorist attacks of ‘9/11’ is a simple reminder that Marxism has little grip on the most fundamental realities of international politics.

For Marx, human history has been a laborious struggle to satisfy basic material needs, to understand and tame the physical world, to resist class domination and exploitation and to overcome fear and distrust of the rest of the human race. Marx thought that capitalism had made massive advances in reducing feelings of estrangement between societies. Nationalism, he believed, had no place in the hearts and minds of the most advanced sections of the proletariat which were committed to a cosmopolitan political project. But capitalism was a system of largely unchecked exploitation in which the bourgeoisie controlled the labour-power of members of the proletariat and profited from their work. It was the root cause of an alienating condition in which the human race – the bourgeoisie as well as the proletariat – was at the mercy of structures and forces which it had created. Marx wrote that philosophers had only interpreted the world whereas the real point was to change it (Marx 1977b: 158). An end to alienation, exploitation and estrangement was Marx’s main political aspiration and the point of his efforts to understand the laws of capitalism and the broad movement of human history. This was his chief legacy to thinkers in the Marxist tradition.

Realists such as Waltz have argued that members of the proletariat concluded during the First World War that they had more in common with their own national bourgeoisie than with the working classes of other countries. For realists, the failure to anticipate this outcome demonstrates the central flaw in Marxism – its economic reductionism, as manifested in the belief that understanding capitalism would explain the mysteries of the modern world and its unprecedented political opportunities (Waltz 1959: Chapter 5). This is one of the most famous criticisms of Marxism within the study of international relations. There are three points to make about it.

First, although Marx and Engels were clearly aware of the globalization of economic and social life, they believed that class conflict within separate, but not autonomous, societies would trigger the great political revolutions of the time (Giddens 1981). Their assumption was that revolution would quickly spread from the society in which it first erupted to all other leading capitalist societies. According to this view of the world, burgeoning transnational capitalist activity shattered the illusion of apparently separate societies – an illusion created by geographical boundaries separating peoples governed by different political systems. Marxism largely ignored geopolitics, nationalism and war. Second, Marx and Engels were forced to reconsider their ideas about the nation because of the importance of nationalism in the 1848 revolutions and its growing political influence later in the century. They wrote that the Irish and the Poles were the victims of national domination rather than class exploitation, and added that freedom from national dominance was essential if subordinated peoples were to become allies of the international proletariat (Marx and Engels 1971; see also Benner 1995). These remarks indicate that while Marx and Engels were primarily concerned with the class structure of capitalist societies, they were well aware of the persistence of ancient animosities between national groups – but they almost certainly continued to believe that national differences would eventually decline in importance and might even disappear altogether (Halliday 1999: 79). Third, as Gallie (1978) has noted, those intriguing comments about nationalism, the state and war did not lead Marx and Engels to rework their early statements about the explanatory power of historical materialism. Marx and Engels’ political writings revealed growing subtlety but the main statements of their theoretical position continued to privilege class and production, to regard economic power as dominant form of power and to regard the revolutionary project as fundamentally about promoting the transition from capitalism to socialism (Cummins 1980).

Analysis

Despite its weaknesses, Marxism contributes to the theory of international relations in at least four respects. First, historical materialism with its emphasis on production, property relations and class is an important counter-weight to realist theories which assume that the struggle for power and security determines the structure of world politics. This leads to two further points which are that Marxism has long been centrally concerned with capitalist globalization and international inequalities and that, for Marxism, the global spread of capitalism is the backdrop to the development of modern societies and the organization of their international relations. A fourth theme, which first appeared in Marx’s critique of liberal political economy, is that explanations of the social world are never as objective and innocent as they may seem. Applied to international politics, the argument is that the analysis of basic and unchanging realities can all too easily ignore relations of power and inequality not between states but between individuals. Dominant strands of Marxist thought have taken the view that one of the main functions of scholarship is to understand the principal forms of domination and to imagine a world order which is committed to reducing material inequalities. This critical orientation to world politics can no longer be simply ‘Marxist’ in the largely superseded sense of using the paradigm of production to analyze class inequalities. But it can nevertheless remain true to the ‘spirit of Marxism’ by combining the empirical analysis of the dominant forms of power and inequality with a moral vision of a more just world order. This critical approach can extend beyond the analysis of capitalist globalization and rising international inequalities to the ways in which states conduct national security politics. One of the failings of Marxism as a source of critical international theory is its ingrained tendency to focus on the former at the expense of the latter field of inquiry. Later chapters discuss whether other strands of critical international theory have succeeded in overcoming this limitation.

References:

-          Burchill,Scott,et al. 2005.Theories of International Relations.New York: Palgrave Macmillan

-          Jakson, Robert S. 2005. Pengantar Studi Hubungan Internasional. Jakarta: Pustaka Pelajar

KEKUATAN, BALANCE OF POWER, DAN TEORI STABILITAS HEGEMONI

Devania Annesya

070810535

devania.annesya@gmail.com

Berdasarkan Oxford Learner’s Pocket Dictionary kekuatan (power) dalam konteks hubungan internasional dapat dideskripsikan sebagai sebuah tingkata sumber kapabilitas dan pengaruh dalam hubungan internasional. Biasanya kekuatan dibedakan menjadi dua konsep, yakni hardpower dan softpower. Salah ahli politik internasional, Ray S. Cline (1975), mampu mengemukakan metode efektif kekuasaan, yaitu:

Pp = (C+E+M) x (S+W)

Keterangan:
Pp = Power Perception; C = critical mass (populasi dan wilayah); E= Economy,
M = Military; S = Strategic (Tujuan-tujuan strategis), W = Will (keinginan untuk mencapai tujuan nasional)

Dalam perkembangan modern, istilah kekuatan negara mengindikasikan kedua kekuatan militer dan ekonomi yang yang kemudian akan menghasilkan perbedaan kapabilitas kekuatan-kekuatan negara dalam sistem internasioal. Kemudian akan muncullah negara dengan kekuatan rendah, menengah, dan tinggi (superpower). Terdapat kecenderungan bahwa superpower ini akan memegang kendali sebagai seorang hegemon. Pada era kejayaan pemikiran kaum realis, hegemon dianggap sebagai sebuah ancaman bagi negara-negara lainnya. Dapat dikatakan teori Balance Of Power (Keseimbangan kekuatan) muncul dengan asumsi dasar bahwa ketika sebuah negara atau aliansi negara meningkatkan atau mengunakan kekuatannya secara lebih agresif, negara-negara yang merasa terancam akan merespon dengan meningkatkan kekuatan mereka. Hal ini dikenal dengan istilah counter balancing coalition. Contoh kasus seperti munculnya kekuatan Jerman menjelang Perang Dunia I (tahun 1914-1918) yang memicu formasi koalisi anti-Jerman yang terdiri dari Uni Sovyet, Inggris, Perancis, Amerika Serikat, dan beberapa Negara lain.

Secara teoritis, balance of power menganggap bahwa perubahan status dan kekuatan internasional khususnya upaya sebuah negara yang hendak menguasai sebuah kawasan tertentu akan dapat menstrimulir aksi counter-balancing dari satu Negara atau lebih. Dalam keadaan yang demikian, proses perseimbangan kekuatan dapat mendorong terciptanya dan terjaganya stabilitas hubungan antar negara yang beraliansi. Kita dapat menilik bagaimana Amerika Serikat dan Uni Soviet yang secara bersamaan melakukan peningkatan kapabilitas militer untuk saling bersaing memperoleh posisi terkuat di dunia saat Perang Dingin berlangsung.

Kelemahan dari konsep balance of power adalah karena ia terlalu sempit dalam menilai kekuatan sebuah negara sebagai ukuran dari sebuah proses perseimbangan kekuatan. Meski dapat dikatakan secara sederhana, seperti yang dipaparkan oleh Morgenthau, penggagas teori balance of power, bahwa kekuatan nasional diukur dari ukuran geografi wilayah, populasi penduduk yang dimiliki, serta tingkat kemajuan teknologi sebuah negara atau aliansi sebuah kekuatan. Adapun kapasistas ekonomi masih dilihat kabur oleh Morgenthau sendiri karena ekonomi diterjemahkan lebih kepada bagaimana kapabilitas militer dapat terbangun olehnya. Dan dengan runtuhnya Uni Soviet di akhir Perang Dingin, beberapa kelemahan teori yang terlalu fokus pada kapabilitas militer ini mulai dianggap irrelevant.

Secara historis, kepemimpinan hegemoni dan munculnya ekonomi dunia liberal hanya terjadi dua kali. Pertama adalah era Pax Britannica hingga berlangsung hingga perang Napoleon dan berakhir hingga pecahnya Perang Dunia I. Sejalan dengan bangkitnya negara kelas menengah, menyetujui ideologi liberalisme, Inggris Raya membangkitkan era free trade dengan cara mereduksi tarif dan membuka border pada pasar dunia (Kindleberger, 1978b, ch. 3). Hampir sama ketika AS mengambilalih aturan internasional liberal setelah Perang Dunia II melalui GATT (General Agreement Tariffs and Trade) dan IMF (International Monetary Fund).

Berdasarkan teorinya, hegemon atau pemimpin memegang tanggung jawab untuk menjamin kondisi collective goods sistem perdagangan terbuka dan kestabilan pertukaraan mata uang. Hegemon memegang beberapa peran penting bagi operasi ekonomi dunia. Ia digunakan untuk mempengaruhi pembentukan rezim internasional (Krasner, 1982a, p. 185). Hegemon juga harus mencegah adanya negara lain dengan kekuatan monopoli mengeksploitasi lainnya agar mencegah negara tersebut keluar dari free trade (H. Johnson, 1976, pp. 17, 20). Hegemon juga harus mengatur, dalam suatu tingkatan, struktur foreign-exchange rate dan menyediakan kooperasi kebijakan moneter domestik (Kindleberger, 1981, p. 247), jika tidak, pasti akan ada serangan dari nasionalisme. Meskipun terdapat beberapa keuntungan dari sistem ini, muncul beberapa kritik sebagaimana Hirschman (1945, p. 16) bahwa hegemoni dapat mengeksploitasi posisi dominannya.

Analysis

Akhirnya, konsep Balance of Power ditujukan untuk menciptakan stabilitas keamanan dengan mengedepankan aspek menentang hegemoni dan membatasi ruang geraknya supaya tidak mendesak negara lain yang lebih lemah maupun secara signifikan-insignifikan terancam, bukan lagi untuk menciptakan distribusi power secara paralel antarnegara sebagaimana pengertian tentang Balance of Power sebelumnya. Alur yang demikian sesuai dengan pemikiran realis di mana balance of power menjadi strategi keamanan yang secara inheren efektif untuk menciptakan stabilitas keamanan yang toleran dan favor bagi negara-negara yang berkonflik.

Sementara itu dengan berakhirnya perang Dingin relevansi konsep ini menjadi dipertanyakan. Kemudian muncullah konsep stabilitas hegemoni yang mana memandang hegemon bukan sebagai makhluk monster yang kemudian akan mencaplok dunia. Teori ini memandang bahwa hadirnya suatu hegemon akan menjamin stabilitas sistem internasional dengan menyediakan pelbagai norma, nilai, dan sokongan bagi keberlangsungan sistem internasional yang tertuang dalam rezim internasional (sesuai dengan pemikran Krasner, 1982a, p. 185). Hegemon, kendati memiliki peluang untuk mengekploitasi kedudukan hegemoninya (sesuai dengan pemikiran Hirschman, 1945, p. 16), telah meresikokan dirinya pada suatu tanggung jawab dalam menjamin berlangsungnya seluruh sistem internasional.
References:

Cline, Ray S. 1975. World Power Assesment : A Calculus of Strategic Drift. Washington DC: Georgetown University. Hlm11

Frieden, Jeffry A & Lake, David A. 2000. International Political Economy: Perspectives on Global Power and Wealth. Routledge: Bedford/St. Martin’s

Gilpin, Robert. 1987. “The Dynamics of International Political Economy” dalam The Political Economy of International relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press

Laison, Thomas D. & D. Skidmore. 1993. “The Political Economy of American Hegemony: 1938-1973”, dalam International Political Economy: the struggle for Power and Wealth. Orlando: Harcourt Brace College Publisher

NEOREALISME VS NEOLIBERALISME

Devania Annesya

070810535

devania.annesya@gmail.com

Salah satu pemikir kaum neorealisme kontemporer terkemuka yang tidak diragukan lagi adalah Kenneth Waltz (1979). Ia mengambil beberapa elemen realisme klasik dan neoklasik sebagai titik awal pemikirannya. Ia percaya bahwa negara-negara berdaulat tumbuh dan bergerak dalam suatu sistem anarki internasional dengan mengabaikan pertimbangan normatif dan menyediakan teori HI yang ilmiah. Tidak seperti Morgenthau (1985), Waltz tidak memberikan pertimbangan pada sifat dasar manusia dan mengabaikan etika kenegaraan. Jika dalam realisme klasik para pemimpin negara dan penilaian subjektifnya tentang hubungan internasional merupakan pusat perhatiannya, neorealisme lebih memfokuskan sistem struktur terkait distribusi kekuatan relatif sebagai fokus analitis utama. Aktor-aktor dianggap kurang begitu penting lagi sebab strukturlah yang memaksa mereka melakukan aksi-aksi dengan cara tertentu. Struktur pada dasarnya menentukan tindakan para aktor (Waltz 1979: 97). Dengan kata lain, perubahan internasional terjadi ketika negara-negara berkekuatan  besar muncul dan tenggelam dan dengan demikian perimbangan kekuatan bergeser. Alat-alat yang  khas dari perubahan tersebut adalah perang antarnegara berkekuatan besar.

Baik realisme strategis (Schelling 1980: 1996) maupun neorealisme (Waltz 1979) sangat erat hubungannya dengan Perang Dingin. Keduanya kemudian merupakan teori HI yang merespon situasi sejarah saat itu. Waltz menyatakan bahwa sistem bipolar bersifat superior dari sistem multipolar sebab menyediakan stabilitas internasional yang lebih besar dan oleh karena itu keamanan dan perdamaian lebih baik pula. Ada tiga alasan dasar mengapa kondisi ini dianggap lebih menyediakan kestabilitasan internasional: pertama, jumlah negara berkekuatan besar hanya sedikit sehingga mengurangi resiko peperangan negara-negara besar; kedua, sedikitnya negara-negara berkekuata besar akan mempermudah sistem pemusatan; dan ketiga adalah dengan adanya dua kekuatan besar tersebut akan meminimalisir kesalahan perhitungan dan prediksi. Singkatnya dua superpower yang bersaing dapat terus menerus mengoreksi satu sama lain.

Sementara itu, kaum neorealis yang gencar menyerang pemikiran liberalisme pada akhirnya menerima perlawanan dari pemikiran neoliberalisme. Liberalisme klasik yang tidak bisa menjelaskan mengenai eksistensi anarki dalam sistem internasional dan mengapa negara tetap mau bekerja sama dalam kondisi tersebut, menjadikan asumsi dasar kaum neorealis sebagai titik awal analisis kaum neoliberalis.

Kaum neoliberalis menjelaskan realitas anarki internasional tidak perlu menjadi “anarki mentah” dengan dasar rasa takut dan ketidakamanan dari lingkungan sekitar. Menurutnya ada elemen lain yang cukup signifikan untuk diperhitungkan dari kekuatan internasional yang legal dan efektif. Ia percaya perdamaian dapat tercipta dalam sebuah bentuk kerjasama yang nantinya akan member efek interdependensi. Dan sistem internasional akan menyediakan sebuah institusi yang menyediakan norma dan nilai umum.

Dengan berakhirnya Perang Dingin beberapa isu tradisional menyangkut agenda riset kaum liberal mendapat urgensi baru. Misalnya tentang bagaimana demokrasi menuju perdamaian dan memahami tingkat yang tepat di mana negara-negara demorasi perlu digabung dalam upaya menjamin perdamaian demokratis. Konsep “komunitas keamanan” yang diajukan Karl Deutsch membutuhkan pengembangan yang lebih jauh. Pemikiran ini membantu dalam menekankan bahwa perdamaian lebih dari sekedar ketiadaan perang melainkan mengenai keberadaan “perdamaian hangat”, sebagaimana “perdamaian dingin” di era Perang Dingin. Dengan demikian akan meningkatkan intensitas kerjasama antarnegara (Mueller 1990; 1995)

Analysis

Neoliberalisme tidak menolak adanya anarki, self interest, dan state sebagai aktor utama di sistem internasional serupa dengan pemikiran neorealisme. Ia bahkan berangkat dari kritikan neorealisme dalam menjelaskan eksistensi anarki dalam sistem internasional. Jika neorealisme percaya bahwa kerjasama antarnegara hampir tidak mungkin dan sulit terjadi karena tidak adanya kepercayaan, neoliberalisme sebaliknya meyakini seberapa besar kontribusi kerjasama internasional dalam menjamin perdamaian sebagai akibat dari interdependensi di antara mereka. Namun jika diteliti dengan benar kedua teori ini tidak ada yang benar-benar “benar” dalam artian perlu mix diantara keduanya untuk menciptakan sebuah formula terbaik dalam menciptakan situasi damai dalam sistem internasional.
References:

Waltz, Kenneth N. 1979. Theory of International Politics. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley

Burchill, Scott. 2005. Theories of International Relations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Mingst, Karen A. 2008. Essential of International Relations. New York: Norton & Company, Inc

COMPARING DETERRENCE, COMPELLENCE, AND MILITARRY DEFENSE

Devania Annesya

070810535

devania.annesya@gmail.com

Deterrence is a conditional commitment to retaliate or to exact retribution if anoter party fails to behave in a desire, compliant manner (Penguin, 1998). It is about relationships between individuals or groups. It is possible to identify this relationship in its simplest two-person version by speaking of an imposer and a target. Hence imposer seeks to deter the target from behaving in an unacceptable fashion by threatening punishment.

Deterrence as a policy is about maintaining a large military force and arsenal to discourage any potential aggressor from taking action (states commit themselves to punish an aggressor states). The goal of deterrence (like that of balance of power) is to prevent the outbreak of war. Deterrence theory posits that war can be prevented by the threat of the use of the force. We can see this policy in 2002 National Security Strategy of United States. There is a very explicit threat for those who may pursue terrorism. The United States writes “the US, the American people, our interest at home and abroad by identifying and destroying the threat before it reaches our border… We will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively against such terrorist, to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country”

Deterrence theory as initially developed based on three assumption (Snyder, 1961). First, decision makers are rational who is assumed to avoid resorting to war in those situations in which the anticipated cost of aggression is greater than the gain expected. Second, the threat of destruction from warfare is large. We used to know since the advent of nuclear weapon in 1945, deterrence has taken on a special meaning. Nuclear weapons pose an unacceptable level of destruction and thus that decision makers will not resort to armed aggression against a nuclear state. Third, there are alternatives to war available.

Meanwhile compellence is the policy of threatening or intimidating adversary in order to get it to either take or refrain from taking a particular action. With the strategy of compellence, a state tries, by threatening to use force, to get another state to do something or to undo an act that it has undertaken. The prelude to the 1991 Gulf war serves an excellent example: The U.S, the U. N, and coalition members tried to get Saddam Hussein to change his actions with the compellence strategy of escalating threat. During each step of the compellence strategy of escalation, one message was communicated to Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait or more coercive actions will follow. Similarly, the Western alliance sought to get Serbia to stop abusing the human rights of Kosovar Albanians and to withdraw its military forces from the region. Compellence was also used before the 2003 Iraq war when the United States and others threatened Saddam Husein that if certain actions were not taken, then war would follow. Threat began when George W. Bush labeled Iraq a member of the “axis of evil”, they escalated when the United Nations found Iraq to be in material breach of a U. N. resolution. And in March 2003, Great Britain, one of the coalition partners, gave Iraq ten days to comply with the UN resolution. And on March 17, the last compellent threat was issued: Bush gave the Baathist regime only forty eight hours sary to resort to an invasion because compellence via an escalation of threats failed. And the compellence end once the use of force begins. Liberal theorists are more suitable with compelling strategies, moving cautiously to deterrence whereas realists promote deterrence.

Analysis

The conclusion is force (and the threat of force) is another critical instrument of statecraft and is central realist thinking. Force or its threat may be used either to get a target state to do something or to undo something it has done (compellence) or to keep and adversary from doing something (deterrence) (Schelling, 1966). For either compellence or deterrence to be effective, states have to lay the groundwork. They must clearly and openly communicate their objectives and capabilities, be willing to make a good on the threats or to fulfill the promises and have the capacity to follow through with their commitment. In short, a state’s credibility is essential for compellence and deterrence. It is a strategic interaction where the behavior of each is determined not only by one’s own behavior but by the actions and responses of the other. If ompellence and deterrence fail sates my got to war but they have choices. They choose that type of weaponry (nuclear or nonnuclear, strategic or tactical, conventional or chemical and biological), the kind of target (military or civilian, city or country), and the geographic locus (city, state, region) to be targeted. They able chose to respond in kind, to escalate or de-escalate. In war, both explicit and implicit negotiation takes place, over both how to fight the war and how to end it.
References:

Schelling, Thomas C. 1966. Arms and Influence. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press

Evan, Grahams. 1998. The Penguin Dictionary of International Relatios. London: Penguin Books

Snyder, Glenn. 1961. Deterrence and Defense. New Jersey: Princeton University Press

Mingst, Karen A. 2008. Essentials of International Relations. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc

CRITICAL THEORY

Devania Annesya

070810535

devania.annesya@gmail.com

Critical theory’ it is the idea that the study of international relations should be oriented by an emancipatory politics. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent ‘war on terrorism’ showed, among other things, that unnecessary human suffering remains a central fact of international life. For critical theory, any assessment of the degree to which September 11 changed world order will depend on the extent to which various forms of domination are removed and peace, freedom, justice and equality are promoted.

Critical theory has its roots in a strand of thought which is often traced back to the Enlightenment and connected to the writings of Kant, Hegel, and Marx. In the twentieth century critical theory became most closely associated with a distinct body of thought known as the Frankfurt School (Jay 1973; Wyn Jones 2001). It is in the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal and, more recently, Jürgen Habermas that critical theory acquired a renewed potency and in which the term critical theory came to be used as the symbol of a philosophy which questions modern social and political life through a method of immanent critique.

Essential to the Frankfurt School’s critical theory was a concern to comprehend the central features of contemporary society by understanding its historical and social development, and tracing contradictions in the present which may open up the possibility of transcending contemporary society and its built-in pathologies and forms of domination. it is always ‘situated knowledge’. Since critical theory takes society itself as its object of analysis, and since theories and acts of theorizing are never independent of society, critical theory’s scope of analysis must necessarily include reflection on theory. By drawing attention to the relationship between knowledge and society, which is so frequently excluded from mainstream theoretical analysis, critical theory recognizes the political nature of knowledge claims.

It was not until the 1980s, and the onset of the so-called ‘third debate’, that questions relating to the politics of knowledge would be taken seriously in the study of international relations. Epistemological questions regarding the justification and verification of knowledge claims, the methodology applied and the scope and purpose of inquiry, and ontological questions regarding the nature of the social actors and other historical formations and structures in international relations, all carry normative implications that had been inadequately addressed. One of the important contributions of critical international theory has been to widen the object domain of International Relations, not just to include epistemological and ontological assumptions, but to explicate their connection to prior political commitments. Robert Cox (1981) succinctly and famously said, ‘theory is always for someone and for some purpose’. As a consequence, critical international theorists reject the idea that theoretical knowledge is neutral or non-political. Whereas traditional theories would tend to see power and interests as a posteriori factors affecting outcomes in interactions between political actors in the sphere of international relations, critical international theorists insist that they are by no means absent in the formation and verification of knowledge claims.

In his pioneering 1981 article, Robert Cox followed Horkheimer by distinguishing critical theory from traditional theory – or, as Cox prefers to call it, problem-solving theory. Problem-solving or traditional theories are marked by two main characteristics: first by a positivist methodology; second, by a tendency to legitimize prevailing social and political structures.

Heavily influenced by the methodologies of the natural sciences, problem-solving theories suppose that positivism provides the only legitimate basis of knowledge. Problem-solving theory, as Cox (1981: 128) defines it, ‘takes the world as it finds it, with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organised, as the given framework for action.

By contrast, critical international theory starts from the conviction that because cognitive processes themselves are contextually situated and therefore subject to political interests, they ought to be critically evaluated. Theories of international relations, like any knowledge, necessarily are conditioned by social, cultural and ideological influence, and one of the main tasks of critical theory is to reveal the effect of this conditioning. As Richard Ashley (1981: 207) asserts, ‘knowledge is always constituted in reflection of interests’, so critical theory must bring to consciousness latent interests, commitments, or values that give rise to, and orient, any theory.

Analysis

To summarize, critical theory draws upon various strands of Western social, political and philosophical thought in order to erect a theoretical framework capable of reflecting on the nature and purposes of theory and revealing both obvious and subtle forms of injustice and domination in society. Critical theory not only challenges and dismantles traditional forms of theorizing, it also problematizes and seeks to take apart fixed forms of social life that constrain human freedom. Critical international theory is an extension of this critique to the international domain.

There are some contributions of critical theory to the study of international relations. One of these contributions has been to heighten our awareness of the link between knowledge and politics. Critical international theory rejects the idea of the theorist as objective bystander. Instead, the theorist is enmeshed in social and political life, and theories of international relations, like all theories, are informed by prior interests and convictions, whether they are acknowledged or not. A second contribution critical international theory makes us to rethink accounts of the modern state and political community. Traditional theories tend to take the state for granted, but critical international theory analyses the changing ways in which the boundaries of community are formed, maintained and transformed.

Critical international theory’s aim of achieving an alternative theory and practice of

international relations rests on the possibility of overcoming the exclusionary dynamics associated with modern system of sovereign states and establishing a cosmopolitan set of arrangements that will better promote freedom, justice and equality across the globe. It is thus an attempt radically to rethink the normative foundations of global politics.
Reviewed from:

Devetak, Richard. 2005. ‘Critical Theory’ dalam Theories of International Relation. New York: Palgrave McMillan

THE ENGLISH SCHOOL

Devania Annesya

070810535

devania.annesya@gmail.com

‘The English School’ is a term coined in the 1970s to describe a group of predominantly British or British-inspired writers for whom international society is the primary object of analysis (Jones 1981; Linklater and Suganami 2006). Its most influential members include Hedley Bull, Martin Wight, John Vincent and Adam Watson whose main publications appeared in the period between the mid-1960s and late 1980s (see Bull 1977; Bull and Watson 1984; Wight 1977, 1991; Vincent 1986; Watson 1982). Since the late 1990s, the English School has enjoyed a renaissance in large part because of the efforts of Barry Buzan, Richard Little and a number of other scholars (Buzan 2001, 2003; Little 2000). The English School remains one of the most important approaches to international politics although its influence is probably greater in Britain than in most other societies where International Relations is taught.

The foundational claim of the English School is that sovereign states form a society, albeit an anarchic one in that they do not have to submit to the will of a higher power. The fact that states have succeeded in creating a society of sovereign equals is for the English School one of the most fascinating dimensions of international relations. This is not to suggest that the English School ignores the phenomenon of violence in relations between states. Its members regard violence as an endemic feature of the ‘anarchical society’ (the title of Hedley Bull’s most famous work, 1977) but they also stress that it is controlled to an important extent by international law and morality.

Members of the English School are attracted by elements of realism and idealism, yet gravitate towards the middle ground, never wholly reconciling themselves to either point of view. In short, members of the English School maintain that the international political system is more civil and orderly than realists and neo-realists suggest. However, the fact that violence is ineradicable in their view puts them at odds with utopians who believe in the possibility of perpetual peace. There is no expectation among its members that the international political system will come to enjoy levels of close cooperation and the relatively high level of security found in the world’s more stable national societies. There is, they argue, more to international politics than realists suggest but there will always be much less than the cosmopolitan desires. This is why it makes sense to argue that members of the English School belief there has been a limited degree of progress in international politics.

The English School is interested in the processes which transform systems of states into societies of states and in the norms and institutions which prevent the collapse of civility and the re-emergence of unbridled power. It is also concerned with the question of whether societies of states can develop means of promoting justice for individuals and their immediate associations. Bull in particular distinguished between international societies and international systems, but he also identified different types of international society in order to cast light on the relationship between order and justice in world affairs.

In an early essay (1966a), Bull distinguished between the ‘solidarist’ or ‘Grotian’ and ‘pluralist’ conceptions of international society. He maintained that the ‘central Grotian assumption is that of the solidarity, or potential solidarity, of the states comprising international society, with respect to the enforcement of the law’ (Bull 1966a: 52). Solidarism is apparent in the Grotian conviction that there is a clear distinction between just and unjust wars, and in the assumption ‘from which [the] right of humanitarian intervention is derived… that individual human beings are subjects of international law and members of international society in their own right’ (1966a: 64). Pluralism, as expounded by the eighteenth-century international lawyer, Vattel, rejects this approach, arguing that ‘states do not exhibit solidarity of this kind, but are capable of agreeing only for certain minimum purposes which fall short of that of the enforcement of the law’ (1966a: 52). A related argument is that states rather than individuals are the basic members of international society (1966a: 68). Having made this distinction, Bull asked whether there was any evidence that the pluralist international society of the post-Second World War era was becoming more solidarist. His answer in The Anarchical Society was that expectations of greater solidarity were seriously ‘premature’ (Bull 1977: 73).

Bull argued that the goal of preserving the sovereignty of each state has often clashed with the goal of preserving the balance of power and maintaining peace. Polish independence was sacrificed on three occasions in the eighteenth century for the sake of international equilibrium. The League of Nations chose not to defend Abyssinia from Italian aggression because Britain and France needed Italy to balance the power of Nazi Germany. In such cases, order took priority over justice which requires that each sovereign state should be treated equally. Contemporary international society contains other examples of the tension between order and justice. Order requires efforts to prevent further additions to the nuclear club, but justice suggests all states have an equal right to acquire weapons of mass destruction (1977: 227–8).

The development of English School thinking about human rights is fascinating in this regard. Bull (1977: 83) argued that in the recent history of international society pluralism has triumphed over solidarism. In recent centuries, the solidarist belief in the primacy of individual human rights had survived albeit ‘underground’. In addition, most states – and Europe’s former colonies since the end of the Second World War – have feared that human rights law might be used as a pretext for interfering in their domestic affairs. Bull was concerned that Western arrogance and complacency about human rights might damage the delicate framework of international society. He also noted that relative silence on the importance of human rights had produced a strong counterreaction, and that states in the twentieth century had come under increasing pressure to ensure their protection (Bull 1984a).

In fact, two very different tendencies have appeared in the English School in recent years. Dunne and Wheeler (1999) argued in the late 1990s that the end of bipolarity made it possible that states could agree on how to introduce new principles of humanitarian intervention into the society of states. They added that the aspiring ‘good international citizen’ should be prepared to intervene in societies where there was a ‘supreme humanitarian emergency’ even though their action was in breach of international law. This argument has been rejected by Jackson (2000: 291ff.) who stresses, citing the example of Russia’s long-standing affinity with Serbia, the danger that humanitarian intervention might disturb order between the great powers. Jackson (2000) argues that the greatest violations of human rights take place in times of war, and so preserving constraints on violence between states should have priority over the use of force to safeguard human rights, whenever it is necessary to choose between them.

Analysis

In The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939, E. H. Carr (1939/1945/1946: 12) argued that international theory should avoid the ‘sterility’ of realism and the ‘naivety’ of idealism. The English School can claim to have passed this test of a good international theory. They have analysed elements of society and civility which have been of little interest to realists. Although they have been principally concerned with understanding international order, they have also considered the prospects for global justice and some have made the moral case for creating a more just world order. Members of the English School are not convinced by utopian or revolutionist arguments which maintain that states can settle their most basic differences about morality and justice. The idea that the English School is the via media between realism and revolutionism rests on such considerations.

The English School argues that international society is a precarious achievement but the only context within which more radical developments can take place. Advances in the global protection of human rights, they argue, will not occur in the absence of international order. It is to be expected that there will always be two sides to the English School: the side that is quick to detect threats to international society and the side that identifies ways in which that society might become more responsive to the needs of individuals and their various associations.
Reviewed from:

Linklater, Andrew. 2005. ‘The English School’ dalam Theories of International Relation. New York: Palgrave McMillan

POSTMODERNISM

Devania Annesya

070810535

devania.annesya@gmail.com

Postmodernism remains among the most controversial of theories in the humanities and social sciences. It has regularly been accused of moral and political delinquency. Indeed, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, some commentators went so far as to blame postmodernism. In a time when moral certitude appeared to be necessary, postmodernism was charged with a dangerous tendency towards moral equivocation or even sympathy towards terrorism. Moreover, as James Der Derian (2002: 15) has provocatively argued, despite everything that differentiates America’s president, George W. Bush, from the terrorist leader behind the attacks, Osama bin Laden, they are united in their moral and epistemological certitude. It is precisely this conviction that their moral and epistemological claims are beyond question that postmodernism challenges.

The meaning of postmodernism is in dispute not just between proponents and critics, but also among proponents. Indeed, many theorists associated with postmodernism never use the term, sometimes preferring the term ‘post-structuralism’, sometimes ‘deconstruction’, sometimes rejecting any attempt at labelling altogether.

Power and Knowledge

Rather than treat the production of knowledge as simply a cognitive matter, postmodernism treats it as a normative and political matter (Shapiro 1999: 1). According to Foucault, there is a general consistency, which cannot be reduced to an identity, between modes of interpretation and operations of power. Power and knowledge are mutually supportive; they directly imply one another (Foucault 1977: 27). The task therefore is to see how operations of power fit with the wider social and political matrices of the modern world. For example, in Discipline and Punish (1977), Foucault investigates the possibility that the evolution of the penal system is intimately connected to the human sciences. His argument is that a ‘single process of “epistemologico-juridical” formation’ underlies the history of the prison on the one hand, and the human sciences on the other (1997: 23). In other words, the prison is consistent with modern society and modern modes of apprehending ‘man’s’ world.

One of the important insights of postmodernism, with its focus on the power–knowledge nexus and its genealogical approach, is that many of the problems and issues studied in International Relations are not just matters of epistemology and ontology, but of power and authority; they are struggles to impose authoritative interpretations of international relations. As Derrida (2003: 105) himself says in an interview conducted after September 11: ‘We must also recognize here the strategies and relations of power. The dominant power is the one that manages to impose and, thus, to legitimate, indeed to legalize … on a national or world stage, the terminology and thus the interpretation that best suits it in a given situation’. The following section outlines a strategy which is concerned with destabilizing dominant interpretations by showing how every interpretation systematically depends on that for which it cannot account.

It is important to grasp the notion of genealogy, as it has become crucial to many postmodern perspectives in International Relations. Genealogy is, put simply, a style of historical thought which exposes and registers the significance of power–knowledge relations. It is perhaps best known through Nietzsche’s radical assault on the concept of origins. As Roland Bleiker (2000: 25) explains, genealogies ‘focus on the process by which we have constructed origins and given meaning to particular representations of the past, representations that continuously guide our daily lives and set clear limits to political and social options’. It is a form of history which historicizes those things which are thought to be beyond history, including those things or thoughts which have been buried, covered, or excluded from view in the writing and making of history.

Textual strategies

Der Derian (1989: 6) contends that postmodernism is concerned with exposing the ‘textual interplay behind power politics’. It might be better to say it is concerned with exposing the textual interplay within power politics, for the effects of textuality do not remain behind politics, but are intrinsic to them. Textuality is a common postmodern theme. It stems mainly from Derrida’s redefinition of ‘text’ in Of Grammatology (1974). ‘Textual interplay’ refers to the supplementary and mutually constitutive relationship between different interpretations in the representation and constitution of the world. In order to tease out the textual interplay, postmodernism deploys the strategies of deconstruction and double reading.

Deconstruction is a general mode of radically unsettling what are taken to be stable concepts and conceptual oppositions. Its main point is to demonstrate the effects and costs produced by the settled concepts and oppositions, to disclose the parasitical relationship between opposed terms and to attempt a displacement of them. To summarize, deconstruction is concerned with both the constitution and deconstitution of any totality, whether a text, theory, discourse, structure, edifice, assemblage, or institution.

As expressed by Derrida (1981: 6), double reading is essentially a duplicitous strategy which is ‘simultaneously faithful and violent’. The first reading is a commentary or repetition of the dominant interpretation – that is, a reading which demonstrates how a text, discourse or institution achieves the stability-effect. The point here is to demonstrate how the text, discourse, or institution appears coherent and consistent with itself. the second, counter-memorializing reading unsettles it by applying pressure to those points of instability within a text, discourse, or institution. It exposes the internal tensions and how they are (incompletely) covered over or expelled.

Analysis

Postmodernism makes several contributions to the study of international relations. First, through its genealogical method it seeks to expose the intimate connection between claims to knowledge and claims to political power and authority. Secondly, through the textual strategy of deconstruction it seeks to problematize all claims to epistemological and political totalization. This holds especially significant implications for the sovereign state. Most notably, it means that the sovereign state, as the primary mode of subjectivity in international relations, must be examined closely to expose its practices of capture and exclusion. Moreover, a more comprehensive account of contemporary world politics must also include an analysis of those transversal actors and movements that operate outside and across state boundaries. Thirdly, postmodernism seeks to rethink the concept of the political without invoking assumptions of sovereignty and reterritorialization. By challenging the idea that the character and location of the political must be determined by the sovereign state, postmodernism seeks to broaden the political imagination and the range of political possibilities for transforming international relations. These contributions seems more important than ever after the events of September 11.
Reviewed from:

Devetak, Richard. 2005. ‘Postmodernism’ dalam Theories of International Relation. New York: Palgrave McMillan

CONSTRUCTIVISM

Devania Annesya

070810535

devania.annesya@gmail.com

The end of the Cold War produced a major reconfiguration of debates within the dominant American discourse of international relations theory, prompted by the rise of a new ‘constructivist’ school of thought. While constructivism owes much to intellectual developments in sociology–particularly sociological institutionalism (see Finnemore 1996) – Richard Price and Chris Reus-Smit have argued that constructivism should be seen primarily as an outgrowth of critical international theory, as many of its pioneers explicitly sought to employ the insights of that theory to illuminate diverse aspects of world politics. Constructivism differs from first-wave critical theory, however, in its emphasis on empirical analysis. Some constructivists have continued to work at the meta-theoretical level (Onuf 1989; Wendt 1999), but most have sought conceptual and theoretical illumination through the systematic analysis of empirical puzzles in world politics.

The rise of constructivism was prompted by four factors. First, motivated by an attempt to reassert the pre-eminence of their own conceptions of theory and world politics, leading rationalists challenged critical theorists to move beyond theoretical critique to the substantive analysis of international relations (Walker 1989). Second, the end of the Cold War undermined the explanatory pretensions of neo-realists and neo-liberals, neither of which had predicted, nor could adequately comprehend, the systemic transformations reshaping the global order. Third, by the beginning of the 1990s a new generation of young scholars had emerged who embraced many of the propositions of critical international theory, but who saw potential for innovation in conceptual elaboration and empirically informed theoretical development (Klotz 1995: 20; Kier 1997; Price 1997; Hall 1999; Lynch 1999; Reus-Smit 1999; Tannenwald 1999; Rae 2002). Finally, the advance of the new constructivist perspective was aided by the enthusiasm that mainstream scholars, frustrated by the analytical failings of the dominant rationalist theories, showed in embracing the new perspective, moving it from the margins to the mainstream of theoretical debate.

Echoing the divisions within critical international theory, constructivists are divided between modernists and postmodernists. They have all, however, sought to articulate and explore three core ontological propositions about social life, propositions which they claim illuminate more about world politics than rival rationalist assumptions. First, to the extent that structures can be said to shape the behaviour of social and political actors, be they individuals or states, constructivists hold that normative or ideational structures are just as important as material structures. (Wendt 1995: 73). For example, Canada and Cuba both exist alongside the United States, yet the simple balance of military power cannot explain the fact that the former is a close American ally, the latter a sworn enemy. Ideas about identity, the logics of ideology and established structures of friendship and enmity lend the material balance of power between Canada and the United States and Cuba and the United States radically different meanings. Second, constructivists argue that understanding how non-material structures condition actors’ identities is important because identities inform interests and, in turn, actions. As we saw above, rationalists believe that actors’ interests are exogenously determined, meaning that actors, be they individuals or states, encounter one another with a pre-existing set of preferences. Neo-realists and neo-liberals are not interested in where such preferences come from, only in how actors pursue them strategically. Third, constructivists contend that agents and structures are mutually constituted. Normative and ideational structures may well condition the identities and interests of actors, but those structures would not exist if it were not for the knowledgeable practices of those actors. Wendt’s emphasis on the ‘supervening’ power of structures, and the predilection of many constructivists to study how norms shape behaviour, suggest that constructivists are structuralists, just like their neo-realist and Marxist counterparts. Normative and ideational structures are seen as shaping actors’ identities and interests through three mechanisms: imagination, communication and constraint.

A curious feature of these developments has been their relative autonomy from the events of 11 September 2001 and their aftermath. Theoretical developments in International Relations have generally – though not always – responded to catalytic historical events: liberalism got a boost after the First World War, realism emerged ascendant after the crises of the inter-war period and the Second World War and, as we have seen, constructivism’s rise had much to do with the end of the Cold War. Yet the terrorist attacks of September 11, which were just as momentous as the fall of the Berlin Wall, have not sparked a tectonic shift in the nature of constructivism, or in the general terrain of International Relations theorizing. There is a general sense that history has drawn the field back to questions of power, hegemony and the state, and some have concluded that this advantages realist forms of thinking. We are yet to see, however, significant theoretical innovations from realists, constructivists, or others. In many respects, the paucity of an innovative constructivist response to the post-9/11 world is surprising, as many of the big and important questions now facing the international community (and which pose ample scholarly challenges) play to constructivism’s strengths. Three of these deserve particular attention: the nature of power, the relationship between international and world society and the role of culture in world politics.

Analysis

The rise of constructivism has heralded a return to a more sociological, historical and practice oriented form of International Relations scholarship. Where rationalists had reduced the social to strategic interaction, denied the historical by positing disembedded, universal forms of rationality and reduced the practical art of politics to utility maximizing calculation, constructivists have re-imagined the social as a constitutive domain, reintroduced history as realm of empirical inquiry and emphasized the variability of political practice. In many respects, constructivism embodies characteristics normally associated with the ‘English School’, discussed by Linklater in Chapter 4 in this volume. Constructivists have taken up the idea that states form more than a system, that they form a society and they have pushed this idea to new levels of theoretical and conceptual sophistication. Their interest in international history also represents an important point of convergence with the English School, as does their stress on the cultural distinctiveness of different societies of states. Finally, their initial emphasis on interpretive method of analysis echoes Hedley Bull’s call for a classical approach, ‘characterized above all by explicit reliance upon the exercise of judgement’ rather than neo-positivist standards of ‘verification and proof’ (1969, 1995: 20–38).

These similarities, as well as constructivism’s roots in critical international theory, appeared to pose a challenge to conventional understandings of the field. An ‘Atlantic divide’ has long structured understandings of the sociology of International Relations as a discipline, with the field seen as divided between North American ‘scientists’ and European (mainly British) ‘classicists’. Two of the defining ‘great debates’ of the discipline – between realists and idealists and positivists and traditionalists – have been mapped onto this divide, lending intellectual divisions a cultural overtone. At first glance, constructivism appears to confuse this way of ordering the discipline. Despite having taken up many of the intellectual commitments normally associated with the English School, constructivism has its origins in the United States. Its principal exponents were either educated in or currently teach in the leading American universities, and their pioneering work has been published in the premier journals and by the leading university presses. The United States also spawned much of the earlier wave of critical international theory, especially of a postmodern variety, but that work never achieved the same centrality within the American sector of the discipline. One of the reasons for constructivism’s success in the United States has been its emphasis on empirically informed theorizing over meta-theoretical critique, an orientation much less confronting to the mainstream. With success, however, has come normalization, and this has seen the neglectful forgetting, or active jettisoning, of theoretical commitments that were central to constructivism in the early years. Disappearing, in the American discipline, are the foundational ideas that constructivism rests on a social ontology radically different from rationalism’s, that studying norms, as social facts, demands an interpretive methodology, and that constructivism was linked, in important ways, to the emancipatory project of critical theory. The continued importance of these commitments to non American constructivism suggests that a new manifestation of the ‘Atlantic divide’ may now be emerging.
Reviewed from:

Reus-Smit, Christian. 2005. ‘Constructivism’ dalam Theories of International Relation. New York: Palgrave McMillan